On leadership

Abstract

As environments become more uncertain, leadership can no longer be exercised solely through individual authority or role. This essay explores how leadership is commonly conflated with people rather than system behaviour, why that assumption strains under uncertainty and what becomes visible when leadership is understood as an organisational capability shaped by how sensing, decision-making and action are structured.

When leadership feels insufficient

Many organisations do not suffer from a lack of leadership in the conventional sense. They appoint capable executives, invest heavily in leadership development, and surround senior roles with governance, advisors and data. Yet despite this, organisations often struggle to respond coherently as conditions shift.

This tension is frequently experienced as pressure on individuals. Leaders are expected to provide clarity, direction and confidence in situations where information is incomplete and outcomes are uncertain. When responses lag or misalign, leadership itself is called into question.

What appears to be a leadership deficit increasingly reflects something else: a system that concentrates responsibility for sensing, deciding and acting in ways that no longer fit the environment.

The inherited view of leadership

Most organisations still operate with an implicit view of leadership as an individual attribute.

Leadership is associated with role, authority and personal capability. Leaders are expected to interpret the environment, set direction and ensure execution. Sense-making is centralised. Decisions are escalated. Action is coordinated through hierarchy.

This model made sense in more predictable conditions. When environments were stable, it was reasonable for a small number of individuals to synthesise information and decide on behalf of the organisation. Leadership could be exercised through judgement, experience, and positional authority.

This was not a simplistic or naïve view of leadership. It was a functional one.

The difficulty arises when the conditions that supported it no longer hold.

Why individual-centric leadership strains under uncertainty

As uncertainty increases, the environment becomes less legible from the centre.

Signals emerge locally and unevenly. Weak indicators appear at the periphery before they are recognised as meaningful. Consequences unfold at different speeds across functions and geographies. No single role has a complete or stable picture.

Under these conditions, leadership concentrated in a few individuals becomes overloaded. Information is filtered to preserve coherence. Ambiguity is escalated rather than resolved where it emerges. Decisions slow as risk and responsibility concentrate upward.

Leaders are not failing. They are being asked to do something that is increasingly implausible: to sense, interpret and decide on behalf of an organisation operating in conditions that cannot be fully understood from any single vantage point.

What strains is not leadership capability, but the way leadership is organised.

Leadership as an organisational capability

At this point, the question shifts.

Rather than asking who leads, it becomes necessary to ask how leadership happens.

Seen this way, leadership is not simply a personal quality or positional role. It is an organisational capability that emerges from how sensing, deciding and acting are distributed and connected. It is shaped by structure, authority, information flows and the degree to which action can occur close to where understanding exists.

An organisation can have strong individual leaders and still exhibit weak leadership at the system level. Conversely, it can enable leadership to occur throughout the organisation even when individuals are operating within modest roles.

Leadership, in this framing, is less about directing action and more about enabling the organisation to respond coherently to what it encounters.

This does not diminish leaders. It reframes their role.

What becomes visible when leadership is constrained

When leadership remains individual-centric under uncertain conditions, familiar patterns appear.

Decision-making becomes cautious and centralised. Authority tightens as risk increases. People hesitate to act without approval. Local insight is delayed or diluted as it moves upward through layers. Momentum weakens even as effort intensifies.

At the same time, leaders experience increasing cognitive and emotional load. They are expected to provide certainty, alignment and reassurance while operating with incomplete information. Confidence becomes performative, standing in for the clarity that cannot be produced.

These effects are often interpreted as leadership gaps, cultural issues, or accountability failures. In reality, they reflect an organisation that has constrained leadership to too few places.

The organisation is not short of leaders. It is short of leadership.

Why leadership is often misinterpreted

In response, organisations frequently double down on familiar interventions.

Leadership development programmes aim to build resilience, decisiveness and influence. Role clarity initiatives attempt to sharpen accountability. Communication strategies seek to improve alignment. Each of these assumes that leadership can be strengthened by improving individuals.

These interventions are not misguided. They address real pressures experienced by people in leadership roles.

The difficulty is that they do not alter how leadership is distributed or enacted. They increase expectations on individuals without changing the system that shapes how sensing, decision-making and action occur. In some cases, they intensify strain by reinforcing the belief that leadership failure is personal rather than structural.

Leadership becomes something people are trained to perform, rather than something the organisation is designed to enable.

Reframing leadership in the organisation

If leadership is understood as an organisational capability rather than an individual attribute, then the leadership challenge must be reframed.

The focus shifts from developing heroic leaders to designing organisations in which sensing, deciding and acting are woven into everyday work. Authority, information and accountability must align with where understanding exists, rather than where hierarchy resides.

This does not eliminate the need for leaders. It changes what leadership means.

Leadership becomes less about directing the organisation toward a predefined future and more about enabling it to respond intelligently as conditions unfold. It is exercised through the system as much as through individuals.

What it would mean to design organisations where leadership is embedded rather than concentrated remains unresolved. What is increasingly clear is that under conditions of uncertainty, leadership cannot rest on a few shoulders alone.