"Leadership Development - On Broken Ankles and Leadership Transitions (http://www.theleadershipcircle.com/on-broken-ankles-and-leadership-transitions) How do we respond to disruption (be it managerial, organizational, cultural, etc.) with the choice to grow as a leader and individual. The Leadership Circle's Article ""On Broken Ankles and Leadership Transitions"" highlights the struggle and the strength needed to persevere. Related Keywords: leadership development, organizational development, leadership, the leadership circle"

1. On Broken Ankles and Leadership Transitions
By: Dave Schrader

2. In the last 30 years, the business environment has
grown more complex than ever in our history. The
pace of change (a la Alvin Tofflerʼs “Third Wave”) is old
news. Now the critical challenge has become
overwhelming complexity.

3. Overwhelming Complexity
Disruption is the bane of the professional manager’s existence. The
credo of the professional manager has been order, predictability, and
control.
With enough planning and forethought, we can make much of our
processes into a machine-like consistency. In the old process, disruption
was a problem to be solved, a problem that should have been avoided.
To the person who longs for predictability, this development is not
merely confusing, it’s deeply threatening. It threatens our existing
ways of making meaning out of what we see in our world, as the
patterns we’ve grown familiar with are up-ended .

4. We have a Choice. The complexity and unseen
interaction of forces in our business and personal lives
are always providing surprising intrusions that donʼt fit
well into our current framework for making sense of the
world. We can ignore them, or we can choose to relax
our grip on our expectations of predictability, and let the
interruptions do their work.

5. The old ways of solving problems don’t
work when confronted with an adaptive
challenge; one must adapt, learn and
evolve in order to rise to the occasion.
And if the challenge is big enough, it may
call forth a fundamental restructuring of
the way a leader sees herself, her role,
and her world.
We Have a Choice

6. We Have a Choice
We describe this restructuring process as
a series of shifts, stepping from “reactive”
to “creative” to “integral,” each one
being a more spacious and open
framework for making meaning of the
world and our place in it.
Each successive framework is more
expansive, having the capacity to hold
more variables, more complexity and
more nuance; “either-or” gives way to
“both-and.”

7. Leaders in all sectors need support to shift away from
an anxious pursuit of predictability
Predictability, order and control are necessary for
the profitable running of business and society. And
they are becoming a scarce commodity, a rarer and
rarer source of comfort.
Only as weʼre “on the way,” can we join our clients in
their journey toward a way of leading that can handle
the complexity, difficulties, and possibilities without
going reactive.

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leadership-transitions