Physics of leadership

The Newtonian universe offers an objective reality that leaders can measure and control by carefully planning to predict the future, partitioning people and processes into parts, and organizing them hierarchically. This mechanical approach provides sufficient rewards and punishments to get people to implement the plans while isolating cause and effect to correct direction. However, Wheatley (2006) argues that the turbulence of global society and culture forces organizations to realize that the models and habits developed for a stable environment may not work in a dynamic world.

Imposing static and mechanical processes on an organization in a turbulent environment can submerge the organization until it implodes under pressure. The complexity perspective proposes that organizations must continuously change and adapt within turbulent environments. Imposing a model on an organization stifles change. Reality exists only in the context, and reality changes with the context. One expert interpretation or best practice does not apply in all situations. This means that organizations and their members must continuously adapt with or “co-evolve” (p. 163) by interacting with the environment.

The Newtonian perspective attempts to understand the system by isolating its parts. In comparison, new science takes a holistic view that attempts to understand the system by seeing the relationships within the networks. Understanding the “landscape of connection” (Wheatley, 2006, p. xxxvii) presents a view of the behaviors that emerge from the interacting elements within dynamic processes. At this point, the new science of leadership starts to sound like the old religion and ancient wisdom. In a quantum universe, “relationship is the key determiner of everything” (p. xxxviii); nothing exists separately from another.

Understanding leadership is no longer a matter of isolating elements, behaviors, traits, or situations. In the new science, building blocks disappear, and the unseen connections among separate entities become the “fundamental ingredient of creation” (p. xxxix).