Leadership Strategies from Nature with Dr. Kathleen Allen

What can nature teach us about how to get the most from our organizations? In this episode, Marcus welcomes Dr. Kathleen Allen to discuss changing our perspectives of assigning roles within teams and organizations to what she calls leading a “living systems”. Dr. Allen is the president of her consulting firm, Allen and Associates, and has written many articles and contributed to a variety of books, including The Transforming Leader: New Approaches to Leadership for the Twenty-first Century and Innovation in Environmental Leadership: Critical Perspectives. Her most recent book, Leading from the Roots: Nature-Inspired Leadership Lessons for Today’s World, is available now.

Show Notes

• An alternative to reorganization (1:45)
• “We are human beings living and working in an environment, and when you have a collection of human beings, then your organization probably isn't an object, either. It's just that we're thinking that it's an object.” Dr. Allen (2:50)
• The “living systems” perspective (4:45)
• "Living systems are interdependent. They're not separate. And our job descriptions are designed and written to keep us separate from each other." Dr. Allen (9:00)
• Strategy comes from patterns rather than details. (13:00)
• "So the old leadership question is, what do I need to control? And the new leadership question of a living system is, what do I need to unleash?” Dr. Allen (16:45)
• Work with you as opposed to working for you (19:30)
• Empowering employees with a common shared goal versus controlling employees through management tactics (28:00)
• "Influence, not authority." Marcus (33:00)
• "It's the illusion of control and power. And that's what we're selling is the illusion. But nature doesn't have a CEO." Dr. Allen (36:30)
• Growing change versus making change (41:00)

Links:

• Kathleen Allen 
• Linkedin
• Twitter
• A Beautiful Constraint
• Humble Inquiry