The Leadership Lab by Chris Lewis and Pippa Malmgren
Book review by Alison Jones
At the dawn of the 20th century, a sponge diver happened upon the wreck of an ancient Greek merchant ship on the sea bed near Antikythera (literally, the island opposite Kythera). Over the next few years a wide range of objects were retrieved from it, including what looked like a rock with a gear embedded in it. It turned out to be something inconceivable[1]: the corroded remains of a sophisticated analogue computer, originally consisting of around 30 bronze gears and wheels mounted in a wooden frame with a hand crank to move them, which could calculate the timing of eclipses by tracking the movement of the sun, moon and stars, and even work out the schedule for the Olympic Games.
Which means that the makers — 1,500 years before Copernicus — not only understood that the sun was at the centre of the solar system, but were able to create a device as complex and precise as that crafted by any 18th-century clock-maker at a time when historians had previously not even thought that bronze was being used.
It should have been impossible, but there it was.
1. Chris Lewis and Pippa Malmgren have taken this ancient device as a navigational model for their book on modern leadership, which is a tactic that works on several levels. Not only does it show the shape and scope of their argument at a glance, like any good visual navigation tool, but it also embeds two of their key messages:
1. that we’re in a world of polarity, with each pointer countered by another equal and opposite force, and
2. that everything we think we know can be utterly wrong, and certainty is illusory.
They argue that the world in which leaders find themselves operating today is ‘inverted, unreal, amoral, impatient, gender-fluid, polysexual, asymmetric, strategically multipolar, everywhere-facing, bottom-up, information-soaked, multi-racial, androgynous, rapidly moving, asymmetric.’
And in such a world, the 20th-century models of leadership these leaders have inherited (primarily white, male, rational and predictable) just aren’t cutting it.
When I interviewed her for The Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast, Dr Pippa Malmgren explained why these old models of leadership are inadequate for this new environment of uncertainty:
‘In the 21st century, you can do analytical, but you have to do parenthetical… you have to be able to not just drill down, but look across. To understand how to connect the dots between silos that were previously independent. To understand what’s the feel. It’s not just the math that matters now, it’s the mood also.’
Of course one of the problems of writing about an inverted, multipolar, rapidly moving, etc, etc world is that it’s hard to make any generalisations about it. Which means there are no neat solutions here. (Sorry.)
That’s not to say they don’t address specifics: there’s cutting-edge thinking here on diversity, debt, diplomacy and drones, to pick a few at random. But the real power of this book for me is as an exploration of the reasons why leaders are failing so spectacularly in this new world. It’s an invitation to think differently and deeply, and on that basis alone it’s a worthwhile read.
The Leadership Lab is available from Blackwell’s here.
[1] Which is a great excuse for this quote from cinematic classic The Princess Bride, which turns out to be a neat commentary on the book itself: ‘”Inconceivable!”’ ‘”You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”’
Alison Jones (@bookstothesky) is a publishing partner for businesses and organizations with something to say. Formerly Director of Innovation Strategy with Palgrave Macmillan, she hosts The Extraordinary Business Book Clubpodcast, regularly speaks and blogs on publishing, business and writing, sits on the board of the IPG, and is the author of This Book Means Business (2018).
