Dear Organlearners,
Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> writes:
>More recently, Gardner has researched and written about
>leadership, including the book _Leading Minds_. He says
>in the interview that his research identifies a common
>characteristic of great leaders that they create powerful
>narratives, and I like his way of talking about these.
>
>I started thinking of this in connection to William
>Auvinen-Bray's question about technology and leadership...
>If leadership is about the creation of powerful narratives,
>then it seems to me:
Greetings Rick,
I like the way in how you connect "technology" (T), "leadership" (L)
and "creation of powerful narratives" (N). Your connections are all of
the associative pattern
L*T*N
where the T (technology) in the middle act as facilitator, tool or
"umlomo" (Zulu: mouthpiece). What you did, was to create a new
dimension in Howard Gardner's pattern
L*N
Thank you also for sharing some important snippets form the interview.
The following has caught my attention for a definite reason:
>"If you're a very good embodier, though, you don't have to be such
>a good storyteller because your symbolic behaviour really conveys
>the point. That's interesting in the corporate sense because the
>more you're trying to create a new business, or change a business
>radically, the more important is the story you tell.
I have noticed long ago that just before a paradigm shifts for a large
(national or international level) collection of people, the number of
gribbing stories by many writers reaches a peak. It is AS IF the
writers have a greater forebode of the future than other people. They
begin to cash in on the large structures of the existing order
(crystals, Digestor!), using the free energy so obtained to drive
themselves to the edge of chaos where they begin to bifurcate. They
articulate their own findings not in terms of the actual revolution
which will take place, but in terms of the story's characters and
their behaviours.
Then Gardner continues:
>But for an organisation that's very well launched, where the
>story is quite set and you don't need to change it -- as in the
>Army or the Catholic Church -- it is only importnat that you
>embody the story...
What Gardner now refers to is, in my technical terms, not the
revolutionary phase at the edge of chaos where bifurcations happen,
but the evolutionary phase close to equilbrium where digestions
happen. The qualities which has emerged through the revolution have
now to grow (be embodied).
I have written above "AS IF". Morepeople than merely the writers have
a forebode of the future and thus cash in on the large existing
structures. But what do they do with the free energy so obtained? This
is where the five elementary sustainers of creativity come in. They
are:
dialogue
problem solving
exemplar studying
game playing
art expressing
People use that free energy to participate (or increase it) in one or
more of the five sustainers of creativity. Stories (narratives) belong
to the sustainer "art expressing".
Thus I view leadership as the facilitation of the followers'
creativity. The initial step in helping any follower to become more
creative, is to encourage that person to participate in at least one
of the five elementary sustainers of creativity if it is not already
the case. The next step is to improve on the dynamics of creativity --
all which is concerned with the content of creativity (entropy
production). The last step is to improve is on the mechanics of
creativity -- all which is concerned with the form of creativity
(seven essentialities).
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>