SPACES FOR THOUGHT – In dialogue with the thinking of others

An emerging school of thought on leadership, complexity, and the ability to shape futures.

I've been pondering a question for some time now:

What do people and organizations need to remain capable of shaping a complex world?

Not just capable of acting in the sense of reacting, deciding and implementing. But also capable of shaping the future: able to encounter the unknown, perceive opportunities and contribute to futures that are not yet foreseeable.

I am not looking for a definitive answer to this question.

Instead, I will engage in a dialogue.

With people whose thinking has shaped our view of leadership, organizations, learning, and change. With their theories and concepts – but also with my own experiences from many years of working with people and organizations.

I am less interested in what a theory explains .

I'm interested in what happens when we think with her .

• What triggers them?

• Where does resonance originate?

• Where do my experiences contradict each other?

• What questions arise?

And what might emerge from the dialogue that was previously neither present in theory nor in my own thinking?

No need to search for the next model

My express intention is not to create a new leadership model from different approaches.

Perhaps even the opposite.

The longer I deal with complexity, the more skeptical I become of the promise that the world can be made manageable again through yet another model.

Models can provide guidance. But they can also narrow our perspective.

Therefore, I do not want to adopt the thoughts of our dialogue partners, but rather engage in a relationship with them .

• Some things remain.

• Some things change.

• Some things contradict each other.

• And some things open up a completely new space for thought.

An emerging school of thought

Perhaps what emerges from this process can best be described as a school of thought .

• Not as a closed system of thought.

• Not as a method.

• And certainly not as a guide to how leadership or organizations will "function" in the future.

For me, a school of thought is more of a way of engaging with the world.

• Attentive.

• Curious.

With the willingness to constantly have one's own thinking questioned.

Thoughts have already emerged that will continue to guide me: perception and resonance. Intuition and curiosity. Spaces of possibility and futures. The importance of inner and social security. The ability to tolerate incompleteness. Design as a movement through which we change reality – and are thereby changed ourselves.

However, these terms should not become new, fixed categories either.

Perhaps a vibrant school of thought can be recognized precisely by the fact that it allows itself to be constantly challenged .

Dialogue instead of confirmation

Therefore, for this series I am not looking for people whose thinking matches mine.

Those who set things in motion are more interesting.

• Otto Scharmer has raised questions about perception and the quality of our attention.

• Deborah Ancona has made us think about sensemaking and the creation of meaning.

• Amy Edmondson took us deeper into the question of psychological and social safety.

• Ronald Heifetz brought us to adaptability, to learning in the unknown – and to a surfer in unpredictable waters.

• Karl E. Weick dropped a stone into the water, leading us to a surprising question: Do we always have to understand what caused an irritation – or can we first learn to perceive more subtly that something is changing?

• And in the dialogue with Ellen Langer, another movement is emerging: What happens if we do not reduce difference, but understand it as a resource for our shared capacity for perception?

None of these dialogues ends where it began.

And that's exactly the idea.

Futures are created through dialogue

Perhaps that already contains part of the answer to my initial question.

For me, futures are increasingly less about parallel possibilities from which we eventually choose the right one.

They are evolving spaces .

• We perceive them.

• We establish a relationship with them.

• We design.

Our design changes the space.

And the changed space, in turn, has a reciprocal effect on us.

Therefore, I do not want these articles to be understood as complete answers.

They are snapshots of a thought process.

Some thoughts will remain.

Others will change through the next dialogue.

Perhaps one day we will even look back at an early article and say:

Today I would see things differently.

That would not be a mistake in this series.

It would be their success.

Because if we're talking about the ability to remain agile in a complex world, perhaps our own thinking should be allowed to do just that:

Keep moving.