The Need for Organisational Resilience Chapter 5

The main emphasis of administrate leadership is to control, and to maintain order that

drives stability, predictability and efficiency. Adaptive leadership, though, drives fluidity, not

chaos, in direction. In their own right, Administrative and Adaptive Leadership provide a

range of benefits (see Table 5.3).

Benefits of Administrative Leadership

Benefits of Adaptive Leadership

Organising

Dis-Organising

Transparency

Confusion

Stability

Instability

Predictability

Variety

Consistency between options

Creation of options

Table 5.3: Advantages of Administrative and Adaptive Leadership

The benefits of Adaptive Leadership appear to convey a negative connotation. Who

wants to be a leader whose task is to confuse, to drive instability in management? As the

next section will outline, the biggest risk is go for one or the other extreme of leadership:

trying to establish order, standardization, alignment, and control, maintaining the status quo.

And yet, the opposite extreme is neither a desirable outcome.

Towards Organisational Resilience: The Fallacy of Order

The previous chapter revolved around the question of whether leadership should be

centralised around a single person. It is tempting to believe that “I” is central to decision

making, that “I” can make better decisions than anybody else. Nevertheless, the “I” is fallible

as much as how centralised leadership tends to be imposed on others in a mindless fashion.

The taxi business is one that may not be described as glamorous or one that yield

exceptional profits. However, in recent years, a new competitor, Uber, shook up this industry

like no other. They provided customers with control of when and where a taxi is needed,

providing them with greater flexibility and lower fares.

The rise of Uber is largely attributed to two services. First, the Uber App. Using a mobile

phone’s GPS, customer can summon a taxi to theoretically any location, and in return

receive an accurate pick up time. Second, unlike most other taxi companies, Uber does not

provide vehicles to their drivers, or requires their drivers to obtain an often pricey taxi

license.

The meteoric rise of Uber has been recently challenged by leadership issues. Its CEO,

Travis Kalanick, found himself and his company in the press for the wrong reason. Referred

to as a cutthroat meritocracy, the emerging culture at Uber started to hurt its reputation. To

seek out the leadership problems at Uber, a consultancy firm was hired to provide a greater

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