The Hames Report

Dancing Dragon

For at least as long as I can remember, pundits in the West have been predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese miracle. If the speed of reform is not sufficient, then the unintended impacts of the one child policy will surely do the job. If it is not the numerous non-performing loans in the banking sector that are sowing the seeds of destruction, then it is bound to be President Xi's militaristic aspirations.

Depending on which expert you listen to, the list of possible hurdles - not necessarily invalid in terms of their individual gravity - goes on and on. And it is certainly true that China faces enormous threats to its future stability on a variety of fronts. But such factors are invariably distorted by the erroneous fictions we apply in a desperate effort to provide lucid reasons for why such collapse is inevitable. Myths like Chinese workers are good at counterfeit manufacturing but unskilled at innovation. Or, (I love this one) productivity in Chinese industry can never match Western efficiencies. Rapid and disruptive change of the kind China has undertaken is unsustainable – sooner or later the entire experiment must collapse, just as it did in the Soviet Union. Up-and-coming entrepreneurs leave China for the West where there are more opportunities…

To anyone with even a basic inkling of life in contemporary China these statements are deceptively false. Sweeping assertions containing shards of the truth. Loud firecrackers accompany the dance of the red dragon: a dance that has already reshaped markets, competition, trade and politics, pulled millions out of poverty, and defied the primacy of the Occidental worldview. For most of us the dance itself remains an exotic mystery.

Of course each of the aforementioned issues, as well as other widely acknowledged problems - such as escalating labour costs, the private property bubble, an aging population, and the drag of state-owned enterprises on the economy - could all bring adversity to China. But the simple fact is none of these factors have had the kind of seismic impact some of us expected and, let us admit it, secretly hoped for. Nor are any of them likely to bring China to its knees – now or in the immediate future.

My confidence that this is the case, a point that will doubtless be disputed by those who think they know better, or pretend to have a more informed slant on current affairs, is based upon a simple conviction: when the hordes of China-watchers tell us what is happening in China (and why) they rely on official versions of tightly-scripted public utterances, which are themselves open to misinterpretation.

By and large our observations are filtered through an Occidental lens that diffuses the reality. This also applies to some Western correspondents living in China, witnesses who fail to engage unreservedly in the communal socialist experience. Furthermore, upon closer scrutiny, many of the more dire predictions aimed at China are a mixture of ignorance, wishful thinking and a failure to comprehend three important tenets:

1. There is absolutely no compelling reason for China to copy the West’s most favoured models and practices in order to grow and prosper. All other things being equal, neither market capitalism nor democratic governance are innately better, or more virtuous, than state-supported capitalism and a unicameral system of government. Both can be degraded, or sustain their integrity. Both can benefit citizens, or destroy the social fabric of the society. Both can be gamed for individual gain.

2. Free market capitalism particularly, at least as currently practiced in the West, is never free and far from perfect. As its detrimental impacts and unwanted side-effects become more and more costly in human terms it is hardly surprising that the Chinese leadership should overtly try to avoid the more obvious traps they see playing out in the West as best they can.

3. Forging a uniquely hybrid path of state-supported capitalism, underpinned by a mercantilist approach to trade, as best illustrated by the Belt & Road initiative, is strategically shrewd - especially given China’s unique history, culture and Confucian ethos.

So within the context of China’s re-emergence onto the world stage it could be argued that the best chance of continued success will come from China doing what it has done for the past quarter century or more – at least since Deng Xiaoping opened the country to international competition following his visits to Singapore in 1978, and the USA the following year. After all, the record of social progress since then has been remarkable.

But these three tenets may also give us a clue as to an emerging factor that could be of concern. Indeed it could very well signal an inner erosion of confidence that eventually brings down the Chinese empire – or at least causes it to change tack dramatically.

This wild card concerns (i) a palpable rivalry between the princelings - the close-knit web of sons and daughters of revolutionary heroes who have slowly gained political kudos in China, (ii) the enormous affluence of this group in comparison to ordinary Chinese workers, and (iii) the intensifying social coercion, along with instruments of surveillance, being deployed by Xi Jinping in his efforts both to engrave his personal brand into the archives of the Chinese Communist Party, and to control a populace of some 1.4 billion people, dispersed over a landmass covering roughly one-fourteenth of the total land area of Earth.

Ironically this situation reflects a similar trend in the West where the disparity between a small minority of individuals and corporations with extreme wealth, and those who have very little by comparison, is a concern. Plug into those circumstances a penchant for increasingly authoritarian policies from the incumbent elite, and you have a highly volatile situation where a social revolution, an economic meltdown, or both, becomes feasible. This possibility was most evident recently with intensifying divisions opening up in the US followed by the storming of the Capitol. Socially the US is still very much on a knife edge. Meanwhile the Biden administration intends ramping up pressure on China over trade, human rights, and the situation in Hong Kong and Taiwan, rather than back off as was commonly expected.

Meanwhile on the Chinese mainland, the rot and the potential damage inflicted by any form of social unrest or civilian protests will most likely go far deeper, particularly since dynastic putrefaction and decline, after years of unfolding public scandals, and the recent antitrust push from China's Central Bank against the likes of Alibaba, have become common gossip on the street. If leaders lose their control over the prevailing memes in society, anything becomes possible.

Since taking over the leadership of the Party in November 2012 President Xi Jinping has repeatedly warned that corruption and decay have become so corrosive that they now threaten the Party and the state. He has criticized China's bureaucracy, hoping to curb the previously ubiquitous extravagance. Yet even today, claims are circulating about the fortunes that have already been amassed by members of Xi’s own family.

In 2013 such a story dominated the front pages. Bo Xilai, the former popular mayor of Dalian and one of the Party’s most favoured princelings, fell spectacularly from grace. The disclosures surrounding Bo’s inner circle, where mass torture was condoned and multimillion dollar favours were meted out as a matter of course, revealed a culture of ruthless fraud and duplicity few had imagined.

The case opened a Pandora’s box, effectively blowing the lid on the families of other leading Maoist revolutionaries and Politburo members (including that of the venerable Wen Jiabao) who, it is alleged, have used their status and abuse of official power to grow vast business empires and amass personal fortunes.

At this stage the long-term political fallout is hard to estimate. Bo himself was found guilty of corruption, stripped of all his assets and sentenced to life imprisonment. His downfall elicited strong reactions among the Chinese public and with commentators across the political spectrum. But as wealth becomes more and more concentrated in a small elite, the potential threat is amplified by the rise of a large, increasingly vocal internet community, that have no problems finding inventive ways to get around the firewalls of the state censors. 

Many people conveniently forget that Chairman Mao Zedong had declared the only way to break free from the dynastic cycles that characterized Chinese history until then was through 'democratic' reform. That was in 1945. What Mao did not count on was how the children of the so-called Eight Immortals, the founders of the communist revolution, could foul things up so spectacularly.

By exploiting the trust of the state and gaining unlimited access to high-level political connections, the princelings are reaping vast rewards from China’s explosive growth. In an outcome that would shock Deng Xiaoping, the divide between the rich and the poor once again echos the pre-Communist era, further delaying badly needed reforms to curb state control that is often used merely to mask underlying inefficiencies.

Massive change to the political underpinnings of China could be in the offing as a result of these scandals, although the trigger could equally be economic or militaristic.

No rapidly-industrializing economies have been able to avert a financial crash at some stage in their history. I would not expect China to be an exception, in spite of its sheer pragmatism. The cause could be any of a number of factors. Yet the one element the Chinese leadership is most loath to confront is the sight of Party officials becoming modern-day Rockefellers at the expense of the people. Deng once proclaimed that 'to become wealthy is glorious' although I suspect it unlikely he was giving his blessing to current corrupt practices that have the potential to subvert the entire socialist order.

It would never have occurred to Deng that generating wealth could cause a rift in the social fabric of the nation sufficient to be China’s undoing. But when you follow the money trail it’s hard not to see that as a distinct possibility.

Meanwhile the more likely scenario for modern China is a continued escalation of economic and military power to rival that of past empires - including the US.

Round and Around We Go

There is something about the human mind and about the way we use it that is at once quirky and persistently primitive: seriously out-of-kilter with contemporary reality. Of particular interest to me in this regard is the way we try to provision for the needs of a growing global population.

Neoliberal economic theories have generated a cycle of desire and consumption. This is propelled by an arrangement where objects and services can be acquired through a widely accepted system of exchange that hinges on labour and wages, as well as credit and debt. This materialist wealth-generating fantasy has become a global infatuation. It defines our major concerns and purpose in life.

I imagine this cycle as a dazzling Ferris wheel in the theme park of human experience. It is so massive, so all-encompassing, that it blocks out the sun. All other rides look dull by comparison, even though the wheel is beginning to show its age.

Each passenger capsule houses a distinct crowd who are on the ride for a particular reason. They are all relatively affluent. Some groups might be here to buy the latest gadgets. Others seek funds to develop innovative products. A few want to buy a second home, or a more fashionable outfit. Food, drink and entertainment  are included in the price of the ticket.

Millions of people stand around and watch - envy etched on their faces. They all hope for a ticket - but the price is prohibitive for most. Centripetal acceleration means that few are sufficiently agile enough to jump onboard the moving attraction, while only an insane individual would want to get off. A few people are beginning to feel nauseous and sense that the wheel is speeding up. But their cries for assistance go unheeded in the hubbub of marketing mayhem.

Meanwhile very few people on the ground have sufficient motivation or experience to know they should be rushing to apply the brakes. They simply continue to queue up, as instructed by the owners of the theme park, in a never-ending line of forlorn hope.

That is us. Trapped on a modern-day ship of fools. A contraption of human ingenuity, no doubt, but simply unable to see that we should get off or at least slow down. We manage our affairs as though they were entirely straightforward mechanisms where one size fits all. We cry foul when others point out that our map is inaccurate, or that there are several incompatible maps. We share the illusion that establishing targets to achieve desired outcomes will work and that reality will simply bow to our aims. We persist in the belief that the resources we are using will always be there for us, even though we can see with our own eyes they are diminishing. We keep on patching up the engine of the ride, rather than designing a new one requiring cleaner fuel...

Need I go on? We are held back by a number of fallacious constructs, many related to the tree of ignorance. On the one hand we revere expert knowledge, yet tend to be guided more by opinions than science. We habitually construct arguments using only partial, inadequate, or ambiguous information. We throw tantrums when our integrity is questioned, trapping us in baffling compromises between equally wretched choices. We resist trying to find neutral ground, preferring to focus on the things that separate us rather than those that unite us. And we take short-cuts - citing extreme costs, little time, or just too much complexity - when we could be transcending most of today's wicked problems by exploring them through the lens of entirely new ontologies. Not only that...

We are fearful of challenging deeply embedded superstitions that guided the daily lives of our ancestors - indeed individuals are often pilloried when they do mount a serious challenge to widely-accepted orthodoxies. Heresy they cry! Worse, we are easily seduced by ignorant yet attention-grabbing drivel that appeals to our innate desire not to disturb the status quo. Is it any wonder that we are so reluctant to dismount the frenzied pace of the Ferris wheel?

An oft-repeated mantra heard during the global economic meltdown of 2008 was that a bank, corporation or industry, was too big to fail. I was unsure whether this meant that its size, wealth, or customer base would inevitably prevent failure, or that it was too important to be allowed to fail and must therefore receive some form of help. It reminded me of a quaint sign I once saw in the toilet of a train in Britain, which said "Gentlemen Lift the Seat". In that instance I was unsure whether it was meant as an instruction, a goal, or simply someone's assumed definition of a gentleman.

Although the axiom ‘too big to fail’ has been used mostly to emphasize the value of a particular institution, industry or enterprise to the economy, it inadvertently reveals a common fallacy - one that happens to be at the core of our thinking about business and the environment.

In fact nothing is too big to fail. Not a society, nor even a civilization. Indeed, specific traits underpinning past civilizational failures reveal a fragility in terms of hubris and aspirational errors that are undeniable.

In nature, too, nothing is too big to fail. Large, overly-complicated systems invariably crash. To understand why that is so one needs to step back from our prevailing set of beliefs, especially the conviction that we operate separately from nature's rules and limits, and can therefore exercise authority over a particular course of events. We can not. Which is why all the target-setting in the world ultimately has no real impact on dynamically complex systems like the economy or natural ecosystems. Nature is in the driver’s seat. The sooner we realize that the more fluid and adaptive our policies will become, and the less futile our actions.

The truth of the matter is that we are ecologically illiterate. Not just unfamiliar with indispensable scientific vocabulary and concepts, but spectacularly, catastrophically, tragically stupid! Some of us now appreciate that draining pristine aquifers, felling tropical rainforests, deep-ocean trawling and pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere are self-destructively dumb things to do. But when it comes down to understanding how nature itself behaves, and why, we remain outrageously naive.

Science tells us that any dynamically complex system - be it an economy, a natural ecosystem, an organization or a community - tends to go through fundamental phase adjustments or adaptations throughout the course of its life cycle. There is even a name for it. We call it the coevolutionary cycle. There are four phases in this cycle. They are growth, consolidation, collapse and renewal.

The initial phase is characterized by an openness to a range of possibilities. As the system organizes itself into being, creative energies open up all kinds of options, roles to be filled, innovations to adopt, paths to take, and partnerships to be explored. The potential for growth is rich and seemingly unlimited at this stage.

After a while, however, the system begins to coalesce into fewer and less diverse activities. Efficiencies are sought, standards imposed, and innovation lessens as a consequence. As the system matures, rules blend everything together in ways that restrict further options. During this consolidation phase the system is still growing, while becoming more stable. It may also appear to be more durable, whereas it is actually becoming ever more vulnerable to forces outside of its control.

The Achilles heel in any large sprawling system is inherent in this phase. As soon as each agent is braided into an entangled whole, tiny or subtle adjustments in a remote part of the system can cascade catastrophically throughout the whole. Think of the arsonist’s match at the edge of a township or a small failure in a local generator that brings down an entire section of a power distribution network.

As we experience dramatic shifts in extreme weather, we can appreciate just how, in an overly mature system, disruptions that start small can escalate rapidly, sometimes spinning totally out of human control. For example, as the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases the oceans become more acidic. At a critical, albeit unknown point, this could potentially shut down entire food webs. Given our reliance on the oceans for food and carbon sequestration this would be sufficient to generate a crisis in its own right. But at this stage we are doing nothing to prevent such a disaster.

The question of ocean acidity also illustrates how easy it is to cross thresholds (even just a small increase in carbon dioxide can precipitate catastrophe) and fall into self-reinforcing feedback loops. Large consolidated systems are particularly vulnerable to such runaway scenarios. Think of the domino effect within the densely connected global economy where a financial product built on thin air (credit-default swaps) and fuelled by greed, led to the collapse of Bear Stearns, then Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG. What appeared to be hardly credible one day eventually happened with such extraordinary speed the next.

The third phase in the typical coevolutionary cycle is collapse. This generally transpires from a lack of resilience – the capacity of any socio-ecological system to withstand shocks, deal with disturbances and persist, either by navigating change and, if feasible, helping to shape future conditions, or returning to the previous stable state.

The resilience of whole systems has been a field mostly overlooked in management circles. Instead, we prefer to stubbornly cling to the delusion of command and control.

When I was a boy, at a time when resources seemed limitless and economic growth became the dominant paradigm, such neglect was explicable. But we are now feeling the impact of such a casualness lack of foresight. It is because everything in this world is not simply linked but intertwined, that when mature systems go into a state of shock the ensuing collapse feels like an earthquake rather than erosion. This is precisely what we are beginning to feel now we are aware of the immense damage we have inflicted on our natural environment that sustains all life.

Although it may be tricky to detect during the mayhem and commotion of a systemic collapse, enormous amounts of energy are released in this phase of the cycle. Indeed it is this energy that leads to the potential for renewal – the final phase of coevolution. After seeds are cracked open by a forest fire, seedlings thrive in the nutrient-rich loam. They soak up newly available sunlight where the forest canopy has opened to the sky. Then, as those open spaces start to fill, the growth phase begins anew.

It is important to appreciate that collapse does not inevitably lead to regeneration as we would ideally design it. On the contrary, this phase actually creates bifurcation points where many unknown paths and trajectories reappear once again. Collapse can also lead to rapid transitions and unexpected shifts in qualitatively different situations and configurations. At other times it may generate a totally new, unwanted regime. There can be no guarantee – which is why adaptation and the ability to navigate become such vital literacies.

Fire, for example, can renew woodland by clearing debris and resetting the ecological clock. On the other hand, when combined with a prolonged drought, it can set the scene for desertification. In social systems we can influence to some extent whether the outcome is positive or negative by designing with intent: establishing desired goals, providing encouragement and incentives, creating liberating policies that promote diversity, resilience and long-term viability, continuously monitoring and recalibrating the results, or even taking dramatic corrective action.

Once we are able to tune in to the transitional phases of the co-evolutionary cycle, we see them unfolding all around us. At first they may seem overwhelmingly complex, especially when compared to the tidier, more linear models that shape conventional ways of seeing the world. But ignoring that cycle as you build an economy is akin to denying gravity as you build a skyscraper. Indigenous people know this. Perhaps it is time to take more notice of their sagacity and wisdom.

‘Too big to fail’ is a warning signal. It cautions us to take deeper, far more forensic, research and consider whether the seemingly impregnable edifice in front of us is closer to collapse than it appears to be and, if so, to ask what can be done about it.

If we were more ecologically astute we would probably intervene by breaking it up, thus creating space for new niches and for the more dynamic diversity that flows naturally into such a system. The last thing we would do is to prop it up in the futile hope that it would not collapse. Nor would we contemplate setting meaningless targets that achieve absolutely nothing at that stage of the game.

Our ignorance of the coevolutionary cycle is an example of our ecological illiteracy. In truth we are inept at reading all sorts of natural signs. Take the idea of thresholds, for example. Those points of criticality where the slightest nudge can tip an economy into recession or a climate into a new regime of monstrous floods and epic droughts.

Thresholds are the gates between the phases in the coevolutionary cycle, except that they are often one-way: once you stumble through them, it is impossible to get back. Which is why it is crucially important to understand where they are and to be able to identify them. Although we are familiar with the notion of ‘tipping points’ (mostly because we have figured out, albeit belatedly, that we have already crossed too many of them in terms of the climate crisis) we are still abysmal at perceiving, and therefore avoiding, critical thresholds before we reach them.

Understanding exactly where a threshold is located may be tricky. But we can at least look for signs of their boundaries and deliberately try to avoid crossing them when the unintended consequences of doing so can be both unpredictable and dire. There are usually ample warnings after all: the reservoir level is lower each year; the colors in the coral reef are fading; mercury levels in the lake are increasing; severe droughts are becoming more frequent...

Once you have driven off a cliff, it does you little good to realize that you are falling. The time to practice water conservation is prior to the dams and the wells running dry. In other words before the threshold is reached.

Still, if we really were attentive to the natural cycles unfolding around us, we would not be attracted to growth like moths to a flame. We would not equate more growth with success, but with risk, heralding imminent collapse. We certainly would not be aiming today to rebuild yesterday's busted economy so that, tomorrow, we can resume our unlimited looting of nature's storehouse. On the contrary we would try to acquire prosperity and well-being without the need for rampant development.

Until recently we had imagined ourselves unconstrained by limits or rules imposed by nature. Encouraged by ancient scriptures urging us to dominate the Earth, we obliged with unimaginable zeal, building an extensive economy where faster, cheaper, bigger, more (and still more) added up to the winning hand.

Then we behaved as though our ultimate authority over everything, from resource scarcity to those melting ice sheets, was a foregone conclusion. Facing thresholds where the red lights were visibly blinking we simply told ourselves that we would figure out how to tweak the engineering a bit, add a new technology here and there, make room for a few more billion passengers, and push down on the throttle.

We got it terribly wrong. A capitalist economy based on constant, unlimited growth is a reckless whimsy because natural ecosystems can not be limitless - there are only so many pollinators, so many aquifers, so much fertile soil. In nature, unchecked rapid growth is the ideology of the invasive species and the cancer cell. Growth as an end in itself is ultimately self-destructive.

If ‘recovery’ from economic meltdowns, pandemics, and the impacts of shifts in the climate is just another word for a return to business-as-usual we will be squandering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to construct a civilization that might remain viable for generations to come, without overloading the Earth's carrying capacity and courting catastrophe.

Remember that renewal phase of the coevolutionary cycle? Here's where that comes in. Yes, collapse can be a nightmare, but it also presents new possibilities. If we were more conscious of the thresholds we have already crossed, we might think differently about the next iteration of the global economy. Humans can always cross a threshold of their own making and decide to live differently. Unrestrained growth, after all, was never a prerequisite for health, happiness, equity or justice.

What would an end to separation from nature and from each other feel like? How might it be expressed daily and in policies that are both liberating and intelligent? The renewal phase that is dawning even now urges us to answer these questions.

This much is clear. Our external world is merely the manifestation of an internal state of mind. The problem is not global warming, soil degradation, water scarcity, extreme weather events, or ocean acidity. It is not even all of these combined. The real issue is how we think about ourselves in relation to nature. That is what we need to change.

If we want to avoid endless hardship, conflict and ecological catastrophes, we must become ecologically literate – and deeply so. The future is, you might say, too big to fail. Which is why developing a new literacy of regenerative praxis is so important and why there is so much to learn from nature itself.

Regenerative practices derived from nature, like permaculture, rewilding and holistic grazing, are at once an admission of our inability to solve problems independently of others (divorced from the environment that is the support system for all life on this planet) as well as a solution staring us in the face.

Albert Einstein famously said that we cannot solve the problems we have brought on ourselves by using the same cognition that created those problems. He was right but we have yet to agree!

Adaptive literacies can help us to shift to higher levels of consciousness from which to comprehend the more critical issues facing us. They are about inquiring together into the motivations and values that compel us to act in ways that are self-destructive, while instituting policies to change these. They are about changing our innate cultural guidance system so as to wean us off waste, greed, profligacy and excess – installing frugality, responsibility, resilience and sustainability in their place. And they to do with becoming sufficiently literate to act in time to avoid crashing through thresholds that promise only further uncertainty and risk.

Revisiting Leadership (Again)

In 2007, after ten years of intensive practical research, I published my third book - The Five Literacies of Global Leadership. Several critical breakthroughs in this work overturned much conventional wisdom. Yet today – a further 14 years down the track - nothing has appreciably shifted in terms of how most people think about leadership.

The art of leading, the practice of leadership, and the development of potential leaders are all interpreted in much the same way as they were over a century ago. Prevailing business school definitions of leadership remain obstinately intact - immune from alternative models.

As a consequence, mainstream assumptions concerning leaders have not changed one iota. Nor have our expectations regarding what we want leaders to deliver. Part of our obduracy has to do with the language we use to describe something that has become much more to do with managing than leading. But the other problem is the way we elevate leadership to  a position of untouchability and then criticize individuals when they fail to live up to that.

We are still attracted to the idea that the leader is an exception – typically an Anglo-Saxon male of intrepid character, appointed or elected to pursue bold goals, his confidence and charm embodied in the number of followers he inspires. That has always been a fairy tale.

Recently, albeit grudgingly, we have admitted women to that elite club, urging the lucky few to behave more like men - instantly invalidating the main reason for promoting women into the top jobs. At the same time, we have diligently avoided advancing a more diverse range of leadership qualities, omitting more feminine traits in particular, lest they intrude on the myth of masculine potency and vision.

Although our technologies have evolved dramatically over the past half century, changing almost every aspect of our lives in an escalating parade of innovative enterprise, our beliefs about governance and the exercise of power are rooted in antiquated myths and obsolete models. The “great leader” syndrome is one of those myths. And a dangerous one at that.

We still desperately cry out for 'leadership'. But what do we really mean by that? And why, when we actually get closer to what we yearn for, is there such a lack of moral fortitude in pursuing what might be called 'the public good' - coming together in Earth-scale initiatives intended to benefit humanity as a whole rather than local fragments of self-interest?

Surely there is more to life than making money, growing the economy, spreading envy and greed, and grinding competitors into the dust? Where are the leaders, worthy of that title, who will repurpose the military to wage peace? Where are the leaders who will eliminate graft and corruption from public life? Where are the leaders who will use the resources at their disposal to unify our society rather than peddle fear of others?

Combative in principle, the old models of leading perpetuate separation and intolerance at a time when empathy, cooperation and concord are urgently needed.

When reviewing the current literature on leadership I am dismayed by the ease with which popular anecdotal evidence is uncritically accepted and used to refute almost any challenge to convention. In that context, I am obliged to return to my own work.

The idea of a leader needing to be psychologically and intellectually literate, together with positioning the work of leadership within a broader (global) context was not new of course. But it had the virtue of pointing out obvious flaws in the inherited paradigm - particularly the constraints, competitive culture, negotiated value, process myopia, and self-serving goals, that are expected and accepted in a management context, yet contrary to effective leadership. By challenging preconceptions, particularly Western-inspired notions of what constitutes effective leadership, and examining this phenomenon from outside and beyond familiar constraints, we were able to lift our thinking out of the quicksand of predictable banality.

Of course, the philosophy of a leadership praxis based on specific literacies was novel. Upon reflection, it was possibly a mistake to be so definite, or to choose just five - the latter borne out by the need to add additional, different, literacies today. I also doubt that qualifying the term leadership, by using the term global as I did, served any useful purpose. I now believe that defining African leadership, technical leadership, or even transformational leadership, as distinct varieties of the same phenomenon, unnecessarily complicates matters. Within the context of transformative change at least, leadership is simply leadership.

Returning to fundamentals in order to design from first principles, it became clear to us that the appeal for a more forceful, morally-driven leadership, is invariably a plea for change and renewal. It is not, nor indeed has it ever been, a call for small improvements or a tweaking of the status quo - which is the role and responsibility of management. Back then we chose this as a critical quality of a 'five literacies leader' - because most of the literature, including any assumptions used as the basis for developing leaders in corporate life, was still framed and comprehended as a management discipline.

The truth is that many so-called leaders, designated as such because of their manifest or symbolic status in a specific entity, are managers in all but name. There is no shame in the separation of managers from leaders. They are distinctive practices, and require intensely different operating modes and behaviours.

Management demands profound knowledge of a system, timely information, and a range of decision-making skills and people-centered competencies that can be learnt and applied in specific situations. Necessitating a professional and disciplined manner, both aptitude and appetite for managing are nurtured by experience and developed over time. The seeds of leadership, on the other hand, are to be found in a deep-seated craving to change things for the better - a desire to be found in the soul of almost every human being.

The aptitude and appetite to lead can be triggered in an instant, emerge fully-formed, and needs no further development per se - at least in the conventional sense. Most commonly, too, it is born from a convergence of desire and opportunity rather than any preconceived role or ordained position.

One of the most difficult issues facing humanity is that we are subjected to management on the pretext that this is leadership. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have turned ancient Greek philosophy - where logos (literally divine reason, or life purpose), is supported by nomos, the body of laws needed to fulfil life's purpose - on its head, so that the economy now dominates each and every thought. Politicians are constantly patching up the present in desperate attempts to avert our gaze from their incompetence. Corporate heads posture and preen with all the courage of canaries in a gilded cage. Both camps are dogged by fear. Fear of structural change (except in very small doses), fear of original thinking (apart from when their constituents give them license to stray from the straight and narrow), fear of a future over which they have no control, and the even greater fear of being found wanting.

Admittedly the impulse to lead is often represented as the desire to achieve a vision or end goal. But that is misleading. It is actually much more than that. In those who really lead it starts as a subconscious reframing of reality within the context of their relationship with others and the environment. In a sense the urge to lead is deeply coevolutionary. Only the early tasks of interior inquiry and incubation can be done in isolated solitude.

Consciously seeking an expansion of one’s own ethical code, for example, invariably leads to insights - alternate ways of seeing and thinking about reality - that are more advanced and seem to make better sense. In this way, a new intelligence of belonging and purpose starts forming. Gradually alternative possibilities begin to appear. Some fresh ideas are incubated, possibly over many months or even years. Others are cast aside. Though hidden in full view, decisions take a different shape. Ultimately uncommon actions are taken and at that point the leader becomes both visible and redundant. With others engaged, change now becomes inevitable.

Because new behaviours are the first visible signs of our intention to change they are often mistaken for the original impulse. Although this is a fundamental error, it goes some way to explain why leadership development programs are routinely structured around behavioural characteristics. But it does not excuse the fact that, by and large, behaviour is an unsuitable starting place.

While actions remain the visible tip of the ontological iceberg, what occurs in the deepest recesses of our consciousness, as a preliminary reaction to external stimuli, is a vastly more accurate guide to our intentions. Thus, true leadership development starts in undetectable liminal moments of the evolving mind. And although the impulse for change can be sparked by one, or possibly two individuals, the actual praxis of leadership is inevitably a collective, shared phenomenon. It can only result from the coherent objectives and actions of many.

The surrounding social ecosystem is therefore a significant factor, if frequently downplayed. In fact, all leadership is context specific – it arises from explicit needs within a group that are not being met by other means.

Although the conventional 'great leader' syndrome is one most commonly associated with theories of contingency (the ability to control a situation) or charisma (the ability to inspire and influence), the most effective leaders arise from, and merge with, their social set, often to the extent that they become indiscernible from others in the group, at least to outsiders.

This notion of social identity explains a lot about the apparent vacuum in leadership today. For example, if leaders distance themselves from society, by crafting an elite persona, or by feigning superiority in some way, they risk resorting to old-style leadership models that have been proven to be the problem.

This is why, when writing The Five Literacies of Global Leadership, we rapidly came to the conclusion that authentic leadership is an emergent phenomenon - intimately entangled with the dynamics of the social ecosystem into which it is born and then flourishes. Unlike management it cannot be planned. But its outcomes can be predicted with high levels of certainty.

Take young Greta Thunberg, for example. Alarmed by the inaction of her government on an issue of such importance, she simply instituted a solitary protest outside of her parliament. She had no legal authority to do what she did. Why, she did not even have the blessing of her parents. She had no elected platform from which to instruct or admonish. Nor did she have any intention of creating a social movement that would eventually lead to her chastising prominent members of the elite at the World Economic Forum or the UN.

In this situation, as in so many others, conditions conspired to elevate her narrative, especially in the minds of young people, to that of an icon of change. Thus a leader was revealed in all its aching unlikeliness.

Perhaps these are the reasons we still cry out for leadership, the reason we still crave more Greta Thunbergs. As long as designated leaders continue to manage, rather than to inspire, our cries will continue to echo into the void and the massive structural changes we urgently need in our world will elude us.