When an obsolete 'paradigm', gives way to a radically different paradigm, an ensemble of formerly unquestioned theories, concepts, technologies, training regimes, methodologies and problem-definitions are no longer taken for granted. The theories and concepts that provide the basis for the new paradigm allow scientists and scholars to re-define the puzzles that had defeated the old paradigm, and open up an array of techniques, insights and opportunities that had been - literally - unthinkable before.Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, Newton, Smith, Du Pont, the Federalists, Clausewitz, Marx, Spencer, Weber, Nietzche, Ortega y Gasset, Pareto, Schumpeter, F.W. Taylor, Walter Lippman, Kennan, Ayn Rand, Carl Schmidt, Andrew Marshall are among those who have made the Command and Control Leadership paradigm what it is.
As long as this obsolete paradigm shapes the way our leaders think about the dangers we face, the great change is impossible. Instead, we are stuck with a global system that I call The Neo-Martian Monetocracies, that Naomi Klein labels Disaster Capitalism, and John Dunn says is 'a single great system of wrong choices.
The Command and Control model of leadership dominates public and commercial cultures at every level and every sector of this system, This is a paradigm based on Monologue and, as Paulo Freire shows, it gives rise to oppression, apathy, hopelessness and a congenital failure to learn.
In any viable alternative paradigm, 'liberating' models leadership will be based on the effects of what Freire calls Dialogical forms of communication and learning: high levels of co-operation, trust, optimism, energy and creativity.
The Command and Control Leadership Paradigm has to be overturned before our societies can think, work and learn their way out of the dangers that threaten all of our futures. We need a Leadership paradigm that is underpinned by the practical applications of Soft-Systems Theory, Complexity Theory and Gaia Theory.
Fortunately there is a huge body of work that provides the basis for such a paradigm. There are hundreds of case-studies, involving millions of people that draw on the work of many innovators in democracy, systems science and leadership. They include Kleisthenes, Stafford Beer, Horst Rittel, Peter Checkland, Joseph Tainter, Karl Polanyi, W. Edwards Deming, Peter Senge, Ricardo Semler, Dee Hock, John Seddon, Jake Chapman and Paulo Freire.
In every part of the existing global regime there are thoughtful, able and experienced people who have achieved leadership roles, or are being groomed for them. Over the past few years they have realised that the system they serve is herding the human family towards disaster. They desperately want to do something to bring about some kind of a fundamental change, but they cannot do so until they can change the ways of thinking. Their mind-sets give them no choice but to carry on with what they are doing, even though they know it will have such dire consequences. Facing such a seemingly intractable puzzle, they become increasingly disillusioned, unhappy and frustrated. Potentially, however, if these people could become the key defectors from the old Command and Control Leadership paradigm, they could provide the 'Liberating Leadership' that will be needed to achieve the global transformation that our children and grandchildren need for a viable future.
