I’ve always admired the way leaders can identify a solution for linear-style problems so readily, and so confidently. Sure, that may have been based on experience, but what impressed me was the ability to instinctively solve these problems. When I was in junior technical roles, I remember being amazed by how readily leaders could solve my problems.
In situations where the problem is linear, like a major construction project or an internal IT upgrade, can be followed successfully to completion with a project plan or chart. Of course, you may have some variations in budget and time control, but essentially, linear problems are understandable, and it’s easy to gain consensus from stakeholders regarding the causes of the problem and the solution.
It has been so successful that the celebrated captains of industry built careers on this dominant mindset. “They” could see what, strategically, was required of their organizations—and society—and would subsequently set a vision that we were to follow unquestionably.
If this type of linear-style thinking wasn’t your strength, that’s okay. Business schools were the prestigious means to structurally support the development of this model of thinking. MBAs, for example, have been one of the key means to leap from being a great manager to becoming a great leader, so the story goes.
Business schools taught students how to excel in a linear world using reductive thinking by breaking the holistic down into a simplified model and calling on case studies from successful organizations in the past. As the AACSB, a prominent body that accredits business schools, worldwide, observes on its website, “The world’s business schools are where leaders are developed, inspired, and emboldened.”
But, there’s a catch. There are three key reasons why what is learned at business schools no longer helps leaders thrive.
Wicked problems resist linear solutions
The context or world that organizations find themselves in isn’t as linear or simple as we are led to believe. It isn’t as easy to control or has as much certainty as we are wired to think. It is downright messy, uncertain, and complex.
Arguably, the messiness reflects the abundance of wicked problems confronting us. The term was coined over 50 years ago to indicate problems such as climate change, crime, geopolitical issues, and arguably even working from home, to name a few.
If you’ve never heard that term before, a wicked problem:
- is hard to define as there can be disparate responses from a diverse group
- can have several root causes, each of which can have greater meaning for some over others in an increasingly partisan society
- is interconnected, being a root cause of another wicked problem
They are messy. Leaders cannot identify a clear and confident solution to them the way they could solve linear-style problems. They require different skills and behavioral traits to those learned by leaders in business school.
Consequently, the ways of confronting the bigger challenges taught in business schools, just won’t suffice when it comes to wicked problems. They cannot be solved; they can only be “tamed.” And they can only be tamed by calling on different perspectives than just that of the great leader. Instead, things often become worse from employing traditional, linear ways of thinking.
Surely, we only need to tweak the “way we do things around here?”
Leading under illusion
It is important to emphasize that this challenge to our dominant ways of thinking isn’t new. We have been receiving warnings for some time. For decades, in fact.
In the late 1980s, the groundbreaking Brundtland Report, calling for a more balanced approach to enhancing rather than damaging lives, livelihoods and the planet, observed that:
“The time has come to break out of past patterns. Attempts to maintain social and ecological stability through old approaches to development and environmental protection will increase instability.”
How has that worked out?
In the 1990s, the U.S. Army War College coined the term VUCA, implying that the world was now Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. Things were no longer black and white. Importantly, this wasn’t just a concern for military organizations, it was for businesses as well.
Yet, still, nothing changed. With exponential advancements in AI, with several environmental tipping points anticipated within a decade, and with your stakeholders—internally and externally—becoming more coordinated, sophisticated, and demanding, I would argue that the business world has become increasingly VUCA. This will continue to be the case for many years.
Leaders have led according to an illusion. Namely, despite the biggest challenges and opportunities no longer being predominantly linear, there is a belief, supported by business schools, that leaders can continue to run organizations successfully by employing 20th-century thinking and mindsets while working in a more fast-paced, complex, and interconnected 21st century.
Even worse, academics Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus claimed in 1985 that too many leaders were hastily creating solutions or doing nothing, further exacerbating the problems.
Sound familiar? It just isn’t working. Rather than positively or proactively dealing with our biggest problems, many leaders are just making things worse. Or pretending these problems can be resolved with control and imposition.
You may ask, “So what if we aren’t making a difference?” Well, trust in organizations is in crisis. Many people believe that organizations, due to the dominant thinking of their leaders, do more harm than good. There is a growing chasm between leaders, staff, and stakeholders.
The consequences are sizeable for leaders who keep to linear thinking. Staff disengagement. Absenteeism. Presenteeism. Difficulty attracting high-caliber staff. And conflict with communities that can last not just for weeks, but for years. Conflict that is costly to the bottom line, bursts morale, and inspires staff to leave.
I see this every week.
Resisting mindset shifts
Please don’t get me wrong. Leaders and aspiring leaders are still learning important skills in business schools by taking core subjects on teamwork, strategy, global management, and even personal development. But, rarely, the skills and traits needed for leaders to thrive in a messy 21st century are acknowledged.
Every time you made a leap in your career you needed to call on new skills and traits rather than be held back by old ones. Similarly, what you learned in business school to propel you into a leadership role now holds you back in this age of uncertainty. Those learnings, on their own, are a hindrance.
We don’t need the continued perpetuation of the story of the great leader single-handedly solving things on their own. Such leadership was brilliant during times of stability and for solving linear problems.
However, in this era where our problems are messy or nonlinear, these styles of leadership are inappropriate. They are not in the best interests of the leader or the organization.
If organizations are to improve or protect their brand, reputation, productivity, and viability we need a collective form of leadership. We need leaders who have transcended their egos and are inspired and emboldened to develop leaders, inside and out, who are equipped and enabled to think strategically and act decisively.
We don’t need the continued story of industry or organizations as blunt machines, with “inconveniences” like the environment, communities, or staff well-being irrelevant to the machine’s success. The world isn’t as simple as it was at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Now, leaders need to be conversant in systems thinking and factor complexity into their strategic thinking. They need to understand how the parts of the system are interconnected, the relationships between them, and how the parts form the whole.
- What has been ignored, traditionally, that could now impact value creation?
- What emerging issues could also impact value creation?
- What assumptions have been taken for granted that must now be confronted?
- Do leaders expect that the future will just be a continuation of the past?
Research conducted last year identified that more than half of the companies on the Fortune 500 list in 2003 no longer exist. If we don’t confront the need to transcend the dominant mindsets taught at our business schools, the rate of organizational extinction will surely grow.
