[The Poetics of Leadership]
By Len Hjalmarson

This past year I have been reflecting on leadership as listening. Along the way I’ve been wondering, “what makes the difference?” Why are some more inclined to listen, and to what are they tuned? Why the difference?

And notice.. to be “attuned” to anything is to exclude other things. There is a connection between leadership and difference. Furthermore, to notice difference one must be in some sense on the margins. As the authors of Surfing the Edge of Chaos note,

“Edges are important to life: in fact, we are drawn to them. They define a frontier that tells us we are about to venture father than we have ever gone before. “As long as one operates in the middle of things,” states science writer William Thompson, “one can never really know the nature in which one moves.”

“The visual cortex of our brain directs our eyes to look for edges, helping us to distinguish figure from background and consequently get our bearings..” (67)

Now you may be hearing other echoes. The first is Gregory Bateson and his reflections on information: “information is difference that makes a difference.” If there is no difference, then information doesn’t inform: it is merely noise.

The second one who ran along a parallel track is Father Jacques. He coined a new word: différance. He notes that différance is neither a word, nor a concept. Words and concepts are themselves différance from other words and concepts and this gives différance its meaning. That would give me the sense that differance is somehow transcendental: but Derrida denies this. Wikipedia explains like this:

The word “house” derives its meaning more as a function of how it differs from “shed”, “mansion”, “hotel”, “building”, “hovel”, “hours”, “hows”, “horse”, etc. etc., than how the word “house” may be tied to a certain image of a traditional house. Not only are the differences between the words relevant here, but the differentials between the images signified are also covered by différance. Deferral also comes into play, as the words that occur following “house” in any expression will revise the meaning of that word, sometimes dramatically so.

Thus, complete meaning is always postponed in language; there is never a moment when meaning is complete and total.

If complete meaning is always postponed, then it is always coming into being and never simply here or there. (Can you hear echoes of Jesus teaching on the kingdom of God?) Yet somehow leaders are tuned to difference, and perhaps to becoming. Leadership is somehow anchored in the future as much as in the present.

Do leaders, then, function similarly to a lens that focuses light? In Surfing the authors claim that leaders focus intention. But in what direction and to what end do they focus it? How do they choose which elements to focus? Leaders are somehow tuned to difference.

A few different images have been playing in my mind around this focus and intention. The first is the VLA. The Very Large Array is featured in the movie “Contact,” and consists of 27 independent radio antennae west of Sirocco, New Mexico. All these large antennae are pointed at the heavens, and they collect huge amounts of information via radio waves. Not all the information they collect is useful. In a sense, what determines the utility or even meaning of the information they collect is the question they are assigned to address. The lens that focuses the information, allowing it to make a difference, is the leader or team leading a particular project.

A second image is the laser beam. Lasers are unusual instruments. They gain their particular power by taking light and focusing it into coherent rays. The light is focused through a lens: the lens in the laser collects light. In the first lasers the lens was a ruby, and that’s why in early science fiction laser beams were always colored red. Without that focus, the light had no particular power - it made no difference.

Or think of the crystal in the early radios. It collected radio waves and allowed a signal to be separated out from all the background noise (other signals) and then translated into sound waves that could be heard and understood.

There are a number of things about these analogies that interest me. First is that they begin with many sources, a lot of information - many “listeners” or collectors. The many are what give the system its great potential. 27 lenses in the VLA give it incredible listening power or “resolution” that two or three dishes would lack. Second is that the many are then interpreted or focused by one or a few. Sometimes leadership is as simple as noticing and articulating what has only been vaguely apprehended.

The third thing is this whole notion of “in formation.” To be in-formed is to be inwardly formed. Leadership, like lenses, makes a difference. By choosing attention .. and sometimes shifting focus.. leadership disturbs a system, bringing change.

“Leaders are to a social system what a properly shaped lens is to light. They focus intention and do so for better or for worse. If adaptive intention is required, the social system must be disturbed in a profound and prolonged fashion. Magnifying a threat or utilizing organizational devices to propagate “genetic diversity” then becomes important.” (Surfing, 40)