Leadership at the edge of chaos

1. Poised in Paradox: Leadership at the Edge of Chaos
Stephen Mugford and Steve Rohan-Jones with Pamela Kinnear
Stephen Mugford, B. Sc. (Hons), PhD is a Principal of Kinnford Consulting, a Canberra based
company specialising in building organisational capacity in teamwork, leadership and emotional
competence. After a successful career as an academic social scientist he became a full-time
consultant. He has worked with a wide range of organisations in the public and private sector and
their senior teams, including (from 1999-2014) the senior leadership team of the RAAF, for the RAF
senior team with Chief of the Air Staff ACM Sir Glenn Torpy (2007-2009) and helped establish and
run the team of 3 star officers and then CDF, ACM Sir Angus Houston. In 2013 he co-authored The
Chiefs: A Study of Strategic Leadership.
Steve Rohan-Jones BA (Hons), MDefStud, MA (Int Rel) is a principal of O2C Solutions a company
specialising in organisational development through resilience, leadership development and
strategic planning. After operational service with the Australian Army and completion of
Australian Command and Staff College, he developed three successful businesses enterprises.
Through these experiences he is familiar with the fine balance and tension between chaos and order
within organisations. He has worked with a range of commercial, social profit, public and private
organisations, including the senior teams of IP Australia, Citadel Group, Outward Bound Australia.
He is currently completing a PhD on resilience and emotional intelligence within organisations.
Pamela Kinnear, BA (Hons), PhD is a Principal of Kinnford Consulting, a Canberra based company
specialising in building organisational capacity in teamwork, leadership and emotional competence.
She has over 20 years’ experience of high-pressure leadership in senior executive roles within
national-level organisations – across government (including PM&C), non-government (e.g.,
Universities Australia), as well as research agencies and think tanks. In her role with Kinnford
Consulting, Pamela now provides consulting services and facilitation to a variety of clients as they
face the challenges that come with fast-paced, uncertain and ambiguous operating environments.
SUMMARY
This paper synthesises a number of important works into an argument about leadership. It
does so in a way intended both the clarify issues and guide actions, especially actions
centring on education and development. It makes six main points which flow one to
another:
1 We come to bury the word ‘leader’ not to praise or use it. The word is over-used, not
well-defined, clouds thinking and discussion and hinders focused action. We
foreshadow its funeral.

2. 2 In contrast, the word leadership—defined below as an expanded version of the
Department of Defence definition1
—is immensely useful. Based on the idea of
‘incremental influence over and above compliance’ it is clear, assists in separating
leadership from command and management activities and helps to show how
leadership may be enhanced. Along the way, it makes the idea of followership
irrelevant, since positive leadership effects from more junior personnel are part of
leadership overall and do not need a separate term.
3 Modern organisations are challenged by rapid change and unpredictability, often
acronymed to VUCA2
. The organisations themselves are complex systems. If they are to
respond adaptively to the VUCA challenge, they need to be complex adaptive systems
(CAS).
4 CAS are ‘poised at the edge of chaos’. To one side lies instability decaying to chaos; to
the other, stability decaying to ‘frozen order’. At the instability boundary is the area
where novelty and change should generate innovation and experiment. At the stability
boundary is the area where business-as-usual should continue, subject to review and
continuous improvement. These two areas need to be held in balance and integrated:
through this the CAS remains poised and hence adaptive.
5 It follows that there are three zones of leadership that must be sought to maintain
‘poise’:
a. A generative zone of leadership which experiments and innovates, allows
emergence of new ideas and effects etc.
b. A professional zone which attends to and improves business-as-usual
c. A unifying or enabling zone of leadership that supports the other two,
integrates them and ‘trades’ innovation from one side with commitment and
resources from the other
6 Finally, we argue that living in the poised state of a CAS, dealing with the external VUCA
world, raises challenges that are beyond the range of conventional thinking and
education. In particular, leadership conceived in this way is the domain of paradox and
ambiguity. It requires a range of emotional and cognitive competences that is larger and
more sophisticated than is required by most management and command roles. The last
part of the paper discusses the necessary elements for such deployment and education.
One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical for the paradox is the source of the
thinker's passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry
mediocrity. Søren Kierkegaard, quoted in Bolden et al, 2016
1
“… the process of influencing others in order to gain their willing consent in the ethical pursuit of missions.”
2
Volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous.

3. Why is leadership so difficult? And it must be difficult; surely there is no other reason why so
many organisations around the world are so poorly led. If leadership were easy, anyone could
do it and we would have a lot fewer problems in our economy and society. We know leadership
is difficult too because despite the publication of more than 20,000 books on leadership over
the years, we are still not entirely clear what leadership is, or how it works, or even who leaders
are. (Bolden et al, 2016).
The adaptive process involves transforming organizations from one state to another to
enhance fitness with the environment. … This adaptive process depends on knowledge,
learning and information flows (e.g., knowledge transfer, knowledge spill-overs) that enable
generation and emergence of novelty and innovation. … The adaptive process requires that
organizations move away from status quo. Most organizations, however, are designed as
complex systems rather than complex adaptive systems. Complex systems differ from complex
adaptive systems in that they are structured for efficiency and control, rather than
adaptability. This leads to the problem of core rigidities in which organizations pull back to
equilibrium, even in the face of complex challenges from the environment. (Uhl-Bien and Arena
2018, emphasis added.)
When could an unfinished leader be good? Well, it might be in a complex world in which there
are no easy answers. In a world where leaders need to see themselves as constantly open to
new possibilities. … we will never finish the most important personal and professional
challenges. This is because more and more of our problems are not puzzles to be solved but
paradoxes to be managed on a continuing basis that has no end. This turns the image of an
effective leader as decisive problem solver on end. Effectiveness in a global, interconnected
world depends on leaders who accept not only that they will never be finished but that the
world around them will never be finished. … [For] paradoxes, unlike puzzles, have more than
one right answer, and more important, they do not have an ending. Paradoxes are not
susceptible to being finished. The only way we can successfully manage paradoxes is to
understand that we as leaders will never be finished. Never finished in our solution to all
problems. Never finished in our achievement of all goals. Never finished in the development of
ourselves. (Stephen Rhinesmith, Foreword to Dotlich, et al, 2014)
Living with … paradox requires us to do something which is, in descriptive terms, quite
simple: accept that there is no black and white, no right and wrong, and that two or more
logically incompatible positions might well be true — yet, in reality, most of us find this
difficult. Partly this is because …Western thinking about management has been heavily
conditioned over the past hundred years by the Taylorist concept of the ‘one best way’;
there is only one ‘best’ way of doing things and all others are inferior. Taylorism tends to
push us into narrow channels of thinking reliant on Cartesian logic and step-by-step
approaches. [.] And Cartesian logic is …the wrong tool. Cartesian logic is very good at
breaking problems down into their component parts and working out cause and effect. But
when there is a discontinuity between cause and effect, or when the cause leads to multiple
and contradictory effects, our logical tools break down. In terms of analysing leadership, it
may be that cause-and-effect analysis has taken us about as far as we can go. It is time,
perhaps past time, that we stopped and stood back and looked at leadership not as a
series of problems that can be solved, but as a series of contradictory, puzzling and
obscure concepts that need to be managed and lived with. (Bolden et al (eds), 2016,
emphases added.)

4. Introduction
This paper synthesises a broad set of arguments from several disciplinary areas in order to
offer a model for developing effective organisational leadership in a context of rapid,
volatile change where novel and ambiguous challenges are present. Success in building a
dynamic leadership capacity lies in improving the professional mastery of the members of
the organisation and, through the synergy that this produces, providing the organisation
with a cognitive and intellectual edge over other similar organisations.
The paper brings to bear important intellectual elements from different literatures into a
coherent whole that has relevance to organisations in general and military organisations in
particular.
At the core of the paper are two linked concepts: complexity and paradox. Complexity,
especially in the form of complex adaptive systems, informs the analysis of;
 the problems that modern organisations face: in brief a VUCA3
world and life at the
edge of chaos
 the dynamics of organisational change: finding where the system is dynamically
poised, sliding neither backwards to frozen order nor forward to chaos
 the cognitive abilities and sophistication needed for people—especially senior
people—to cope with and thrive in ambiguity and uncertainty.
Paradox and paradoxes are a key feature of responding to and living in complexity. The
most troubling paradoxes are those where two opposing forces, beliefs or pressures are
involved. When this is the case it seems necessary to accept the reality of both rather than
to choose between them and find resolution, to deploy what Roger Martin (2007) calls ‘the
opposable mind’, one which holds contradictory beliefs in tension. This is uncomfortable
because there are:
…natural human drives for control, consistency, and closure, for which most leaders
have been rewarded over a lifetime. Who wants a leader who doesn't want to control
events? A leader who doesn't act consistently? A leader who can't bring about closure?
But with paradoxical problems, these drives get the problem-solving plane down the
runway but fail to give it sufficient lift to take off. Leaders need to understand how to
use control, consistency, and closure but also how to give away control to others, to
tolerate inconsistency, and to accept a lack of closure4. (Dotlich et al, 2014).
The paper’s central substantive thrust is embedded in the quotes on the title page. First,
despite many analyses and theories, leadership remains a problem. In this paper we explore
3
VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous
4
As we shall see below, we would alter this quote in one way—deleting ‘leader’ in favour of the more accurate SOA
(senior organisational appointments).

5. the paradox of the word leader being extremely widely used and discussed while also being
widely abused and counter-productive. We propose changing how the word leader is
deployed, offering the radical suggestion that we cease to use it altogether in order to
increase conceptual clarity and improve applied efforts.
Second, we know from direct experience and from scholarly study that change is hard. In
large organisations with a strong culture and a hierarchical character the predominant
tendency is often not successful adaptation but rather reversion to old habits and models,
even when those are clearly sub-optimal.
Third, we have to grasp the nettle that a change means we must unlearn things we thought
we knew and abandon certainties that once we relied upon. As with holding onto paradox,
giving up old certainties is uncomfortable, the more so when we suggest replacing them
with new ways of thinking and acting that are wilfully open-ended. For example, Dotlich et
al (2014) offer the paradoxical idea that there are no ‘finished’ (i.e., complete and fully
trained) leaders and that the only route towards being finished lies in giving up the notion
that there is a finish. This is not the clean, complete and controllable idea that most people
are trained to search for, but in a world that is complex, unpredictable and shifting, the
search for clean, complete closure is not only unworkable, it is actively pernicious.
As we unpack these topics, we offer four main arguments:
1. Unlearning leadership requires us to bury ‘leaders
2. An adaptive organisation requires dynamic poise
3. Leadership of organisations requires exploration and continuity
4. Mastering complexity is by definition unachievable
It is said that on her death bed, Gloria Steinem’s last words were, “What is the answer? …
Ah, but what is the question?”
In the spirit of synthesis and enquiry, therefore, we ask you the reader at each juncture to
consider some questions and invite you to come back with your own. After all, if there is no
finished leader, then there is no finished leadership discussion.

6. 1: Unlearning leadership: The Funeral of the ‘Leader’
It is time to stop using the word leader and lay it to rest.
This rather provocative statement has a strong rationale.
Discussions of leaders as people who exert leadership
influence (see further below) are contradicted by how the
word is used. It is widely agreed in formal texts that:
 All of us who follow the leadership literature and
debates acknowledge that leaders may exist
throughout an organisation. People who hold a
Senior Organisational Appointment5
(SOA) are a
subset (at a senior level) and may exert leadership
as an outcome or an effect to achieve an outcome.
They also do other things—e.g. command or
management that are not leadership;
 Also, by no means all leadership is carried out by these people—many others
contribute important elements of leadership.
It follows that ‘leader’ is not the same as ‘SOA’, and vice versa. By far the most common
usage in most discussions, however, is to endorse this idea and then blithely ignore it and
talk as if SOA and leader are one and the same. The point is not merely semantic. To talk as
if given a SOA or group of SOAs deserves the label leader(s) muddies not only the
discussions we have but also impedes any effort to create more and better leadership.
This paper avoids any semantic and practical confusion by adopting the term SOA and
burying the term ‘leader’.
The same burial is not needed for the concept of leadership. We do not equate leadership
one-to-one with the actions of SOAs. Instead, drawing on a wide range of contemporary
work, we offer the following definition:
Leadership is incremental influence over and above compliance with routine
direction, may centre upon indirect, catalytic process within organisations and is
often independent of, and possibly even contrary to, the authority structure, as it may
well influence the process of emergence or self-organisation.
The idea that leadership is influence is central to, for example, the current ADF doctrine
which calls it “… the process of influencing others in order to gain their willing consent in
the ethical pursuit of missions.6
” (Department of Defence, 2010). It is also congruent with
5
C-suite or senior public servants, star ranked military officers, school principals, etc.
6
This is a useful example. Many others could be cited to identical effect.

7. numerous arguments that the exercise by SOAs of other important functions (such as
command and management) are not leadership per se.
From this definition we can identify a number of leadership levels. These include:
A. Top down leadership (TDL): when those with authority over others use their
authority to influence subordinates. The leadership literature is replete with ideas
(e.g. servant leadership) which point to one of three important possibilities.
a. Facilitation: the SOA creates positive emotion (hope, optimism, etc.) in others
or facilitates positive action by ‘empowerment’, etc.;
b. Modelling: the SOA offers a positive role model to others;
c. Unifying or enabling: the SOA exercises command or management functions
which in turn create conditions for the leadership effect within the
organisation. (Below in Diagram 2 this emerges as an important function.)
B. Bottom up leadership (BUL): when those who have positional authority exercised
over them are able to influence those ‘above’ them in various ways. This is often
called ‘followership’, raising yet another problem of definition7
.
C. Lateral leadership (LL): when some action or arrangement affects others in positive
ways. This can occur because the group lacks formal structures and (in broad terms)
all are equals, or within a hierarchical organisation among those who are peers, or,
where there is no clear command structure that links the actors. LL equates to much
of what we might call good teamwork or organisational synergy, both of which are
seen as crucial advantages for organisational success and (usually) for successful
change efforts8
. (When we examine Diagram 2 below, we shall argue that LL is an
important component of generative leadership.)
One implication of this leadership definition should be mentioned here. It is important to
see that SOAs can block leadership—a point which is obscured if we call SOAs leaders and
assume all their action is leadership. Here is an emblematic example:
In the 1990s, a team of British criminologists, headed by Prof. Alison Liebling of Cambridge
University, undertook a Home Office funded initiative to improve the functions of HM
Prisons. This study used an ‘appreciative inquiry’ methodology (see e.g. Liebling et al, 1999).
The initial experiment was successful and was expanded to many other prisons with
considerable positive impact. Not all prisons, however, were equally able to apply the model
and make progress: a critical factor seemed to be the extent to which the Governor (the
7
Followership will not be explored in detail here but suffice to say that if subordinates in an organisation are able to
influence their superordinates for the better then this fits the central definition of leadership (meaning that
followership would need to be clearly delineated if it refers to something different.) Probably the term follower could
be buried as well.
8
Of course, a team with good cooperation and high morale could also be a powerful blocker if asked to change in a
direction they didn’t like.

8. most senior official at each prison) was willing to give up direct control and let innovation
emerge (Liebling, pers. comm. with the senior author.)9
That is, the SOA deployed positional power to counteract leadership and prevent its self-
organising beneficial effect from emerging. This formulation is much more powerful in
carrying forward the discussion of leadership than, for example, calling these Governors
‘leaders’ and then (perhaps) calling their action ‘poor leadership’. That would miss the
point: this is not leadership at all and blocks actual leadership10
.
Questions for the reader
 How does burying leader assist to understand the paradox of leadership?
 When will we know we have unlearnt the paradox of leadership?
 If I am captive of my times, will I ever escape?
2 Complexity: Adaptive Organisations Require ‘Dynamic Poise’
Summarising the previous section, SOAs and others may combine together under varied
circumstances to create incremental influence over and above compliance with routine
direction. A crucial question is, how does this work in complex settings? Indeed, what IS
complexity and how do we best operate when enmeshed in it?
In the 1970s and 80s, work in biology and artificial intelligence coalesced in interesting ways
to form the broad field of chaos and complexity theories. A central concept is that of the
complex adaptive system—an interacting set of units and forces that tends to maintain a
certain degree of order and dynamic flow. Commonly cited examples are birds flying in a
flock, an anthill, the balance of biota and bio-chemicals in a healthy gut, etc. AI programs
that mimic these processes were an early and important development: one of the most
important findings being that the programs simply could be designed top-down but, given
space and time to iterate, readily and effectively evolved bottom-up.
A huge literature has developed from this start point, with one important aspect
considering what this means for organisations—both in terms of internal dynamics and also
relations to their environment.
Here we draw on the work of Dave Snowden (e.g., Snowden, 2002) and Ralph Stacey (e.g.
Stacey 2002) who drew on chaos and complexity theory to develop arguments about how,
in practical terms, these might apply in work with organisations. Snowden, for example,
offers the oft-quoted ‘Cynefin’ framework, (zones that are simple, complicated, complex
9
Numerous other examples exist. See, for example, Garratt, 1997a, 1997b). who talks of SOAs who won’t use action
learning because it “… can be seen as so powerful by perceptive but faint-hearted souls that they will not allow its use
in their organizations because of the perceived risks to the organization and their careers.” (p. 21, emphasis added.)
The work of Argyris (see e.g. Argyris and Schon, 1978) on defensive routines and ‘Model 1’ also fits here.
10
We are grateful to Tony Hewson who, commenting on an earlier draft, helped us sharpen the impact of the example.

9. and chaotic) in which the optimum SOA response for the categories (other than the simple)
are:
 chaos requires action-oriented command
 complicated requires technically sophisticated management
 complexity requires sense making
This tri-partite division can readily be applied to real world settings—see for example Jans,
et al (2013), where it is used to analyse varied tasks of very senior military officers.
Stacey (2002) creates a very similar model to Snowden and (a lightly amended version) is
shown in Diagram 1:
DIAGRAM 1
This is a rather simple model for what can be very intricate sets of loops, feedback
mechanisms etc. We use it because it is widely deployed (and hence familiar) and it helps to
point out how complex adaptive systems need leadership effects that are different to other
areas of the space illustrated.
A simple way to express the core issue we are concerned with is to observe that many
organisations are, as a result partly of familiarity with these functions, comfortable to
handle chaotic situations with command and more routine ones (lower left) with
management. Indeed, and crudely put, we have seen organisations that appear to hope
that it they push command hard enough from the right and management from the left,
somehow the troubling blue zone—challenging and unfamiliar—will just go away. Perhaps
they cannot recognise complexity and its challenges, or, for wanting of knowing what else
to do, do what they know. Whatever the causal chain, the method does not work.

10. The edge of chaos has its own special character (not fully explained by the simple diagram).
This is where, in complex adaptive systems we see the system “… ‘poised’ which has a
special relevance … because [this condition seems to] have the optimal capacity for
evolving”. (Schneider and Somers, 2006, 355.)
In hoping this will ‘go away’ organisations neglect the very zone that may hold their future
possibilities.
The poised system is bounded (in this diagram):
 to the right and above, as one tracks towards chaos, the system “… cannot maintain
[itself] as small forces can result in systems disruption, i.e., the butterfly effect. They
have too few stable or "frozen" components and tend to fail due to too little
buffering and low adaptability and evolutability.” (Schneider and Somers, 2006, 355)
 to the left and below, as one tracks away from chaos, “… highly ordered systems are
too rigid to coordinate new behaviors and likewise tend to fail. Many elements of
highly ordered systems are frozen, so that virtually all forces yield, at most, only
minor system changes, resulting in too much buffering and low adaptability and
evolutability.” (Schneider and Somers, 2006, 355)
Both of these adjacent areas have something important to offer. The area of instability can,
with some care be the area where an organisation can find new ideas, experiment, innovate
and grow. Similarly, the area of order is the area of continuity and effective operation,
providing the organisation can avoid being drawn too far back into a frozen state.
It follows that a crucial question for an organisation is how to find the ‘poise’. How in short,
can the organisation sit in the optimum area, avoiding shifting either too far right into a
chaotic state or left into ‘frozen order’?
Part of the answer lies, unsurprisingly, in the general character of an organisation at any
given point in time. A considerable literature exists on ‘types’ of organisations, many
adopting some version of ‘form follows function’. Simplistically put, we may imagine that an
organisation that typically experiences a fast changing and varied set of demands will adopt
a fluid management structure while another in a stable environment with repeatable core
activities will tend more to hierarchy11
.
As we have implied, this is a dynamic not a static issue. An organisation which is (say) nearer
stability and hierarchy at Time 1 may struggle to change if more fluidity is required at Time
2, and vice versa. In both cases an existing culture will embed beliefs, norms and habits that
re-create the start point and hence may resist the change.
11
In an Army, for example, a special forces unit may be more fluid in structure than a regular infantry unit, and so on.

11. An illustration that arose in recent work by the first two authors, is that of emergency
medical response by ambulance services. We know that organisational culture follows
history and the nature of the job/work. Yet, current organisations must prepare for
tomorrow and prepare for the work of tomorrow. For example, the original ambulance
services derived from almost paramilitary style arrangements where speed rather than case
was of the essence. Today’s paramedics are first responders with university level training
and part of a professional and skilled health care system they can tap into with modern
communications. The struggle that has occurred is to gradually let go of the prior model—
paramilitary style focusing on basic response plus speed—and move towards the emerging
model of first line skilled professional response on the spot. Future needs and capabilities
will emerge, and this will call for new leadership to ensure effective organisational poising12.
Thus, the core issue might be re-phrased:
How can an organisation faced with change move to a new poise point and maintain
poised adjustment once there?
Questions for the reader
 To what extent does your organisation readily adapt and sit in the space of ‘dynamic
poise, as opposed to reverting to frozen order or collapsing into chaos?
 What might be required to engender and sustain organisational poise in your
organisation?
 What influence can SOAs exert to shift an organisation towards poise and hold the
organisation in that space?
3 Exploration, Continuity and Unification: Leadership Models in Organisations in
Flux
The next point we wish to explore is how understanding complexity may or may not link to
leadership, since leadership can create positive outcomes of influence and emergence.
There are a number of ways we can approach this. In Diagram 2 (next page) we offer a
composite of several recent treatments of leadership in complex, adaptive situations (see
esp. Hazy, 2011; Uhl-Bien and Arena, 2018). Both build upon the earlier ‘ambidextrous’
organisation literature: organisations must, as it were, hold continuity in one hand and
exploration in the other.
A detailed summary of the issue by Uhl-Bien and Arena is relevant:
The adaptive process involves transforming organizations from one state to another
to enhance fitness with the environment. … This adaptive process depends on
12
See ACT Ambulance Service (2015) Enhancing professionalism: A Blueprint for Change which is informed by an 02C
report by Rowan-Jones and Mugford.

12. knowledge, learning and information flows (e.g., knowledge transfer, knowledge spill-
overs) that enable generation and emergence of novelty and innovation.
Because bureaucratic (i.e., formal) organizing structures can stifle information flows
and interactions needed for adaptability, networks (i.e., informal structures) are
needed to open them back up. Social networks emerge in organizations in the informal
organization that links people, information and resources internally and externally.
These linkages provide the basis for activating and amplifying the innovation and
adaptation process. This process occurs across time, starting with idea generation, and
proceeding into elaboration, championing/amplification, adoption and
implementation. In large-scale organizational change it involves different people at
multiple levels, with appropriate innovation and networking skills, and requires [SOAs]
who can catalyze the emergent innovation process by understanding and tapping the
power of employee networks.
The adaptive process requires that organizations move away from status quo. Most
organizations, however, are designed as complex systems rather than complex
adaptive systems. Complex systems differ from complex adaptive systems in that they
are structured for efficiency and control, rather than. This leads to the problem of core
rigidities in which organizations pull back to equilibrium, even in the face of complex
challenges from the environment. Complex adaptive systems overcome this problem
by enabling “adaptive space” that generates adaptability in the interface between the
competing demands of exploration [innovative activity] and exploitation [getting the
core functions delivered]. (2018, 96. Emphasis added.)
What emerges from later work offered in these and similar analyses is the need to balance
and unite the two ‘hands’ of ambidexterity. Diagram 2 presents a model for this.
In Diagram 2 we see that:
 novel and volatile external problems and forces are best met by an exploration
function which is unfamiliar, akin to using the non-dominant hand (orange text);
 at the same time external factors, which are familiar, are dealt with business-as-usual
style—akin to using the dominant hand (blue text);
 each of these aspects is linked to an optimal leadership mode:
o The ‘left hand’ needs a generative style. It is likely that, in the terms used
above, a good deal of this is lateral leadership and bottom-up leadership. Top-
down leadership is not irrelevant, but in most cases, this is provided when
SOAs model the activity and facilitate it;
o The right hand requires existing processes to continue, albeit with continuous
improvement. The role of SOAs as directors is important, and all three
elements of their leadership (facilitation, modelling, enabling) will be relevant
 In the right-hand column, we see a crucial addition—the need to unify and enable
the process (green text). This is likely to involve SOAs acting to:

14. o Facilitate by ‘holding open’ the spaces necessary and ensuring (down arrow)
the flow of emergent properties (innovations etc. into the continuity stream
while at the same time ensuring that the exploring ‘left hand’ is offered
o Unify and enable by balancing the two functions and ensuring they stay in
touch, sharing core values and norms.
It will be readily apparent that this involves a wide skill set for all players, most especially
SOAs. It may also be apparent that the way SOAs act will not greatly involve two commonly
called for attributes:
1. Visionary. The SOA in this context will be less like some modern incarnation of a
visionary, hero leader. S/he won’t be able to ‘get on the balcony’ and steer in some
omniscient fashion towards a goal that only s/he can see13
2. Conventional manager. S/he will not be centrally and strongly focused on
conventional approaches to management—KPIs, milestones, traffic lights, bottom
lines, etc. The danger with all these—linear and rational as they are—is that they are
suited for the continuity function but often antithetical to the exploration function
which is embedded in a much wider reality of non-linear features. Over-focus on
these conventional measures at the highest SOA level is a recipe for severely
weakening both unifying and generative leadership.
In fact, not only will SOAs need to play down the approach in 2 above, they will need to
consciously adopt the Marshall Goldsmith mantra that ‘what go you here won’t get you
there’14
. Such SOAs will need different development:
Third, [SOA] development and education needs to identify and train [SOAs] in skills that
are needed to operate in our new organizational world. The 2015 World Economic
Forum Future of Jobs Report identified the top skills needed in today's workplace as
complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management and
coordinating with others—all behaviors identified in our review as being associated
with leadership for organizational adaptability. Yet these skills are not often the ones
we typically focus on in … training. ... For more senior [people], they need to know that
times are changing, and that what got them and their organization to success is likely
not what will keep them there. [SOAs] play a crucial part in determining whether and
how [people] will be able to engage the adaptive process through their role in enabling
or stifling the conditions needed for adaptive space.
Finally, leadership for organizational adaptability is not a “feel good” model of
leadership. It involves tension, conflicting, creativity, uncertainty and, for many, stress.
For those who like order it takes them out of their comfort zone—leadership for
13
While we see much value in the approach of Heifetz and co-workers (e.g. Heifetz et al, 2009) we see the ‘balcony’
exhortation as misleading. It seems to arise from a misreading of adaptation evolutionary biology which leads them to
smuggle in an omniscient SOA. The detailed analysis is available on request.
14
Although Goldsmith (2007) operates from within a more conventional paradigm than is suggested here, this simple
aphorism captures the essential need for a new way to operate as an SOA in complex contexts.

15. adaptability requires high tolerance for ambiguity. For those who like creativity,
innovation and emergence (i.e., complexity) it requires stamina, as engaging in
entrepreneurial and enabling leadership takes energy and tenacity. Therefore,
organizations need to develop HR, coaching and talent management systems that can
help people find their way through these processes to survive, and even thrive, in
organizations focused on performance and adaptability. (Uhl-Bien and Arena, 2018,
101. Bold Emphases added.)
Compared to many standard accounts of ‘managing change’ people need a different kind of
leadership and possibly a different kind of SOA to enable this method, noting that different
does not imply replacement of styles and skills so much as enhancement of them15
.
For example, a military officer who wants to increase skills around the generative or
unifying areas, should not do so by giving up the capacity to command or manage. These
may well be appropriate modalities. Instead s/he needs the skill to know when and how to
switch between the modalities as appropriate. At the same time, the danger is that SOAs
may appoint, foster and encourage successors in the image of themselves. The future
organisation will only be successful where future SOAs align with their environment rather
than the environment their predecessors mastered. Ambiguity and uncertainty requires the
active promotion and embracing of future SOAs different, if not opposite, to yourself.
Questions for the reader
 What type of leadership can balance these competing priorities?
 How well is your organisation doing at creating and sustaining all three types of
leadership effect?
 How do SOAs actively avoid the ‘like me’ complex?
 When you look at the future SOA you are encouraging do you see a mirror image?
Point 4 Diagram 3: Complexity to Match Complexity
The previous section explicitly calls for new skills and imagine these as adding to the skills
set of people in the organisation. Some ways of being and doing will, of course, need to be
given up or transformed, but whole scale abandonment of the previous status quo is far
from what we are suggesting. Instead, we want to consider additions both of type (new
skills) and degree (greater capacity). This is taken up as the last substantive point.
Diagram 3 (next page) is the densest of the three. The reason is that this covers a great deal
of material which, separately explained, would take a large number of pages. Furthermore,
it seeks to identify core processes rather than list instances. Nonetheless, it can be
explained and followed.
15
We argue that managing change is, in a fluid and uncertain environment, an unrealistic ambition.

16. Individual Level:
Education
Various
experiential
approaches
based on
diagnosis,
coaching, in situ
experimentation
etc.
Many elements
already well
known, such as
assertiveness
training,
mastering
difficult
conversations
etc. Some more
innovative such
as ‘competing
commitments’.
Individual Organisation
Adaptive
High order metacognition,
multiple perspective taking,
ambiguity tolerance. An
adaptable actor who can deploy
‘dialogic’ skills, master ‘simple
habits’ and engage paradox
(K& L Level 4+)
An ‘everyone culture’, capable of
polyarchic action.
Resilient
“EC +”: mindful, vulnerable,
authentic, active in resilience,
developing ambiguity tolerance
and ‘focus’
(K& L Level 4)
Organisation is ‘positive’ as
described by Lewis and tends
towards ‘polyarchy’.
High reliability organisations, etc.
Fit
Basic emotional competence (EC)
(K& L Level 3+)
PROSOCIAL norms are
embedded**
‘Normal’
Leaders rely on ‘yang’ and deride
‘yin’.
Everyone is doing two jobs: the
one they are paid for and the
other maintaining face (Cf.
Everyone culture, Argyris, etc.)
Suffers the ‘stupidity paradox”—
that is, hires smart people and
underuses them.
Reliance on hierarchy, games and
Argyris Model 1.
Organisational
Level:
Interventions
Approaches to
dealing with
paradox, complexity
and ambiguity, via
Dialogic OD and CAS
strategies. Creates
an open and flexible
culture that can live
with ambiguity and
exercise excellent
metacognition as
SOAs and as teams.
Appreciative inquiry
is embedded into
the broader strategy
as the set of
activities at the core
of any change
process.
DIAGRAM 3
** see http://magazine.prosocialgroups.org/outstanding-evidence-for-prosocial-in-a-government-agency-setting/

17. The logic here has two central principles:
1. The vertical axis corresponds to a notion of cognitive and functional complexity. On
the left-hand side is individual cognitive complexity. This has been described by many
authors16
. The model relied upon here (not least because the authors contribute to
both columns) is that of Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey (Kegan & Lahey 2009,
2016)17
. The core concept at the individual level is that most chronological adults
settle at one of three ‘plateaus’ of cognitive development (see Appendix). The
argument here is that higher levels of leadership and organisational function require
people to be at least at the level of ‘self-authoring’.
2. Horizontally, individual capacities of actors are shown next to attributes of
organisations. This is because they are seen to be largely inter-dependent. It is
pointless to aim for a high level of organisational complexity and sophistication in the
right column if the people in the organisation are at a lower level. By the same token,
organisations stuck at lower levels in the right column cannot make space for people
to grow and risk ‘exit’ if staff are frustrated.
The diagram provides a snapshot of the kind of people and relationships and organisational
processes that can deliver the full range of leadership effects, help to move to a new,
dynamic ‘poised’ state and adapt in the face of complexity. To achieve this requires a
conscious strategy on several fronts.
In the case of education and development of leadership, for example, these considerations
help to frame a pedagogy (or, better, andragogy) that will promote rather than prevent the
kind of thinking and action needed. Each organisation will, of course, need to develop a
curriculum and a pedagogy appropriate to its setting (for a firm, its market) and its area of
function and expertise. What may be best for a pre-school may not suit a fast jet squadron,
a medical school is not a newspaper. Etc.
Nonetheless, the best of the relevant research (which we have aimed to combine in
Diagram 3) shows that some important common features are:
 Eschews top-down ‘experts’ who ‘tell’ and prefers active participants who, provided
with time space and data, can ‘ask, evaluate and create’;
 Imagines that everyone has continuous potential for growth and pushes people at all
levels to achieve it, at the same dissuading people from imagining that they will ever
be ‘finished’
 Shares knowledge about systems and system properties and builds habits that may
make sense of systems
16
Kohlberg’s idea of the stages of moral reasoning is a well-known example that would fit here, his argument being that
more complex moral reasoning emerges with maturation taking the individual ‘higher’ up the scale.
17
Hence the short hand K&L to indicate the level at which people are operating.

18.  Sees error as an opportunity for learning, does not immediately punish mistakes in a
risk averse, blame-oriented way
 Builds a critical thinking mind set
 Creates habits and routines of thinking and conversing that encompass both
divergent and convergent thinking skills as well as judgement as to when to focus
upon one or the other
 Engenders high level metacognition in actors and teams
 Embraces paradox, rejects the search for fast, satisfying and complete ‘answers’ and
encourages diversity of ideas and inputs to help sense making activities
 Rejects reliance on ‘one right answer’ or best practice
 Finds growth and learning opportunities in the messy and in destabilising influences;
 Chooses not to let rank determine truth nor silence questions and disagreement.
Numerous sources are relevant: we don’t intend to cover all of them or find a finished
answer (which would after all be an irony). It is, however, clear that whatever the
organisation and substantive field of work, creating a leadership development model that
has these as central tenets will deliver people with the skills needed to create leadership
influence thought-out the organisation in ways that maximise the likelihood of adaptability
and dynamic poise. Making the unconscious conscious is the cornerstone of this point.
Creating space – physical and intellectual – for individual and organisational leadership to
explore simplicity, complexity and chaos is paramount in the struggle to master complexity.
Questions for the reader
 What type of space best befits a poised organisation?
 What andragogical model optimises a poised state?
 How many paradoxes can an organisation embrace on the path to mastery?
 If your current SOAs are failing to get you where you need to go, and you had the
access to the leadership you needed what would you be able to do?

19. Appendix: Kegan and Lahey’s Three Plateaus of Cognitive Development in Most Adults
These three plateaus, in order of increasing complexity are:
Most common: the socialised mind (or ‘village people’):
 The self is shaped by the definitions and expectations of the personal environment
(e.g. “A rule is a rule is a rule. I must follow it. And that is true for everyone.”)
 The self coheres by its alignment with and loyalty to that with which the person
identifies (e.g. “I must do this because I am a loyal X and that is what Xs do.”)
 The self is expressed primarily in relations with others, with schools of thought or
both. (e.g. “S/he is my boss, I must follow. He is my subordinate, I must command.”)
Less common: the self-authoring mind
 Can step back enough from the social environment to generate and use an internal
seat of judgement or personal sense of authority that allows one to evaluate and
make choices about external expectations. (e.g. “I know that is a rule, I usually follow
rules and expect others should do the same. This time there is a more important
thing at stake, so I shall not follow.”)
 The self coheres by alignment to its own belief system, ideology or personal code,
relying on its ability to self-direct, take stands and set limits, creating and regulating
boundaries on behalf of its own voice. (e.g. “Yes, I know you are my parent and want
well for me, but this is my choice and I’m free to make it and not have to justify it.”)
Least common: the self-transforming mind (or ‘the sage)
 Can step back enough from and reflect on the limits of one’s own ideology, see that
any one system or form of self-organisation is partial or incomplete; be friendlier
towards contradiction and opposites; seek to hold multiple systems
 There self coheres through an ability not to confuse internal consistency with being
‘whole’ or ‘complete’ and through its alignment with dialectic rather than either
pole. Paradox is not the enemy of the self.

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