Sustainable Leadership in a Changing Society

SUSTAINABLE LEADERSHIP

IN A CHANGING SOCIETY

There is a crisis in leadership and governance. In our research, we see the symptoms everywhere:

• More and more managers and administrators tell us they can see the direction their organizations ought to go in but also tell us that they can’t set the necessary changes in motion; they are not, or are no longer, effective leaders.

• Others deplore the fact that they can no longer just give orders to their colleagues and collaborators but have to persuade and convince them at every step.

• We see major research centres that are struggling to come up with good innovations, while the solitary inventor in a garage is still managing fine.

• People regularly deplore the failure of the authorities to resolve social problems that lead to violence and crime.

• And many more deplore the inability of our social, economic, commercial and political leaders to come up with sustainable solutions to the problems of our planet. A wave of modernization is radically transforming Western society and the world as a whole. A better understanding of some of the dynamics of that modernizing process can shed light on this leadership crisis and suggest what steps should be taken to resolve the problems. It can also help us to identify forms of leadership and governance that will be effective and contribute to the development of sustainable businesses in a sustainable world.

Let us look at three core aspects of this modernizing process:

1. Because of changes taking places right across Western society, all forms of leadership and governance that remain hierarchical and systematically authoritarian are doomed to become increasingly ineffective.

2. The current general movement towards a more peaceful society is threatened by a number of dangerous long-term trends. Society needs therapeutic leadership and governance.

3. At the start of the 21st Century the planet faces ecological and geopolitical challenges that could prove fatal; we can...