The Leadership Lab

THE LEADERSHIP LAB:  Understanding Leadership in the 21st Century, Chris Lewis and Pippa Malmgren, Kogan Page Inspire 2018 

Note the different leadership styles in US government today - a president with a hierarchical, reactive, post World War II orientation, vs. young, sometimes female, sometimes multicultural, sometimes revolutionary, perhaps even socialist  members of Congress - just the style differences between Donald Trump and Ocasia-Cortez could not be sharper.  Where does this exaggerated leadership gap come from and which one will work going forward, and more specifically, what should the new leadership generation look like as we move ahead?

Turns out, say the authors, that we are moving through another Big Change, and the leadership rules and models that worked in a pre-digital, pre-robotic age will of course not  work to build or manage the new workforce.  The Leadership Lab highlights the differences we need to think about, and urges new leaders to pay attention to situational fluency: 

1.  First, information overload.  "Top-down Alpha-male leadership often asks the wrong question and gets the wrong answer."  and "All leaders say they want more intelligent people, but how many recognize the different types of intelligence?"  and "Our goals here are to replace the analytically, economically efficient with a more balanced approach."  Its about what the authors call "situational fluency - "Sometimes we see what looks like chaos, but what is chaos except a pattern we have yet to understand." 

2.  Technology changes plus human goals imbalance.  The author urges new leaders to consider left-brain and right-brain process differences; the impact of information overload, with improvement recommendations; what to do about the algorithms; what is "news", anyhoo ; spotting the signs of a waterboarded leader.

3.  We are not alone in this world, but the authors warn us that internationalism and insularity trends are in conflict.  Add fear to the mix, and a chart on page 60 showing central government debt (lowest Estonia, Chile, Luxembourg... all the way to debt as a percentage of GNP...  United States 125%, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Japan 200%+  ), and its clear we are eating our future.  US household debt in the US falls around the same 25% as a percentage of net disposable income.

4.  The Table of Inversions - What was clear 20 even 10 years ago appears to have reversed: education - work experience;  freedom of speech - censored speech,  political correctness;   etiquette and protocol - huddles and hang-outs; marriage and commitment -  promiscuity and Tinder; even trust - cynicism.

Just this one frightening list of inversions is enough to make leaders question their traditionally workable approaches. 

Although the authors offer a leadership model, Kythera, as a diagrammatic approach to understanding leadership, some readers will skip the diagram and go for the written word and charts. 

Mill Girl Verdict:  Look at this book twice, once for the numbers and charts, and once for the visionary glimpses of our future. 

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, pemoody@aol.com, patriciaemoody@gmail.com, tricia@patriciaemoody.com,