In my previous two articles I presented a summary of my ideas and those of others on the need to re-invent organizations; and suggested that for this it is necessary to raise the level of consciousness of managers, in addition to the fact that this concept of consciousness seems to me to be a more inclusive concept than the fashionable "talent management".
Be sure to read parts 1 and 2 of this series:Manage your managerial talent or raise your level of consciousness?
Methodology to raise the level of mental complexity of managers
What do we need to become to create the future we want ?; To realize the promise of Conscious Capitalism, what kind of leaders do we need to be?
Today's business leaders face conditions of unprecedented complexity and increasingly rapid changes in markets. At the same time, the intensity of many economic, social and environmental challenges outweighs the ability of society to respond effectively. While we are winning in many areas, we are also losing seriously on mission critical issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, unemployment and corruption.
There is increasing pressure for corporations to take leadership in responding to the world's difficulties. However, most business leaders and their teams are outgunned. In a global survey of CEOs conducted by IBM, the majority expect their companies to become more complex, and more than half doubt their ability to manage it. The very difficulty of keeping the corporation afloat in such turbulent social, economic and political waters, exceeds the experience and mental capacity of most leaders.
Investigaciones de la National Security Agency apoyan lo que muchos experimentan sobre el terreno. Los líderes tienen una brecha significativa entre la complejidad de las tareas que afrontan y su propia complejidad mental. Las tareas que tienen que abordar son literalmente más complejas que lo que sus mentes pueden gestionar. El fracaso de la mentalidad ejecutiva es uno de los causantes del fracaso de los ejecutivos. Otros estudios citan la carencia de la suficiente inteligencia emocional de los líderes para responder a las exigencias relacionales del liderazgo del siglo XXI. Finalmente, el ritmo de cambio del entorno empresarial esta re-creando el campo de juego a una velocidad nunca conocida. A pesar del rápidos cambios que parecen producirse actualmente en la tecnología, en los mercados y en la política, de hecho es posible que en el futuro no sean tan lentos como los actuales.
The Bottom Line: Most leaders are hitting a mental and emotional glass ceiling, unable to navigate effectively in today's business environments. However, at the same time, we are facing a perfect storm of increasing complexity, accelerated change, and almost constant uncertainty and all of this is here to stay. To lead and scale "conscious capitalism" and create the future we want we need masses of leaders capable of breaking through the glass ceiling to arrive at truly conscious leadership. In practice, we need more conscientious leaders capable of cultivating high-impact innovation, developing high-trust relationships with all stakeholders, and consciously acting with great value. This document describes how to develop them.
In the business world, in the military, in public administrations and in society, there are already leaders who have reached a level of development above the glass ceiling. In the West, approximately 5% of leaders operate with the mental and emotional capacity necessary to manage systemic and complex change and reliably generate organizational transformation. They are at the forefront of human development and represent the future of conscious capitalism leadership.
A senior executive declares that the ideal leader is a great strategic thinker capable of focusing on big problems and opportunities, an inspiring and excellent communicator with great relational skills, risk-oriented and highly collaborative.
The challenge is that identifying and recruiting high-performing leaders with those qualities is time consuming, expensive, and not scalable. The only viable, affordable and sustainable solution is to develop them. But today's leadership training approaches fail to deliver the advanced cognitive, emotional, and relational capabilities that tomorrow's organizations need.
In most of the world there is, at least in latency, considerable leadership potential and complexity of mind and heart, but a different model of environment needs to be unleashed. Vertical learning is precisely the missing piece of the puzzle.
What is vertical learning?
It is the transformation of how leaders think, feel and make sense of the world. It includes the development of both mental complexity and emotional intelligence. Vertical learning occurs naturally but can be accelerated 3-5 times under the right conditions. An increasing number of leaders and researchers have discovered that "how we know" is at least, if not more important than "what we know." This is especially true when it comes to leading through complex change.
While vertical learning focuses on how, horizontal or traditional focuses on what a leader knows. Horizontal learning represents the knowledge and skills we acquire when we operate at the same level of cognitive, emotional, and relational complexity. It enables us to improve knowledge and develop functional skills. The vertical broadens our vision and permanently increases our consciousness, making us, at the same time, wiser and more supportive.
For example, when designing a strategy it is critical to be able to connect and relate different data sets to each other, and to identify an emerging trend or market opportunity. That pattern recognition ability is the result of advanced mental skills that we develop during our vertical learning. There was a time when you couldn't do this, now you can, but we probably won't read it in a book; It comes from experience learned from viewing a lot of data and from training to see patterns in it. In this case, horizontal learning would be the technical knowledge that comes from reading an analyst's report on the environmental risks of the supply chain.
In the same way, when leading a board of directors, the ability to feel the unspoken, the underlying concerns of the board members and speak with them with emotional dexterity is essential. Sensitivity to the subtle emotional landscape is the result of vertical learning that has strengthened emotional intelligence. In this situation, horizontal learning could be the training received on how to lead effective due diligence in a company prior to its acquisition.
Almost all leadership development methods are based on horizontal learning. Yet the vertical is rapidly migrating from the research labs at Harvard, Stanford, and Cambridge into the center of elite management development programs. The “Center for Creative Leadership” cites them as the # 1 future trend in leadership development; It is also widely used in some areas of the United States military, intelligence communities, with Olympic and extreme sports athletes, and in a growing number of select organizations.
These organizations use a combination of both horizontal and vertical learning, utilizing the best that these two approaches offer.
In the following articles I will present concrete techniques to develop vertical learning.
