The World Needs More Thought Leadership. Stop Claiming it, Start Doing it.
A new take on thought leadership in a society of transformative change
You may well be fed up with hearing it, but the message is unavoidable: the world is transforming. We are faced with a sustainability transformation, a digital transformation and on top of that an overall value transformation — as reflected worldwide in social unrest and demonstrations.
The term transformation has not been chosen randomly. It’s in fact a 3rd order change¹. A change, taking place at societal level, whereby the old situation changes both in essence and form, in the same way that a caterpillar changes into a butterfly; change of that kind calls upon organisations to reposition themselves in the face of a new reality, based on new visions and values. Often also referred to as new paradigms. A 3rd order change is therefore based on an underlying paradigm shift. Effectively, without such a shift, we cannot truly talk of a transformational change.
Thought leadership: shifting paradigms
Organisations can play a thought leading role in these 3rd order changes. Thought leadership is not something you claim to have.
Real thought leaders are organisations that are brave enough to shift their strategy and positioning towards new paradigms. Organisations who propagate innovative views and approaches, in order to break out of collectively embedded ways of thinking, and mobilise people to give meaning to, and shape, new realities.
From this point of view, organisations do not strive to achieve thought leadership, but instead to make a clear contribution to changing and improving the economy and society, and to shift toward positioning that is based on this contribution, and the innovative body of thought on which this contribution in turn is based.
Renewi is a good example. In an era in which economic value is still very much the prevailing paradigm in industry and society, this waste processing business opted for a new strategy and vision. Namely, the idea that waste does not in fact exist (‘waste no more’).
Of course waste still exists wherever we look, but based on their viewpoint that waste does not exist, they are building a new reality: that of the circular economy. From within their circle of influence (their strategy, commercial practices and their people), they are translating their viewpoint into physical behaviour and actual results. Today, 90% of the 14 million tonnes of waste they process is recycled, or reused for energy generation.
The role of leaders
Since thought leadership is aimed at achieving a new reality, based on new paradigms, it also calls upon leaders to rethink their role and how they demonstrate commitment. The seven habits of effective leadership — Covey’s world famous principles ² — in this transformational era are more relevant than ever to leaders in demonstrating thought leadership.
According to Covey, people who discover in themselves the capacity for innovation and progress use four human gifts: their awareness, their conscience, their imagination and their independent will.
The same in fact applies to organisations and to leaders wishing to demonstrate their thought leadership; it is essential that they become aware of this fact.
Awareness is an essential key to new paradigms. Based on awareness, we as people can examine ourselves critically, we can recognise old thought patterns and we can ask ourselves whether they are still relevant or beneficial. Using our imagination, we can imagine new paradigms, and visualise those paradigms through the strength of language and images. Our conscience enables us to embed new ideas and views in sound principles. Principles that for organisations go beyond their own interest: they also affect the interests of society as a whole. Finally, our independent will enables us to demonstrate the personal leadership and courage to actually turn those innovative visions into concrete actions and results.
When leaders become aware of this vital psychological mechanism, they are able to deploy their creative capacity far more effectively and convincingly, and in that way inspire employees and other stakeholders.
They ‘lead by thought’ because they offer a change in perspective based on deep personal convictions and use that changing perspective to inspire and mobilise people to reshape the change.
The strength of a Novel Point of View
I describe a change in perspective of this kind as a Novel Point of View — the innovative frame through which you view important market-societal themes. Expressing your point of view in a clear and unequivocal manner is the first step towards proactivity and influence. For that reason, leaders must make serious work of understanding and articulating their points of view.
Bernhoven hospital in the southern Netherlands is an excellent example of an organisation that has arrived at a strong Novel Point of View based on its own awareness, conscience, imagination and independent will. This was not exclusively achieved by a few leaders or managers in the organisation, but in ‘shared leadership’. For Bernhoven, the momentum for change arose from the merger from two locations to a single central location in 2013. This development led the organisation to ask itself demanding questions during a series of consultation sessions, based on self-awareness and conscience:
Do we offer the care that is truly needed, and does that care truly match our patients? Is the Dutch healthcare model according to which doctors are paid for each treatment they provide still relevant? Is that model actually based on the most appropriate stimulus/motivation?
The hospital recognised that the costs of healthcare for society were rising out of control.
Based on the power of imagination with regard to alternative healthcare models, a shared independent will emerged among the hospital’s directors, doctors and the patients’ association to attempt a fundamentally different approach. The transformation started with a single question put to as many of the stakeholders as possible, namely:
“What would you want if your mother was taken into hospital?”
This simple question revealed new points of view, values and principles, and set a whole chain of events in motion. This collection of new points of view was combined to form an overarching Novel Point of View, that although apparently something of a paradox, clearly tackled old paradigms and traditions, namely: ‘less care means better care’.
Putting your Novel Point of View into practice
Although a Novel Point of View is not in itself a complete vision, it is the logical starting point for a new vision. A vision is an aspiration for the future, based on your purpose and values³.
Nonetheless, a vision only unleashes innovation if it also appeals to something in existing practice that you want to change or shift. Many visions may well be attractively formulated, but still lack this specific aspect, and as a result they fail to encourage the drive towards actual innovation.
Visions that emerge from a Novel Point of View play with the tension between old and new thinking. And it is precisely that tension that delivers transformative capacity.
The Novel Point of View at Renewi is that waste does not exist. Starting from that point of view, they formulated the vision of becoming the world’s leading waste-to-product company, thereby generating energy, drive and an innovative call to action.
Bernhoven put its novel point of view into practice via a transformation programme that within the organisation bore the title ‘Dream’ (2014–2019). The hospital went in search of innovative ways to realise its dream of delivering the very best healthcare — based on quality rather than quantity. It identified the appropriate innovative methods in a range of new organisation models, including ‘Doctors in the lead’ (placing doctors in key strategic, tactical and operational positions) and 100 quality initiatives all aimed at realising their dream.
New financial agreements were also reached with the healthcare insurers. Whereas according to the old paradigm doctors were paid per treatment, now a fixed level of turnover was agreed with the insurers, for a five-year period. This created the space to replace the traditional financial stimulus (the more treatments, the higher the income) with a quality stimulus (the best and most meaningful care for the patient). Both hospital and healthcare insurers were able to agree on this new paradigm.
Synergy as the basis for transformational cooperation
Bernhoven hospital and the Dutch healthcare insurers CZ and VGZ shifted their relationship from purely transactional to a relationship based on a shared new paradigm. This led to renewed enthusiasm within the organisation, and took their cooperation to a higher plane. It brought about synergy, as Covey had suggested forty years previously.
Synergy means recognising the added value of the overall structure: the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Synergy is a magical force that can result in unimaginably creative forms of cooperation. Synergy occurs in sports teams and project teams and I can well believe that it also occurred among healthcare professionals in many hospitals, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. When people achieve a better understanding of each other’s paradigms, and within those paradigms learn to appreciate and respect one another, then they are capable of accessing and combining underlying forces that would never have been tapped into, without that mutual appreciation.
Whereas synergy in business may have appeared soft and spiritual in the 1980s, in the current era, in which we are increasingly being brought together through digitalisation and globalisation and our collective awareness of climate problems and other issues continue to grow, his vision on synergy is more valuable than ever.
Sadly, not everyone is fortunate enough to experience synergy. This is true at a personal level, but certainly also at the level of organisations and their cooperation with stakeholders. Many professionals in organisations have not yet learned the essence of synergetic communication. Their education has trained them in substance, analysis and strategy, but has focused little on reflecting on personality and relationships.
For those leaders who wish to give meaning to a new reality based on a Novel Point of View, and who wish to mobilise themselves and others to adopt that point of view, synergetic communication is of fundamental importance. After all, to encourage others to share your vision, you must first be willing to study their paradigms, in depth. By listening to someone with empathy, you are providing that person, as it were, with the psychological oxygen he or she needs. Only once that need has been met can you jointly work towards win-win situation — only then do you shift your relationship from transactional to transformational.
To conclude
In this article I suggested that organisations can play a thought leading role in the transformations in our society. Thought leadership is all about shifting your strategy and positioning towards paradigms that express a new future.
This is not a communication and marketing challenge or a challenge for senior management, but a transformational challenge for the entire organisation. To succeed in that transformation, leaders must work alongside their team, and their organisation. This can only be achieved by appealing to the awareness, conscience, creative imagination and independent will, and by actively entering into discussion within their organisation. By openly working together to arrive at innovative views in words and pictures, you can create a shared Novel Point of View, which in turn serves as the starting point for thought leading organisations.
If leaders succeed in structuring their thinking, actions and communication in this way, the outcome is a far more fundamental and solid basis for a new paradigm. That in turn opens up opportunities for arriving at the creative collaborations and joint transformative solutions that the world so desperately needs right now. That is what creates true synergy.
References
[1] Bartunek, J. & Moch, M. K., 1994. Third-order Organizational Change and the Western Mystical Tradition. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 7(1), pp. 24–41
Van Halderen, M.D. (2015), Shifting Paradigms — Thought Leadership as Instigator of Societal Change, Eindhoven, The Netherlands: Fontys University of Applied Sciences.
[2] [1] Covey, S. (1989), The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
[3] Collins & Porras (1996), Building your Company’s Vision, Harvard Business Review, September — October, pp. 65–77.