Only ONE way for an organisation to survive
We live in, no we have created, a VUCA world, a world that is volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous! And there is no stopping this roller coaster – it’s going to get more VUCA-rer! We barely cope with the rate of change now, so how are we as leaders going to ensure our organisations survive? And if we get that right, will the next generation of leaders, our organisational heirs, be pleased with what they inherit from us?
Peter Hawkins, world-renowned author and team coach, puts it this way: organisational learning must equal or be greater than the speed of environmental change. This is the only way for organisations to survive!
This, of course, begs the question: what are our leadership teams doing to achieve this? What are we doing to build a leadership culture that seeks to achieve this?
The easy answer is probably, not enough. The more difficult question is: what is enough? Some of the challenges leadership teams of today face are:
- Managing expectations of different stakeholders
- Both running the business and transforming it
- Being members of multiple teams
- Working with systemic conflict
- The world becoming more complex and interconnected
- Working virtually
- The major challenges lie not in the parts but in the interconnections
These, then, are the areas that you as leaders and us as coaches need to focus on if we are to not only survive VUCA, but leave a world to the next generations that they are able to cope with and succeed in.
Over the next several weeks, I will be focusing how we might achieve exactly this using a form of systemic leadership team coaching. I hope you enjoy the series – and that you find ways for your organisation to comfortably survive VUCA!
(I am indebted to the work of Peter Hawkins, of Renewal Associates, and the methodology of Integral Coaching Canada, which I have integrated for purposes of this series and in developing my Systemic Leadership Team Coaching process.)
