The Integrators ― The Next Evolution in Leadership, Knowledge and Value Creation

In the 1970s and 1980s a new breed of management writers emerged, with a view to taking management theory, and practice, onto the next level of its evolution. However, in spite of the rich and innovative thought-leadership that developed in those decades, somewhere along the way, the world of management and enterprise, took a wrong turn at the dawn of the nineties. In other words, while certain writers acted as a transitional influence, reacting against the ’analytical management’ of old, the powers that be went backwards rather than forward, leadership and entrepreneurship (including social entrepreneurship) being a regressive rather than a progressive development. As such, the author in an attempt to take the management agenda forward, duly influenced in the 1980s like so many others by the ’east’, drew on the Indian energy system to co-evolve a variegated approach to management that included leadership and entrepreneurship, but also much more. Here, the author takes the reader into a psychological (spectral), and a cultural (integral) journey, set alongside individual, organizational and societal learning and innovation in each case. Such a journey will serve to both differentiate and integrate, thereby bringing about managerial and enterprise unity-in-variety. Lessem transcends both standardized notions of management and also unduly personalized approaches to leadership and entrepreneurship that are universally applied to all-comers in all cultures. The outcome of such will be the introduction of Integrators in the 21st Century to replace leaders, managers and entrepreneurs from the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Ronnie Lessem was born in Zimbabwe of central European parentage, and graduated from Harvard Business School and the London School of Economics. He has written some 30 books, the last six together with Alexander Schieffer, on self, organizational and societal development from a transcultural, transformational perspective. He has also been an international management consultant in Europe and America, India and Africa for three decades.