Boston Centerless - Precision Matters Magazine Precision Matters Magazine Spring 2018 | Page 10

LEADERSHIP
Scaling
Leadership
WITH BOB ANDERSON
WE DEFINE self-leadership or personal
mastery as creating outcomes that
matter most. If we can create the life we
most want—organizations we believe in,
great families and relationships, a better
world—we think that is self-leadership.
Personal Mastery is the capacity to
create the life that seems to want to come
through us. Self-leadership and personal
mastery are prerequisites to leadership.
Leadership
is
something
more.
Leadership enhances these very same
capabilities in others.
LEADERSHIP IS SCALING
THE CAPACITY AND
CAPABILITY OF THE
ORGANIZATION TO
CREATE OUTCOMES
THAT MATTER MOST—TO
CREATE ITS DESIRED/
OPTIMAL FUTURE.
Leadership scales capacity and
capability in others, through teams, and
within the organization. Leadership scales
the capability of the organization to thrive
by constantly and agilely reinventing itself
in the midst of volatile, ever-changing
conditions.
Leadership At Scale
Andrew Millstein, the president of Walt
Disney Animation Studios, once said to
us, “Our leadership was exposed at scale.”
He told us that when they attempted to
scale their business from one film a year
to two, the capacity and capability of their
leadership was exposed.
Leadership that works at one level of
scale is likely to run into serious limitations
at the next level of scale. Leadership is
exposed at scale. Is your leadership built
for scale? Or, are you already beyond the
level of scale and complexity for which
your leadership is optimized. If so, you are
likely feeling in over your head.
You may be getting great results, but at
ever higher energetic costs—diminishing
returns on ever higher expenditures of
time and effort. You may have a gnawing
sense that working more hours is not the
solution. The harder you go, the more you
get in your own way. You may even be
canceling yourself out. If so, you are facing
a significant development gap. If so, you’re
in good company.
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The Development Gap
In 2008, Bob Johansen, one of the
foremost futurists in the world, wrote a
book titled Leaders Make the Future where
he said, “In my 40 years of forecasting
the future, the direst forecasts yet are
in this book.” He went on to describe a
“VUCA” business environment—constantly
escalating volatility, uncertainty, complexity,
and ambiguity.
We spoke with Bob recently and he
said, “We ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” The
level of disruptive change that is coming
at us is unprecedented. As leaders, we
must learn to navigate permanent white
water that is becoming more and more
turbulent. This is the world we are in. We
have no choice about it. We either rise
to meet that challenge or get swamped.
Is your leadership built for scale in this
environment?
For most of us, complexity (the “c” in
VUCA) is outpacing our development.
Escalating complexity is a given and it
is requiring that we adapt and evolve or
perish. It continually confronts us with
our own development gap. We often
ask leaders where they would rank the
business reality they face on a scale