Complexity and Leadership

Preface to the Complexity and Management seriesThe key ideas of complex responsive processes of relating and their recent development

Chris Mowles

Our experience at work tells us that we make plans but they rarely turn out as we intended. We communicate as clearly as we can, but we are still often misunderstood. Even when acting with the best of intentions we can cause harm. Sometimes leaders and managers become brutally aware that they may be in charge, but they are not always in control because work life has the quality of being predictably unpredictable. Management training and education have become much more widespread since the 1990s yet still largely rely on assumptions of predictability and control. Often dealing with abstractions and ...