Latest News: Leadership for a Complex World
Leadership used to come with a map. Now it comes with a compass.
That line has stayed with us since completing the first cohort of Leadership for a Complex World, delivered by Perspectiv in collaboration with Bayes Business School.
Because the more we work with leaders, the clearer it becomes that many of the challenges they face do not arrive neatly packaged. They are messy, shifting and full of competing priorities. They involve people, pressure, ambiguity, values, relationships and uncertainty. In other words, they are not just problems to be solved. They are situations to be navigated.
The first cohort brought together leaders who are working in exactly this kind of environment: one shaped by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. The kind of environment where the “right answer” is not obvious, where different people see the problem differently, and where progress depends as much on trust, judgement and adaptability as it does on expertise.
Across the programme, we explored what it means to lead when the problem will not sit still. We looked at values, because leaders need to understand what guides them when the route is unclear. We used VIEW to explore how people approach change and problem solving. And we examined wicked problems, because so many leadership challenges today cannot be solved by simply working harder at the same old approach.
What stood out most was the honesty in the room. Leaders were not looking for easy answers. They were looking for better ways to think, relate, adapt and act when certainty is unavailable.
For Perspectiv, that is the work. Helping leaders build the capability to move through complexity without pretending it is simple.
It has been a pleasure to deliver the first cohort with Bayes Business School, and Cohort 2 is coming soon towards the end of the year.
