Progressive organizations understand that the ability to adapt and experiment in ever-evolving environments is superior to trying to predict the future and creating rigid strategic plans that quickly become obsolete and ineffective.

Management is the business equivalent of the Titanic. Let’s figure out how to do it differently. What if we decided people are adults and can be smart and motivated, and if given the opportunity, a team of people TOGETHER could actually design better jobs, better metrics, better processes, and better division of labor than any one boss/manager/genius/hero ever could?

According to Jesse Lyn Stoner from the Seapoint Center for Collaborative Leadership, to successfully face today’s challenges, leaders need to pay attention to ten provocative truths.

Leadership is about three outcomes. The focus is less on “The Leader” and a laundry list of individual leadership competencies and more on “The Leadership Process” and helping everyone pay attention to its essential elements.

Leadership can exist everywhere and anywhere. It's not associated with a position. Leaders are people who help us to change. They sometimes are those who occupy positions of power, but often they are not. Facilitative leadership is an attitude that anyone can practice.

Employees in high-trust organizations are more productive, have more energy at work, collaborate better with their colleagues, and stay with their employers longer than people working at low-trust companies. They also suffer less chronic stress and are happier with their lives, and these factors fuel stronger performance.

Nick Petrie makes a case for moving beyond traditional approaches that emphasize horizontal (knowledge, skills, and competencies) leadership development. He argues that vertical development (thinking in more complex, systemic, and interdependent ways) is what’s increasingly needed in our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world.

This post features a New York Times article by Charles Duhigg that documents the surprising truths that Google discovered about why some work groups thrive and others falter.

Ten design principles are foundational to the future of organizations and the kinds of mindsets and behaviors that are needed to bring a legacy organization into the 21st century.

Many of us sense that the current way we run organizations has been stretched to its limits and we are increasingly disillusioned by organizational life. Frederic Laloux suggests that another, more soulful organizational model may be just around the corner.

Today’s problems and challenges require a unique type of leader – the system leader – a person who catalyzes collective leadership.

For many, life these days is a roller coaster ride between hope and fear, oscillating wildly between what’s possible and what is. Once liberated from these two extremes, we can discover clarity and energy, but the journey requires behaviors that don’t come naturally or that we have actively avoided.

Liberating Structures are simple processes that make it possible to include and engage every voice in shaping the future. The 33 individual practices are powerful tools for facilitative leaders and, best of all, no expert training is required!