Time to Move into the Driver’s Seat?

This tweet by a Toronto resident made me laugh while highlighting a key reason why ill-informed policies and decisions are too often implemented.

‘Toronto Transit Committees are run by people who rarely ride the bus. Parks are operated by people with backyards. The island ferries are managed by people who spend long weekends at the cottage. Toronto’s decision-makers need a reboot.”

Toronto isn’t the only community experiencing a disconnect between decision-makers in positions of power and the actual users of public service.

Early signals also suggest that a growing number of people prefer the ‘driver’s seat’ rather than being relegated to being the ‘backseat driver.’

When ill-informed policies, decisions, and funding are made, communities experience growing frustration, anger, and a sense of urgency. It also becomes apparent how much this is about power and who holds it.

Those in power have likely worked hard to attain political or senior positions in government, businesses, and organizations. While they see challenges, they may not always see that the systems they lead are broken. Even if they do see the systems are broken, they may not know how to fix them.

Our traditional hierarchal, command-and-control systems were built for the industrial era, not the current realism of a hyperconnected, fast-changing world.

Growing social action incidents also suggest that dominance and control aren’t a good fit for today’s complex issues, the growing divide between the haves and the have-nots,  technologies, and a demanding public.

Today’s challenges are often too complicated for traditional, centralized leadership and a culture that rewards strong personalities.

The solution lies in a more open-source culture in which power and leadership are distributed and allowed to emerge organically in a trusted and more transparent environment. This collective approach to leadership results in better-informed policy and decisions and the collaborative culture required for responding to today’s complex issues and opportunities.

More leaders who embrace the need to empower others by sharing control are required to generate the innovation and transformative change needed to address today’s complex challenges and opportunities. 

This distributed or collective leadership is not a management technique but a mindset. It involves accepting that despite being in a position of power and authority, one might not have all the answers and, in many cases, may even be wrong.

If they aren’t doing it already, those who hold power must first embrace the idea that many others are experts in their own right. With or without formal titles, they are a unique, underutilized, and essential source of knowledge and wisdom that should be tapped. Recognition of this diverse expertise is a crucial for aspirational and impactful leadership.

In today’s world, those in charge will make more successful, well-informed policies and decisions when they embrace the idea that the best way to have meaningful control and power is to share it. 

As Margaret Wheatley - a thought leader in organizational and leadership development - wisely stated,

“Everyone in a complex system has a slightly different interpretation. The more interpretations we gather, the easier it becomes to gain a sense of the whole.”

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