Leading Social Transformations: Creating Public Value and Advancing the Common Good

This essay explores what is involved in leading a social transformation to create public value and advance the common good. The contrast here is with strategic leadership of organizations, collaborations, and social movements. Leading a social transformation is much bigger. The required changes are multi-issue, multi-level, multi-organizational, and cross-sectoral, and can cross national frontiers. Deep and broad changes, often involving radical innovations, are needed. Deep and abiding changes in relationships - and power relationships - among people and groups are required. Leadership of organizations, collaborations, and social movements is still important for transformation, but not enough. Instead, advancing social transformation requires leadership that is deeply relational, visionary, political, adaptive, and comfortable with complexity. MAD statement If one views leadership as a response to challenges, leading social transformation is a crucial element needed to address the most significant challenges - the 'grand challenges' - the world faces. For example, transformations (and their opposition) are underway in terms of how much of the world approaches climate change and inequality. The leadership involved in each case has been multi-issue, multi-level, multi-organizational, and cross-sectoral, as well as multi-generational, multi-ethic, and multi-gendered. The essay explores what seems to be involved in successful societal transformation - in conjunction with strategic leadership of organizations and leading collaborations, coalition building, and advocacy.