Replying to LO29777 --
Dear Jan,
Mike McMaster in his brilliant book "The Intelligence Advantage", helps
answers the question of what leadership aimed at organizational
transformation looks like in a complex self-organizing system. McMaster
tells us that first and foremost "leaders have theories that guide their
actions." "Leadership without a distinct theory is merely phenomenon of
personality and will not survive the particular leader." McMaster's ideas
are in contrast to much of conventional wisdom that extols leadership
styles and thus encourages damaging organizational cults built around
personalities. Mike points out that "leadership in transformation begins
with the realization that we are part of a complex intelligent system and
not separate from it." In all, in an organization that uses
self-organizing principles, we can say that leadership is an emergent
response to the needs of the system and will shift among the members of
the organization.
Incidentally Mike's book has just sadly gone out-of-print. It needs and
deserves a publishing home.
Best wishes,
Barry
P.S. After 23 years working on "Charles Street" I can't answer your question
:-).
Barry Brownstein
Yale Gordon Distinguished Teaching Professor
University of Baltimore
1420 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD. 21201
[Host's Note: Charles Street is a prinicipal street in Baltimore and can
be found in several old eastern US cities. We have Charles Street and the
Charles River in Boston. I'm quite sure these are named for a king of
England. ..Rick]
>From: "Jan Lelie" <janlelie@wxs.nl>
>
> Thanks for the invitation. I cannot help myself and must remark that there
> seems to be stange loop in "self-organization" and "leadership". Did you
> find that leadership develops naturally from self-organisation? What is
> the difference and what are the similarities between self-organization and
> learning?
>
> PS: Who is the Charles the Charles street is named after?
--"Barry Brownstein" <barry@brownsteingroup.org>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.