Leadership Nuggets – From Peter Senge

What an honor to learn some of these leadership nuggets from Peter Senge today, at Jakarta, thank you to Cherie for the invitation and warm hospitality.

Thought of sharing my raw notes, hope we all can take some of the wisdom and practice it immediately. 🙂

On letting chaos into order

• Life is just not orderly, life emerges. Out of that emerges, order can come but it’s different than the order that we control.
• How hierarchy can work better, not in the absence of hierarchy.

On Innovations:

• The deep principle of innovation is collaboration: At MIT and its successful innovations, the heart of it is collaboration. Innovations emerge through working in teams.
• All innovations come from someone who praised someone for stepping ahead, by taking risks.
• Technology is meant to connect but now unfortunately has fragmented the society. Online communities tend to stick to the similar group because of zero-cost of exit. Real communities can only happen when you are stuck with each other and embrace diversity.
• Diversity creates innovation. Solidarity is not uniformity but commitment to shared vision.
• Harmony only exists because of diversity. The beauty of orchestra is diversity. This is deep old problem.
• Technology is neutral and only an enabler. Technology does not define Industry 4.0.
• The unintended consequence (such as terrorism) accelerated by technologies – it is not technology but really the human dimension (ie. motivation/intention) underlying behind it.

On Revolution:

• The journey for IR4.0 is understanding our past and then create the future. The very first question: Will we still be a country with Industry 4.0. It is a question about identity and root.
• Movement requires deeper sense of security. To take courage and step ahead, it is paradoxical that there has to have a sense of deeper sense of security.
• Similar to biology, the process of evolution is transformation through conservation – it is rather paradoxical.
• So, the important part for revolution is two-part: (i) what do we want to create and (ii) what identity do we want to conserve. But who are “we”? Whose identity?

On Leadership:

• Do not confuse rank / formal authority with leadership. Just because you have a title, does not mean you are a leader. Most organizational leaders do not have titles.
• The job of the CEO is to patiently listen to what’s being said and then forcefully communicate and execute.
• In combat, it is easy to find a good leader, finding those that people whose team are willing to fight and die because of trust.
• Masculine and feminine leadership – balance of leadership. The challenge we are facing in the leadership in this decade is re-balancing because the past has been fully-dominated by masculine power. That’s why yin and yang together are so important. With one-eye we don’t see the depth, only with two-eyes can we see the depth and the truth.
• The deeper problem is how do I find myself something to appreciate when we see someone of different political view.
• If we don’t like what we see, hold a brighter mirror. Of course, it is about changing society, but it starts with holding a mirror in front of us.
• The real work of a leader is always external and external impact but the process is very reflective. “How do I keep discovering the flaw of my own ego, where my own fear takes over, when I don’t listen..”
• To become a leader, you must be a human being. – Confucious
• We can have respectful authority and challenging authority in the army. It is about balance. That’s what Innovation 4.0 is leading to. Hence, the chaos…. but we need to get comfortable with chaos..
• It is not enough to have ideas and vision, but we have to practice. If we want to change, we need to create new practices. The leadership practice is about deep reflective practices AND execute simple daily actions.

Roots of words

• “To lead”- indo-european is lithe which means, to step across the threshold. Leadership is stepping ahead. Leadership is from the edge.
• Leadership is uncertain, you may fail. You will need courage to step ahead.
• Willingness to be vulnerable (yet the images in the society that leaders are perfect, always right), hence why innovations are stalled.
• It doesn’t matter because we are all human, we are imperfect yet we step ahead.
• Leadership is the ability to clarify your goal and mobilize people.
• Most effective leaders are deep listeners.
• Courage means “opening of the heart”