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  Yet Allen couldn’t simply demonize and discount BP executives. He needed them on his side to help clean up the mess. He knew that it would be impossible to stop the leak without the company’s experience, equipment, and expertise.

  Governors of the affected states, all Republicans, were fighting to snatch the finite protective resources being overseen by the Democratic Obama administration. The attitude was, “Get a boom on my shoreline.” In Louisiana, Plaquemines Parish president Billy Nungesser was among the vocal local leaders deriding the entire federal response, saying, “These guys have no clue and no ability to think outside the box.” He was a regular guest on the national news shows. The fishing and tourism industries lamented the millions of dollars of business they were losing every day. One local real estate broker called the spill a “sucker punch” as coastal property sales and rentals ground to a halt.

  Not only was Admiral Allen “it,” he had to convince everyone who was part of or affected by the operation to see that they were critical to the solution as well. As a meta-leader, he had to overcome the shortsighted belief that only he, the official national incident commander, could surmount all the problems involved in countering the oil spill. BP was both the legally designated “responsible party” and an ally to engage. So too were the governors, local leaders, and the many federal agencies that were part of the mammoth response. Engaging all of these people constructively was more vexing than the enormous engineering challenges involved in stopping the spill. These were the very people whom he needed within the collection of followers, and getting them to work together was the essence of the meta-leadership challenge.

  Eventually Admiral Allen succeeded. The hole at the bottom of the Gulf was plugged, and the ecological damage, though significant, was more limited than it otherwise could have been.

  Why Do You Lead?

  Why do you lead? Everyone has a different answer to this question. Most speak to what makes life meaningful. Making meaning is at the heart of the human experience. For some, life’s meaning comes in finding a purpose and trying to make a difference in society. For others, meaning is measured in money and market dominance. Meaning can be about achieving power, becoming recognized, righting wrongs, overcoming strife, finding excitement, preserving a tradition, or molding a new one. Some people embrace an organization’s mission as their own. What is your answer?

  Meta-leaders are distinguished by the passion and commitment they bring to their quest for meaning: it motivates and engages others.

  People follow leaders because they help in that search for meaning. It might be a political leader, a spiritual leader, a business leader, or an artistic leader. People rally behind these leaders even though they may not pay their wages or supervise their work. Picture the leaders who inspire you and whom you follow. You believe in them and see your aspirations in theirs. You appreciate that they recognize your value. You do more than simply show up when such leaders motivate and acknowledge your efforts. You share and amplify their passion.

  There is something extraordinarily fulfilling in following people who effectively and creatively shape solutions and who, at the same time, really care about those around them. Such leadership motivates performance and loyalty that exceeds any job description or evaluation. Meta-leading in this way is synergistically meaningful. It is satisfying in its accomplishments for you, and it is equally satisfying for the people you lead. We found just that when we met and later followed Dr. Suraya Dalil.

  It takes enormous commitment and courage to stand up and be the leader.

  Every year during Harvard’s January winter session, we teach an intensive leadership class for graduating master’s students. On day one, we tell students that after lunch they will present an introductory speech as the highest-ranking professional official in their state or country. It is their first day on the job, and in five minutes they are to review their background, their objectives for the job, and how they will achieve them. Afterwards, students and faculty critique each speech and offer comments. We videotape the session and its discussion, and after class students are expected to watch their performance. It’s an intentionally challenging assignment and experience.

  One year, as students stood up to head for lunch and their speech preparation, Dr. Suraya Dalil, a physician from Afghanistan, approached us. She was annoyed. “How can you expect me to give a speech as the public health minister from Afghanistan? Can’t you see? I am a woman. No woman would ever be in such a position in my country.” We asked her to give it a try, suggesting that she think of this leader position as an aspiration.

  After lunch, Suraya reluctantly went through the motions. Her speech was mechanical. Her ambitions for improving health in her nation were narrow. She was thinking from the perspective of a single clinic rather than a country. She was nervous and showed little confidence in herself and the vision she had for the job.

  On Friday, as the weeklong class comes to a conclusion, students once again give a speech. This time they choose who they are and who they are addressing as their audience. By that point in the class, they have experienced and learned the whole of the meta-leadership curriculum through interactive exercises, lectures, and discussion. We often find a new sense of leadership confidence and commitment among the students.

  That Friday, Suraya again introduced herself as the new Afghan minister of public health. This time she belted out her speech with a bold vision for maternal and child health for the nation. She had a plan to raise health standards for the whole of the population. She was definitive, directed, and pragmatic.

  These speeches are ultimately evaluated by a simple criterion: Will people follow you? As Suraya concluded, the classroom of students and faculty cheered and jumped to their feet in a standing ovation. Four months later, at the 2005 Harvard graduation, it was announced that she would soon return to her country and become Afghanistan’s deputy minister of public health. Five years later, when the position became available, she was promoted to minister. Dr. Dalil served from 2010 to 2014, and in 2015 she was appointed the Afghan permanent representative to the United Nations, the first woman in the post.

  Dr. Suraya Dalil was transformed into a devoted advocate for the health and well-being of the war-torn population of her country. Recognizing the importance of presence despite the dangers, she regularly traveled to areas hard hit by devastation and terrorist attacks, both to learn what happened and to support survivors in their recovery and resilience.

  She later told us, “I realized that it is so easy to trap into day to day activities, like signing papers. They are easy, they don’t question you a lot. Or doing the easy things that don’t challenge you because you are comfortable with them. But then I realized, what did you produce? The number of signatures on a piece of paper? So I… made a commitment to myself to do one thing every day that scares me. That I normally don’t do it. Or that I am not very comfortable doing it. But they are important. They are important for decision-making. They are important for that job. They are important for the people.”

  Commitment and courage.

  Meta-leadership is both a skill and an art.

  Here you’ll find the model, methods, and thinking that can help you enrich your skills and understanding. How you incorporate all of this into your personal and professional repertoire is a matter of your unique style, your character, and the artistry of how you lead.

  There is much to learn from leaders who have mastered the art of motivating and engaging people to do and accomplish far more than they otherwise could have dreamed. Much can also be learned from mistakes and failures. This lesson in part explains Dr. Suraya Dalil’s transformation from day one of that winter session class to the last day. And in how she transformed her academic learning into real-life leading.

  What can meta-leadership mean for you? Seek to find what others cannot. Galvanize your courage. Imagine. Dream. And then bring others along for the adventure.

  You’re it. It is time to lead.

 
Questions for Journaling

  Why do you want to lead? What do you hope to accomplish?

  Recall a situation when you were “it.” What did you learn from the experience?

  Similarly, recall a moment when someone else was “it.” What happened with that person, and why? What does this memory mean for you?

  THREE

  COMPLEXITY IS…

  Okay, pardon a bit of hometown baseball pride as we (Eric, Barry, and Lenny) recall the 2004 Boston Red Sox. (Unfortunately for the rest of us, Joe is a Yankees fan.) It was the year when the team broke the eighty-six-year-long World Series losing streak known as the “Curse of the Bambino,” a reference to the 1920 sale of legendary baseball star Babe Ruth by the Red Sox to the New York Yankees.

  All professional baseball teams have the same number of players. The 2004 Red Sox roster did not represent an outsize number of superstars. In fact, team members described themselves as a “bunch of idiots.” Yet together they overcame a seemingly insurmountable three-game deficit against the archrival New York Yankees to win the American League Championship Series and then swept the St. Louis Cardinals in four games to win the World Series.

  For Joe and our readers who are not Red Sox fans, we note the contrast in the 2012 team. Red Sox management spent lavishly to put together what appeared on paper to be a dream team. They finished in last place, twenty-six games behind the division-winning Yankees.

  What was the difference between those two teams, and what does it have to do with meta-leadership? It was the relationships between the players that were different, not simply the talents of the individuals.

  Every team, organization, community, or swarm you lead is a complex adaptive system. To lead, you must grasp three basic concepts: systems, complexity, and adaptive capacity. In this chapter, we introduce these concepts, show their relationships, and apply each to meta-leadership thinking and practices. As you read, consider how they apply to the work you do.

  Systems, Complexity, and Adaptation: Keeping Track of All That Is Going On

  A system is a collection of connected parts that work or move together. Shift one piece and others are affected, some subtly and others profoundly. A new law, a different leader, or a shocking disaster exposes how one changed component of a system affects the others. By shifting priorities, these new factors redefine what is important, what gets attention, and what does not. Actions and events are connected even if the moderating dynamics are not readily apparent.

  Complexity characterizes the multiple and varied interactions between the parts in a system. Change one relationship and the cascading effects are hard to trace. Some of that complexity is visible, while other, intricately related aspects are difficult, if not impossible, to perceive. No one person or entity is in charge of a complex situation. Many factors affect what happens. A perfect example of complexity in action would be the stock market, whose gyrations are driven by national policies, individual company actions, analyst predictions, and investor attitudes.

  A situation becomes more complex when human factors, idiosyncratic phenomena, and difficult-to-know forces are in the mix. Bosses, subordinates, and colleagues are often puzzling and unpredictable, and all the more so when difficult personalities interact.

  Adaptive capacity is the ability to change in response to fluctuating conditions and pressures. To adapt, you need to recognize what has changed as well as the effects of those changes. Adaptive capacity is closely linked to the survival instinct. Those able to adapt, survive. Those who can’t adapt, do not. For example, changes in technology, the economy, the market, and the population require businesses to adapt. Organizations that adapt to survive often enhance their place in dynamic markets. Organizations that fail to recognize and respond to a changing situation shrink, collapse, or are bought out by competitors. Newspapers that deftly shifted operations online and adopted new business models survived, while those that could not adapt, folded. Resistance is the opposite of adaptive capacity, while resilience is the expression of it.

  Together, these phenomena comprise what is known as a complex, adaptive system. It is a collection of numerous parts, actions, interactions, and reactions. There are inputs that affect what happens. There are outputs that result from decisions and actions. Relationships among these individual components change over time. For example, in 2014 the pharmacy retailer and benefits provider CVS Caremark changed its corporate name to CVS Health to reflect its expanding role in providing health care services at its locations. Adapting to be consistent with its new wellness theme, the company simultaneously removed all tobacco products—a source of significant revenue—from its stores. It was the first national community pharmacy chain to do so.

  The contrast to a complex adaptive system is a simple, linear system. A watch provides a classic example. Each part has one role, one purpose, and a finite, well-defined connection to the next part. Remove one part and the watch does not fully function. There are no parts without a purpose.

  Even though a watch is linear and the systems used to manufacture it are linear, if its design, pricing, functionality, and marketing don’t keep up with the market, it will eventually become obsolete. Remember the now-extinct personal digital assistant, the Palm Pilot? At one time, the Palm Pilot was the standard in its market. However, its functionality stagnated, better devices emerged, and the Palm Pilot disappeared. Simple, linear systems and complex adaptive systems affect one another.

  Simplicity is part of complexity. Breaking down a large and complex problem into easy-to-understand and easy-to-execute tasks is a management responsibility of effective leaders. As a meta-leader, it is important for you to see both the complex big picture and the simple parts and pixels which create it.

  Herman Miller provides an example of a company that has balanced the complexity-simplicity equation. The company, an innovative manufacturer and retailer of furniture, is best known for its ergonomic Aeron chair. As a manufacturer reliant on global supply and distribution chains, it focuses on optimizing processes for assembling and shipping products. Yet it also gives designers free rein when they are conceiving a new product. Manufacturing efficiency never constrains design creativity.

  Brian Walker, the CEO, described achieving this balance as putting “principle above protocol.” In other words, don’t follow a rule that breaks a core principle. Change the rule. Herman Miller’s principles have evolved over time, with input from individuals throughout the company. Articulated as “things that matter to us,” these principles currently include relationships, transparency, curiosity and exploration, design, and inclusiveness. Herman Miller has a leadership culture that embraces complexity while remaining mindful that value can be derived from simplicity.

  More recently, Herman Miller executives realized that their growth goals would require moving beyond the highly cyclical office furniture environment. They acquired one of their major customers, the retailer Design Within Reach, with the intention of establishing a presence in the consumer market. The company was willing to evolve their form beyond manufacturing and business-to-business sales in order to fulfill its function as a growing, profitable company providing home and office furnishings to design-conscious customers.

  Look inside any organization and you find activities that are simple and linear. Invoice payment is one example. Other activities, such as new product innovations, emerge not simply from formal processes but also from informal networks, ad hoc initiatives, and commitment to experimentation and continuous quality improvement.

  Progress—and the new and innovative thinking it requires—leverages complexity. Interactions and decision-making need to be fluid if something fresh and worthwhile is to be discovered. The people involved must be adaptive: recognizing themselves as part of a complex adaptive system, they jump into the flow of change and reorient those forces in their favor. Organizations that leverage complexity are agile and willing to change synchronously with their evolving contingencies and mission.

  Let’s go back
to the 2004 and 2012 Red Sox teams. It is clear that simply plugging individuals into positions, even quite talented people, is no guarantee of outstanding team performance. That’s a linear approach to a complex systems challenge. Meeting this challenge requires recognizing that winning games is about more than just individual performance. Kevin Millar, first baseman on the 2004 team, described the chemistry to ESPN Boston: “The group of guys, the family, it wasn’t just a team. It was a unit that literally hung out together and ate together and liked each other,” Millar said. “You can’t buy that.” The 2004 Red Sox operated like a swarm.

  Just as the 2012 Red Sox stumbled by applying linear thinking to a complex systems problem, the opposite can also occur. Linear thinking has its place, such as the checklists used by pilots and physicians. Instead of relying on unreliable memory, the checklist helps pilots ensure that everything important has been verified before they fly their plane. Similarly, checklists in hospitals safeguard surgical procedures, confirming that the right patient is getting the right procedure, with all the necessary steps done in order. This simple practice helps keep “complex” people from messing up simple, linear processes.

  The challenge for you is to distinguish between what is simple and what is complex, then deploying the appropriate solution set. Before checklists were introduced, piloting an airplane or performing surgery seemed too complex to be put into simple formulas. The introduction of “simple” checklists, however, has greatly improved flying and medical safety.