Building Change Leadership That Others Will Follow

A Systems Perspective on Change Leadership

Becoming a Leader Others Will Follow

I have identified fourteen systems principles (at this time) – these are principles that all living systems share. In times of significant change it is crucial that we revisit these fundamental principles and the truths they can teach us.

The Universal Truths of Systems All HEALTHY living systems share the same 14 qualities:

1. Purposefulness – the dominance of goals

2. Differentiation – specialization of parts

3. Wholeness – subjugation of parts to the whole

4. Interrelatedness – interdependence of parts

5. Openness – environmental influence and adaptation

6. Transformation – input-output process

7. Control – maintaining focus and order

8. Rhythms – cycles and patterns

9. Competition – seeking competitive niche distinction

10. Decay and death – natural entropy

11. Intelligent design – irreducible complexity and beauty

12. Learning – adaptation and specialization

13. Sustainability – through substantive advantage and harmony

14. Equilibrium – punctuated and dynamic3

The Universality of Systems

• Some observations:– These systems properties or

principles provide insight into leader-follower • Cause and effect relationships• Primary and secondary sequence

– In the end, human behavior is infinitely complex and ultimately irreducible. However, the systems properties do provide perspective that allows us to see more deeply and precisely.

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The Universality of Purposefulness

• Purposefulness – the dominance of goalsHealth promoting leaders marshal all their

energy and effort to attain important change goals

Health promoting leaders seek simple, clear, compatible purposes.

Health promoting leaders adapt to environmental changes by making adaptations to their leadership approach in order to continue to meet their fundamental change purposes (fanatical devotion to ends, flexible adaptation to means)

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The Universality of Differentiation

• Differentiation – people exhibit a great deal of differences in preparation, personalities, and perspectives Health promoting leaders develop insights and

initiatives that respond positively to the different characteristics and skills of their followers

Health promoting leaders do not try to force everyone into a particular “mold” of thinking or acting. They celebrate differences, and are not threatened by the inevitable “friction” that arises when different people work together on a common purpose.

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The Universality of Wholeness

• Wholeness – the subjugation of parts to the

whole

Health promoting leaders lead their individual

team members to recognize the need to sub-

optimize by each part to the good of the whole

Sub-optimization in healthy systems is a good

thing because it focuses on the cooperation of

parts in service to the greater collective gain of

the system

The leaders seek to act in ways that reflect a

preference for harmony and rationality even

during chaotic times.7

The Universality of Interrelatedness

• Interrelatedness – the interdependence of partsHealth promoting leaders create an

internal communication process that minimizes conflict and maximizes cooperation

Health promoting leaders are ware of the impact of process and workplace design – developing processes and procedures that facilitate rational and orderly flows of consultations and decisions

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The Universality of Openness

• Openness – environmental influenceHealth promoting leaders are sensitive

and responsive to their environmentHealth promoting leaders continually

adapt to changes in their environmentHealth promoting leaders resist the

tendency in times of conflict and chaos to allow communication and cooperation to cease.

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The Universality of Transformation

• Transformation – input-output processHealth promoting leaders are creative and

focused on the relationship between resource inputs and outputs used by the system and valued by its environment

Health promoting leaders seek efficiency – the optimum proportion of inputs to outputs that achieves internal conservation and external value-added

Health promoting leaders creatively adapt to changes in input-output competitive challenges and innovative technologies 10

The Universality of Control

• Control – maintaining focus and order and innovation Health promoting leaders develop optimal controls to

insure effectiveness (goal attainment) and efficiency (resource utilization)

Health promoting leaders place controls at the key points where recognition and response are best located

Health promoting leaders achieve economy of control – control always serves clear value-added purposes

Health promoting leaders promote innovation though control – control does not always mean maintaining direction – it can and should mean learning, growing and changing

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The Universality of Rhythms

• Rhythms – cycles and patternshealth promoting leaders are sensitive

to cycles• rest – work – recuperating • birth – growth – maturity – decline • daily – monthly – seasonal – annual

Health promoting leaders seek pacing and sequencing that preserves and restores the system

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The Universality of Competition

• Competition – seeking competitive niche distinctionHealth promoting leaders know that they are

in competition with others for resources – that competition helps make the system stronger and more adaptively resilient

Health promoting leaders compete by focusing on a an environmental niche and marshalling resources to attain a competitive edge in that niche

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The Universality of Decay and Death

• Decay and death – natural entropyHealth promoting leaders know that

everything and every person have a finite life – no system last forever

All systems lose, gradually and eventually completely, loss of energy and function

Healthy systems experience decay and death (and rebirth and repair) in various parts throughout their lifetime

All systems experience momentum, inertia, gravity and entropy – either succumbing to these forces or growing by resisting these forces

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The Universality of Intelligent Design

• Intelligent design – irreducible complexity and beautyHealth promoting leaders see structural design and

process integration that is impossible to achieve accidentally

Health promoting leaders recognize that systems are irreducibly complex – their minimum requirements could not appear merely sequentially by a natural evolutionary process

Irreducible complexity highlights such truths as non-determinism, unexpected outcomes, and non-linear/multi-level cause and effect.

So, healthy systems are both intentionally designed and spontaneously emergent 15

The Universality of Learning

• Learning - through environmental adaptation and specialization Health promoting leaders learn from their environment

through sensitivity to environmental cues and responsive adaptation to those cues.

Health promoting leaders create specific structural and performance capacities to thrive in a particular environment.

Health promoting leaders avoid “over learning,” that is, so greatly specializing that they are incapable of adjusting to new environmental cues.

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The Universality of Sustainability

• Sustainability – the development of external and internal mechanisms that build system longevity Health promoting leaders seek long term growth

through mechanisms which balance the competing demands they face from external and internal stakeholders.

Health promoting leaders develop ways of utilizing resources in ways that optimize the total system’s welfare, rather than maximizing one particular component at the expense of all other components.

Health promoting leaders seek competitive advantages that are significant, supportable and enduring.

Health promoting leaders place primary focus on acquiring and utilizing scarce and valuable resources

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The Universality of Equilibrium

• Equilibrium - dynamic and punctuated Health promoting leaders understand that systems are

cooperative networks of complimentary and supportive subsystems and seek to continuously share through the management of dynamic flows of information and resources .

Health promoting leaders know that systems go through periods of both continuity and change – long periods of relative normalcy punctuated by periods of rapid change, often keyed by the accumulation of small internal adjustments or small external pressures that have reached some tipping point

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