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Systems Leadership: Unlocking Collaboration for Meaningful Change

Discover the art of Systems Leadership and learn why it is essential in navigating complex systems. Understand the resistance to change and gain practical insights on how to foster collaboration for effective leadership. Take action now and make a real difference.

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Systems Leadership: Unlocking Collaboration for Meaningful Change

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Presentation Transcript

  1. Let’s gather14th March 2019Systems Leadership Ken PerryVisiting Industrial Fellow, Prifysgol, Glyndwr WrecsamDirector, Do-Well (UK) Ltd

  2. What we are going to cover • What is systems leadership • Why bother • Why and how is it resisted • Why it is a leadership art, not a management skill • What can you do today

  3. What is Systems Leadership?

  4. System Leadership • The collaborative leadership of a network of people in different places and at different levels in the system, creating a common purpose • Co-operating to make a significant change • Questions to get to common purpose: • What do we want life to be like for people in our place? • Who else needs to be in the room?

  5. The idea behind Systems Leadership is to ask some different questions and work with some different people, to get to a common purpose on which you can co-operate to get real change

  6. System Leadership • Start with: • Relationships, influence, trust: “Systems move at the speed of trust” • Partial, clumsy and emergent/evolving solutions • Going slow to go fast – allow for dynamic and changing situations • Double-loop learning • Don’t start with: • Structures/organisations/processes • Governance/money/whack-a-mole projects

  7. Why bother?

  8. System Leadership – Why?We work in complexity • New situations – you don’t know what to do • Or you work with systems/people that don’t work • They’ve been around forever and nothing you try seems to make any difference/shift things • They involve lots of different people/organisations and different sectors • There may well be a political dimension – large and small ‘p’

  9. System Leadership – Why?We work in complexity • No one person is – or can be - in charge, but you still need to influence others/effect change: no linear relationships • You don’t know quite how to describe the issue or you think you’ve nailed it but then it changes shape: mix of old + new • Or you’re on the outside looking in

  10. Why and how is it resisted?

  11. People don’t fear change, they fear lossHeifetz • Even if you’re an amoeba, you’re well-adapted to your environment • And you act accordingly, to preserve your identity and what works for you • So if something comes along that upsets that environment, by changing it, the natural response is to kill it

  12. People don’t fear change, they fear lossHeifetz • So it’s worth thinking about what people may feel they will lose by your change (NB can be loss of culture, friendships, familiarity, professional status – doesn’t need to be loss of job) • But keep going: “if the organism is held perturbed for sufficient time, it adapts to this new condition.”

  13. Resistance • Mostly forms of work avoidance • Deflection tactics: defaults, mantras, language • Doing the wrong thing busily/expertly: eminence-based change • Endlessly delayed meetings • Governance as Domestos

  14. Resistance • Defining issue as purely technical, with a ‘fix’ • ‘Turning down the heat’ – denying a problem exists • Taking options off the table, hiding: “Be amongst the best” • Shooting the messenger • Delegating work to the wrong people – consultants, committees, juniors

  15. Why is it a leadership art, not a management skill?

  16. Systems Leadership – Ordinary ManagementGetting things in correct box

  17. Leadership & ManagementKeith Grint, Warwick University

  18. Hero Leadership? • “The best people practicing systems leadership are not described in terms of charismatic heroes or divas, but as thoughtful, calm personalities who are as confident working in the background, supporting and enabling others, as they are in the limelight, leading from the front’. • From ‘Exceptional Leadership for Exceptional Times’, Virtual Staff College, 2013

  19. What can you do today?

  20. Act Now!

  21. Myron’s Maxims • People own what they create • Real change takes place in real work • The people that do the work do the change • Start anywhere but follow it everywhere • Keep connecting the system to itself • The process we use to get to the future determines the future we get

  22. Movement Building

  23. What we have covered today • What is systems leadership • Why bother • Why and how is it resisted • Why it is a leadership art, not a management skill • What can you do today…………

  24. Act Now!

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