By Peter Senge, Hal Hamilton, & John Kania
With the passing of Nelson Mandela in late 2013, the world celebrated a remarkable life. But the spotlight on Mandela's accomplishments relegated to the shadows much of the reason that he has had such a lasting impact, in South Africa and beyond. Above all, Mandela embodied a system leader, someone able to bring forth collective leadership. In countless ways, large and small, he undertook interventions aimed at bringing together the remnants of a divided country to face their common challenges collectively and build a new nation.
In the four delicate years between Mandela's release from prison in 1990 and the first open election, he supported a scenario process that brought together the formerly banned black political parties to work through their alternative visions for the future of South Africa. Exploring their different ideologies and their implications openly and together resulted in the moderating of potentially divisive differences that could have ripped the nation apart, such as whether or not to nationalize critical industries.1
Perhaps the most transcendent example of Mandela as a system
leader was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a radical innovation
in the emotional healing of the country that brought black
and white South Africans together to confront the past and join in
shaping the future. The simple idea that you could bring together
those who had suffered profound losses with those whose actions
led to those losses, to face one another, tell their truths, forgive, and
move on, was not only a profound gesture of civilization but also a
cauldron for creating collective leadership. Indeed, the process would
have been impossible without the leadership of people like Bishop
Desmond Tutu and former President F. W. de Klerk.
Even more, the process invited the thousands who participated
to step forward in co-creating a new reality for South Africa—and,
in so doing, to embody an ancient understanding of leadership; the
Indo-European root of “to lead,” leith, literally means to step across
a threshold—and to let go of whatever might limit stepping forward.
At no time in history have we needed such system leaders more.
We face a host of systemic challenges beyond the reach of existing
institutions and their hierarchical authority structures. Problems
like climate change, destruction of ecosystems, growing scarcity of
water, youth unemployment, and embedded poverty and inequity
require unprecedented collaboration among different organizations,
sectors, and even countries. Sensing this need, countless collaborative
initiatives have arisen in the past decade—locally, regionally,
and even globally. Yet more often than not they have floundered—in
part because they failed to foster collective leadership within and
across the collaborating organizations.
The purpose of this article is to share what we are learning about
the system leaders needed to foster collective leadership. We hope
to demystify what it means to be a system leader and to continue to
grow as one. It is easy when we talk about exemplars like Mandela
to reinforce a belief that these are special people, somehow walking
on a higher plane than the rest of us. But we have had the honor to
work with many “Mandelas,” and this experience has convinced us
that they share core capabilities and that these can be developed.
Although formal position and authority matter, we have watched
people contribute as system leaders from many positions. As Ronald
Heifetz has shown in his work on adaptive leadership,2 these leaders
shift the conditions through which others—especially those who
have a problem—can learn collectively to make progress against it.
Most of all, we have learned by watching the personal development
of system leaders. This is not easy work, and those who progress have
a particular commitment to their own learning and growth. Understanding
the “gateways” through which they pass clarifies this commitment
and why this is not the mysterious domain of a chosen few.
Today, many of us are “swimming in the same river”—trying to
cultivate collective leadership in diverse settings around the world even
while our larger cultural contexts remain firmly anchored to the myth
of the heroic individual leader. This search for a new type of leadership
creates a real possibility to accelerate joint learning about system leaders.
For undoubtedly we are at the beginning of the beginning in learning
how to catalyze and guide systemic change at a scale commensurate
with the scale of problems we face, and all of us see but dimly.
Core Capabilities of System Leaders
Though they differ widely in personality and style, genuine system
leaders have a remarkably similar impact . Over time, their profound
commitment to the health of the whole radiates to nurture similar
commitment in others. Their ability to see reality through the eyes
of people very different from themselves encourages others to be
more open as well. They build relationships based on deep listening,
and networks of trust and collaboration start to flourish. They
are so convinced that something can be done that they do not wait
for a fully developed plan, thereby freeing others to step ahead and
learn by doing. Indeed, one of their greatest contributions can come
from the strength of their ignorance, which gives them permission
to ask obvious questions and to embody an openness and commitment
to their own ongoing learning and growth that eventually
infuse larger change efforts.
As these system leaders emerge, situations previously suffering
from polarization and inertia become more open, and what
were previously seen as intractable problems become perceived
as opportunities for innovation. Short-term reactive problem
solving becomes more balanced with long-term value creation.
And organizational self-interest becomes re-contextualized, as
people discover that their and their organization’s success depends
on creating well-being within the larger systems of which
they are a part.
There are three core capabilities that system leaders develop in
order to foster collective leadership. The first is the ability to see
the larger system. In any complex setting, people typically focus
their attention on the parts of the system most visible from their
own vantage point. This usually results in arguments about who has
the right perspective on the problem. Helping people see the larger
system is essential to building a shared understanding of complex
problems. This understanding enables collaborating organizations
to jointly develop solutions not evident to any of them individually
and to work together for the health of the whole system rather than
just pursue symptomatic fixes to individual pieces.
The second capability involves fostering reflection and more
generative conversations. Reflection means thinking about our
thinking, holding up the mirror to see the taken-for-granted
assumptions we carry into any conversation and appreciating how
our mental models may limit us. Deep, shared reflection is a critical
step in enabling groups of organizations and individuals to actually
“hear” a point of view different from their own, and to appreciate
emotionally as well as cognitively each other’s reality. This is an
essential doorway for building trust where distrust had prevailed
and for fostering collective creativity.
The third capability centers on shifting the collective focus from
reactive problem solving to co-creating the future. Change often
starts with conditions that are undesirable, but artful system leaders
help people move beyond just reacting to these problems to building
positive visions for the future. This typically happens gradually
as leaders help people articulate their deeper aspirations and build
confidence based on tangible accomplishments achieved together.
This shift involves not just building inspiring visions but facing difficult
truths about the present reality and learning how to use the
tension between vision and reality to inspire truly new approaches.
Much has been written about these leadership capabilities in the
organizational learning literature and the tools that support their
development.3 But much of this work is still relatively unknown or
known only superficially to those engaged in collaborative systemic
change efforts.
Gateways to Becoming a System Leader
Many years ago, a mentor of ours, William O’Brien, past CEO of
Hanover Insurance Companies, posed an important question, “Many
business leaders espouse ideals like vision, purposefulness, and growing
people to grow results. If these aims are so widely shared, then
why are such organizations so rare?” O’Brien’s answer was simple,
“I think it is because very few people appreciate the nature of the
commitment needed to build such an enterprise.” We believe this
insight also applies to budding system leaders seeking to help build
collaborative networks for systemic change.
Watching people grow as system leaders has shown us repeatedly
the depth of commitment it requires and clarified the particular
gateways through which budding system leaders begin their
developmental journeys. These gateways do not define the whole
of those journeys, but they do determine whether or not they ever
commence. Those unwilling to pass through them may say all the
right things about system leadership, but they are unlikely to make
much progress in embodying their aspirations.
Re-directing attention: seeing that problems “out there” are “in here”
also—and how the two are connected | Continuing to do what we are currently
doing but doing it harder or smarter is not likely to produce
very different outcomes. Real change starts with recognizing that we
are part of the systems we seek to change. The fear and distrust we
seek to remedy also exist within us—as do the anger, sorrow, doubt,
and frustration. Our actions will not become more effective until we
shift the nature of the awareness and thinking behind the actions.
Roca, Inc., is a community youth development organization founded
in the Boston area in 1988. Roca works with youths whom, by and large,
no one else will work with. Many of the organization’s staff are former
gang members who now work on the streets to help current gang
members redirect their lives.4 In 2013, 89 percent of the high-risk youth
in Roca’s program for parolees and ex-convicts had no new arrests,
95 percent had no new technical violations, and 69 percent remained
employed. On the strength of these outcomes, in 2013 Massachusetts
entered into a $27 million social impact bond with Roca, whereby Roca
will be paid to keep at-risk youth out of prison, receiving remuneration
directly in proportion to the positive outcomes they achieve.5
Critical to Roca’s success has been its ability to build transformative
relationships with the young people it works with. It does
this by what it calls “relentless” outreach and relationship building.
“Our first job is simply to ‘show up’ for kids,” says founder and CEO
Molly Baldwin. “The truth is that many have never had someone
they could count on consistently in their lives.”
Showing up for young people means using processes like “peacekeeping
circles,” a Native American practice that Roca has adapted
and applied in diverse settings, from street conflicts to sentencing and
parole circles. The practice begins by getting all the critical players in
any situation into a circle and opening with each person saying a few
words about his deepest intentions. The central idea behind the circle
is that what affects the individual affects the community, and that
both need to be healed together.6 “We learn to listen to each other in
a deep way in circles,” says Roca youth worker Omar Ortez. “You see
that a problem is not just one person’s problem, it is all our problem.”
Developing peacekeeping circles has not been easy, including for
Baldwin herself. At Roca’s first circle training 15 years ago, “Forty
people came—young people, police and probation officers, community
members, and friends,” recalls Baldwin. “Halfway through
the opening session, everything blew up. People were screaming,
the kids were swearing, everyone was saying, ‘See! This is never going
to work!’ Watching the session break down was wrenching, but
eventually I understood how committed I was to divisiveness and
not unity, how far I was from being a peacemaker. I understood on
a visceral level the problems with ‘us and them’ thinking, and how
I perpetuated that, personally and for the organization. Continuing
to insist, ‘I’m right, you’re wrong! The issue is you, not us, because
we hold the moral high ground!’ was a big source of what was limiting
our ability to truly help people and situations.”
In their book Leading from the Emerging Future, Otto Scharmer
and Katrin Kaufer describe three “openings” needed to transform
systems: opening the mind (to challenge our assumptions), opening
the heart (to be vulnerable and to truly hear one another), and
opening the will (to let go of pre-set goals and agendas and see
what is really needed and possible). These three openings match
the blind spots of most change efforts, which are often based on
rigid assumptions and agendas and fail to see that transforming
systems is ultimately about transforming relationships among
people who shape those systems. Many otherwise well-intentioned
change efforts fail because their leaders are unable or unwilling
to embrace this simple truth. Baldwin’s development as a system
leader started with her willingness to face her own biases and
shortcomings (and how these shortcomings limited Roca’s effectiveness
in their work) and her openness to gradually setting a
tone for the whole organization.
Today, this willingness to open the mind, heart, and will has
extended far beyond the four walls of Roca as the organization has
evolved into a critical interface between gangs, police, courts, parole
boards, schools, and social service agencies. Indeed, many of Roca’s
important allies are the police departments in the communities it
serves. It has been a long journey for former social activists who
often saw the cops as the enemy.
Re-orienting strategy: creating the space for change and enabling
collective intelligence and wisdom to emerge | Ineffective leaders try to
make change happen. System leaders focus on creating the conditions
that can produce change and that can eventually cause change
to be self-sustaining. As we continue to unpack the prerequisites to
success in complex collaborative efforts, we appreciate more and
more this subtle shift in strategic focus and the distinctive powers
of those who learn how to create the space for change.
For Darcy Winslow, the journey to becoming a system leader
began in 1998 when she was responsible for Nike’s advanced research
department and was reviewing a gas chromatograph toxicological
analysis that showed, she says, “for the first time the chemicals embedded
in one of our top running shoes. Our VP of product looked
at the results—the known toxins embedded in our products and
processes and the many chemicals that posed uncertain risks—and then surprised us, by asking what we thought he should do.
We figured he was the head of this part of the business and would
know. But after some time, we understood. The stuff that was in
our products was there because of cost, function, and our design
and material choices. The real question became, ‘Who could—and
should—lead in tackling this truly complex problem?’”
Over the ensuing weeks and months came an epiphany for
Winslow. “Nike creates products,” she says. “Our first maxim is, ‘It
is in our nature to innovate.’ The people we had to reach were the
designers. While Nike had about 25,000 employees at that time,
there were only about 300 designers. Five to 10 percent of our designers
represented only 15 to 30 people. Suddenly, building an initial
critical mass seemed far less daunting. So I went knocking on doors.”
With the report in hand, Winslow simply showed the results
to designers and asked what they thought. “You could tell within
two minutes if the person was stirred up to do anything,” says
Winslow. “If they weren’t, I moved on. If they were, I asked for a
second meeting.”
Soon Winslow was bringing together groups of engaged designers
and others in related product creation functions, and a new network
started to emerge. “If you tell a great designer something is impossible—like you cannot make a world-class running shoe without
glues—they get very excited. It is the challenge that engages them.”
Within two years, about 400 designers and product managers convened
for a two-day summit where leading sustainability experts
and senior management explored together the concept of design
for sustainability. A movement was born within Nike.
Today, Nike’s efforts have spurred collective leadership throughout
the sports apparel industry on waste, toxicity, water, and
energy. For example, the Joint Roadmap Towards Zero Discharge of
Hazardous Chemicals, a joint initiative of Greenpeace, Nike, Puma,
Adidas, New Balance, and others, aims to systematically identify
major toxins and achieve zero discharge of hazardous chemicals in
the entirety of the sport apparel manufacturing industry worldwide,
starting in China.7 (Winslow left Nike in 2008 and is now managing
director of the Academy for Systemic Change.)
We are all on a steep learning curve in understanding this gateway
of creating space for change, but it seems to be crucial not
only in initiating collaborative efforts but in what ultimately can
arise from them. A few years ago, one of us co-authored an article
describing five conditions for achieving progress at a large scale
through a disciplined approach to collaboration called “collective
impact.”8 Today as we research and observe effective collective
impact initiatives, what stands out beyond the five conditions is the
collective intelligence that emerges over time through a disciplined
stakeholder engagement process—the nature of which could never
have been predicted in advance.
Systemic change needs more than data and information; it needs
real intelligence and wisdom. Jay Forrester, the founder of the
system dynamics method that has shaped our approach to systems
thinking, pointed out that complex non-linear systems exhibit
“counterintuitive behavior.” He illustrated this by citing the large
number of government interventions that go awry through aiming
at short-term improvement in measurable problem symptoms
but ultimately worsening the underlying problems—like increased
urban policing that leads to short-term reductions in crime rates but
does nothing to alter the sources of embedded poverty and worsens
long-term incarceration rates.9 Another systems thinking pioneer,
Russell Ackoff, characterized wisdom as the ability to distinguish
the short-term from the long-term effects of an intervention.10 The
question is, How does the wisdom to transcend pressures for low-leverage
symptomatic interventions arise in practice?
System leaders like Baldwin and Winslow understand that collective
wisdom cannot be manufactured or built into a plan created in
advance. And it is not likely to come from leaders who seek to “drive”
their predetermined change agenda. Instead, system leaders work to
create the space where people living with the problem can come together
to tell the truth, think more deeply about what is really happening,
explore options beyond popular thinking, and search for higher leverage
changes through progressive cycles of action and reflection and learning
over time. Knowing that there are no easy answers to truly complex
problems, system leaders cultivate the conditions wherein collective
wisdom emerges over time through a ripening process that gradually
brings about new ways of thinking, acting, and being.
For those new to system leadership, creating space can seem
passive or even weak. For them, strong leadership is all about executing
a plan. Plans are, of course, always needed, but without openness
people can miss what is emerging, like a sailor so committed
to his initial course that he won’t adjust to shifts in the wind. Even
more to the point, the conscious acts of creating space, of engaging
people in genuine questions, and of convening around a clear
intention with no hidden agenda, creates a very different type of
energy from that which arises from seeking to get people committed
to your plan. When Winslow went to the designers, she went with
basic data and a big question, “What do you think about this and
what should we do?” Her success in building an extraordinary network
of collaboration and shared commitment over 15 years, whose
ripples are still spreading, started with this basic shift in strategy.
System leaders understand that plans and space are the yang and
yin of leadership. Both are needed. But what is needed even more
is balance between the two.
Practice, practice, practice: all learning is doing, but the doing needed is
inherently developmental | Bringing together diverse stakeholders with
little history of collaboration, different mental models, and different
and even apparently competing aims is a high-risk undertaking.
Good intentions are not enough. You need skills. But skills come only
from practice. Everybody wants tools for systemic change. But too
few are prepared to use the tools with the regularity and discipline
needed to build their own and others’ capabilities.
This is why system leaders like Baldwin and Winslow never stop
practicing how to help people see the larger systems obscured by
established mental models, how to foster different conversations
that gradually build genuine engagement and trust, and how to sense
emerging possibilities and help shift the collective focus from just
reacting to problems to releasing collective creativity. The practice
is internal and external, and it requires discipline.
Fortunately, a rich set of tools has emerged from diverse fields
over the past few decades for developing these core system leadership
capabilities. The tools that matter have two functions: they
produce practical benefits and they affect how people think and see
the world. As the inventor Buckminster Fuller said, “If you want to
change how a person thinks, give up. You cannot change how another
thinks. Give them a tool the use of which will gradually cause
them over time to think differently.”
What follows are examples of a few of these tools and how they
can be applied to develop each of the core leadership capacities.
Tools for seeing the larger system. Tools that help people see the
larger system integrate the different mental models of multiple
stakeholders to build a more comprehensive understanding. Often
this starts with simple questions, like Winslow’s “Do we know what
is in our product?” For educators, it might be “What happens for
the child when she or he is outside of school?” Systems mapping
can be used to extend this inquiry by helping stakeholders build a
visual picture of the relationship and interdependencies beyond the
boundaries they normally assume.
For example, in an initiative focused on improving children’s
asthma outcomes in Dallas, a steering committee composed of doctors,
hospital administrators, community agencies, insurance providers, the
city health department, faith based organizations, built-environment
executives, philanthropists, and public schools worked together to
map out the system of children’s health of which they were all a part.
Leaders of the effort agreed up front that they needed all these different
views of children’s asthma in order to develop a full perspective.
It was also clear, as the group engaged in initial dialogue, that each
person’s perspective on the causes of poor asthma outcomes, and the
solutions to produce better outcomes, was different.
The systems map the group developed helped all involved to see
the entire system better, and for each professional to see aspects affecting
children’s health that were less evident in their own work.
Eventually, the group created what it called the “asthma wellness
equation,” which translated insights from the systems map into an
illustration that knit together the science of asthma triggers, the
practices of asthma management, and the leadership of families and
community in creating support structures that promoted a sense of
efficacy within asthmatic children themselves. (To see a copy of the
illustration, go to http://www.ssireview.org) This. map especially helped
clinical professionals to put in perspective the often-overlooked
influence of family and community on asthma, not just clinical interventions.
It also helped non-clinical actors, such as schools and
public housing administrators, see more clearly how their actions
linked to those within the medical community.11
Tools for fostering reflection and generative conversation. Tools
that help foster reflection and generative conversation are aimed
at enabling groups to slow down long enough to “try on” other
people’s viewpoints regarding a complex problem. These tools enable
organizations and individuals to question, revise, and in many
cases release their embedded assumptions. Examples include the
peacekeeping circles used by Roca and the dialogue interviews
conducted by Winslow.
Two other tools we have often seen used by system leaders are
“peer shadowing” and “learning journeys.”12 Both tools have been
used to build the Sustainable Food Lab, a network of more than 70
of the world’s largest food companies and global and local NGOs
(half NGOs, half companies) working together to make “sustainable
agriculture the mainstream system.” Starting in 2004, with
Oxfam, Unilever, and the Kellogg Foundation as initial conveners,
a team of 30 senior managers from food businesses and social and
environmental NGOs spent time in each others’ organizations and
traveled together to see aspects of the food system they had never
seen. Corporate executives visited farmer co-ops and social activists
saw the operations of multi-national food companies. “This
almost never happens in our normal busy focus on tasks and results,”
says Andre van Heemstra, a member of the management board at
Unilever and the founding Lab team. Gradually, as business and
NGO partners got to understand one another better as people and as
professionals, the cognitive dissonance between them became less,
and the power of their differing views grew. “We do see the world
very differently, and that is our greatest strength,” said a corporate
participant about a year into the process. Today the Lab has become
a powerful incubator for collaborative projects, such as companies
and NGOs learning together how to manage global supply chains
for long-term reliability based on the health of farming communities
and ecologies. Practices like Learning Journeys are regularly
incorporated into projects and gatherings.
Embedded in tools like peacekeeping circles, dialogue interviews,
peer shadowing, and learning journeys is a disciplined approach
to observation and deeper conversations called the “Ladder of
Inference.13 System leaders committed to practicing with the ladder
learn to pay better attention to how their often unconscious
assumptions shape their perceptions, from what data they notice
and do not notice to the conclusions they draw. The ladder also
provides a reorientation path for shifting behavior, from asserting
subjective assumptions as reality, to identifying what facts people
actually have and the reasoning by which they interpret those facts.
Winslow calls it “an essential tool for the deeper listening that builds
networks of collaborating change leaders.”
Tools for shifting from reacting to co-creating the future. Building
the capacity to shift from reacting to co-creating is anchored in relentlessly
asking two questions, What do we really want to create?
and What exists today? This creative tension, the gap between vision
and reality, generates energy, like a rubber band stretched between
two poles. Helping themselves and others generate and sustain creative
tension becomes one of the core practices of system leaders.
One approach embodying creative tension that we have seen help
large, multi-stakeholder initiatives is the Appreciative Inquiry (AI)
Summit. An initiative begun in 2010 used an AI Summit to bring
together police, grassroots advocates, courts, probation officers,
state agencies, private agencies, education institutions, health care
providers, and philanthropy to reform the New York state juvenile
justice system.14 At the outset, few thought it possible to get this
group of 20 stakeholders to agree (one group was actually suing
another). But no one had ever brought them together for real dialogue
and to explore the visions they might share.
To start, people were encouraged to collectively imagine that “The
rates of recidivism in New York state have become the lowest in the
nation … and the New York state juvenile justice
system has become a model for other communities
across the nation.” Buoyed, almost miraculously, by
collectively imagining the dimensions of this compelling
future, the group eventually was able to agree
on two goals they could work together on: improving
public safety and effectively rehabilitating youths
who were involved with the state justice system.
Within ten months, the group had turned those goals into a full-fledged
reform plan. A year later, components of this reform plan
were adopted by the governor, passed into legislation, and rolled
out in communities across the state. Today, three years into the
reforms, New York has 45 percent fewer youths in the custody of
the state juvenile justice system, without any increase in crime.15
Many of those initially involved cite the AI Summit as a seminal
event that turned the tide from people holding on to past realities
into a network of organizations and individuals excited about a
more compelling future.
This example illustrates something we have seen again and
again. The basic idea of shifting from problem solving to creating
is not complicated, but the impact can be immense. “As managers,
we are all good problem solvers,” says Winslow. “But it is easy
to get so caught up in reacting to what we don’t want and completely
fail to tap the heart and imagination of people’s genuine
caring for what they do want, and to use this energy to transcend
the ‘us versus them’ mindset.” We have also seen that nurturing
the collective creative approach happens most reliably in concert
with helping people see the larger system, fostering reflection,
and having different quality conversations—each of which is also
bolstered in the AI Summit.
Last, system leaders are ever mindful of the composition and
character of groups practicing with learning tools like those above.
Tools become truly developmental only in the hands of people open to
their own development. But you can also have open groups who have
little power to take action, just as you can have powerful groups with
little openness. No group is perfect. This is why system leaders never
stop working at the fine art of “getting the right people in the room.”
Guides for Moving Along the Path
Clearly the path to becoming a system leader is not a simple journey.
As in any daunting undertaking, it is useful to have a few simple
guides to keep in mind.
Learning on the job | Growing as a system leader is a process that
never ends, and to be successful it must be woven into the work itself.
Although training and other episodic interventions can help,
they are most useful when embedded in a work culture that fosters
ongoing reflection and collaboration. Most organizations are consumed
by the tasks at hand. Others spend large amounts of money
on staff development with little return. The missing element is often
a clear vision for how the work itself becomes developmental. This
means employing models of change that weave together outcome,
process, and human development—made operational via embedded
developmental practices like Roca’s peacekeeping circles or the
Sustainable Food Lab’s learning journeys.
Balancing advocacy and inquiry | All change requires passionate
advocates. But advocates often become stuck in their own views and become ineffective in engaging others with
different views. This is why effective system leaders
continually cultivate their ability to listen and
their willingness to inquire into views with which
they do not agree. Leading with real inquiry is easy
to say, but it constitutes a profound developmental
journey for passionate advocates. As collaborative
networks grow in sophistication, they learn how to
institutionalize the balance of advocacy and inquiry. For example,
the Sustainable Food Lab has a great many passionate advocates.
Recognizing that passionate advocacy can put others on the defensive
(even though they may agree with what is being advocated),
the Lab’s NGO-Business steering committee declared that all major
meetings would be “no pitch zones,” safe spaces for thinking
together rather than a place where people come seeking to engage
others in their own agendas.
Engaging people across boundaries | We are often most comfortable
with those with whom we share a common history and views.
But operating within our comfort zones will never lead to engaging
the range of actors needed for systemic change—whether it is the
police for Roca or the multinational food corporations for the NGO
founders of the Sustainable Food Lab. Though always challenging,
reaching across boundaries can have immense payoffs. “Innovation
often only comes from seeing a system from different points
of view,” says Winslow.
Letting go | System leaders need to have a strategy, but the ones
who are most effective learn to “follow the energy” and set aside
their strategy when unexpected paths and opportunities emerge.
In the Sustainable Food Lab there are many companies that have
become leaders who had little prior commitment to sustainable
agriculture until artful system leaders helped them see a bigger
picture. In one case, an internal corporate advocate for “pro-poor”
business practices had made little progress. When she talked to her
vice president about the plight of the rural poor, he was sympathetic
but responded that this was the work of charities, and she should
reach out to their corporate foundation. A colleague pointed out
her boss’s deep concern about the long-term supply of important
products and the implicit alignment with her concerns. When she
showed the vice president how the company might be unable to
source critical food products if it didn’t invest in the well-being of
farming communities, he said, “Why didn’t you just tell me that if
we don’t do these things we won’t have product on the shelf?” Today,
the company is a global leader in sustainable food supply chain
innovations. “Once I could let go of my advocacy for the poor,” she
says, “I discovered how to help my busy managers see the problem
in a way they could get their hands around.”
Building one’s own toolkit | The variety of helpful tools and approaches
available today is large and growing, and system leaders
should be knowledgeable about what is available. In our work, tools
we use regularly come from a variety of places, including a few mentioned
here: the “five disciplines” approach to systems thinking and
organizational learning, Theory U and Presencing, Appreciative
Inquiry, Immunity to Change, Roca’s peacekeeping circles, and the
Change Labs and scenario planning of Reos Partners.16 Recently, several
of us have started a process of organizing these tools to provide
an integrated tool kit for systemic change.17 But it is important to
remember that building a tool kit is more than just putting arrows
in your quiver. It is about learning, over time, through disciplined
practice, how to become an archer.
Working with other system leaders | Growing the capabilities to become
a more effective system leader is hard work. It needs to happen
in difficult settings and under pressure to deliver tangible results.
It is naïve, even for the most accomplished system leader, to think
that she can do it alone. We know of no examples where effective
system leaders achieved broad scale success without partners. You
need partners who share your aspirations and challenges and who
help you face difficult changes while you also attend to your own
ongoing personal development—balancing task time with time for
reflection, action, and silence. You need to engage with colleagues
who are at different stages in their own developmental journeys.
And you need help letting the unexpected emerge amid urgency
and time pressure. Connecting with others who are also engaged
in this journey can help lighten the load and foster the patience
needed when organizations or systems seem to be changing at a
slower rate than you yourself are changing.
Dawn Awakening
We believe system leadership is critical for the times in which we
now live, but the ideas behind it are actually quite old. About 2,500
years ago Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu eloquently expressed the
idea of individuals who catalyze collective leadership:
The wicked leader is he whom the people despise.
The good leader is he whom the people revere.
The great leader is he of whom the people say, “We did it ourselves.”
The real question today is, Is there any realistic hope that a
sufficient number of skilled system leaders will emerge in time to
help us face our daunting systemic challenges? We believe there are
reasons for optimism. First, as the interconnected nature of core
societal challenges becomes more evident, a growing number of
people are trying to adopt a systemic orientation. Though we have
not yet reached a critical mass of people capable of seeing that a
systemic approach and collective leadership are two sides of the same
coin, a foundation of practical know-how is being built.
Second, during the last thirty years there has been an extraordinary
expansion in the tools to support system leaders, a few of
which we have touched on in this article. We have observed numerous
instances where the strategic use of the right tool, at the right
time, and with the right spirit of openness, can shift by an order of
magnitude the ability of stakeholders to create collective success.
With the right shifts in attention, networks of collaboration commensurate
with the complexity of the problems being addressed
emerge, and previously intractable situations begin to unfreeze.
Last, there is a broad, though still largely unarticulated,
hunger for processes of real change. This is undoubtedly why a
person like Mandela strikes such a resonant chord. There is a widespread
suspicion that the strategies being used to solve our most
difficult problems are too superficial to get at the deeper sources of
those problems. This can easily lead to a sense of fatalism—a quiet
desperation that our social, biological, economic, and political systems
will continue to drift toward chaos and dysfunction. But it can
also cause people to be more open to seeking new paths. Compared
to even a few years ago, we find that many today are exploring new
approaches that move beyond the superficial to ignite and guide
deeper change. Organizations and initiatives like those described
in this article have succeeded because of a growing awareness that
the inner and outer dimensions of change are connected. As our
awakening continues, more and more system leaders who catalyze
collective leadership will emerge.