The Hidden Leadership Skill: Leading for Evolution

Premise:

Almost all leaders today lead in an environment that is ripe with disruptions and ever changing competitive landscape.

The challenges of leading in this constantly evolving landscape are very different from that of leading in a stable environment where the current management practices are rooted in.

So, if we have to succeed in this new world, we need to change the lens through which we view leadership and management practices. That begs the questions - where can we draw inspiration for the new way of leading.

Thankfully, we don't need to look far. We can learn from Evolutionary Biology. Leading an organisation today and how evolution works are very similar - they are both a part of and navigate complex adaptive systems.

And nature has had a long time to perfect the techniques and tactics that have allowed life to bloom. So, I think there are some interesting and important lessons that we can learn from nature and the evolutionary process.

Foundational Tenets of Evolutionary Biology

Here are the most fundamental and foundational tenets on which the entire field of Evolutionary Biology is based on:

1. Random events produced the first signs of life.
2. Since then, variation (mutation - adjacent possible and genetic drift - random shifts) provides the impetus for evolution.
3. Selection acts as the fitness test (ability to reproduce and stay alive)
4. Inheritance ensures successful traits are passed on to next generations.
5. Deep time allows cumulative change to produce new functions or species.
6. Over time, simple rules lead to complex patterns, behaviors and species.

The starting of our organisation was the random event that started this journey of survival.

Embrace Variation - Adjacent Possible & Genetic Drift

All evolution happens when there is some sort of variation - either within the organisation or its context. This variation results in something new, which is then put through a rigorous test by its environment and only those variations that are able to navigate the environment successfully are then preferred. Every other variant slowly but definitely dies out.

Similarly, as leaders, we need to create an ecology of ideas. We need to look at adjacent possibles (continuous improvement) in our area of work all the time. We should also be on the look out for the genetic drift (random, breakthrough ideas) which can help us shift the level we operate at.

Every time something changes - internally within our organisations or externally within the context in which we operate in, we need to explore and come up with experiments and the one that is able to navigate the changes the best, needs to be promoted, while the other ideas slowly but surely die out.

Actionable Tip for Leaders:

• Invite everyone on the team to constantly explore ways to improve the existing processes by running small SMART experiments.
• And once in a while (maybe quarterly), explore to identify game changing ideas. It is great if you succeed, if not, you would have atleast some more interesting experiments to run. Idea is to engage in the process.

Selection acts as the filter for fitness

Evolution uses fitness as the only filter to assess whether a variation in a species continues to evolve or simply goes extinct. It is nature's job to be always creating variations, testing them for fitness, promoting the fit one's to be passed on and killing off all other variations.

It is exactly our job as a leader. We need to continue to create experiments (variations) both in the adjacent possibles and attempt at breakthroughs (genetic drift), give them some air to test and continue to invest in those that are providing to be successful and kill those that are not.

Actionable Tip for Leaders:

• Lets ideas clash for investments - money, attention and time.
• Let the best idea (defined before the process is run) win, and let the rest die quickly.

Inheritance of successful traits:

In addition to variation, evolution also ensures that the successful traits are always passed down from one generation to the next.

In exactly the same way, as leaders it is our responsibility to ensure that good ideas and what we learn is spread across the organisation and passed on.

This can be done by creating systematic process for documenting and sharing of ideas - good one's that work well.

In evolution, the only key criteria is for the organism to continue to survive as a species by reproducing itself. In business, the most important criteria is similar - to survive for another day.

Anything that can help in this regard needs to be well known and well shared within the teams.

Actionable Tip for Leaders:

• Ensure that best practices and good ideas are widely shared among the team so that everyone can learn and build on them.

Let time play out

The biggest strength of the evolutionary process is that it takes its time and is in no hurry. It allows for simple variations to compound over time to create complex abilities and species as a result.

As leaders, we can also leverage the power of time on our side - by continuing to work on the different experiments, we are in a way creating a flywheel.

This flywheel has the potential to compound over time and create an outsized impact for our business. We just need to trust in the process and let time do the rest.

Actionable Tip for Leaders:

• Have a long term view and approach. Allow multiple small ideas compound over time.

What does this mean for us as a leader?

This requires us to shift from being a controller to a facilitator, creating environments that empower self-organization, experimentation, and optimizing for learning.

We can do that by

• Encouraging exploration and manipulation of ideas and contexts
• Design robust feedback and feedforward loops for continuous learning
• Empower teams with autonomy and reward experimentation, even failures
• Value diversity and inclusion to prevent blind spots and foster robust solutions
• Be comfortable with ambiguity and utilize managed tension between agents as a driver for adaptive change and novel information
• Be responsive to environmental shifts
• Continuously modify internal models
• Implement continuous learning loops ("learning by doing")
• Leverage inherent resilience and self-organization of complex adaptive system
• Adopt adaptive governance with decentralized decision-making

As leaders, we need to treat leadership as Experimentation. We treat decisions as hypotheses to be tested, learn from feedback, and adapt accordingly.

Self Organisation and Emergence:

In evolution, all of these principles when play out and result in what we call Self organisation and emergence.

Emergence by its definition is random and can not be predicted in advance and is a result of self-organisation (there is no one in charge there).

This also shows that the overall entropy in the system is ever growing (with variation and emergence).

As leaders, we need to be aware and constantly looking for emergence as and when it emerges. Once we see what emerges, we can explore how to exploit the emergence towards our goals.

Smart leaders are always on the lookout for emergence everytime, they change something - for both expected and unexpected consequences and deal with them in real time.

Self-organized Criticality

One of the results of emergence is also the concept of self organised criticality, where the response to a small action can be outsized and can cause ripple effects across the entire system (as in the last grain of sand falling on an already tall sand pile leading to the collapse of the sand pile).

As leaders, we need to be constantly on the look out for such criticality building up within our systems and plan for the inevitable shock that will come. By being better prepared, we can not only minimize the shock but possibly even find ways to leverage the shock to accelerate our pursuit to our goals.

Conclusion

Evolutionary biology offers an invaluable lens for leading complex adaptive systems. By embracing variation, facilitating selection via feedback, prioritizing adaptation over prediction, cultivating self-organization and co-evolution, organizations can move beyond outdated management practices.

When leaders act as adaptive facilitators, empowering systems to learn, evolve, and adapt to an unpredictable future, we build resilient and some times even an Anti-fragile organisation and that can lead to consistent and significant high performance over a long and sustained period of time in a turbulent environment.

In the past few posts, we explore about how we can learn from Anthropologists, Behavioral Scientists, Coaches and Directors.

As you can see, Leaders worth following can learn from anything and everything. In order to succeed in the ever evolving environment, we need to optimize for our learning ability.