Chaordic Leadership

 Posted By: Stephen Duns | June 25th, 2010

Dee Hock, founder of the Visa Corporation has written a delightful and powerful article that describes “Chaordic Leadership”. (Hock, 2000) Central to the concept is the need to focus on the self, and self-awareness as a leader. Hock defines “chaord” as any self-organising, self governing, adaptive, nonlinear, complex organism, organisation, community or system, whether physical, biological or social, the behaviour of which harmoniously blends characteristics of both chaos and order.

The first and paramount responsibility of anyone who purports to lead is to manage self: one’s own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words, and acts. It is a complex, unending, incredibly difficult, oft-shunned task. We spend little time and rarely excel at management of self precisely because it is so much more difficult than prescribing and controlling the behaviour of others.
However, without self-awareness no-one is fit for authority no matter how much they acquire, for the more authority they acquire the more dangerous they become. It is the self that should occupy 50 percent of our time and the best of our ability. And when we do that, the ethical, moral and spiritual elements of leadership are inescapable.

“It is not making better people of others that leadership is about. In today’s world effective leadership is chaordic. It’s about making a better person of self. Income, power and position have nothing to do with that. In fact, they often interfere with it.” (Hock, 2000)

Chaos—Order—Control can be seen as different states of being and experiencing. We tend to feel safest in the state of order, or for some people, in control. Being out of control is scary if we are looking for predictability. If we have a mechanistic view on organisations, our tendency will be to stay within the realms of order and control, where things are predictable and stable—and where we produce status quo or “more of the same”—which in some cases is exactly what is needed.

Diagram 3: The Chaordic Path
(from Art of Hosting Workbook 2009)

The world and times we live in are, however, neither predictable nor stable and call for more flexibility as “more of the same” solutions are not meeting the challenges. If we are looking for innovative, new solutions we will find them in a place between chaos and order—the chaordic path.

The chaordic path is actually the story of our natural world—form arises out of nonlinear, complex, diverse systems. “At the edge of chaos” is where life innovates, where things are not hard wired, but are flexible enough for new connections and solutions to occur. New levels of order become possible out of chaos.

The art is to stay in the fine balance between chaos and order. Straying too far to either side is counterproductive. On the far side of chaos is chamos or destructive chaos where everything disintegrates and dies. On the far side of order is stifling control—where there is no movement which eventually means death. When we move toward either of these extremes, the result is apathy or rebellion—the very opposite of chaordic confidence. Staying on the chaordic path is where the balance is and where life thrives.