We are navigating a world that is more dynamic and complex than ever before - and understanding this as a leadership challenge can transform this from feeling like a threat to an opportunity for growth.
In the excellent book ‘Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World’ by General Stanley McChrystal, the analogy of a watch is used for something that is complicated - while difficult at first, the clock builder with time and effort, can understand and master the mechanism of the watch.
McChrystal makes the distinction that the world is complex - like the butterfly flapping it’s wings in the Amazon and creating an unpredictable chain of events that affect the weather across the world - no one person can hope to understand and master this complexity.
Leaders and their teams - and externally (customers, competition, regulators, … ) are all butterflies - with every achievement, they create new and unexpected changes, that can enhance or derail their plans.
Is leadership about being a gardener more than a clock builder?
While a clock builder seeks to master the watch mechanism, ironically known as a complication, the Gardener embraces the complexity of the garden and approaches their task very differently.
Here are three ways we can learn from the gardener:
- Build ecosystems not mechanisms: like the gears and springs of a watch, an organisational chart is a map of the mechanism of a business. For a gardener the garden is an ecosystem, and the gardener sees the many roles each plant plays, how they interact and how that changes with the seasons. Successful leaders focus on the growing healthy of the ecosystem, knowing that each individual and team will thrive in this environment.
- Focus on shaping, not controlling: while the watchmaker focuses on the specification of the tolerances of gears and tensions of springs to get the best performance, the gardener sees the garden growing and only prunes or fertilises when the garden needs help to realise it’s potential. Successful leaders keep a broad perspective, and spend their time watching and listening and engaging only when they are needed.
- Be curious and always learning: a gardener recognises that there is always something going on, every day and across the seasons. The curiosity to understand why a plant is thriving or is struggling leads to a valuable body of knowledge that can be used to understand and adapt to new situations and challenges in the future. Successful leaders see patterns, while remaining open and curious to the nuances of each situation, and use their experience to guide and coach.
As leaders, it can feel reassuring to feel we have mastership and control of a situation, however, thinking like a gardener and using our experience and judgement to create and nurture a thriving ecosystem is what will bring us long term, sustainable success.