insium's newsletter on leadership: January, 2017
Tuesday, 24 January 2017 00:00
Leading with Courage in a VUCA World
Sustaining organisational performance in an environment that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) (Bennett & Lemoine, 2014) is challenging and falls to the leadership within an organisation. This environment has contributed to corporate scandals including that of Enron in 2001 and Lehman Brothers in 2008. Might the collapse of both of these organisations have been averted by a strong expression of courage by senior and executive employees? Might courage – defined as "an intentional constructive or moral action taken by an individual in the presence of perceived personal risk, fear and uncertainty of outcome (personal or organisational) in order to resolve or avert an organisational dilemma" – avert further global collapses?