More Connection, Less Hierarchy
“Leadership, an amorphous phenomenon that has intrigued us since people began organizing, is being examined now for its relational aspects. Few if any theorists ignore the complexity of relationships that contribute to a leader’s effectiveness. Instead, there are more and more studies on partnership, followership, empowerment, teams, networks, and the role of context.”[1]
Margaret Wheatley’s Leadership and the New Science and Finding our Way contained too many gold nuggets to include in a 1000-word essay. The good news is that she addressed a topic (one among many) that is very much a part of a solution I decided to focus on in my doctoral project. That topic is networks. My project is focused on network ties (strong and weak) and their relationship to the health and well-being of leaders and organizations. I’ll come back to that.
First…
Over the past two years, our program has included authors who have defined the subject of “leader” or “leadership” in a variety of ways. Where Peter Northouse provided a good but perhaps more textbooky sort of definition (“Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal”[2]), Wheatley provides another angle: “We define a leader as anyone who wants to help at this time.”[3] Both definitions seem straightforward enough, yet Wheatley’s definition of a leader provides the agility one needs to navigate both organized and chaotic systems.
More connection, less hierarchy
For Wheatley, the “real world” is more about living systems and interdependence. However, the worlds of leadership and organizational design are dominated today by artificial structures and controls, especially in the West. It seems too many organizations have been influenced by top-down leadership paradigms meant to incentivize and control. In business, machine-like operations are favored over more ecologically-informed systems thinking. To thrive as a leader, we need to learn from other ways of organizing. We need a different way of seeing the world. We need another way to frame the problems we hope to solve. We need other ways to organize around a common mission. Wheatley posits, “The dominant world view of Western culture—the world as machine—doesn’t help us to live well in this world any longer. We have to see the world differently if we are to live in it more harmoniously.”[4]
For Wheatley, leadership and change are less about hierarchies and more about relational structures.[5] There are times that Wheatley reminds me of what we read about in Greg Satell’s Cascades.
Consider the following:
Wheatley writes, “Here is the real world as I experience it. It is a world where small groups of enraged people alter the politics of the most powerful nations on earth.”[6] What are these small groups? Are they top-down, powerful, mechanical command-and-control structures? Hardly. More than a decade after Finding Our Way was published, Satell tells his readers in Cascades that “power no longer resides at the top of hierarchies, but at the center of networks.”[7] Satell’s “small groups, loosely connected, but united by a common purpose,”[8] reflect “interconnectivity and interdependence”[9] more than hierarchy and control. That was basically the premise of Satell’s book. (I also wrote about this in my blog post titled “Networks, Weak Ties, and Societal Change.”[10]) This interdependence is where Wheatley is taking her readers.
Networks
“To become effective at change, we must leave behind the imaginary organization we design and learn to work with the real organization, which will always be a dense network of interdependent relationships.”[11]
A key subject for Wheatley and Satell is human networks. This is such a huge topic. It’s a subject that was made more popular, in my opinion, in the late 1990s and 2000s by physicists, social scientists, and historians.[12] In fact, it’s a subject that Dr. Eve Poole says Leadersmithing would likely focus on if she were to write her book a decade into the future.[13]
To pave the way for viewing leadership through an interdependent networked life, Wheatley introduces her readers to a different framework – “a new way of perceiving the world”[14] with implications for how we lead. It’s one that incorporates a “new science” that explores organization through quantum physics, biology, chemistry, and more. This new science draws “metaphorical links between certain scientific perspectives and organizational phenomena.”[15]
New science thinking
Not long after Wheatley’s third edition of Leadership and the New Science was published (2007), the Rockefeller Foundation provided the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), a think tank in New Mexico focused on complexity science, with a grant to explore concepts from biology and what they can teach us about cities and companies.[16] The research was cutting edge, indicative of the integration of the “new science” thinking of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The SFI researchers were able to compare the biology of living organisms and their ecosystems to the creation, growth, and eventual demise of cities and companies.[17] A summary of their findings can be heard in a TED talk given by the physicist Geoffrey West.[18]
Conclusion
I mention SFI’s research partly because of the way they approach new ways of thinking like that of Wheatley’s. I also mention SFI because the institute’s multidisciplinary approach to research has influenced the way I am tackling the problem of leaders who experience isolation and burnout due to lack of trust, poor communication, and unhealthy life rhythms.
I decided to focus on the way a leader’s well-being (in my context, a leader includes pastors and ministry leaders) is connected to the strength of the leader’s network. This network includes a tribe that the leader can belong to (strong ties) along with weaker ties (ties with “low emotional intensity, and limited intimacy”[19]) outside of the leader’s primary group. I’m working on a diagnostic tool that helps the leader assess the health of his/her network.
Wheatley’s book, though late in the game, will be an excellent resource to include in my bibliography because of the way she compares the effectiveness of the leader to the health of an ecosystem and the relationships within that living system.
[1] Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006, Kindle edition, 13 of 228.
[2] Northouse, Peter G. Leadership: Theory and Practice, Seventh Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2016, 6.
[3] Margaret J. Wheatley, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Future, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2007, Kindle edition, 296 of 300.
[4] Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science, 189 of 228.
[5] Wheatley writes, “The essential structure of any network is horizontal, not hierarchical, and ad hoc, not unified.” Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006, Kindle edition, 182 of 228.
[6] Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science, location 197 of 3783.
[7] Greg Satell, Cascades: How to Create A Movement That Drives Transformational Change (New York: McGraw Hill, 2019), 21.
[8] Ibid., 19.
[9] Ibid., 16.
[10] See https://blogs.georgefox.edu/dlgp/networks-weak-ties-and-societal-change/.
[11] Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science, 144 of 228.
[12] See my blog post titled “Networks, Weak Ties, and Societal Change” where I discuss authors such as Duncan Watts, Rodney Stark, and James Davison Hunter.
[13] Poole writes, “I have a hunch that if we were to repeat our research in ten years’ time, networking would feature more prominently.” Eve Poole, Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 143.
[14] Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science, location 212 of 3783.
[15] Ibid., 9 of 228.
[16] See https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/rockefeller-foundation-grant-furthers-study-science-cities-companies-West-Bettencourt.
[17] In an interview with Alliance magazine, SFI researcher Geoffrey West stated,
“As corporations grow, they eventually behave much like living organisms; death and decline are part of the process. So here’s the speculation: when a company is formed, it is driven by open-ended, innovative ways of thinking – not overly concerned with economizing – and many may die quickly because of that. But those that survive and flourish eventually become increasingly dominated by bureaucratic and administrative issues as they grow in size. Driven by economies of scale rather than ideas and innovation, the company eventually dies.” – see https://www.alliancemagazine.org/interview/interview-geoffrey-west/
[18] See https://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_of_cities_and_corporations?subtitle=en
[19] J. Moreton, C. S. Kelly, & G. M. Sandstrom, “Social support from weak ties: Insight from the literature on minimal social interactions,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12729.
About the Author
Travis Vaughn
5 responses to “More Connection, Less Hierarchy”
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Travis…I need to come to Houston, enjoy a few good coffees with you, and ask some serious questions about networking as an enneagram 5 and a high introvert! I suspect I would ‘fail’ your networking assessment (if failing is an option!), even though I know in theory–and somewhat in practice–the benefits of ministry connection.
For now I’ll only ask these two questions: Are you using ‘networks’ specifically related to work-based relationships…or any kind of relationship?
Second, what advice would you give a Pastor who takes your test and the results show a ‘low network connection’…but they don’t feel terribly motivated to prioritize a different way of being? (asking for a friend).
Hi Travis,
I am highly interested in your writing in the second paragraph from the bottom, where you mention your focus on how a leader’s well-being relates to the strength of a leader’s network. You even explicitly mention the project you are working on, which is a diagnostic tool for the health of leaders’ networks. That is a very creative idea. If you would be so kind as to share, what instruments are included in the tool? I cannot wait to read the results.
Blessings.
Travis,
I also found ties from Wheatly and Satell to my NPO as I’m working to encourage an intergenerational leadership cultrue at our church. I feel like the non-hirarchical and relaionally based structure speaks to rising generations more.
I missed Wheatley’s definition of leadership but I love it. Thanks for pointing it out. It reminds me of Mr. Rogers’ encourgaemet to kids that when bad things are happening to “Look for the helpers”. Really he was giving us a definition of leadership all along, wasn’t he?
Hi Travis,
I’m really looking forward to reading your work and learning more about your assessment! Greg Satell’s phrase, “Small groups, loosely connected” sparked my imagination as well. I found Wheatley’s books quite refreshing. The conceptualization of the inter-connectedness of all things is complex and yet so simple, and spiritual as well. I wonder why it easily gets overlooked and hard to keep in focus.
My question has more to do with your NPO, I hope that’s OK?
When you talk about networks, what have you discovered from your research that keeps networks safe for pastors and leaders?
Travis,
What a great post. I love the way you, seemingly effortlessly, connect current books and themes to past readings. I appreciate your perspective.