Distributed Leadership

Discussion

Mark Roest

"Leadership evolved in two or more major threads: small groups, especially small communities and conscious companies, and large organizations, city-states, and nations. There have always been people who understood both Theory X and Theory Y leadership philosophies, because they inherited them or discovered them on their own, before they were named.

But in both cases, leadership was defined by the finite nature of the organization or state, which often lived in hostility with at least some of its near or distant neighbors.

Now it is time to discover what we know about leadership of permeable organizations and states -- entities with permeable membranes, or way beyond that -- organizations that merge and re-merge endlessly. There *is* a way to make sense of this!

When we understand that we as humanity live in 827 eco-regions, with perhaps hundreds of thousands of smaller specific instances of ecosystems, and upwards of 6,000 cultures, yet we are all in the same boat, and we are capable of assimilating (into ourselves so we become it, in part -- NOT digesting and dissolving it into our more powerful cultural identity so it disappears) almost any culture, we can truly understand the mosaic principle -- unity and diversity. Then we can collaborate fully with anyone else who gets it, and partially even with those who don't.

To get there, those who understand it can show the way within their specific eco-region and culture to others who share that basis for differentiated thought and action, but have not yet understood it. That is leadership by pioneering, and by going back and showing. Early adopters wlll follow the pioneer. About half of the mass of people will follow established opinion leaders who move when they decide an idea is proven, and about half will follow the other half when they decide it is 'the standard'. There is a 'long tail' that will adopt late, or never. This is the Chasm Theory of Marketing model, minus the discussion of the chasm between adoption by early adopters, and by established opinion leaders.

Permeating the process I just described, and perhaps usually operating in relatively short time frames, there will be tens or hundreds of millions of groups of people finding their way, and getting progressively more familiar with the nature of nature -- with how we can live in harmony with the world, and by extension, have the emotional space to live in harmony with each other. There is this generalized axis they are moving along, and also the particular process they are figuring out or carrying out. There are opportunities for leadership along both axes, within the longer movement along the axis toward general sustainability and social justice, which has its own opportunities as well.

Leadership is going to include three main aspects:

1. the topic (domain)content being worked with (e.g. renewable energy and conservation),

2. the knowledge of how to work with such content (process and whole systems) (e.g. knowing the scientific method and having access to the literature on ecology), and

3. human process (psycho-social-spiritual context for learning and choosing) (e.g. the content of the Stanford CCARES curriculum or process that teaches people how to understand themselves and each other, so that they can approach others with compassion and altruism every day).

At the meta-meta level, we also need leadership to disseminate the meme that all three of these aspects of behavior and skill are needed, along each axis, and that any combination of those can be picked up and carried at any time by every person, as inspiration motivates. This, when thoroughly assimilated, allows each of us to surrender the perceived need to rule in order to protect our interests. We will finally understand that we are in it together, we are inherently both the same and unique, and we can truly be as supportive of each other as our cells are within us. Believe me, we can do this! I have seen and felt early versions of it many times." (NextNet, May 2011)