Leader - an onion analogy: part 1

What is a leader, what would be a whole picture? Yep, a bit too much for a single blog, but I try provide one intriguing perspective. Clearly this is not a theory, not even a framework, perhaps this text could be best viewed as a food for thought. If this blog inspires new ideas, thoughts and discussions, I would be most pleased. And I do promise that this is a new way to try to outline what is a leader.

Lets get started. The onion analogy means that there a many layers in a leader as the picture above suggests. Here I will outline five layers and discuss briefly about those layers, although this first blog focues on the core and on the first layer. I hope that the concept layer, becomes clear enough when this text proceeds. And odd enough, although the concept layer is an important one, it is not that important to try to define it, but please make your own judgement as the text unfolds. 

First the core of the "onion", a leader as such, please see the picture above. One of our top speakers, Timo Myllykangas, proposes that each one of us should ask a following question: when I enter to room, what comes in? In our onion analogy the core  is the person and what s/he brings to any situation by being who s/he is. This is a huge question as a such, what any of us bring to a situation before we do, say or act. What is the message what each of us deliver and how we do this delivering? And what if we are not pleased to the effect which we seem to cause, how we could change the situation? Or if we are very pleased to the effect which we seem to facilitate when we join to any setting how we keep up the good work (or whatever it is what we do what seem to cause positive effects).

That got a bit philosophical (which should be a good thing as such), but now it is time to start to explore the first layer. To give some idea of layers, they can be seen as phenomena (all kinds of acts) what a leader does, intionally or unintentianally. These acts effect to the way how a leader is perceived by others around him/her and these acts are vital in determing how the leadership works. Hence the first layer are the gestures of a leader. Through his/her gestures a leader send powerfull messages, for instance is s/he listening or not, is s/he interested or not, does s/he seem to support the issue or not. This may sound like a trivial issue and a trivial layer, but perhaps we should at least consider the meaning and the potential power of this layer. At least all individuals around a leader pay a close attention to these things - intentionally or unintentionally. And these things effect what happens next and what develops in that given situation.

Let us stop here for a while. Perhaps this could well be a first part of this blog:  A Leader - an onion analogy. In fact, I think that I will very closely look around in order to see what kind of gestures surfaces in people around me when they encounter this text. Pretty interesting. And this is particularly interesting, bacause in this internet era we all seem the closely connected and messages travel fastly from one place to another. All comments from everywhere most welcome.

Physics and mathematics in business economics

This is a short text where I mainly test this blog system. At the same time I try to say something about the title of this blog.

I have just heard magnificent radio program where famous scientist Brian Green was talking. His topic was mind blowing issue: multiverse, the idea that there might be several universes. Mr. Green said that mathematics is a tool which can be used to find new phenomena and with the help of mathematics it is possible to suggest new and most intriguing ideas, like the idea of the multiverse. Mr. Greene said that so far many (or at least some) very bold  mathematical calculations have proved to be right, so that what has been first located and deciphered with the help of mathematics have been found in reality. As an example, black hole is famously one such thing.

From the perspective of this blog the most interesting comment in that radio program was the idea that first mathematics locates somehting new and then physics tests whether those located new phenomena are really part of reality which we can measure. Thus there seems to be a system to produce ideas and then a system to test those ideas, both producing and testing are needed.

For me that producing and testing ideas was a powerful point when I started to think business and organizatonal life. Perhaps that form of life is not full of mathematics but it is full of new ideas, plans and propositions. As such those new ideas, plans and propositions can be seen as untested phenomena which must be put under test before we can convince ourselves that they can become of part of reality. And here comes the challenge, how willing and able we are to put our ideas, plans and propositions under test? Could it be be that sometimes in business and in organizational life the mathematics, the production of ideas is the place where we stop. Are there organizations and actors who operate "in the meeting business", ie for those actors presenting and discussing ideas in meetings is a pretty satisfactory result.

That is not, however, the place to stop. Instead also in business and in organizational life the reality test is at least as essential as in mathematics and physics, although it takes a different route than in natural sciences. One could claim that in business and organizational life the reality test of ideas, plans and propositions is vital because typically different actors and stakeholders choose their own way to interpret new ideas, plans and propositions . On the basis of their interpretation they choose how they act toward new ideas. Thus here we are not so much testing the idea as such put developing the idea together and we are actually producing new reality in joint effort with all those actors who are willing and capable in participating to this development.

Sunny days,
Ari