It is time to reframe mediation. I believe there is an opportunity to reframe mediation from a remedial intervention to one that is both creative and strategic. My hypothesis is that those organisations who master #mediatingthefuture are set to thrive.
Leaders who feel they must come up with the perfect plan endure huge pressure. In playing the role of the heroic leader they become the organisational bottle neck. In telling everyone that they know the way forward; they disempower everyone around them. This mind set is the main obstacle to agility.
Right now, the capacity to pay attention, make sense, act and change ahead of the curve is the holy grail of most organisations and if it is not, it should be.
My hypothesis is that a humanity traumatised by pandemic, facing existential environmental impacts, and that is experimenting with various exponential technologies needs a better approach to strategy. An approach that can yield the crazy ideas that are needed.
In addition to our ability to analyse and predict we need to learn to engage directly with what is happening now so that we can learn faster from what just happened. Organisational strategy becomes “just-in-time” and “just-in-case” supported by more investment in general knowledge, diversity, the ability to do a quick study and the capacity to respond to intuition.
What may look like a people problem is often an environment, situation, or system problem. Organisations are brimming with misdiagnosed problems. Just as a caged bird is so close to the bars that it does not know it is in a cage, we too do not recognise the structures that surround us. Rather we just find ourselves conditioned to behave in certain ways.