Convergent Leadership- Leadership for Growth and Sustainability
Convergent leadership is a practice based on the awareness that the world is coming together at an ever increasing rate. This should really be no shock to anyone. Whether you like or not humanity is now connected like we have never been before. Do you think this will require a shift in thinking or can we go on acting the way we have been acting for the last 100 years? This connected world will require a certain set of skills and thinking to live optimally in it. We need to behave differently in our world, and people and planet are the optimum choices. Profit, while it has a place, can no longer trump over people or planet. Convergent leaders have the higher social moral obligation to people and planet and lead with the greater good in mind. They know leading this way ultimately provides the greatest profit for all.
The first shift in thinking requires that this togetherness is synergistic and a benefit to humanity. Leaders who embrace convergence act in a manner to better the human experience in the shortest time possible with no harmful side effects to the planet. The idea of maintaining the status quo is over. The new core values are comprehension, cooperation, diversity, integrity, self-introspection, and self-reliance. These are the rules that will govern success in a connected world.
“If you change the way you look at things, the thing you look at changes” – Wayne Dyer
For the doubters, if you think convergence isn’t happening just grab your smartphone. What impact has that device had in your life? Are we more connected with communication, email, social media? Yes, we are far more connected than ever before. Look at the features of the device, over a million apps exist for the iphone alone. We are moving at an exponential rate yet still thinking on a linear plane. What does this connectivity bring into our lives? If you are not connected, how does that impact your ability to serve others optimally? The standard of living measured globally tells us that the more connected countries and regions are, the higher standard of living of those countries. The shift will continue to be connectivity, as humans always pursue increase of life.
Cooperation is one key to being a convergent leader. Cooperation is a building block. Through cooperation we become synergistic in our doings. We need to include not exclude in our dealings. Cooperation cannot be ignored. As projects become increasing more complex we need support at all levels. New leaders understand they are part of a rapidly emerging complex system and understand the role cooperation plays in a results driven world. Complexity or simplicity refers to our time and resources involved in achieving outcomes.
Cooperation is a two way street. You must first be willing to cooperate with others. This involves being receptive to ideas and seeing the big picture. Of course, we desire cooperation on our projects, agendas’, and situations. What should leaders be focusing on to foster cooperation? Marshall Thurber in his essay, “When Cooperation Breaks Out” points out that cooperation will occur when three things are present; lightness of the future, frequency of interaction, and darkness of the future. The first and last refers to things two parties both want and don’t want for example peace and war. The frequency of interaction is critical, when you cannot avoid something and something is on the line, you have an opportunity to make it work.
Cooperation will be needed in accomplishing whatever mission you are on. Understanding how critical cooperation can be and knowing how to promote is what convergent leaders do. Back to our main point, in a connected world you will have frequency of interaction, not to have cooperation is like trying to bake bread without adding yeast. The bread will never rise.
Understanding the role diversity plays in our world today is another key to leadership. Diversity is what is getting the job done. People from different places and cultures tend to have differing ideas on things. Diversity offers mash-up of human capital. It has been documented for decades that a diverse team generally out performs a homogenous team. Scott Page has a book on this subject called “The Difference”. As a leader can you perform optimally if you are not embracing diversity? Do you think the challenges we are going to face will be simple or more complex in the years to come? The convergent leader is aware that he has to always be building a diverse and talented team. This is not just a buzz word, the diverse teams are solving the equations and getting the results.
Diversity aids challenges in being solved. Diversity is simply the bringing together of different ways of doing things and allowing them to solve something. As the world continues to converge more differing views will show up wherever you are. Are you willing to embrace this and lead the charge? The data suggests the ones who do will have the biggest gains. Are you interested in the biggest gains
Buckminster Fuller said “Integrity is the essence of everything successful long-term”. In a connected world, what you say and do matters. You have nowhere hide in today’s world. Relationships and networks drive a lot of what we do. How you show up in your relationships and networks stays with you. By keeping your integrity in check, you control the outcome of relationships and how to increase your networks. This is another key building block to embrace. The amazing part of this is that this is something you have control of, you never have to act out of integrity. It may not always be easy to act in integrity, however, it stays with you forever. While it may take practice and work, living in integrity is the ground work for long term success. In a high tech world, what you touch matters, once again how you show up counts. We get very little redo’s in today’s world. In a high tech world, touch becomes an important element.
Self-Reliance is a very powerful idea. It can be the most liberating of ideas. You are responsible for your thinking, your success, and as leaders; our people and planet. Conformity has no place in this equation. It appears that societies have embraced conformity rather than self-reliance throughout the ages. The convergent leader plays by a different rule. Self-reliance is a critical leadership piece. You will not have full agreement. Leaders must lead in the face of resistance. Having a higher social moral purpose is key to convergent leadership. Conformity appears in many shapes such as a building a wall on the border, using non-sustainable materials to shave a dime off a project. The self-reliant leader understands his mission and is true to purpose. It is not a fight or a war, it a way of life. Taking responsibility equals creating freedoms.
As with self-reliance comes self-introspective. Convergent leaders are people of reflection. They view what they do as important and on purpose. They understand their job is to provide predictable results for their teams. This in turn requires introspection. Mistakes are not mistakes, they are opportunities for growth. We all know the term “trial and error”, let us move it forward with “effort and error”. Leaders understand that error or mistakes are part of the process. We move into action and then course correct. The opportunity for growth lies in our mistakes and what we can take from them. The leaps of learning are high when we stop and ask ourselves “What do I need to learn from this situation”.
Think back to a great leader you were with, how did they handle mistakes? Did they go into blame or shame or did they take responsibility and learn from it. Here is the bonus, when you make errors and you own up and take responsibility, you keep control of the situation. You rectify the situation with integrity and you look at what learning transpired and you grow. That is being a leader. I wish I could say mistakes will go away in the future, they will still be part of the process because that is ultimately how we learn. We learn through our experiences and the ones plagued with obstacles tend to provide the most growth.
When we begin to utilize integrity, cooperation, self-reliance, and self-introspection we are constantly increasing our perspective. Our perspective or how we perceive ourselves is our biggest distinction. Leaders with the greatest perspective tend to have the greatest success. I find it easy to see the correlation. How can you lead when you are looking with a narrow view? Go back to history battles, the generals stayed behind where they had the best view of the field of battle and could make the best decisions taking everything into account. Your perspective has value, it dictates how you show up in the world and how you pass value on to others. Your approach to any situation lies in your perspective of the situation.
The comprehensive approach is the path. Nature has shown us time and time again that overspecialization leads to extinction. In a connected world we must start with the big picture in mind and work down from there. Everything we do today has the potential to be seen or conveyed anywhere in the world. If I give a speech today, it could show up minutes later in China or any place for that matter. This goes with our actions, building cities responsibly has an impact and a cost; let’s make it a positive impact.
If you study Scrum, a software management technique, they discuss how not handling something right in the moment takes an enormous amount of time to fix later. Think about our buildings, waterways, education, etc. What are the costs to our future with our actions today? Convergent leaders understand the big picture, the idea is to get in, get it done for everyone’s benefit and get out. Any mistakes in the process are just course corrections.
Convergent leadership comes down this, it is about playing win-win in the connected world with people and planet as the beneficiaries. Through the big picture, they understand playing this way will yield the profits and abundance for all. If you study synergy truly by definition you can start to see how this works.
Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately. When you get your head around synergy lots of things start to make sense. The phrase “Together we are better” which I happen to use quite a bit speaks of synergy. Cooperation and diversity are examples of synergy in motion. Synergy works both in the physical and metaphysical world. Synergy it plays an important role in our world whether you understand it or not.
Steven Covey’s book “The Third Alternative” is about synergy. He calls us to action to make synergy part of our world. And lays out four steps to get there. First, ask the “Third Alternative Question”; are you willing to go for a solution that is better than any of us have come up with yet? If yes go to step 2. Define the criteria of success. What would be a win-win for all concerned? Third, creat Third Alternatives by suspending judgement, work quickly and creatively, create, borrow ideas, mind map, etc. Fourth, arrive at Synergy, and how you intend to put it in practice.
We all know and understand gravity and no one blames gravity for causing something to fall and break. As leaders we need to operate fully understanding the concept of synergy. Moving past the buzz word days of the nineties by coproate mergers, synergy is real and it opens the door for human potential. Our planet operates by a synergistic regenerative landscape. Convergent leaders embrace this idea that there is enough and through the cooperation we can have abundance for all. When we all are all are operating as convergent leaders the synergy of synergies (all of us working for each other) will create a level of sustainability that will amaze us all.
“Humanity is moving ever deeper into crisis- a crisis without precedent….Brought about by cosmic evolution intent upon transforming humanity into a completely integrated harmonious whole.” -Buckminster Fuller
It has become time for us to increase our perspectives, we are all operating on one planet, the cumulative effect of our actions matters. The building industry touches many of the agendas of the UN. Many corporations have responded to this already. We play no small part in making our cities sustainable. Where are we still playing win-lose in our daily business lives. Through our understanding and implementation, we can educate our end users on the need to have specific target goals for each project that make sense for the client and also for the city, the state, the country, and earth. We do have a say, we have specific agendas to meet for our planet.
Where does our food come from, it is not the factory, it is from our planet. Where does our water come from, once again our planet. It is not being a tree hugger to speak of this, this is real. People are finally starting to wake up to this plain and beautiful fact. It is our job to be environmentally responsible. We have outlined the tools that help us make this happen.
Comprehension, integrity, cooperation, diversity, self-reliance, self-introspection, and synergy. These are the tools that will create predictable results in an unpredictable converging world. You can start today in exactly the place you are and start operating as a convergent leader. Margret Meade has left us wonderful and penetrating thoughts on this subject.
“We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.” -M. Meade
“I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.” -M. Meade
