How can we think differently about leadership?

Futurists have been heralding the advent of the 4th Industrial Revolution for some time. However, it wasn’t until recent cataclysmic events, which precipitated huge disruption to existing structures such as supply chains, and accelerated the uptake of digital technologies, that we have started to appreciate the emergent future. The intersecting ecological, social and technological disruption creates unique opportunities and challenges for shaping this future. There is much anxiety about the future – how can we use leadership to steer towards not only surviving this future, but thriving in it? The conversations we have had with leaders to date about this new world have yielded two themes in particular: 1) that we must re-define what we mean by leadership in this modern context, and 2) that in re-defining leadership, we must also re-frame purpose and the relationships that constrain or enable it. We explore these themes in the context of a cybernetic approach. For more on what leadership is, and why it needs to change in the 21st Century, see The Menzies Leadership Forum - Audio Podcast (menziesfoundation.org.au)