5 Highlights of the Week in Creative Leadership – October 25, 2024

While vital to our understanding of learning and growth, “mindsets” are increasingly made to serve as elastic and abstract catch-all’s for discussions about how to drive the change and improvement of individuals and groups. Dave Snowden, better known for his astute writings about decision-making and the development of the Cynefin framework, sets down some helpful preliminary thoughts about an alternative, more evolutionary approach. He proposes to start by identifying who or what can make decisions or changes, then asking what opportunities for change exist or are prohibited by the system of which those individuals or groups are parts, and only then determining which patterns of belief or understanding could encourage or constrain the changes being sought.   

The latest issue of the management consultancy’s magazine, Think : Act, examines “how pacing yourself is good for your mind, body and business”. These discussions not only explore and share successful instances of specific alternatives to hustle culture, the productivity trap, and continually increasing personal efficiency. They also point more generally to the long overdue need to evolve our approach to time in our lives and leadership, much as we’ve increasingly done in other areas of organizations and work, beyond the basic, early twentieth-century parameters of scientific management.

The Harvard Business Review article is much more than a typical, unelaborated list of generic skills. It draws on the thinking of three leadership researchers and discusses six essential skills: 1) emotional aperture; 2) adaptive communication; 3) flexible thinking; 4) perspective seeking, taking, and coordinating; 5) strategic disruption skills; and 6) resilient self-awareness. As Knight, a journalist, observes, these skills don’t only contribute to personal growth; their development can also shape the future of work and inspire others. Without using the term, it speaks well to issues related to developing metaskills (which, among other things, help us build other, more technical or task-based skills over time).

The recent publication in the Creativity and Innovation Management journal examines three key domains of activity among cultural entrepreneurs: 1) Identity work and managing perceptions of who they are; 2) Utilizing, creating, and exchanging resources; and 3) Developing relationships and contexts. The Swedish business school faculty authors outline the interplay between the challenges and strategies within and across these overlapping domains. A broader takeaway for all creative leaders involves the benefit of addressing the dynamics between these domains and coordinating leaders’ allocation of resources (time, energy, capital) across them. 

(The Interplay between cultural entrepreneurship challenges and strategies.)

An all-time favorite TED Talk that I watched again earlier this week. At a time when calls grow louder for individuals, organizations, and brands – to find and tell a defining and illuminating story, the Nigerian novelist offers a cautionary take, at once astute and funny, about the inherent incompleteness of any single story of individuals and groups. By pointing to the misunderstandings we risk by hearing (and, presumably, telling) only a single story, she speaks eloquently about the empathy, intercultural understanding, complexity of identity, and power that are all essential in the leadership and lives of those who embrace and foster creativity.