Transforming through collective wisdom
Successful organizations are more than a collection of divisions and teams working in silos. Collective leadership taps the collective wisdom of the organization—and establishes the “tonal safety” necessary for organizations to drive innovation, encourage collaboration and embrace a common purpose that aligns actions across distributed networks.
Contemporary organizations are too complex for any individual to manage, control, or even comprehend all the factors required to ensure directional accuracy. Collective leadership, or the development of an emerging ecosystem of leadership, enables the whole to interact with a kind of wisdom not merely controlled through a single, external point of control, but enabled by many interdependently interacting parts.
In every one of our interventions, from our work with the CEOs of Fortune 100 companies and their teams to leadership groups of global organizations to relatively unstructured innovation lab configurations, alignment at the core of leadership has been the make-it-or-break-it factor that determines whether the organization progresses or flounders. Senior teams who are collective leaders on paper only may espouse alignment through consensus, performance metrics, or shifting of mission and culture, but these approaches are nearly always abandoned as people see through and grow frustrated with this contrived form of “agreement by appearance.”
The Dialogos approach is designed to help teams build the capacity to govern together in “real-time” rather than in habitual or outdated patterns of association. This requires devoting attention to acknowledging, honoring and releasing structures from the past that limit current function, developing strategic direction together and focusing on the needs of the organization overall rather than its divisions or silos. We help leaders build the kind of safe and honest setting for all of this to take place, and assist them to articulate their common priorities, choose initiatives and actions that best serve their goals and focus on personal mastery while developing the capabilities of the organization as a whole.
Dialogos Collective Leadership Services:
Diagnosing core dynamics and pathways for transformation in teams
Identification of fundamental disciplines and practices for optimizing team efficiency
Development of strategic capacity in teams
Development of core purpose, values, and identity for the team
Transformational processes for uncovering and articulating the core intention
Development of continuous learning and reflective capacities
Recent projects include:
Multinational Risk Management for a Fortune 10 Company
A major global multinational brought together in sustained “pre-investment dialogues” its next generation of senior most leaders, each of whom was tagged to take over one of the two jobs, and one of whom, though it was not yet known which, was destined to be the next CEO. A culture of remarkable honesty, collaboration, and successful experimentation emerged from this group over a number of years in the dialogue process, including a commitment to work in this way once they were fully in power.
Hi-Technology Senior Team Alignment
The CEO of one of the global hi-tech firms engaged Dialogos to help bring about a change in the nature of the core dynamics of the senior team. The project enabled the group to move from the “myth” of a senior team to a clear definition of the few core topics around which it wished to focus, enabled a significant leap in team efficiency through its use of time and meeting discipline, and intensified awareness of the next level of behavioral transformation required for its next level of breakthrough.