How much should we 'centralize' or 'decentralize'? Should we focus on maximizing our profits or do what is consistent with our stated values and purpose?
Should we 'move fast (and "break things")' or 'ensure the safety of our users, and a positive impact on the world'?
Clearly, it doesn't have to be one or the other, and these choices are, in reality, not simple 'either/or' situations.
It takes 'leaders' to manage paradoxical situations in which there may be no one 'right answer'. The most challenging situations can be those in which there is only a least-worst course of action in which the choices being made might be trade-offs between options which, in different ways, are all the right things to do.
Organizations today don't really need leaders for problems to which there is a known solution, or solution to a similar kind of problem which can be reapplied, with some adjustments, to a current problem. Those sorts of problems can and should be left to people who are closest to the sharp end of an organization. For them to deal with tricky but nevertheless ordinary problems, they need access to knowledge about good practice, and tools to get the job done. Generative AI will be helpful in this context.
My own hypothesis is that the difference between 'leadership' and 'management' (an age-old debate) is that leaders manage complexity, and in particular, it is their job to deal with seemingly intractable issues. Such issues might raise different options or ways forward which can be reconciled but the issues themselves, by definition, cannot be completely resolved. Genuinely complex issues might appear to have solutions, but these solutions invariably create a whole raft of new problems. Pushing this complexity down to managers to sort out is a failure of leadership accountability.
In this sense, the rapid deployment and popularization of AI is possibly one of the most important existential leadership issues of our time, representing very difficult trade-offs, which will require collective leadership both within organizations and around the world. The choice between monetizing emerging forms of AI as quickly as possible, in an AI arms race, rather than slowing down the AI arms race, so that humanity has time to ensure its safety, is an existential choice. How humanity faces this challenge, alongside climate change, and various other systemic risks, is likely to shape our future. AI is already creating a huge acceleration in the ways that digital technology is shaping our lives, both positively and negatively, visibly and invisibly.
There are companies experimenting now with AI tools in psychotherapy, psychometrics, coaching, learning, employee engagement, and many other areas of applied psychology, in ways that are entrepreneurial and at the same time, potentially harmful. The provision of AI-based coaching, counselling and psychotherapy, for example, has the potential massively to increase the availability and accessibility of mental health support. That's a good thing. AI-enabled platforms for therapy or coaching can also be designed in several ways to be intrusive, addictive, commercially lucrative, always-on, and available to people regardless of their age, mental health circumstances, or background, rather than boundaried, ethical and supportive of the client's long-term health and personal growth. Indeed, we have been here before with social media, and all that it brings.
Our world is at a mind-bendingly strange and at the same time incredibly exciting inflexion point at the intersection, perhaps even the complete fusion of psychology and technology. This will make the 'change management' challenges of the last thirty years or so look like child's play. When leaders are dealing with this kind of complexity, which is being caused by technology (which ultimately is supposed to make life less complex), they are likely to be engaged in creative problem solving activity in relation to issues not experienced before. This might also include paradoxical situations requiring difficult ethical and commercial trade-offs.
It can be helpful to do this with robust tools and conceptual frameworks which can structure, and guide their thinking, and their behaviour. The risk is that in the absence of a common language and some structure, very complex problems become the source of an 'impasse'. In other words, people can get stuck. They can end up in a state of conflict as a result, hung up on polarized perspectives about difficult situations.
In light of this, organizations I work with often ask me to help their leaders deal with the sometimes subtle, sometimes very overt human conflicts which arise out of the need to make difficult collective choices, to deal with uncertainty. When I do this, I tend to make use of coaching and facilitation tools which allow leaders to reframe the issues that appear intractable, such as how to scale the use of emerging technology without putting the enterprise and its customers at risk.
My aim is to help people, especially those with any power over others, to use their decision-making authority well, and help organizations move forward. Psychological coaching and facilitation for groups of leaders can help create more personal and collective awareness of the what is really happening in an organization, and greater accountability for their decisions.
WORKSHOPS ARE DESIGNED TO MEET THE NEEDS OF YOUR BUSINESS CONTEXT
CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING and COMPLEXITY: HOW TO MANAGE COMPLEX PROBLEMS, DEAL WITH UNCERTAINTY AND PARADOX IN AN AGILE WAY
For middle managers, and senior leaders.
Targeted business outcomes: enhanced creativity, innovation and solution-development in the face of complexity/uncertainty, better use of diverse perspectives to find creative solutions to complex business issues.
- Apply a robust creative problem-solving framework which is anchored in psychological
research.
- Learn to generate ideas effectively and to treat diversity or difference as a source of
creativity.
- Apply tools to manage complex problems with no obvious ‘right answer’.
- Manage the conflicts which can arise when dealing with complexity.
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