Richard Hodge
48. Value Leadership Behaviour

A great quote from Dr Margaret Wheatley helps us tie together the strands of value we’ve been discussing so far. Dr Wheatley says this:

“Leadership is a series of behaviours not a role for heroes.”

…and we’ve all met a few heroes, haven’t we?

culture

39. Life in motion

Sunday dinner. A weekly ritual connecting our family in three locations. The conversation moves to privilege of birth, statesmanship and expected behaviours of those in high position. I’m at once engaged and soon detached, hearing myself fall into arguing with my grandson, Cameron.

My detachment sparks a realisation: Liminal states are common. Whenever we let go of a state of being that no longer serves us and evolve to a new state of being, we move through a liminality in time, space and mind.

24. This Century Thinking Webcast - Value The Mess

Any idea of finding solutions for systemic issues is misleading. Systemic issues lose traceability between causes and effects – so, approaching them with a solution mindset is itself a problem.

What’s needed is an intervention mindset and approach. Dame Maggie Smith once put it, “there’s no beginning and no end, only points where you enter and leave the story.” [1]

22. Safety Culture

Intensive care specialist, Peter Roberts, told me “bad health policy is more dangerous to my patients than the flesh-eating bug.”

That notion struck accord for every organisation I’ve worked with.

Peter realised his qualifications were not enough to assure a culture of safety, that enables working to do no harm. So, he studied the systemic issues in health care exploring the inadequacies of dominant paradigms. [1]

15. Leaders who care are leaders who give a damn and make sure everyone knows it.

Leaders who care are leaders who give a damn and make sure everyone knows it.

Leaders who care know that Black Lives Matter. I first wrote All Lives Matter. They do. Always. Yet, right now that seems to diminish the underlying racism in America and Australia. Known and unspoken.

12. Leadership and Care

Leadership and Care. On caring, Christian Madsbjerg (Sensemaking, 2017) writes:

“When you have a perspective – when you actually give a damn – you intuitively sense what’s important and what’s trivial. You can see what connects with what, and you know the data … that matter. Caring is the connective tissue that makes all things possible.

8. Agility precedes survival and sustainability

Agility precedes survival and sustainability. It’s an emergent property not a set of practices. It’s enabled by all we think, say and do. Agility is seen by others in our ability to respond to change.

On the inside, leaders have a deep responsibility for the response-ability of their enterprise.  

7. Survival precedes growth

Survival precedes growth. So, what’s essential for survival? Many businesses shine with ‘incident response’. No worries. It matters less where we start, it matters more that we start to work systemically on all 7 measures.

Leadership: Engaging people as a system of sense-making and advocacy, with clear directions and controls. Now, it’s less about the person at the top.

We all live two lives. The second one begins when we realise we have only one life.