Getting to where you want to get to
Do outdated maps guide your navigation through today’s challenges?
Leaders are increasingly realising that the old leadership tools and templates no longer work well in our fast-changing world. The structures from more stable times offer some order, but they miss the complex connections and rapid changes we face now.
Inherited maps serve as more than past organisational structures because they represent the assumptions leaders maintain and the behaviours they replicate, while they default to certain leadership styles when facing stressful situations. New territories force us to reconsider not only our directional choices but also the fundamental compass guiding our leadership path.
Rethinking the Compass: Finding Your True North
In the influential book True North, Bill George calls on leaders to focus inward and re-establish their genuine selves, which serve as their moral guides, rather than depending on external approval or inherited leadership roles. George’s premise is clear:
Authentic leadership emerges from self-awareness and a purpose-driven commitment to values beyond traditional titles and trends.
A well-defined True North needs interpretation when faced with evolving conditions. Our leadership practice needs to develop alongside the new challenges we face—from digital transformation and climate urgency to cultural shifts and global interconnectivity—just as maps require updates to represent new geographical features.
Why Inherited Maps Fail in New Territories
Leaders’ reliance on outdated hierarchical structures fails to reflect actual influence operations within networks. Traditional methods assume stability while modern challenges require leaders to demonstrate flexibility through ongoing experimentation and active learning.
Leaders prioritise command-and-control management approaches above collaborative methods and adaptive leadership techniques. Their approach neglects essential emerging landscape elements, such as empathy, digital fluency, and systems thinking.
Traditional methods assume stability while modern challenges require leaders to demonstrate flexibility through ongoing experimentation and active learning.
Leaders prioritise command-and-control management approaches above collaborative methods and adaptive leadership techniques. Their approach neglects essential emerging landscape elements, such as empathy, digital fluency, and systems thinking.
Creating New Maps: Mechanisms for Rethinking Leadership
Leaders who want to advance must learn to chart change by constantly understanding evolving environments and updating guidance systems for others. The following four mechanisms enable this transformation process.
1. Reflective Practice
Develop systematic practices to evaluate underlying assumptions, identify personal biases, and ensure decisions reflect core principles. Through reflection, people learn from their experiences and convert confusion into meaningful insight.
2. Peer Exchange and Collaborative Dialogue
Address organisational silos through open dialogue with peers from different sectors and generations, and across various geographic areas. Through these discussions, participants discover hidden biases from traditional thinking while developing fresh points of view.
3. Scenario Planning and Future Foresight
Instead of forecasting a single future outcome, develop the skills to envision multiple feasible future scenarios. Use uncertainty to power creative approaches while developing adaptable and inclusive strategic solutions that stand firm against challenges.
4. Learning Ecosystems and Micro-Experiments
New ideas should emerge from generative ecosystems through co-learning communities, experimental labs, and innovation sprints instead of isolated development. Test new behavioural patterns and structures before refining and repeating them.
Conclusion: From Map Readers to Map Makers
Leadership today requires us to build new paths together instead of simply following established routes as we journey through modern organisational landscapes. True generative leadership is demonstrated by the willingness to discard traditional maps and to construct new ones with the help of others.
As always, it begins with asking the right question:
Do you navigate with an old map, or are you prepared to find your true north through a new path?