Neoteny is a zoological term that describes curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth, and energy. Neotenic leaders and followers are "first-class noticers". Their ability to tolerate uncertainty helps them be aware of how many situations are in a state of flux and change. People of ordinary ability do not wake up to change until a big change has occurred. Being comfortable with high levels of uncertainty increases our awareness of how the world around us is changing. It allows us to think independently and act responsibly instead of living in the slavery of conformity.
Of all the overlooked leadership practices, the ability to anticipate is perhaps the most critical skill. Anticipation is not prediction but is rather the readiness to deal with whatever the future brings; it is being on our toes.
Anticipation has three distinct qualities:
- sensory ability to detect important trends early
- mental agility sufficient to spot opportunities and threats embedded in these emerging trends
- the mobility and resources with which to seize the opportunities and evade the threats in good time
These emerging trends can be defined as "weak signals". Anticipation is the eagerness and ability to detect and respond to weak signals in order to "get ahead of the curve". Successful leaders demonstrate the mental agility to respond appropriately to these weak signals and ready their followers to be fluid enough to respond quickly to new and changing circumstances.
Sensory ability has not only to do with personal awareness but also the ability to create an organizational "skin" through which followers can sense or detect weak signals. Understanding the nature of organizational skin is easier if we grasp the character of leprosy:
Lepers do not lose fingers and limbs because their fingers and limbs become diseased. They lose them because their central nervous systems are damaged in a way that prevents them from feeling pain and thus avoiding injuries to their extremities. Consequently, parts of fingers and other extremities can be damaged and even torn off without the leper feeling anything. Long ago, when lepers were forced to live in caves, the rest of the population thought the disease destroyed fingers. Actually, while the lepers slept, caves-dwelling rats would eat their fingers. And the lepers did not have the blessing or gift of pain to signal the need to move their hands out of danger. An organization that loses touch with its "skin" risks a similar a kind of injury.
In business the critical organizational sensory perception system or skin is found in the customer-facing employees. Organizational difficulty comes when decision makers and leaders are insulated from the outside world. Leaders have too often lost the habits of watching and listening - - they lose touch with what their customers, clients, and competitors are thinking and doing.
Highly important organizational knowledge must in part be derived from a corporate sensory system. Frontline and external staff must accurately perceive and relay not only commonly used information from the outside world but also the weak signals that foreshadow emerging changes in that world. Waiting for strong signals and relative certainty is a losing game in this fast-paced world.
Anticipation and certainty can be considered opposites. By the time strong signals are received, critical events are upon us. Instead of anticipating in a proactive manner, we are instead forced to react and scramble to cope with the new realities. Anticipation has to do detecting signals early, before they become clear. "Everyone can hear a shout, but only those with exceptional sensory systems can hear the barely audible whisperers where most of the opportunities and timely warnings lie".
Further, is important to build a picture from multiple signals. Weak signals need to be corroborated by other signals. A multiplex sensory system can help us deduce meaning from a combination of different signals; clarity and direction comes from analyzing multiple weak signal data.
There is a “social operating mechanism” that utilizes multiple signal information in six ways:
- Real-time information is continuously fed to those who need it
- External rather than internal data is relied upon
- Consideration of the data fosters dialogue
- The data is utilized to generate complete pictures of the world across all dimensions
- Data and information fed directly to key decision makers results in follow-through action
- The process is rhythmic and repeats over short cycles.
In this way, action follows swiftly on the heels of signal detection
The more complex a situation with which a leader has to cope, the less gut instinct should be relied on. The use of intuition to see patterns in the external world or internal environment is highly unreliable and most often counterproductive. Often in relying on gut feel we look for cause-and-effect that does not exist at all, or also only exists in the second, third, and fourth order effects of dependence.
Lone Ranger leadership based on intuition is inevitably impatient with ambiguity and acts too soon. Such leadership does not call upon the wisdom of groups. Using gut feel often makes us feel special - - that we are part of the true business elite. However, for the most part it oversimplifies complex situations leading to failure. In complexity, our gut leads us more often to disaster than to success.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" said Albert Einstein. Mental agility utilizes such imagination. Mental agility explores beyond real and imagined boundaries. It recognizes the limits within which creativity operates. It is flexible in pursuit of goals as obstacle after obstacle is encountered.
Agile leaders don't wait until things go wrong; they use their mental agility to quickly respond to the threats and opportunities detected in weak signals. Dream stuff is turned into reality as energetic imagination is harnessed in each moment of each day. This is possible because the world is not in equilibrium and never will be.
Prosperity comes to those who innovate constantly in response to goal blocking obstacles. Overcoming is found in generating multiple interpretations of incoming signals and in having diverse points of view in analyzing the data.
Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety states "only variety can absorb variety.... organizations will only succeed if they can generate as much internal variety as the variety surrounding them externally". However, variety can be both a blessing and a curse. It brings both productive creativity and also chaotic disorganization. To be helpfully creative, mental agility needs to be contained within themes. Some of the most useful themes are found within the essence of core competencies or within organizational personality and brand. When creativity is channeled through what we do best, amazing things can happen.
Leadership is it not really about individuals at all, but about the relationship between leaders and the led.... in the end, it is not what the leader does that matters, but what the led do, how quickly they do it and how easy it is for them to get hold of the resources they need to do it right.
An interesting part of leadership is how leaders can help followers attain a high degree of self-organization and adaptability. They create lean structures to handle routine and repetitive tasks while enabling pools of highly talented people "to swarm" around threats and opportunities in flexible and creative adaptation.
Leaders can empower followers by setting up "complex adaptive systems" in which simple rules or principles - - not commands - - are the modus operandi for distributed decision-making, in which resources are free to move, and in which the value of redundancy is appreciated for its mobility function.
Redundancy rather than efficiency provides flexible adaptive freedom; it multiplies the number of creative solutions available in response to detection of weak signals. Redundancy can be conceptualized as reserves to be mobilized to help swarm identified inflection points of threat or opportunity. Redundancy increases the power of "real option" decision-making opportunities. Anticipation in combination with human and resource mobility brings the freedom to adapt to change, threat and opportunity.
One other factor needs to be considered when considering the role of anticipation. That factor is the role of luck. "Luck is the meeting of preparation and opportunity". Thomas Jefferson noted that as a very lucky man, he found that the harder he worked, the luckier he got. We cannot make ourself lucky but we can put ourselves in positions where we are more likely to find opportunities. We need to anticipate where those positions might be. Too often) groups or companies do not understand that their success came to them as a result of luck, or perhaps just being in the right place at the right time. In anticipating future solutions, it is most important to realize the role that luck can play. In humility, good leaders place themselves, their followers and their organizations in a place where it is possible to get lucky.
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