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Stewarding Enterprises through Polycrisis

The advent of polycrisis, the intersecting, intertwined set of civilization threatening crises now facing humanity1, signals a significant shift in how ‘leadership’ should be understood and practiced. Indeed, I expect the meaning of leadership in the sense of ‘managing others in hierarchical relationships’ to evolve to one of ‘stewardship’, in which stewards are caretakers of whole systems. They can be anyone who operates in externally-connected enterprises who is able and willing to step into that role. In this context, this blog identifies some of the core stewardship skills needed to catalyze system change: stewarding the connecting, cohering, and amplifying the work of numerous entities towards shared aspirations.

Stewardship implies the caretaking of, in this case, organizations and whole system for the good of the whole—for the good of others, a goal that is aspirational that needs to be consciously designed and implemented (not an automatic consequence of polycrisis). As networked ways of interacting become more common, and people in all types of positions are expected to cope with the implications of our planetary crises, the idea of stewarding enterprises for the good of the whole of people and planet will take center stage.

Arguably, stewarding of both human and natural or planetary resources cannot only come from the ‘top’ of enterprises. Rather such stewardship needs to emerge from throughout the enterprise in what my colleague Joe Raelin called ‘leaderfulness’2, i.e., leadership that is coming from wherever and whomever needed. ‘Leaderful’ stewardship is needed wherever decisions are made to fully align enterprises with the growing recognition that they need to transform purposes and practices to ensure the survival—and thriving—of people in nature.

That means that people in business and other enterprises—as well as management educators—need to begin to take stewardship skillsets into account. These expectations of transformed enterprises shift businesses towards purposes that Donaldson and Walsh define as creating collective value absent dignity violations3 (of both people and extended to nature’s other-than-human beings). Of course, if people throughout an enterprise are to assume new duties, tasks, and responsibility, structural changes in the enterprise will also be needed that align responsibilities with the relevant decision making authority at different levels, including changing

Stewardship of human and planetary resources means catalyzing the transformation of how business is done to better align human activities in harmony with the natural world, as I explain in my book Catalyzing Transformation4. A few examples set the context. For instance, there is an ongoing, still insufficient, energy transition away from fossil fuels, along with growing pressure to incorporate agroecological and regenerative practices in food, forestry, land management, and marine industries, as well as produce healthier food, garments with less ecological impacts, and products that are reusable, recyclable, and of sufficient quality that they last much longer. This burgeoning transformation means there is growing pressure for companies to achieve real—not just incrementally less bad—sustainability5 in all of their activities. Those pressures could shift corporate purposes and goals away from their current almost solely profit-driven focus towards greater emphasis on ensuring wellbeing for all—stewardship for the good of the whole.

Increasingly, however, stewardship of both internal and external systems, communities, and nature is likely to be embedded in manufacturing, resourcing, distribution, customer relations, services, financing, and any of the manifold other responsibilities that people in enterprises perform  throughout the enterprise. What does stewardship for catalyzing transformative action look like and what types of skills will stewardship need? Catalyzing transformation involves three core processes. Connecting involves bringing key actors or relevant stakeholders who can co-create a transformed system together and helping them ‘see’ and make sense of the system. These actors will be unique to each system, but should be representative of the entire community and selected because they have (potential) influence over the system, for instance, in a company that would include employees, investers, and customers, among others. In a social initiative, it might involve initiatives that, e.g., are working to improve agricultural practices, for example, farmers, customers, and relevant suppliers, among others. Cohering involves developing visioning processes for relevant actors to develop shared and transformative actions and related action plans for changing what needs to change. Amplifying involves implementing the action plans, assessing their impact, learning from that, and co-creating new plans—and new infrastructure for ongoing transformation as needed. Each of these actions is associated with a set of skills, as the figure illustrates and briefly discussed below.

Stewarding Skills and Processes in a Time of Polycrisis

Source: Sandra Waddock, Catalyzing Transformation (Business Expert Press, 2024).

Core to connecting processes are skills of relationship management and emotional intelligence, which enable stewards to work well with others, managing conflicts that arise. A fundamental aspect of connecting processes, ‘seeing’ the system involves mapping out the system to figure out who is doing what and where; and telling the ‘story’ of what is problematic in the enterprise or system and what needs to change. In other words, developing new narratives through visioning processes and weaving together the diverse values that different actors bring to their collaborative interactions. Stewards attempting such transformative actions also need to develop their own curiosity about what might be, as well as their capacities for inquiry and listening to others and really hearing what is being said, as well as an orientation towards the good of the whole system or enterprise—without ego getting in the way.

Along similar lines, cohering processes involve developing skills that transformation theorists call ‘netweaving’ or network weaving6, which includes bringing previously unrelated and disconnected actors into engaged dialogues (conversations) where they can cross organizational boundaries to work together in new ways with more potential for impact. Of course, the relevant expertise and technical skills associated with the particular system (e.g., food systems, manufacturing systems, communication systems) are also important, along with willingness and capacity to generate new collaborations and alignments among actors.

Amplifying processes require stewards to assume the role of a guide rather than traditional ‘leader’ because there is a need for collaborating actors to co-create or co-emerge what makes sense to them—a process I label ‘allowing’, similar to what change theorist Otto Scharmer labels ‘letting come’—emerging the future that wants to be7. Hands-on skills are needed here to build new infrastructure for transformation where needed, help actors evolve new capacities and capabilities, take necessary risks through experimentation and possible failures. All of that requires adaptiveness, openness, and accountability for one’s actions, as well as strategic sensemaking.

Teaching these skills will be up to business schools and higher education broadly, as well as in consulting and training roles, to acquire and help others acquire these skills.

Citations

1.         Homer-Dixon, T., Renn, O., Rockstrom, J., Donges, J. F. & Janzwood, S. A Call for An International Research Program on the Risk of a Global Polycrisis. SSRN Scholarly Paper at https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4058592 (2021).

2.         Raelin, J. A. Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring out Leadership in Everyone. (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2003).

3.         Donaldson, T. & Walsh, J. P. Toward a theory of business. Research in Organizational Behavior 35, 181–207 (2015).

4.         Waddock, S. Catalyzing Transformation: Making System Change Happen. (Business Expert Press, Hampton, NJ, 2024).

5.         Laszlo, C. Quantum management: the practices and science of flourishing enterprise. Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion 17, 301–315 (2020).

6.         Goldstein, B. E. System Weaving During Crisis. Social Innovations Journal 5, (2021).

7.         Scharmer, O. Theory U: Learning from the Future as It Emerges. (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009).

  • Sandra Waddock

    Galligan Chair of Strategy, Carroll School Scholar of Corporate Responsibility, Professor of Management, Boston College Carroll School of Management, USA, and Faculty Affiliate, BC Schiller Institute for Integrated Sciences.

2 Responses

  1. The white boxes in the figures identify core skills. In the book, those skills are elaborated and described (Catalyzing Transformation, Business Expert Press, 2024). Hope that is helpful.

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