Sensing the System: How Aesthetic Sensibility can Enhance Leaders’ Capacity to Navigate Complex Systems

Abstract

This article makes the case that sensing a system provides vital information about a system's health, where it might be stuck, and how energy might more easily flow through it. Furthermore, rather than requiring computer simulations or performance management systems more commonly used to assess a system's health, our bodies have amazing capacities of sensing which can be put to use within whatever system we are part of, and whenever we choose to do so.

The piece proceeds as follows: I will begin by identifying aspects of systems and comment on the extent to which they are readily discerned. I will then move on to describe in a bit more detail what I mean by aesthetic sensibility, and how it can be used to glean important information about the systems we navigate. Finally, I will end by offering activities which you can play with in order to develop your own capacity to sense the systems of which you are a part.

Department

Leadership, Management & Business

Journal

Journal of Leadership Studies

Volume

15

Issue

2

Publication Date

2021

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1002/jls.21771

Link to Article

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