30 Leading with NLP
The business writer and consultant Rosabeth Moss Kanter
has beautifully summed up the situation: ‘The mean time be-
tween decisions is greater than the mean time between
surprises.’ By the time you make a decision, based on what
you know, the situation may have changed, and your deci-
sion may not fit the new conditions. Your business may be
perfectly geared to solving yesterday’s problems. What
makes the difference is how quickly you can obtain and eval-
uate information. And the people on the spot are in the best
position to do that. So now managers at every level need the
confidence and skills to make decisions and to be able to fos-
ter those qualities in those they manage. They need to be
able to manage knowledge. The new model of leadership fits
in perfectly.
Even in the army, for example, appearances are deceptive.
In critical situations of combat, team or project leaders are
nearly always the most competent people for the job. They
may be the highest ranking, but not necessarily so. The more
dangerous the situation, the more competence rises over
rank. In life or death situations, anyone who pulls rank over
ability will lose. The lower the risk, the more formal author-
ity becomes the normal way of operating. In no-risk
conditions, during peacetime army training, say, the lines of
authority are unquestioned. So even the army, with its vast
tradition and publications on discipline and lines of com-
mand, recognizes that in a tight corner, the person best
fitted to the job must lead. Leadership through knowledge
takes over from leadership through authority.
The military metaphor of attack and defence does have a
place, but in a strategic frame: outwitting and outflanking
competitors in a battle of intelligence rather than big battal-
ions. Survival of the fittest is a good description of how
companies that adapt best to their environment survive
and prosper (although ‘survival of the fittingest’ would be
more accurate). Linked to this is the idea of co-evolution –
businesses co-evolve, they do not evolve on their own, they
change and influence each other in a network. No business
changes in isolation – as one market opens, another contracts,