cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

Emerging inquiriesWheatley urges leaders to lead through vision, values and ethics. This doesnot mean crafting a single vision which shines so brightly that it has its ownpower, but co-creating a vision that permeates the organization andharnesses the organization’s own self-organizing power. However, thedifficulty for many leaders is that vision and value seem ‘a bit soft’ whencompared to traditional forms of authority, and they may feel powerlessand somehow naked without the familiar controlling mechanisms.Wheatley also emphasizes the importance of developing a new relationshipwith information so that it is embraced for all its vibrant, livingqualities. She notices an unhelpful habit in leaders. Rather than lookingfor small differences in the information we receive, often leaders seekcertainty and notice only the big trends and large gaps. They may valuequick, surface decisions over wiser, deeper ones. She says that leadersneed to see information as nourishment rather than power, and keep theflow well stocked.Wheatley goes on to say that in this world of chaos and complexity weappear to need leaders rather than bosses; people who assist theiremployees in embodying organizational values and carry a strong senseof purpose. Policies and procedures curtail creativity and end up failingto control as effectively as a strong sense of purpose and some clear,hard rules.Scharmer (2000) is a great believer in self-organization too, but he alsosees a more spiritual dimension to organizational or community endeavours.As we sense and intuit together, something sacred happens, and outof the space between us something new emerges.Scharmer refers to leadership as ‘sensing and actualizing emergingfutures’. He identifies two important methods of learning that are bothimportant for sustained organizational success. The first is to reflect onthe past in a way that loosens our traditional views of what’s happened.The second is to begin to sense and embody the emergent future, as itappears out of the mist between us, instead of re-enacting past patterns.He talks about the processes of both ‘letting go’ and ‘letting come’,which leaders need to understand as the root of generative learning.This process is not about being polite, or getting involved in conflictualdebate or dialectic. It involves true generative and reflective dialogue.Scharmer sees the leader’s role as creating the conditions that allowothers to ‘shift the place from which their system operates’. There is asacred quality to Scharmer’s work which takes us far beyond the focus328