Different is danger” so unsurprisingly our instinct is for command and control. In a world of change our evolutionary programming screams “Same is safe. With the disruption from COVID it is easy to get locked into seeing challenges as binary dilemmas: work from home / come to work, centralised / decentralised crisis response. Alignment or autonomy and other paradoxes and why trust is critical Is McDonalds a fast-food business or a real estate / franchise business? Was Kodak a photographic film company or a company that helped people capture their most precious moments? Is BP an integrated oil and gas company or are they beyond petroleum? What are Amazon and Netflix? How many organisations fail to realise what business they need to be in before it’s too late? How do you educate and enrol your people in this vision to make it a reality?ģ. So, the pervasive mental model in an organisations has a huge impact on their ability to adapt to change. While the hedgehog benefits from its focus, execution excellence and efficiency the fox gains in adaptability, innovation, and flexibility. In times of stability where we can be clear and certain, hedgehogs can be very effective and in times of disruption and VUCA it may pay to be a fox. Hedgehogs are one trick ponies – highly focused on a certain outcome while the fox is the jack of all trades. In essence hedgehog organisations view the world through the lens of a single idea while foxes draw on a wide variety of experiences – for them the world (and their business) cannot be boiled down to a single idea. "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." The Hedgehog and the Fox – building an adaptive organisational mindsetĭr Keith Grint introduced Isaiah Berlin’s essay on “The Hedgehog and the Fox” which originated from the ancient Greek parable by Archilochus. It raises interesting questions in COVID, which of these strategies did organisations default to and what combinations proved most effective?Ģ. Finally, there is Management - the efficient and effective use of your resources once you are clear on what must be done (Do things right). We can all remember those amazing customer experiences where people are empowered to solve our problems and we also remember for less positive reasons those where “there is nothing I can do” was the default answer. closest to the context where the decision has impact (Take action and do the right things). Leadership: if done right, is empowering, creating more leaders to be able to delegate decision making to the lowest possible level i.e. Command and the control it offers requires hierarchy and authority – it is top down and involves positional power. In these situations, organisations should clearly distinguish 3 separate types of activity: command, leadership, and management. Teams and organisations will increasingly need to be able to absorb, adapt and re-engage in more competitive ways. Where the VUCA (Volatile Uncertain Complex Ambiguous) world is highly disrupting shared leadership with highly empowered teams will be the key to organisations being both adaptive and resilient to change. The Military have long been familiar with the concept of “dispersed fighting” where conflicts involve small independent formations requiring a greater focus on proximate leadership. In the current lockdown context, the skills to build teams, communicate, create trust and lead by direct example have never been more relevant. The military are experienced in creating the culture for successful remote leadership A few people in my network have asked me to summarize from my perspective the key takeaways on how this relates to wider civilian organisational contexts - so here goes (please refer to the Centre for Army Leadership website for more details on the speakers and the sessions).ġ. While the topic was broadly on remote leadership the discussion extended widely to include how we can develop adaptive and resilient organisations. The day included sessions from a range of army and civilian experts including General Stanley McChrystal, Dr Keith Grint, Siobhan Sheridan, Matthew Syed and many more. Last Thursday I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend a conference on remote leadership hosted by the Centre for Army Leadership (CALConf21).
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