They were also highly self-aware about the connections they were making between their actions and broader strategies.
“For sustainable change you need to be part of the re-setting and re-set yourself. Re-setting is not a quick fix. You need to tell a grand vision story and enable people to see their pathways. It is not as linear as you would like.” (DCS)
Engeström and his colleagues had earlier argued that human agency is enhanced when future-oriented envisioning and actions are brought together (Engeström, Engeström, & Kerosuo, 2003). These DCS, were clearly invigorating professional agency at a time of uncertainty and disruption by using the narrative to make visible the affordances for action represented within the vision.
Creative leadership
Conceptualizations of leadership are necessarily work in progress as changing economic models and working arrangements call for new modes of weaving together disparate contributions that specialist units might make to organizational ends. Nonetheless, the notion of heroic leader does seem to be waning, to be replaced with one which emphasizes a broadly goal-oriented organizational culture and values and attention to human resources. As Girin once put it:
All literature on organizations is available to show the complexity of this universe, and it takes little to see that it is necessary to understand two aspects: the aspect of a system oriented towards some ends, and the aspect of a social system or ‘social order’ connected to the social environment. (Girin 1990/2011: 206)
In a recent review of research on leadership Avolio and his colleagues describe leadership in a way that echoes the findings from the two studies as “depicted in various models as dyadic, shared, relational, strategic, global, and a complex social dynamic.” (Avolio et al. 2009: 422-423). Yet their research review indicated that work was needed to clarify just what these concepts entail at the micro-level of human interaction. Indeed a group of Business School Deans has recently observed the lack of close understanding of the work that leaders do to be found in research and have therefore raised questions about the relevance of the evidence base of leadership programmes (Canals, 2010). This is not a new problem, in 1990 Girin also pointed to both the need and the research challenges of recognising the relevance of actions in activities where leadership may be occurring.
The dynamic of management situations is engaged and maintained by the actions of the participants. The word ‘action’ may imply a vast series of elements such as the realization of a material task, the analysis of a problem, consulting with others, leading negotiations, reacting to an event, etc. It is difficult to more precisely define the word ‘action’, other than say that it has a beginning and an end and that it entails an ‘accomplishment’. The action can be more or less elementary, and observation is not enough to decide its limits: a specific perspective of analysis is needed to decide if a particular action can be isolated, or if it is only part of a larger action. (Girin, 1990/2011: 200)
“The DCS is heavily involved and sees her role as enhancing the quality of debate and maintaining a focus on values.” (another senior leader in authority A in telephone interview)
“We have good systems because we have shared values, getting shared values is hard work. We need to listen hard to each others’ stories and work collectively on the priorities” (senior leader in authority B in telephone interview)
Here we connect with the centrality of ‘common knowledge’ to the process of meaning making across professional boundaries (Edwards, 2010; 2011; 2012). Common knowledge, as we have already