- Definition of Complexity Leadership Theory (or CLT): Burns, Clarke, and Uhl-Bien
- Application of Complexity Leadership Theory to Problems of Practice
- Boston, Massachusetts, Problem of Practice
- Frankfurt, Germany, Problem of Practice
Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT)
Application to Problems of Practice (PoP)
- CLT fosters Complex Adaptive Systems while enabling control structures for coordinating within organizations to produce outcomes that support the vision and overall mission.
- CLT investigates the role of leadership in expediting those processes in organizations, through which interdependent actions among many individuals combine into a collective venture (Drath, 2001; Meyer et al., 2005, p.2).
- CLT focuses on identifying and exploring strategies and behaviors that foster creativity, learning, and adaptability within complex adaptive systems.
- CLT seeks to integrate complexity dynamics and bureaucracy, enabling and coordinating, exploration and exploitation, CAS and hierarchy, and informal emergence and top-down control.
Project approach encompasses PoPs from a middle school and an international high school.
- Initial PoP is an ongoing initiative being conducted in at a middle school in the Boston, Massachusetts area.
- Second PoP involves the deployment of successful actions from the Boston initiative to address a problem at a high school in Frankfurt, Germany.
Complexity Leadership Theory:
Implementing Curriculum Change Through The Lens Of Complexity Leadership
Frankfurt, Germany, Problem of Practice
Boston, Massachusetts, Problem of Practice
- Established a culture of trust amongst teachers, administrators, parents, and students.
- Opened themselves to dialogue on plan implementation and associated issues.
- Showed willingness to share leadership through the committees which is key in identifying critical connectors within each group.
- Established Change Stability Committee tasked to ensure smooth transitions of changes.
- Creation of complex adaptive systems (CAS), specifically a group of teachers who recognized the shortcomings of the current curriculum.
- Measure future curriculum effectiveness.
Nurture and Develop Trust (Mangundjaya, 2015)
Identify Critical Connectors (Masci, 2008)
Establish a Change Stability Committee (Masci, 2008)
Two ideas that Clarke describes that served as a lens for our consideration of the two Problems of Practice include:
- The role of leadership as facilitation and capitalization on these random interactions of aggregates which create the conditions that promote bottom-up behaviors from which human and social capital give rise to distributed intelligent activity, a process called “autocatalysis” (Luke 1998).
- Leadership then is an emergent, interactive dynamic, evolving from the interactions in Complex Adaptive Systems, in which new learning and problem-solving is the outcome (Lichtenstein & Plowman 2009).
- Setting is a boys’ catholic high school which is one of three high schools in a region of Massachusetts.
- Enrollment gradually declined from approximately 1,000 students in 2008 to 800 students in 2013.
- Examining new seventh and eighth grade program implemented in 2013, initiated so that Catholic High School could remain competitive and enhance upper grades.
- As part of the program, the school had to create and get approval for a new curriculum for grades seven and eight.
- With the new grades, it also had to revisit and revise the curriculum for the upper grades to ensure a certain consistency throughout the entire school course offerings.
- These changes are being examined through a complexity leadership model.
- An international school in central Germany with an existing process and policy requiring review of the curriculum in each discipline every five to six years.
- Concern existed among some faculty that failing to review sixth through tenth grade curriculum will result in poorer student performance in high school and beyond.
- Upper School Principal and Head of English questioned need for curriculum reviews and update.
- Success of students on external exams
- International Baccalaureate exams for grade 12 and Measures of Academic Achievement (MAP) grades 6-9).
- Kindergarten through fifth grade reviewed and developed research-based curriculum.
Melvin Holland
Charles Miller
Devin Pratt
Christopher Vasta
Uhl-Bien recognizes three broad types of CLT leadership:
Administrative - Leadership grounded in traditional, bureaucratic notions of hierarchy, alignment, and control.
Enabling - Leadership that structures conditions in complex adaptive systems to optimally address creative problem solving, adaptability, and learning.
Adaptive - Leadership as a generative dynamic that underlies emergent change activities.
Leadership incorporated Uhl-Bien’s three types of leadership.
Set policy that school and English department faculty have professional obligations to review curriculum to ensure students are prepared for the future (administrative).
Encouraged other teachers to voice their interest in changing curriculum which led to creating a new guiding document to address this problem (enabled).
Allowed teachers autonomy for change to emerge within their CAS units to ensure effective adaptation to the needs of the respective program (adaptive).
Complexity Leadership Theory from additional academics:
Weberg (2012)
Interconnectedness and change are normal operating conditions.
A new type of leadership is necessary to help groups learn their way out of unpredictable problems leading at the intersections, through strong networking, allowing for distributed decision making, and fostering conditions for the organization to quickly and effectively adapt to these pressures.
Snowden & Boone (2007)
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and solutions can’t be imposed; rather they arise from the circumstance” (p. 63).
O’Connell (2014)
As our world grows more complex in will require all members of an organization to develop leadership skills (p. 184).
- Leadership is not reduced to a key position holder or team of people, instead leadership is conducted throughout the organization using all agents.
- Known as non-hierarchical collaborative leadership.
- Leadership conducted throughout organization since members potentially have access to vital internal and external information that is key to the organization’s success.
- Chaos Theory is similar and interchangeable with Complexity Leadership Theory but speaks directly to the chaos within organizations.
- Catholic High School (CHS) leadership team employed several techniques that assisted in the successful implementation of curriculum change.
- Administration leaders held information and listening sessions in an effort to create transparency and open communication throughout process.
- Faculty with middle school experience were identified as well as community members interested/qualified to teach 7 and 8 grades.
- Faculty members invited to participate in a middle school transition committee.
- CHS examined learning effects.
- Teachers in specific disciplines adopted the new change process.
- Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) refine curriculum with inputs from lower/upper grades.
- Cross disciplinary PLCs established by grade assist with curriculum rewrites.
- Head of department is opposed to any change and working to prevent a review of curriculum; and the Principal aligns herself with him.
- Current English department faculty believes current curriculum is not well articulated.
- Additionally, policy is unclear and the value of reviewing the curriculum should be addressed especially in terms of the current student success rate.
- Outside consultants facilitated a recognition of issues with the curriculum during a professional development day.
- The local Germany-sponsored union agreement has an impact on educators.
Chaos Theory (Burns, 2002)
Bums, J. S. (2002). Chaos theory and leadership studies: exploring uncharted seas. Journal
of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 9(2), 42-56, doi:10.1177/1071790200900204.
Clarke, N. (2013). Model of complexity leadership development. Human Resource
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Dansereau, F., Seitz, S. R., Chiu, C., Shaughnessy, B., & Yammarino, F. J. (2013) What makes leadership,
leadership? Using self-expansion theory to integrate traditional and contemporary approaches.
The Leadership Quarterly, 24, 798-821.
Mangundjaya, W. H. (2015). People or trust in building commitment to change? Journal Of
Developing Areas, 49(5), 67-78.
Masci, F. J., Cuddapah, J. L., & Pajak, E. F. (2008). Becoming an agent of stability: keeping your school in
balance during the perfect storm. American Secondary Education, 36(2), 57-68.
O’Connell, P. K. (2014). A simplified framework for 21st century leader development. The Leadership
Quarterly, 25, 183-203.
Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A leader’s framework for decision making. Harvard Business
Review, 61-69.
Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. (2007). Complexity leadership theory: Shifting
leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. The leadership quarterly,
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Wenberg, D. (2012). Complexity leadership: A healthcare imperative. Wiley Periodicals, Nursing
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Complexity Leadership Theory
- Investigates role of leadership in expediting organizational processes through interdependent actions among many individuals combine into a collective venture.
- Focuses on identifying and exploring strategies and behaviors that foster creativity, learning, and adaptability within complex adaptive systems.
- Are complex adaptive systems [CAS or subunits] that use areas of expertise to create paths to change initiatives to ensure the survival of the organization.
- Framework that enables learning, creative, and adaptive capacity of CAS in knowledge-producing organizations.
- Fosters CAS while enabling control structures for coordinating within organizations to produce outcomes that support the vision and mission.
- Multiple theoretical perspectives.
- Practical approach for leaders to addressing complex issues in complex organizations.
- It recognizes that linear hierarchically organization leadership structures can hamper creativity and the flow of information vital to the organization.
- Key in sharing leadership throughout an organization to encourage participation and leadership from all members.
- Encourages collaboration, information exchange, and teamwork among faculty, administrators, and parents.
- Holds all members accountable for improvement changes with the organization.
- Easily adaptable from one organization to another.
Complexity Leadership Theory (Uhl-Bien. 2006)
Complexity Leadership Theory (Clark, 2013)
- Complexity leadership begins with assumptions about the nature of reality within complex environments.
- Recognizes organizations are open systems inherently dynamic and unpredictable.
- Organizations are complex adaptive systems that cannot be understood by simply breaking down its components.
- Interactions between the system and environment give rise to unforeseen and unpredictable outcomes and behaviors.
- Challenges reductionist approaches that believe leadership and its impact in complex systems can be captured by simple, linear, cause-effect relationships.
- Focuses on how leadership create conditions that facilitate organizational effectiveness.