Leadership and the New Science

In a nonlinear system, the slightest variation can lead to catastrophic results.

All organisations are fractal in nature. They are nonlinear, dynamic, chaotic systems. They will always remain complex, unpredictable and beyond understanding.
Margaret Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science

Understand the universe, understand the organisation

How do you build a decent universe? It's quite simple. You need two key elements.

Energy and the universal evolutionary algorithm.

We can define the universe most beautifully as the flow of energy radiating from the sun to matter. This energy then partners with the evolutionary algorithm in a magical dance to generate emergent complexity.

We call this 'the brain of the universe'. A super smart software programme that has worked for 14 billion years without any upgrades.

From the sun to the vine leaves, to the wine, to your brain, to your thinking, to your action. Energy and the evolutionary algorithm.

It's how the universe works. And organisations too. Both bound by the laws of science. Leaders need to take note.

Everything is for the first time in a Bayesian field of infinite probabilities

Energy drives everything. It is the fuel of life. From electrons and molecules to gravity that binds our galaxies. From leaders and teams to organisations.

It also drives every thought and action of every person who has walked this planet.

Energy is life.

Carlo Rovelli describes this more poetically. The world is not made up of objects but of continuously unfolding events. Truth. Beauty.

Where every event is driven by energy and the evolutionary algorithm. Where everything is for the first time.

And every event is born into a world of infinite Bayesian probabilities. A constant dance of birth and death.

Each event is a 'frozen moment in history.' It may last a millisecond (a fleeting thought), decades (Apple, Google), a lifetime (Einstein), two millenia (major religions), or 14 billion years (the Big Bang).

Where every 'frozen moment in history' has two things in common. Energy and the evolutionary algorithm. Never one without the other. Ever.

Every event is unique in time. The world around us is changing continuously, evolving in this Bayesian field of energy and the universal evolutionary algorithm. And each time we think or act it is in relation to this nonlinear, dynamic and chaotic world.

The same thing can never happen twice. It is contrary to a basic law of the evolving universe.

Organisations as 'mini universes'

The organisation is a mini universe. It too needs two things to survive and grow. Energy and the evolutionary algorithm.

This is the real bedrock upon which organisations live or die. And the challenge for leaders in a post-covid, hybrid-uncertain, AI- emergent world. All within an umbrella of planetary uncertainty.

Of one thing we can be certain. The world is not what it used to be. And neither is leadership.

In this exciting and challenging world of minimal precedent, we know one thing.

Leaders will need to be smart, courageous and above all, obsessively curious and imaginative. Finding new and better ways of doing things every day. In a nutshell, high energy evolutionists, game changers of the future.

Tomorrow's leaders will be a special new breed of pioneers. Warriors and Magicians. Scientists and Lovers.

We predict the following. Our traditional two player game of economics and geopolitics is fast approaching its sell-by date. We cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. We are staring at our shadow, a planetary ouroboros.

It will be replaced by the three model genius of Serres. Biogea (planet), Science and Technology, and Society. These will be the core skill areas needed by future leaders.

Thus we cannot 'teach' traditional leadership skills in a world of rapidly emerging and largely unknown nonlinearity and complexity.

But what we can teach is requisite knowledge and skill to understand energy - how to measure and generate energy in systems - and how to understand and use the evolutionary algorithm.

And to apply this new knowledge in the three-player world of Serres.

What's in our Black Box?

The Quanta Black Box contains all the tools needed to amplify organisational energy. From measuring energy to generating system energy, it's all in the box.

We have worked with thousands of leaders and their organisations over the past three decades. Our most important finding is that all performance is a direct function of organisational energy. From strategy to innovation, from engagement to teamwork, from customer satisfaction to profitability - everything is driven by energy. There are no exceptions.

We measure this potential energy with a range of instruments and we also amplify this measured potential energy with our own customised, proven, fractal based tools and methods.

We can state categorically that no leader, team or organisation can perform outside of its potential energy envelope. Amplify the potential energy and you amplify performance. It's a scientific fact.

Further, the primary driver of all organisational energy is leadership energy. Leaders create the climate or context for all performance.

To measure the potential energy of leaders and leadership teams we use the global, unique and powerful Game Changing Index. This tool provides four essential elements.

How we choose to think intelligently
How we choose to act intelligently
How we choose to interact with others intelligently
How much energy we are prepared to commit to how we think and act

It is the interaction of all four of the GCI elements that generates the magic.

To any CEO this will make perfect sense. No strategy will see the light of day unless the system's potential energy level is sufficient to deliver the strategy.

Our Black Box includes all our assessment and analytic tools as well as our globally unique fractal based method for generating and amplifying system energy levels.

Summarising the future role of leadership

We can no longer bury our heads in the sand. We know that we face massive global challenges;

from managing a planetary system as one integrated, nonlinear, complex, chaotic system with finite resources;

to managing a growing and energy hungry population that is using eight times the energy compared with a century ago;

to managing the existential threat of global nuclear holocaust;

to finding reliable renewable energy sources - 85% of our current energy needs are still being met by fossil fuels;

to AI, evolving at runaway speed where the impact to organisations remains unknown.

Looking backwards will not help us to solve the current leadership challenge.

Our landscape has changed irreversibly. Our survival is now dependent on the emergence of a new breed of intelligent leader that fully grasps and executes the Serres thee-player model of Planet, Science and Society.

In short the great leaders of tomorrow will know how to apply new scientific methods, based firmly on the principles of energy and evolution.