Affiliations: Singapore Management University, Lee Kong Chian School of Business, 50 Stamford Road, Singapore 178899, Republic of Singapore. E-mail: tyliang@smu.edu.sg
Abstract: As humanity becomes more dependent on information and knowledge, the current concepts, theories and practices associated with leadership strategy have to be transformed. Fundamentally, the influence of the knowledge-intensive, fast-changing and more complex environment has initiated a shift in the mindset, strategic thinking, ability and style in the new generation of leaders. In addition, for all categories of human organizations (economics, business, social, education and political) their members are becoming better educated and informed, and consequently they are more sophisticated interacting agents with modified expectations. Leading these new intelligent human organizations is drastically different from leading a traditional setup. Consequently, the introduction of a new leadership strategy is inevitable. Concurrently, in the new context, it is also highly significant to recognize that all human thinking systems and human organizations are indeed complex adaptive systems. In such systems, order and complexity co-exist, and they learn, adapt and evolve with the changing environment, similar to the behavior of any biological species in an ecological system. The complex and nonlinear evolving dynamic is driven by the intrinsic intelligence of the individuals and the collective intelligence of the group. Therefore, focusing and exploiting the bio-logic rather than machine-logic perspective is definitely more appropriate. In this respect, a better comprehension of leadership strategy and organizational dynamics can be acquired by “bisociating” the complexity theory and the concept of organizing around intelligence. The resulting evolutionary model of this analysis is the intelligence leadership strategy.
