Leadership in a VUCA World

The Jedi Path to Agile Mastery

Michael Fuchs, Jochen Messner, Robert Sok

• Publisher: Haufe
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9783648121504
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

VUCA is not just another acronym. Originally coined by the American military to describe a situation fraught with a variety of challenges, it now has a permanent place in the realms of strategic leadership. Those who have made it into an enterprise management role are finding that their leadership skills are truly being tried and tested on account of the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment we are in.Agility is now the name of the game. Developing one's leadership skills to match this requirement, and to not only surmount the challenges posed by the VUCA world but do so in a mature and authentic way, is what this book is all about. It gently submerges the reader into an impressive tank of knowledge that the authors, experts in the field of personal development, have amassed during their careers. Psychology, mythology and examples of real-life enterprises are accompanied by the excellent analogy of one of our best-known heroes, Luke Skywalker of the Star Wars films, to illustrate that there is nothing to fear, that we all have the potential to act courageously.At regular intervals throughout the book, the reader is presented with thought-provoking questions and statements, the answers to which will help them eventually resurface with a clear picture of how to use their skills and talents to motivate themselves and others to proceed wisely in the corporate landscape.Contents: - An expert guide from three vastly experienced and accomplished executive coaches- Learn effectively at your own pace, any time and anywhere- Convincing background knowledge and examples

1 Part 1 Management - Preparation for the Way of the Jedi

Leadership in a VUCA world consists of three stages with the ultimate goal being the development into a mature authentic leader. The Jedi way starts with solid management, then building skills to initiate and successfully provide support for innovation and change processes and finally the development of what we call a top manager. A top manager in this sense is a personally mature human being with deep experience, solidly anchored in his own calling and ready to support others in their work. He is always looking for further personal development opportunities, leading the organisation into the future with stability and agility, while always keeping the whole of society and the global economic dependencies in mind.

In this first part you will learn the foundations for the aspiring Jedi. These are tasks that a confident manager needs to master: clear goal setting, careful execution planning, delegation and negotiation. Tools that you need to deliver solid results. Through exercises and questions we will prompt you to explore your basic assumptions, become familiar with the management tools of a Jedi and experience what Jedi masters like Obi-Wan Kenobi or Master Yoda mean by mentoring. The Star Wars saga will function as an analogy to the challenges of modern managers. We will use it as the backdrop for your development path from manager to mentor. To this end we will combine aspects from mythology, psychology and management theory to create an adventure of personal maturation. The structure of the three stages of development, from manager to mentor, comprises the different phases of the hero’s journey that we also see in the Star Wars movies: departure (management) - initiation (reconnect to your potential) - integration (leading and mentoring). We accompany Luke Skywalker on his journey to becoming a Jedi and, through this, describe the different levels of guiding yourself and others in business.[19]

In each of the three parts you will encounter four „archetypes“, powerful universal themes or primal images. You can look at them as psychological apps that will help you solve developmental issues and leadership challenges or enhance your focus and action-capabilities of your leadership software. In this first part we will describe the following four archetypes: the optimist, the companion, the warrior and the caregiver. The combined qualities of these four archetypes are the foundation of solid management practice. However, they will only show their full potential when you also acknowledge the negative manifestations of these archetypes. Otherwise it might come to a „system crash“. And this is where the adventure of the art of leadership of a Jedi starts: do you follow the light or rather the dark side of the Force?[20]

Overview of the development in three phases.

	Phase 1	Phase 2	Phase 3
Level of development	Manager	Transformer	Leader
Leadership model	Transactional	Transrational	Transpersonal
System	Mechanical	Biological	Transformative
Leadership task	Goal setting	Explore	Renew
	Control	Create	Transcendent
Goals	Stability	Sensitivity	Agility
	Perfection	Free the potential	Fit
	Control	Creativity	Relationship
Focus	Outcome	Progress	Interdependence
Star Wars	Aspiring Jedi	Jedi Padawan	Jedi Master
Hero’s Journey	Preparation	Initiation	Integration
Archetypes	Optimist	Seeker	Ruler
	Companion	Decision Maker	Magician
	Warrior	Lover	Sage
	Caregiver	Creator	Jester
Psychology (C. G. Jung )	Stabilizing of Self	Individuation	Ego-Self-Reunion
Dimension of Meaning	Outer	Inner	Ultimate
Activity	Do	Becoming	Be

Image 2: Luke Skywalker’s stages of the hero’s journey

1.1 Business as usual

Star Wars is science fiction, adventure, mythology, far away in another time, and is set in another galaxy. Nevertheless, Star Wars also exactly matches the world you live in. Already the famous opening of the movie, the text slowly rolling away from you into space, gives you an idea of the movie’s fundamental conflict⁴. You immediately get the impression that there is a glimmer of hope in the midst of this conflict of galactic proportions. We have civil war, a rebellion, spaceships, an evil empire, spies, secret plans, an utterly deadly weapon the size of a star, dark agents and a princess who wants to save her people and restore peace. Then two droids emerge, one in humanoid form, the other more cylindrically shaped, both of whom appear substantially more human than many others we will encounter in the story. The Stormtroopers of the Empire are masked and without expression, whereas the Rebels’ faces are visible and express fear and tension. At this point in the story the imagery is largely black and white, the gracious Princess Leia in white and the anti-hero, the dark lord, Darth Vader, in black.[21]

At the outer level, Star Wars here tells the story of general conflicts and the state of our current society: the dominance and rule of the patriarchate which, in a massive all-powerful star ship, attacks the small Rebel ships, which are a symbol of a process-oriented and vibrant social system. On the inner - psychological - level the story is about the over-emphasis of the conscious, reason, outward focus and control over the unconscious⁵ (the intuitive, introspective and multifaceted aspects of our lives) - in other words, a world where ratio has gained an unhealthy dominance over intuition.

This imbalance can also be found in the well-known economic institutions of our professional world. Many organisations still insist that the causes and solutions of their problems can be found somewhere out there. These organisations subconsciously project their unresolved conflicts and difficulties on their staff, partners or clients. They look for answers to questions like, „how do we become more important and more effective,“ in the outer world. They forget to take the inner dimension, the human dimension, into account.[22]

The leaders of these organisations, both men and women, defend a lopsided collection of beliefs, in the form of lists of prescriptions and prohibitions, to somehow ensure growth and survival of the organisation. Interpersonal relationships are represented by organisational charts, and steady economic growth is seen as a suitable long-term strategy for society. This represents a Newtonian model of linearity, simple cause and effect relationships and reductionist logic, so well known in our technological society. This mental model is based on the idea that only one view is the correct view. It tries to ignore the other side of our reality: complex dynamic relationships and interconnections, endless variations, diversity and synchronicity - the VUCA world.

Important

The drama of what we term the modern times is that our naive rationalism does not take into account the complex reality that we have created.

We think that the world can be understood; that everything can be planned and categorised. Using numbers and statistics we try to control the world. We have forgotten that our world is full of mysteries that we may never understand completely. In the past, all cultures had useful teachings about the divine to which we ceded a part of our power to protect us from overestimating ourselves and our abilities. In this way, self-organizing and self-regulating principles could unfold themselves without our interference. Today our destiny is controlled by representatives of the rational economic model who rely on questionable statistics and probability models. They forget that every measurement is, to a smaller or larger extent, incorrect and that many important aspects of the system cannot be measured at all. The illusory assumption that one can control the world by using statistics leads to excessive risk taking. The result of this overestimation could clearly be felt by all of us a few years ago in the first global financial crisis.[23]

This „we have everything under control“ attitude makes our world even more fragile. We have to open up to another type of reality in which we trust that many physical processes can indeed be predicted to a sufficient level of accuracy, but that not all events of our social systems, which shape our world, are in any way predictable. These black swan events⁶ are events that escape our ability to predict and have the power to upend our whole society. Fortunately, the acceptance that highly complex systems can never be completely understood and controlled seems to be, more and more, returning to the consciousness of social institutions and commercial organisations.

Still, what do an innocent princess and an embittered war strategist have to do with all of this? For one, we see that the Empire, with its first order solutions for controlling the galaxy or predicting the outcome of a battle, constantly fails. Over and over the unpredictable actions of one brave individual or a small group of friends disrupt the plans of the all-powerful Empire. Of course, the reality of the corporate world is seldom as glossy and simple as depicted in the movies, but this simplified model helps us to understand the fundamental dynamics of complex phenomena and non-equilibrium processes.[24]

Every complex dynamic system fundamentally consists of four levels, layers or energies: on the top, we have the visible features, comparable to the tip of an iceberg. Below the surface we find the hidden features. In organisations, these four levels represent the organisational psyche or the organisational culture:

Image 3: Levels of organisational psyche

• At the first level we have the visible features, the observable behaviour and visible cultural artefacts. For example, how people greet and address each other, dress code, or the design and organisation of the workspace.
• The second level comprises processes and relationships, from which the quality of the connections between mission statements, strategies and goals can be deduced,
• while the even deeper level of developmental processes expresses the values of an organisation.
• At the fourth and deepest level, the unconscious level, we find the foundational assumptions of the organisation about the world, the market or the employees.

These third and fourth levels are of fundamental importance for understanding the integrity of the organisation. Without understanding the core processes and the underlying assumptions of your organisation (fourth level), you will not know to what extent the corresponding values and relationship patterns (second level) are viable. In other words: the essence of a culture lies in the fabric of their assumptions - and only when you have properly understood these will you be able to understand the more superficial levels and deal with them appropriately. The members of the Empire, for example, see the construction of a functional Death Star as evidence of the superiority of their organisation. The values behind these artefacts and the way they treat each other are themes like „winning“, „power“ and „security“. The purpose of their core processes is exploitation, and the use of victim mentality. If you further questioned the underlying assumptions of this system however, you would probably be confronted with themes like „the world is a battlefield“ and „individual freedom needs to be destroyed“.[25]

1.1.1 Underlying assumptions of a leader

A crucial role in this process lies with the leaders in the system. Their values and convictions can prompt family, friends or employees to deal with their internal and external problems in certain ways. When a leader inspires his sphere of influence to look at a situation in a particular way, then his assumptions will become the common assumption. When a series of fundamental convictions successfully gets validated, it will, at some point, form the character and identity of the whole group and can become their individual and common defence mechanism towards the outside. This is because we - groups as well as individuals - seek direction, stability and meaning. Once we have found this, we are very quick to reject or block alternative points of view. We deny their validity, project our problems onto them, rationalise our way out of them and use many other interesting defence mechanisms, so that we do not have to change our existing assumptions.[26]

Cultural change, in the sense of confrontation and challenging assumptions, is hard. Sustainable development takes time and is likely to inspire fear and anxiety. As a leader it is good to be aware of this, because the more you are involved in shaping an organisation, the more you will be confronted by the „invisible“ forces, demons and shadow aspects of the organisation. The more familiar you are with your personal assumptions and you have integrated your shadow aspects, the less you will be...

Table of contents

• Inhaltsverzeichnis
• Copyright Notices
• Imprint
• Prologue
• 1   Part 1 Management – Preparation for the Way of the Jedi
• 2   Part 2 Transformation – Becoming a Jedi
• 3   Part 3 Transpersonal Leadership – The Order of the Jedi
• Epilogue – The Lord of the Two Worlds
• Appendix
• Acknowledgement to the English version
• Literature and further reading