Dec 17, 2008
Power And Love: Is it Time for Bi-Lingual Leaders?
I was able to catch a talk by Adam Kahane at Global Business Network recently. His message about needing BOTH love and power in these times struck me as something all of us in the change business need to attend to. Adam is a consultant who wrote Solving Tough Problems four years ago about his experience applying scenario work to the South African situation before and after apartheid ended. He’s now with Generon Reos, continuing to address very challenging issues around the world with scenario work—which is fundamentally about surfacing and refreshing the core stories that people tell about what is plausible and possible.
“I didn’t realize that we would be doing so much personal development,” one participant said in our closing circle at the Facilitation Mastery Workshop, held recently at Islandwood Conference Center on Bainbridge Island in Washington. “The way you and Laurie showed up made it possible,” someone said. “This was transformational for me,” another said.
I’m on the lip of change this week watching my energy shift from vision quest in the desert to the world of meetings. I’m leading a new finance team in a mid-sized company through an alignment process on Wednesday, then into a seminar called “Inventing the Future of Management” co-sponsored by the MLab (Gary Hamel’s new non-profit venture), McKinsey, and the London School of Business, Hamel’s long time base of operation. Gary’s invited a who’s who in management thinking to come to Half Moon Bay and ask why organizations can’t innovate, adapt, and engage more inventively. “We innovate with everything else – why not management?” he wonders. We’ve been helping get the agenda, templates, meeting infrastructure and everything else in place for several weeks now and it all comes to a head.