In a leadership parable
on leadership, a prince goes to the
forest to live for one year. His task: to observe all sounds he could and
relate them to his master later. After relating his experience, his master sent
him back as he was not content with his disciple’s achievements. After a while
hearing the same sounds, the prince started to hear the unheard: a star rising in the sky, a rock moving in the sand…
That tale touched me very
deeply, because the key for a good exercise of a leadership is in the unheard, invisible and intangible, those
things we just perceive, but there is no measurement to it.
Big data is a big thing
nowadays, it is what is making noise, but there is no comparison with the practical
effect of small data, those details
most programs, institutions and people ignore. Small data is invisible, unheard
and intangible, but it is also very powerful: it is the small data that gave
many surprises last year with Brexit, Donald Trump’s election and the victory
of NO in the Colombia peace process referendum.
Leadership does not mean
to leave all of the analysis, strategies and hard decisions aside, but it is
time for leaders to focus differently: leaders need to change their focus from
analysis to understanding, from strategies to intuition and from unilateral
decisions to decisions that are accepted by others.
Otherwise, they too will
become invisible.
No comments:
Post a Comment