1 A633.2.3.GA: How Does it Affect You? Name OBLD 633 Adaptive Leadership

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A633.2.3.GA: How Does it Affect You?

Name

OBLD 633 Adaptive Leadership in Complex Environments

School

Professor

Date

How Does It Affect You?

Preface:

I chose to address question 3 for this week’s General Assignment. “Complexity science shows that complexity has an inherent underlying simplicity. The key concepts include self-organization, inter-relatedness, adaptation, and emergence. How might these ideas be related to leadership?”

Inter-relatedness

Inter-relatedness is a crucial concept that simplifies the leadership role of fostering the spirit of teamwork across various departments. A more complex system of diverse interrelated departments enhances the chances of arriving at a simpler and better solution to a problem (Berlow, 2010). An organization’s performance or productivity level is likely to improve if leaders instill good or healthy relationships among their workforce. On the contrary, businesses have become more complex due to their multiple diversified, interconnected components, making it considerably difficult for managers to perform their duties (Sargut & McGrath, 2011). Leaders’ performance may also be affected by the fact that complex systems or departments that rely on one another to operate effectively may be subject to failure if their chain of inter-relationship is breached. For instance, when one department encounters a problem, other departments within the same chain of interrelationship may also be affected by halting their activities until the issue is resolved. Furthermore, a corrosive relationship between leaders and their staff or across departments is likely to have a detrimental impact on an organization’s productivity or performance.

Adaptation

The business environment is rapidly becoming more complex. Technology and globalization have significantly contributed to the emergence of new markets and triggered new competitors (Morieux, 2011). For instance, with technology, new ways of doing things keep emerging that are more efficient and effective than the former. However, for an organization to remain competitive, its leaders must come up with adaptation mechanisms or interventions in order to cope with the consistently changing environment. Moreover, some leaders have resorted to introducing new organizational structures and coordination procedures to intervene in the complex and changing environment. In addition, companies that may fail to adapt due to the rigidity of their leaders towards change may face severe consequences such as total closure or running at a loss. Adaptation is an essential skill that leaders should continue to embrace in order to remain relevant in the changing market.

Self-Organization

Leadership and self-organization have a beneficial effect on workers’ productivity. For instance, the performance of employees is greatly enhanced by self-organization (Oh et al., 2020) . Moreover, it is the responsibility of leaders to ensure that they make effective decisions that would assist in the self-organization of a company. Instead of following orders from individuals outside the team, self-organizing teams decide how to best complete their work. Cross-functional teams possess all the skills required to do the work without relying on individuals who are not team members. As much as self-organization teams work in solitude, leaders still need to monitor their work constantly. Self-organization involves a lot of critical decisions. However, according to Morieux (2011), the longer it takes for the consequences of such decisions to be felt, the harder it is to hold the decision-makers accountable.

Emergence

Leaders use emergence to promote collective behavior of unity among departments toward achieving a common goal or end product. Emergence does not focus on the cause and effect of activity but on the results (Sullivan, 2011). It takes a collective effort of departments to come up with a final product that they would not have been able to make in solitude. In addition, emergence also makes it simpler for leaders to make appropriate and effective decisions due to the diversity of opinions. Moreover, some leaders also rely on emergence to foster the spirit of teamwork and unity and discourage self-reliance.

Reference

Berlow, E. (2010). Simplifying complexity [Video]. Youtube. https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_berlow_simplifying_complexity

Morieux, Y. (2011, September 1). Smart rules: Six ways to get people to solve problems without you. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2011/09/smart-rules-six-ways-to-get-people-to-solve-problems-without-you

Oh, S., Khan, N., Jin, S., Tran, H., Yoon, N., Song, C. E., Lee, H. K., Shin, W. S., Lee, J., Moon, S., Lee, E., & Lee, S. K. (2020). Alkyl side-chain dependent self-organization of small molecule and its application in high-performance organic and perovskite solar cells. Nano Energy, 72, 104708. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2020.104708

Sargut, G., & McGrath, R. G. (2011, September 1). Learning to live with complexity. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2011/09/learning-to-live-with-complexity

Sullivan, S. (2011, September 1). Embracing complexity. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2011/09/embracing-complexity