the experience of interaction

Tina, whom I have served under for several years recently warned me not to reduce my new job as National Director down to something I can control and measure. She bought me a book: 'Complexity and the Experience of Leading Organizations' (by Griffin and Stacey, 2005). It is about 'how organizational members cope with the unknown as they perpetually create futures together.'

The authors argue 'that organizations are not systems but the ongoing patterning of interactions between people.' Traditionally, 'leaders play a significant role in designing this system, specifying its purpose and inspiring others to act according to values that will achieve this purpose.' Complex Responsive Processes offers an alternative perspective.

The book recommends, 'one moves from thinking in terms of a spatial metaphor, as one does when one thinks that individuals interact to produce a system outside them at a higher level, to a temporal processes way of thinking, where the temporal processes are those of human relating.'

This book, which I have only begun to read, focuses my attention on 'ordinary, everyday processes of relating'. I wonder if I can survive without my traditional views of leadership?