INsight/ Dealing with Complexity

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Manila, 12 February 2025 — Dealing with complexity and hyperreality is essential for leaders today. How do you build your capacity?

Story

It happened over the past decade. And it has been accelerating recently. Many of our problems in society and the world at large are getting more complex than ever before. Several researchers have called this our metacrisis, referring to the big problems we have with a changing climate, governance, technology, economy, and how to make sense and meaning of these problems.

Moreover, our challenge to navigate this metacrisis isn’t getting any easier with the introduction of hyperreality, a state where the perceived boundaries between fact and fiction are rapidly becoming blurred. What is true and what isn’t? Some researchers argue that we now live in a post-truth world. What does that mean for us individually and collectively?

Taking these challenges together, how can we grow our ability as leaders to understand and deal with complexity and hyperreality, without retreating into narrower worldviews that give a false sense of security? Robb Smith, CEO of the Integral Life community and the Institute of Applied Metatheory (IAM), is calling for us to develop a Big Picture Mind able to “think integratively, restore coherence, and actively shape the future rather than be overwhelmed by it.”

Challenge

Over thousands of years, leaders have always been challenged to recognize, make sense of, and deal with complexity in their lives, their organizations, and their societies. This capacity is core to human development, which happens in progressive stages. Such development should not stop in adolescence. We can continue developing throughout our entire adulthood as lifelong learners.

At this time, we have access to more advanced tools to define and measure cultural complexity than ever before. In a talk I watched this week, an IAM researcher presented their latest research on the framing of cultural complexity, using the so-called Lexical Scale. A new generation of tools can now help us apply big picture thinking to our big problems and see the transformational potential hidden in these problems.

In our coaching work with leaders, we already help them expand their ability to make sense of the complexity they encounter in their leadership and the complex problems occurring in their organizations and the wider world. This ability is essential to their leadership growth. With the Work In All Colors method, they learn to decode worldviews and choose the right styles of leadership for each audience and situation.

Question

How do you build your capacity to make sense of complexity and hyperreality in your project, organization, and the wider world? That’s my question for you this week. I would love to see your response, so do reach out to share.

We like to challenge leaders to get clear about their worldviews and the values that they accept and reject. Considering that we all have blindspots, an independent assessment is very helpful. Our executive coaching clients discover what drives them with the ValueScan questionnaire, followed by one-to-one coaching to develop a tailor-made communication strategy to use in their workplace. 

The members of our Grow3Leaders community of practice also have access to the Work In All Colors method to make sense of the growing complexity of their work. Leveling up in our worldview is a mission for all humans, especially us leaders. The wider your worldview becomes, the more capable you will be as a leader to drive positive changes in highly complex environments. Set up a free strategy call to start one-to-one executive coaching or join our community of leaders.