Open Heart: Open Mind

Those men and women inhabiting the corridors of corporate and government power and who practise obsolete forms of leadership are bluffing. They cannot resolve the most critical issues of our time. If they could, they would have done so by now. This book is based on the premise that an organization’s ongoing success will be shaped by people exhibiting a very different suite of leadership competencies than prevail in most organizations today. Five Literacies leaders recognize that new ways of understanding, analyzing and responding to change is required in business, and that this also demands a different style of leadership. This style is characterized by a shift from short-term, anthropomorphic, narrowly economic and control-orientated thinking to a longer-term, systems-based, evolutionary perspective where humankind is but a part of the global ecosystem. The key to such leadership is reintegrating human knowledge, and posing sharper and more perceptive questions based on an appreciation of the interdependent, ever-shifting dynamic between issues (content) and the framework in which those things interact (context). Open Heart - Open Mind is a primer for business executives who want to access and practice Five Literacies leadership in their own organizations.