Jean Richardson, Azure Gate Consulting, LLC
Agile team members and those who embody the organizational infrastructure around them have, by and large, been raised in a culture that has taught them to follow and ask permission rather than lead and take the risks inherent in leadership. Every pause for permission is a delay that impacts decision latency. Organizational leaders have been enculturated to direct rather than coach which often leaves them in the position of making more decisions than necessary and thereby impeding important decisions due lack of access to them as deciders or allowing decisions to be made by default, thereby impacting decision quality. Pervasive Leadership has been designed to address both decision latency and decision quality by focusing leadership at the locus of the most appropriate decision point.
Pervasive Leadership is based on the following three principles:
- Change your mental model of I and Thou.
- Act locally; think wholistically.
- Enact empathetic stewardship.
This paper and presentation discuss the details of Pervasive Leadership, expanding upon the InfoQ article published in January of 2015 by the author of this paper and provides a case study where introduction to Pervasive Leadership immediately improved an organization’s ability to execute while discussing why this approach to leadership has the outcome of improved agility.
2017 Technical Presentation, Jean Richardson, Abstract, Paper
