Thesis 2: We need to upgrade our inner human operating systems

In a more digital world, we must be more human

Digital operating systems can help with, and even supremely take over, more and more of the leadership tasks that require analytical logical power and the synthesis of data and knowledge, as well as tasks that can be predictably automated and controlled. Our inner human operating system, by contrast, can do something that digital systems cannot, and which until now in leadership we have simply taken for granted rather than consciously developed.

Over the last 100 years, leadership thinking and tools have broadly pursued a 'planning and optimisation' track, in the form of, for example, best practice, seven-step recipes, top-down budgeting and KPI management, which is insufficient, and often directly counterproductive when we need to lead in the complex and unpredictable circumstances that our times are increasingly characterised by.

To succeed in leading and developing our organisations better in a time full of crises and transformation across all planes, we need to upgrade the capacity for engaged co-creation, with many stakeholders involved — where we find workable paths forward through curious dialogue, and by experimenting our way through a cycle of interactive testing in an ever-changing reality. This calls for an upgrade of our inner human operating systems.

Which unique human qualities should we develop and base leadership on?

In our view, the following human capacities and qualities are unique and fundamental for exercising good leadership generally, but especially when we need to create solutions together with others in areas that are unfamiliar and cannot be calculated in advance:

1. Relation — to have a basic sense and experience of being part of a larger context, which we care about, and to which we have significance.
2. Being — to sense mood, energy and feelings, and to establish human contact and empathy, and create harmony in our relationship with ourselves and one another.
3. Thinking — to think critically and creatively, see connections, create meaning and imagine a desirable future, and continuously expand and reconstruct our understanding of the current reality we are in.
4. Collaboration — to express ourselves and respond engagedly in the co-creation of shared solutions, for which everyone takes their share of responsibility.
5. Action — to improvise, renew and develop our actions and behaviour patterns, so that we also in practice realise our good intentions and desired results — without knowing in advance exactly how.

A model of the human inner operating system

The above five capacities indicate a particular quality in our personal or cultural way of 1) relating, 2) being, 3) thinking, 4) collaborating and 5) acting. They match a model of the inner human operating system which consists of these five parts, which are constantly running and playing together 'unconsciously' in the background at a very basic level: we relate to something, which creates a sensation, feeling, mood, impulse; we think and connect it with something to make sense of it; we choose how we will respond to it in interaction with others (or inner representations of others); we act and experience an effect, which becomes the start of a new cycle.

The five parts play together in a continuous circular process, which is constantly unfolding both within each of us, but also socially and culturally between us. Most of the time we are not at all conscious and aware of it. We are preoccupied with the objects that we use our operating system to navigate in relation to.

With the metaphor 'inner operating system' we point to two things: just as on our smartphone, it is all the applications we see and are preoccupied with, whilst the underlying operating system for most people is not in focus, and is taken for granted. Secondly, we point with the metaphor to the fact that the inner human operating system can be upgraded. And beyond continuous improvements, the upgrade can involve quantum leaps like those we saw with the transition from DOS to Windows to the Internet.

Put the inner operating system into upgrade gear

By becoming more aware of how our inner operating system works, we can deliberately work to upgrade it, so that we strengthen our ability to navigate complexity and unpredictability.

Inner operating systems can also have imbalances, so they are overfocused on, for example, rational thinking and action, whilst contact with senses and feelings is shut down and collaborative relationships suffer. In the other ditch, operating systems can be overfocused on having a good time together, so that critical thinking and courageous engagement with unhelpful behaviour patterns are shut down. Finally, our inner operating systems, both personally and culturally, are shaped by some very fundamental assumptions about how we stand in relation to ourselves, each other, and the rest of the world. When we become aware of that level and challenge what we otherwise take for granted, we can achieve genuine paradigm shifts and quantum leaps in our functioning.

Our thesis is that we are in a time and with challenges where we need to consciously upgrade our inner operating systems personally and culturally.