Empowerment is the Only Way to Go.

 After thirty five years, I am back, full circle.  I saw this T-Shirt last week, worn by a worker on a  Fair Trade certified Banana Plantation,  employing 700 workers on a permanent full time basis in Ghana.  I was deeply moved by the T-shirt. Here is the story…

Forty year ago when working for De Beers Mines, just before the end of Apartheid, we formed the Limes Acres Discussion group,  a partnership between Mine Management and the National Union of Mine workers to explore post Apartheid South Africa.  It was part of the mine’s Strategic Five Year plan to empower and develop workers. 

 A Five Year Plan which changed so much for so manyThe Lime Acres discussion group were my first steps in discovering the power of people and what is possible through genuine collaboration, inclusion and focused dialogue. Well done Robin Mills, Rudolf De Beer, Godfrey Oliphant, Rupert Besent (deceased), Jeremy Wyeth and Archie Luhlabo.

As part of the Strategic Plan we started looking for leadership potential among workers.  The idea of finding potential in youngsters led to a venture much later in Australia aimed at identifying and developing young high potential individuals at risk youngsters. Thanks Kate Madden.

Looking for young high potentials who are at risk

With the march of time I became deeply involved in the business world.  Many of my clients were high tech financial services such as banks, insurance, ITC communications, and high profile individuals.  As we restructured, right sized, brought in hi-tech solutions and worked with elite talent pools,  I lost sight of worker empowerment.  

I forgot its critical importance for humanity’s development.  I fell into the trap of thinking trickle down economics worked, that the modern workplace had any other real interest then profits (market driven profit and short termism) and that technology would help solve the big problems of overpopulation, and climate change. 

However, let me give credit to some visionary CEOs and Chair who took the risk of shareholder displeasure with the bigger picture view.  It is a pleasure to have worked with Gareth Ackerman, Mike Hawker, Guy Winship and Prof Muhammed Yunus

Now as the debate shifts to AI, billionaire and fascist autocracy, climate change, plus conspiracy theories, workers become increasingly lost in the noise.

Time as a board trustee for the Global Eco village Network (GEN), helped restore reality.  I helped pioneer and market first world European eco-villages (Narara Ecovillage, Tasman Ecovillage) and made regular visits to Findhorn and Damanhur. I recall Kosha Joubert, then CEO of GEN saying there are millions of villages in the global South and North who are not first world, who needed help to reinvigorate their village and the rural landscape.  So sad all her work at the COPs to make Eco-villages center to rural generation failed due to leadership at the wrong level of complexity.

Full Circle

Protecting People at Work – 35 years ago this message was as relevant as today.

In 2022 the then Chair of Fairtrade International,  asked me to work with the board. This opportunity gave me a chance to visit workers in farms ranging from small producers to plantations.  Thank you Lynette Thorstenson and current Chair, Laurence Tainty.

I have just returned from a board meeting in Ghana and was privileged to visit farm workers near Accra and Kumasi.  It was here I saw the ‘Empowered Worker, Productive Worker‘ T shirt.  I heard from the workers first hand how Fairtrade’s certification has made a difference to their lives. I experienced this in Sri Lanka, Mexico and Kenya.

I do urge you to consider buying Fairtrade products, its direct action that helps workers. If your retail outlet doesn’t stock them. ask them to do so.  It gives workers dignity, opportunity and the ladder for self development, both for themselves and their communities.

In 2024 I formed Neos Delta with a circle of influential and caring friends.  Our aim is to foster long term thinking, empowerment and accountability to living our best lives.    That’s why we are run interesting and eclectic workshops for Boards who see different visions of the futureLeaders who want to work with a Long View and for all of us, Living your Best Life.

Conclusion

If you are in the position of leverage, be it an organisation or a board, consider how you can make a difference to people’s lives and planet health.  If you are working for an organisation, choose one with a purpose for greater good.  It is not only rewarding, its empowering and provides a sense of greater purpose, both for you and workers.  Remember doing good is good business.

Scaled Systems Leadership

Network and Ecosystem Leadership

Is it possible to organise complex ecosystems to achieve a shared purpose?  Indeed is it possible to organise something which by nature is emergent, uncertain and comprised up of autonomous and semi-autonomous parts? Often with powerful agents? Are there clear guidelines that might help?

The questions this chapter seeks to answer.

  • What are the general principles of large systems design? For example – does a shared sense of purpose exist or is latent and requires articulation? What are the  activities taking place in the system and are they broadly understood?  
  • What are the characteristics of large systems leadership?  Achieving progress among diverse,  often conflicting part of a large scale systems requires different skills from those running an enterprise.

This chapter focuses on answering these questions using two specific examples; the global response to COVID 19, the other, an emergent, thriving global ecosystem of volunteers, committed to sustainable living.

Networks operate at different scales of complexity serving all manner of purpose.   For example, businesses operate a range of commercial networks serving diverse needs.  Behind networks sit organisational structures. Evolutionary trends now see  Agile, Platform and the multi dimensional enterprises emulating the principles of Systems Leadership.

Other networks exist for special interests, we know about terrorist networks and hear of the dark net.  Social media connect relationship networks, promote and organise specific causes (e.g #MeTo, Extinction Rebellion, BLM, Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street).  The internet has enabled the mushrooming of this online phenomena, while COVID 19 has enforced dependency. 

As networks scale in size, stakeholders, functionality and diverse purpose, ecosystems emerge around shared interests.  Accompanying scale, comes complexity, uncertainty, disruption, ambiguity, surprise and hyper-connectivity.  

Complexity. pencil on paper. A Olivier. 2020

Before addressing the two case studies of a pandemic and a voluntary global movement, the following observations are pertinent to the analysis;  

  • Shared purpose – the need to identify key players / stakeholders, activities, and nodes of development within the associated networks or larger ecosystem. Engaging stakeholders in creating common ground, shared purposes and domains of authority and accountability is necessary. This is a first step, accomplished through a helicopter view of mapping and collective learning. 
  • Leadership of scaled, social networks and ecosystems is different to leading an accountable goal directed business. Large scale systems leadership requires a different set of meta competencies to galvanize and orchestrate diverse stakeholders. 
  • Different tools for building collaborative leadership are required to build trust, advocacy and communication flows.  Top down command and control is not optimal because of systems complexities.   Tools which connect, engage and empower are critical. Understanding there is no master neuron, no one is in control or has complete authority is a fundamental mindset. Therefore leadership maturity and wisdom is fundamental.
  • Leveraging complimentary capacities to advance progress is essential and that is done by having clarity of vision and understanding it’s all up to us.
  • What’s going on in the System – Understanding the activities and developments within the ecosystem’s different networks is important.  By understanding stakeholder’s involvement and contributions, one can create empowering and autonomous conditions.  It is important for leadership to know what is going on rather than giving instructions. This is the requisite leadership at scale.
  • Leadership can cluster ‘what is going on or needs to be going on’ into one or more existing or emergent domains of work. This  allows the ‘chunking’ of activities into semi-autonomous parts. Through understanding the semi-autonomous nature of the parts, empowerment of local decision making, relevant information flows and distributed accountability and authority takes place.
  • Complex adaptive systems operate at different speeds and scales of complexity and thus have different design requirements. Activities (work) within the parts of the whole ecosystem can be grouped into Domains, regardless of purpose.
  • Understanding the nature of existing or emergent Domains of activities within large complex systems (think COVID 19, UNSDGS, global emergencies) allows for recognizing relevant accountabilities and authorities, information requirements and flow, empowerment and decision-making rights at all the different network levels, from local to strategic.

We call this Scaled Systems Leadership. This chapter seeks to explore network activation, activity chunking and systems leadership competencies.

Let us now turn to COVID19 and The Global Ecovillage Network…

Notes to this Extract

1. An ecosystem refers to multiple networks within an umbrella of shared interests.  Networks are regarded  as bilateral cooperation while ecosystems are multilateral – ie will work with anyone in the ecosystem. 

2. Andrew will be presenting a series of Masterclass sessions with the Singapore Institute of Management in 2021 and Requisite (as required by the nature of things) Leadership of Scaled Systems will be on the topics.

3. My thanks to Reos Partners for the invitation to their workshop in Geneva at the UN Innovation Lab in 2018, to David Nabarro and Peter Atkinson, for their input at the 4SD lab in France in 2018. Thanks to the GEN ecosystem (fellow trustees and network members), for gently showing me the real complexities/ challenges of consensus leadership. Also thanks to Gillian Stamp for taking EJ’s work from hard physics of design into the nuanced and messy world, now just being discovered in OD. All this has really formative in thinking about fractals of work activity at scale.