ABSTRACT
Organisations today face an impending series of systemic shifts potentially as significant and disruptive as the Covid-19 pandemic: disruptions in the fields of climate and earth systems; geopolitics and trade patterns; economic and financial shocks; food security and microbial resistance; the application of digital and connected technologies; and demographic changes. In our work, we accompany leaders and organisations in situations where the only certainty is that the existing knowledge and practice have become insufficient. We draw on the ‘Navigate–Explore’ framework to help explain the situation and argue that Quiet Ego Leadership—trained by way of mindfulness, a sense of interdependence, compassion, and the pursuit of one’s deepest values—can assist greatly by addressing the individual and systemic obstacles to change and rapid learning. We suggest that a capacity for AIM, Allowing, Inquiry, and Meta-awareness, enables both individuals and the systems they lead in to more successfully explore what is called for in complex, uncertain times.
