Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 554

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Deliberately Different: Fifty Years. Two Generations. Leading in a Changing World," by Aileen K. Alexander and Judith M. von Seldeneck.

Judee had to bust through barriers. In the 1970s when she founded DSG, executive search was a $100-million-a-year industry with fewer than a dozen major players. (By comparison, it's now a $25 billion industry, and the United States along has 5,630 executive search businesses.)

Judee: I know 9/11 had a profound impact on you, Aileen, but I didn't understand until more recently how pivotal it was for you as a leader.

Aileen: It changed me forever, to be sure. I learned the importance of being prepared, watching the leaders around me putting their training to work. We were all shocked and scared on the inside, but I saw those officers draw on deep reserves of calm to help their teams stay on an even keel and focus on the mission. It was extraordinary. And I do my best to emulate that cool-headedness myself now.

VUCA is an acronym that first appeared in US Army War College documentation in 1987 and has since been adopted by the business world. It stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, four terms that perfectly describe the world we live in today. Since technology, culture, and the entire business landscape are all changing at breakneck speed, leaders who stagnate have become actual liabilities to their companies and teams.

And as Judee points out, teams full of people who bring varied perspectives to bear are a surefire way to keep leaders open to change.

Aileen's take on this strategy is to "lead through others." She's found that if everything rests with her alone, the dynamic shifts to command-and-control, which makes it impossible to keep pace with constant change. In a world that's constantly evolving, it's not just different perspectives and experiences that need to be elevated and heard; it's distributed leadership. More people need to feel ownership and be entrusted to lead in order for endeavors to move forward quickly.