Leading the future: three challenges that we cannot avoid
Farshad Arjomandí expresses it clearly: the leadership model inherited from the industrial era no longer serves us. That model, based on hierarchy and command-control, was useful in a world that valued predictability, linearity and mechanical efficiency. But today we live in another era. Digitisation advances more in twenty years than in an entire century. Globalisation is no longer just economic: it is political, cultural, social and technological. And what emerges from that combination is a world more complex and uncertain than ever.
Companies and organisations are still essential. They generate wealth and employment. But they also generate suffering when they fail to align people with a purpose, when they turn complexity into bureaucracy, when they reduce leadership to an exercise of power.
The real challenge of our time is how to produce change by minimising pain and maximising meaning.
Arjomandí raises three big questions — three challenges — that synthesise this transition towards a new leadership paradigm.
Extending them, deepening them and connecting them with practice is essential if we want to lead responsibly in the 21st century..
1. How to make the cultural transition
Changing from a hierarchical leadership to a more participatory and collective one is not an administrative decision. It’s a cultural process. And every cultural transition is uncomfortable because it touches the invisible: abilities, mindset, beliefs, values, purposes.
The dilemma is clear:
- Should it be done from top to bottom, with CEOs and CEOs pushing a new style?
- ¿Or from the bottom up, with teams that try new forms of collaboration and gradually transform the organisation?
The reality is that both vectors are necessary. Without institutional leadership that opens up spaces and protects cultural innovation, teams’ attempts are suffocating. But without an energy that springs from the bases — people who embody another way of working and deciding — the transformation becomes an empty discourse.
Making the transition means accepting the loss of control as the central axis of leadership. It means that the task is no longer to give all the answers, but to make it easier for others to build collective answers. It means that coherence matters more than charisma, and that conversational and shared learning habits are worth more than organisation charts.
In practice, change starts with simple but disruptive questions:
- What decisions can the team make directly without asking permission?
- What information should we share to make those decisions possible?
- What dynamics help us sustain trust and common purpose?
Each organisation will have its own rhythm, but all will have to go through the same curve: from control to trust, from obedience to shared responsibility.
2. What capacities do we need to build
it is not enough to proclaim a new leadership: we must develop concrete capacities that allow it to be implemented. Arjomandí underlines three fundamentals:
a) Reading reality
In a constantly changing world, leadership requires a systematic reading of the environment. It is not about accumulating information, but about identifying patterns, listening to weak signals and understanding what assumptions are expiring. A leader who does not know how to read reality condemns his organisation to live on autopilot, repeating yesterday’s solutions for tomorrow’s problems.
b) Managing complexity
The organisations of the industrial era were thought of as machines: pieces that fit, linear processes, manuals that describe everything. But today organisations look more like living ecosystems: interdependencies, feedbacks, non-linear dynamics. Managing complexity is learning to think in systems, to accept that we do not control all the variables, to design spaces where adaptability is worth more than rigidity.
The decisive step is to change the question: not how to build a perfect structure, but how to create conditions for the organisation to grow and develop as a living organism.
c) Continuous response
Reading reality without acting is irrelevant. Managing complexity without experimenting is immobility. The third ability is to respond recurrently, through cycles of planning, action and reflection. What we used to call continuous improvement today becomes a mode of learning: identify challenges, try quick responses, evaluate, refine, and start over.
These three capabilities are more valuable than any tool. And they are not acquired with a weekend course: they require training, perseverance and a willingness to unlearn as much as to learn.
3. How to lead when the organisation is not ready
he third challenge is the most intimate.
What happens when one understands the need for this new leadership, but works in an organisation that is still anchored in the managerial hierarchy? What happens when we want to change, but we don’t have “permission” to do so?
Arjomandí is clear: yes you can, but it is not easy.
It’s about leading small. To generate local changes, in the sphere of influence that we have, demonstrating that another way of doing things is possible and gives results..
This type of leadership “from within” is fragile, because it collides with inertia and resistance. But it is also powerful, because it infects and creates practical evidence.
Each team that is organised in a more participatory way is living proof that the model can change. Each collegiate decision that solves a problem better than the old command-control erodes the myth that “there is no alternative.”
The future of leadership will not depend only on visionary CEOs. Also of thousands of everyday leaders who, in every corner of their organisations, decide to act differently, even when the system is not yet prepared.
Towards a collegial leadership
The most disruptive thing about Arjomandí’s proposal is the idea of a collegial leadership.
In a world where complexity overflows any individual, continuing to rely on one-person leadership is a fiction. Neither in politics, nor in companies, nor in society is there someone who can, by himself, understand and decide everything.
Collegiate leadership is not lack of direction or eternal assembleism. It is a model where decisions emerge from diverse groups, capable of reading reality from multiple angles and holding responsibility together. It is a leadership that relies more on collective intelligence than on individual genius.
Travelling to it will not be immediate or easy. But it is the only way to give effective answers in a time of uncertainty and recurring crises..
Conclusion
The leadership of the future will not be a matter of charisma or power. It will be a matter of cultural, systemic and moral capacity.
The transition to more participatory leadership, the ability to read reality, manage complexity and respond continuously, and the courage to lead even when the organisation is not ready, are three challenges that we cannot avoid.
“The question is not whether we will make the change, but when and with what pain. Because the world has already changed. Now, it is our turn to change the leadership that accompanies it.”
HERE ARE MORE IDEAS OFFERED BY FARSHAD ARJOMANDÍ IN HIS TALK AT THE FIRST EBBF SUMMIT IN LATIN AMERICA:
About Farshad Arjomandí:
Farshad Arjomandi He was born in Iran and trained in his childhood and youth in Barcelona (Spain), he currently lives in Madrid. He is a member of the Bahá’í International Community.
After finishing his studies as an engineer, he specialised in development and human rights issues and worked in the field of NGOs. For 6 years he was responsible for the external relations of the Bahá’í Community of Spain. Subsequently, he worked for about 20 years in the private company performing managerial work and leading operational and commercial teams. Later, he worked as a consultant and trainer of organisations, as well as a managerial and team coach.
He currently works as regional director of Iberia of Kidde Global Solutions.
He has been a professor of the Master of Neuromanagement at the Rey Juan Carlos University. He has collaborated in research projects with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, the Basque Country and the Public University of Navarra, which have resulted in articles published in international journals and publications.
He has participated in the United Nations World Development Summit, and for many years has given lectures on topics related to peace, human rights, social and economic development, leadership, values education and the management of personal, social and organisational transformation.
