Leadership in Complex Systems: Skills & Attributes for Systems Leaders

These are what we call adaptive challenges, gaps generated by bold aspirations amid challenging realities. For these the world needs to build new ways of being and responding beyond the current repertoires of available know-how. What is needed from a leadership perspective are new forms of improvisational expertise, a kind of process expertise that

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Theory: There are several theories at work within this process. I will list a few of them in category form, but not define the theories.

1. Patters that connect


2. Bertrand Russell’s Logical Levels


3. Difference that makes a difference


4. Multiple description


5. Mutual learning and calibration (Symmathesy)


6. Iterative multi-modal learning


7. Autopoeisis (Varella and Maturana

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Other foundations are applying one mental model during strategy development and another for evaluation and learning. In recent years, for example, more foundations have been doing systems-change work that falls solidly within the systems-emergence model. But the approach to reporting almost always is aligned with a systems-dynamics model.

You can better see now that the typical (and usually linear) problem-solving orientation that dominates many workshops and projects is not helpful in complex socio-technical systems. In ordered contexts, we are dealing with solvable problems; in complex ones, we are dealing with emergent and entangled patterns. Cynefin methods propel us to see and

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