Walking The Walk Through Complexity

Amid the veritable sea of leadership advice, finding a guide that is practical, digestible, reasonable, and makes sense can be quite the task. There are so many ways that we can learn to be more effective, more humble, more strategic, more outcomes driven, accountable and flexible – the aspirational list is endless. Nonetheless, it is essential if we’re going to lead to get things done.

Consider adding Strategic Doing: Ten Skills for Agile Leadership to the mix. Written by a team in 2019, the book is a cornerstone of a larger movement about agile leadership. Consultants, a lab (originally with Purdue University and now at the University of North Alabama), a community of practitioners and a wealth of materials follow Strategic Doing and are shaping businesses, organizations, and a host of collaborative efforts. Examples are eclectic and interesting: violence reduction in Flint, Michigan, NASA projects and redevelopment in Oklahoma City, to name a few. Easy to grasp, Strategic Doing offers a flexible combination of mind-set, skill set and approach towards solving wicked problems.

Stressing that hierarchical structures are not applicable to much of how we operate today when it comes to solving complex problems, the book grounds its philosophy in how to deal with complex issues. Complexity is about systems with numerous interconnected parts that do not necessarily respond in predictable ways. A mechanical watch is complicated; figuring out how to improve a school or reduce crime is complex. To wrestle with complexity, Strategic Doing emphasizes the necessity of collaboration and fluidity.

A great way to conceptualize the need for new models to deal with complexity is the difference between the old studio system for making movies and the way that they are made now, which relies on the effective interplay of different teams with different cultures, practices and priorities. The old studios employed everyone, from directors to cast to make-up artists, under one roof. Today, movies require different groups to work together, such as a marketing firm, a production company, teams for casting, companies for logistics, outsourced CGI (for all the aliens), and so on. Knowing out how to align teams into larger coordinated teams, getting them each to play to their strengths, in a truly collaborative manner, is at the core of what Strategic Doing is explaining. But how? The authors say that it can be done through the right sort of agile leadership and the development and implementation of ten skills.

Strategic Doing is not about mastering the skills. That’s not now one goes about steering collaborative efforts in complexity. Instead, the aim is understanding the skills, determining who or what does them well, and collaborating to advance skills collectively. These are not traditional skills, either; they are as much about framing and how to proceed.

The skills are 1) Create and maintain a safe space for deep, focused conversation; 2) Frame the conversation with the right question; 3) Identify your assets, including the hidden ones; 4) Link and leverage assets to identify new opportunities; 5) Look for the “Big Easy”; 6) Convert your ideas to outcomes with measurable characteristics; 7) Start slowly to go fast – but start; 8) Draft short-term action plans that include everyone; 9) Set 30/30 meetings to review, learn and adjust; 10) Nudge, connect, and promote to reinforce new habits. The book is illustrates the skills with real life examples and scholarship.

Agile leadership requires sharing leadership responsibilities so that an effective team achieves results. While the authors note that each of the skills stands on their own, they also state that complexity is going to be hard to grasp without appreciation of these skills.

Strategic Doing ends by posing four questions to help think through how one might proceed. What could we do? What should we do? What will we do? What’s our 30/30? Answering them – and knowing why they are important to address – completes the circle.

Richly informative, Strategic Doing is a provocative organizational philosophy of leadership.

David Potash

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