The document discusses the challenges of leadership and change in modern organizations. It notes that traditional change models and organizational structures no longer work effectively. Leaders now must make sense of complex systems, clarify goals, and simplify messages. Additionally, viewing organizations as living systems and leveraging social networks can help facilitate meaningful and lasting change. The key challenges for leaders are to establish purpose, model desired behaviors, enable changes, and listen to others within the organization.

1. “The Usual”? No thanks
Leadership and change replugged
for the actual organisation

2. Globalisation New generation
THE “RULES” HAVE
CHANGED
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3. “Old” doesn’t work any more, “new” is not yet
established …
And meantime….
Wave upon wave of change initiatives and we haven’t got
back on our “board” again but they’ve already changed the
board and the teams and the parameters of the
competition
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4. Consultants like to present nice “neat” waves of change
2 DENIAL, 7 INTEGRATING
retreat/”block” Of new ideas, skills, behaviour
2
6 SEARCH FOR MEANING 7
building new models/personal
theories
6
1
1 SHOCK,
immobilisation/fear 3
PERCEIVED COMPETNCE
5 EXPERIMENTATION
3 FRUSTRATION 5 Testing the new/success and
awareness/incompetence failure
4 ACCEPTANCE
4
Letting go
Adapted from Adams et al
TIME
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5. and talk about “cascading it down”
Top
Management
Middle
Management
Employees
Time
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6. The reality looks more like
this
Initial peak of excitement and “adoption” followed by progressive fading and
disappearances, at which time probably another “Corporate Initiative” is born
Peaks, disappearances, and resurrections of multiple iniatitivies running in
parallel, none of them fully established or implemented
Leandro Herrero “Viral Change”
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7. And what about enlarging the picture to
include
COMPETING METRICS
COMPETING INTERESTS
COMPETING FRAMEWORKS
on top of hidden and more permanent
FRAMES OF REFERENCE ??!!
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8. Our “rapidly evolving times” are characterised by
Social networks and tribes
Globalisation …and localisation ……
Multiple ..and liquid identities
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9. We “know” we need something different, new, more
appropriate.
So we look to the leadership that is “working”
And “guess what?”
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10. What “works” involves “breaking” the “previous” rules
There is a lot of literature on “disruptive”
ideas
…and “disruptive people

11. Bratton:NYPD
Within a public organisation, with scarce
resources and huge resistnace to change
he turned around the New York crime
rate ….changing a lot of “rules” along the
way
(see the “broken windows” paradigm)
Olivetti: Olivetti
An entrepreneur from Italy’s past
who changed Italy’s concept of a
company and a lot of other
paradigms too.
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12. “..KIND OF “IRONIC”, ISN’T IT?
LOOKING AT “RULE BREAKERS”
TO FIND A “NEW RULE” TO
FOLLOW TO MAKE US FEEL
SAFE……
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13. In my experience people are developing immunity to new recipes
for change
(and are tired, burnt out, often trying to “keep under the radar” of the “next
change initiative” and continue work as it makes sense to them
Organisational charts are less and ever a representation of reality:
people are becoming immune to them, too!
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14. NEW PARADIGMS NEEDED
The sciences currently offering the most useful paradgms and informing the
evolution of managment models are
 Systems Theory
 Game theory
 Behavioural sciences
 Behavioural Economics
 Complexity Theory
 Network sciences
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15. WARNING!
All of these paradigms are non linear.
So the “good” news is that hopefully we won’t have
anymore “8 steps to change management” as if it were a
linear process.
And trust , like change, is not a linear process…it can be felt in a
minute, can take time to build and can be lost in a second.
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16. Leadership needs to move from “mecchanic…
… “to “organic”
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17. WORKING WITH THE PROCESS INHERENT IN
LIVING SYSTEMS MEANS…. THERE’S NO NEED TO
“PUSH” “PULL” OR “BULLY” IT TO MAKE A CHANGE.
FORCE AND ENERGY ARE NOT THE ISSUE:
THE ISSUE IS MEANING.
MENAINGFUL DISTURBANCES WILL GET THE
ORGANISATION’S ATTTENTION AND TRIGGER
STRUCUTURAL CHANGE.”
Fritjof Capra “The Hidden Connections: a
science for sustainable living”
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18. In systems there is also resistance and
immunity to change.
 Established routines
 Comfort zones
 Competing interests
 Competing frames
 Organisational reinforcing mecchanisms
 ……
And this immunity is not “overcome” by senior managers giving
power point presentations.
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19. LEADERS
to
MAKE SENSE OF
THINGS
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20. The pertinent challenges for leadership in these times
Make sense of
things
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21. The pertinent challenges for leadership in these times
 Share the Whys”
 Establish a clear and unambiguous sense of purpose
 Be a model of the behaviours needed
 Enable the changes they are asking for
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22. The pertinent challenges for leadership in these times
 CLARIFY CLARIFY CLARIFY
 SIMPLIFY SIMPLIFY SIMPLIFY
Which involves
 THE COURAGE TO MAKE CHOICES
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23. The pertinent challenges for leadership in these times
In addition to all this leaders “still” need to:
 Be receptive
To listen
To care
To encourage
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24. The pertinent challenges for leadership in these times: SOME
SUGGESTIONS
Oraganisational Leadership: think “networks”
Live in the real world: not the “organisational chart” one!
Organisations are systems. With dynamic interdependent
parts.
An organisation is much more like a human body than an
artificial reporting system.
We should think
of the CEO as
CNO: Chief
NeuroBiologist
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25. The pertinent challenges for leadership in these times: SOME
SUGGESTIONS
IF organistations are like living systems THEN
We need to leverage the dynamics: tipping points of change
included
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26. The pertinent challenges for leadership in these times: SOME
SUGGESTIONS
Human networks are not
“random” Leonard Herrero
They have some “people nodes” that have more connections
than others.
Clusters are created, some smaller some bigger and they are
connected via some highly linked people.
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27. VIRAL CHANGE
Leonard Herrero
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28. The pertinent challenges for leadership in these times: SOME
SUGGESTIONS
At a certain point there is a “phase transition” phenomenon.
Clusters of connected people start behaving as visibly cohesive groups.
New ideas, new behaviours, new routines “infect” the system, and will at one
point “appear” as “tipping points”: once they appear they become
established very soon
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29. The pertinent challenges for leadership in these times: SOME
SUGGESTIONS
Karen Stephenson
Micro positions in a network produce macro cultural
changes that have both a substantial and sustained
impact on business performance. Shift happens.
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30. CLASSICAL ORGANISATIONAL LEADERSHIP
 Organisational charts
 Knowing the “n -1” level
 Cascading change “down”
 Preaching and presenting charts
 “25 KPI’s” and “14 priorities”
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31. The pertinent challenges for leadership in these times: SOME
SUGGESTIONS
Organisational Leadership: deliberately “infect”
Archimedes said “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
and I could lift the world”.
Leverage however in a world of networks, is no longer
mechanical.
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32. Organisational Leadership: “social infection”
Know your
“hubs” “gatekeepers” “pulsetakers” “influencers”
Know your
“low thresholds” and “early adopters”
“Inject” the desired behaviours
into the organisation via the right
people and help the “infection”
“spread”
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33. Start with behaviours
Culture creates behaviour…..but is also
created by behaviours
Disruptive messages that “make sense” are quickly picked up
and followed by others.
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34. Exercising organisational leadership means:
Making Meaning
Interpreting the context, the challenges, making sense
Giving direction
Sense of purpose, unity of intent, road maps to guide the way
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35. Exercising organistional leadership means:
Knowing your networks
The influencers, the early adopters, the skeptics
Deliberately “infecting” the system, “seeding” for
change
Facilitare an “epidemic” of the desired change through defining,
modelling and “spreading” the appropriate behaviours
Providing clarity
What’s the purpose, who’s the client, what are the rules, what is rewarded,
what is not negotiable?
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36. Exercising organisational leadership means:
Defining the “not negotiables” (small set of values translated into
behaviours) which provide stability in times of change.
“Priorities” and “preferred routes”
may change but if, when it’s not
possibile to “see round the next
bend”, the overall sense of purpose
is there, and you can watch the
(non negotiable) behaviours of
leaders, you can take direction from
there and keep faith in the journey.
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37. Exercising organistional leadership means:
Enabling
Owning the big picture; making sure the behaviours are there to support the
processes; simplifying, clarifying addressing bottlenecks and naysayers.
Rewarding
Recognising and reinforcing desired behaviours, creating consequences
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38. What is needed now
is
SIMPLICITY
The best leadership
output is
MEANING
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