The relevant question is: from where does Intuitive Leadership originate? Kamila Malewska and Maja Sajdak emphasize in their article The Intuitive Manager and the Concept of Strategic Leadership that decision makers who utilize intuition in the decision process possess certain skills, traits, and thinking styles. Included in these skills and traits is the ability to synthesize large data sets of information and evaluate what is essential to the decision-making process, and to fill in any missing gaps in the information with contributions made from relevant personal experiences.

This second part requires the trait of confidence and the ability to make connections from seemingly unrelated data sets. These skills and traits can generate unique solutions to problems. The trait of risk-taking is also apparent with intuitive leaders as the ability to obtain perfect information is usually limited. (pg 8-9). Malewska and Sajdak offer the following traits that are effective for Intuitive Leaders:

• Ability to Anticipate,
• Willingness to Take on Challenges,
• Ability to Interpret,
• Ability to Make Decisions,
• Ability to Find Common Areas of Cooperation, and the
• Ability to Learn.
• (Malewska & Sajdak 2014).

 

In 2011 J. Polowczyk wrote that intuitive leadership is one of the primary attributes for effective strategic leadership, and these attributes should be “consistent with the characteristics and skills of managers who have and use their intuitive potential in practice”. (Polowczyk 2011)

In addition, changes in workplace structure have also occurred, in part due to globalization, which has changed the applicability of other management styles and effectuates in part a move to a more ‘teams’ approach.

Below is an example of the older command and control structure of a ‘typical’ organization from the Saudi Geological Survey. Note that the structure enables the creation of ‘silos’, those vertical columns within an organization that inhibit collaboration with other silos. Note that these structures only represent employees and not all contributors within the organization as contractors are usually not included in these organizational charts.

Organizational Structure of the Saudi Geological Survey

Since this is a top-down structure with silos, the flow of information and ‘business energy’ is in a linear or straight-line fashion, and data evaluation and decision making is made with first order variables. An example of this decision making is the formula for break-even analysis : BE=FC/(S-VC)

where FC is the fixed cost, S is the sales value per unit, and VC is the variable cost per unit and BE is the break-even production requirement to cover the fixed costs. The Saudi Geological Survey would use this formula when determining whether an oil reserve was valuable based on how many barrels of oil would be needed to cover extraction costs.

Globalization has changed business from ten-hour day to a twenty-four hour day as teams can be located anywhere. Engineers in the United States can hand the project off to the team in India, who then hands it off to the team in China, and at the end of their shift it is the next day in the United States and that handoff is enabled. In addition to teams working in other countries,

1) the change from employees to contractors,

2) the change from permanent workers to temporary workers,

3) the impact of technology,

4) the rapid increase in the speed of business, and

5) the conversion to a more project-based workflow for addressing the needs of the business has required the corporate structure to flatten out from a hierarchical model into a model that more resembles a nodal network as shown below.

Each node on the network represents a repository of knowledge, skills, or abilities that enhances or facilitates the efficient functioning of the organization. New opportunities or threats can be responded to much more quickly as nodes with relevant skills can be deployed without breaking into other ‘silos’.

 

Example of a complex nodal network

What is represented in the above picture is that each domain or node is connected to another with an equally weighted line. In the real world, these lines of connection are weighted differently depending upon the size of the communication bandwidths between the nodes and domains. The human brain operates in a similar fashion.

The functioning of the network model becomes invisible to the classic department structure, which geo-region the node is located in, or the employment status of the node. The key function is the deployment of the domain of the node, which is the relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities that the domain possesses. The node is required to maintain a state of readiness for just-in-time contributions to the solution. The nodal domain contains not only the human aspects of the required functionality, but also non-human resources such as finances, software, productive assets, and intangibles such as patents, trademarks, and know-how.

The new business environment has become non-linear, which focuses on the large impact of small changes in exponential variables. This environment evaluates data and decisions using variables greater than the first order. The application of non-linear natural growth and decay models are now relevant to product life cycles.

An example of this is the formula is  V=a * e^(kt) where a is the initial value, e is the value for the natural state , k is the rate of growth (if positive) or the rate of decay (if negative), t is time, and V is the value of the system at that state.

Small changes in any variable, especially k or t could have large impacts of the value of that system. The following chart is an example of a non-linear expression of population growth that is useful for determining marketing strategies.

An example of Non-linear growth cycle

From the aspect of leadership, the use of Informed Intuitive Leadership supports the nodal domain model under the concepts of the Sentient Vector Theory (SVT). Each domain node creates a ‘cloud’ of capabilities or constraints around it. Each domain node has a different cloud, but each contributes to the over-arching intelligence cloud of the organization. This is in part based on the ‘perceptions of the node’ and that each node ‘intuits the meaning and value’ of the perception to the organization. This creates an Organizational Cloud of Perception. Sentient Vector Theory conceptualizes that Informed Intuitive Leaders interact with the organization’s cloud of perception and, using both data and intuition, the leader finds the best way forward.

Some of the primary management duties for an SVT manager are monitoring the network(s), supporting the resources of the domain and related nodes, assessing and clearing points of friction between the domains, and listening: listening and using the Cloud of Perception for any developing variations in planned goals or activities.  This is a reiterative and frequent process.

As business and the world evolve, we experience a profound increase in processing speeds, and as technology gathers increasing data through sensors from devices and the incredible increase in data, we are stretched to our ability to analytically manage our pathways by data alone.  We must never let go of that context of how the data was developed, and what the data means.

 

 

REFERENCES

Malewska, K., Maja, S. (2014), The intuitive manager and the concept of strategic leadership. Management (1429-9321) Vol. 18, Issue 2. pp 8-12

Polowyczyk, J. (2011), Przywództwo strategiczne w swietle osiągnięć psychologii.Przegląd Organizacji nr 1.(translated by Malewska and Sajdak)

Schmid, R. & Waltman, P. (1987), Limiting the complexity of limit sets in self regulating systems. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Emory University

Website-Saudi Geological Society: (http://www.sgs.org.sa/English/AboutSGS/Who_We_Are/Pages/Organization_Chart_EN.aspx pulled 2016Feb28

Website-Nodal Chart:

http://tacity.co.uk/category/social-network-analysis/ pulled 2015Feb28

Website-Nonlinear growth cycle: https://jasoncollins.org/2011/06/03/natural-selection-and-economic-growth/ pulled 2016Feb28