Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ.

— by Sharron L. McPherson

Christian Leadership in the 4th Industrial Revolution:

Equipping and Enabling Christ-Followers to Lead in the Age of Disruption

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” (Albert Einstein)

No industry or organization is immune to the impact of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Whether we are leading in business, government, arts and entertainment, health, or education the question remains, “In our quest to be effective leaders, how do we develop a biblically-based approach to appreciate what has gone before and what has worked, whilst keeping an eye towards the future as we build a new paradigm for leadership that is capable of meeting the challenges we face today?” 

Moving Beyond Management Theory to Understanding Christian Leadership in the Age of Disruption

To “disrupt,” especially within the tech industry, has been a trending term in the last few years. At its most basic level, the term means to change the way people think, or the way things are done, usually in a business setting. Disruption can destroy or change existing markets by producing a better alternative to existing products or services; it can even change the face of entire industries. Innovation is closely linked to disruption, but they are not the same thing. 

Although it’s trending, disruption theory is not new. In fact, it’s been around for decades. The father of disruption theory, Harvard’s Clay Christensen, has become one of today's most influential modern management thinkers, in part due to his 1997 book, The Innovator's Dilemma. In this book Christensen details his theory of “disruptive innovation”—explaining how smart incumbents are toppled by upstarts in an era of fast technological change. Christensen’s concepts are widely cited in Silicon Valley and across a wide variety of fields, including education, journalism, management consulting, and increasingly in leadership training and coaching. 

As disruption theory continues to trend, a host of incumbents and challengers are facing off. Each of these has a different view about which business growth and organizational development strategy will be most effective in this current phase of the computer age that we call the disruption age, or the “4th Industrial Revolution” (4IR). These theoretical approaches all have one thing in common: they rely on historical lessons grounded in business management theory. I believe that in the age of disruption, this approach is fundamentally flawed. The successes we have managed to gain from reliance on historical ways of thinking are precisely what will hinder our capacity to survive and thrive in the disruption age.

It makes no sense trying to learn new ways of thinking so we can grow our organizations differently without addressing the state of consciousness that has created many of the challenges we’re now facing. Essentially, there needs to be a paradigm shift in the entire approach. If disruption is as an idea that literally uproots and changes how we think, behave, do business, learn, and go about our day-to-day, then our approach to dealing with such phenomena will require a fundamental shift in our consciousness. Only then will we be able to create new ways of thinking that engender transformative approaches that, in turn, will enable us to conceptualize, develop, and implement new business models that are right for the emerging new economic paradigm we now call 4IR. 

4IR is forcing us to face challenges without precedent in human history. Disruptive technologies are themselves converging and accelerating (i.e., artificial intelligence converges with mechanics and things that move to create robotics). Technological acceleration is driving and being driven by a host of VUCA factors that can include climate change, pandemics, globalization, and the rise of populism, trade wars, immigration, the changing notions of work, and technology unemployment. As a result of the stress caused by 4IR and the scarcity of natural resources, global conflicts will continue to worsen. These challenges require a fundamental transformation of leadership and followership because the leadership models that worked in the past are insufficient to face the current situation. Without clearly recognizing it, corporate and public leaders are challenged by external forces to build a radically new leadership culture from the ground up.

This new culture of leadership must redefine the leadership paradigm to enable us to deal creatively with rapid change, uncertainty, global interconnectivity, de-centralization, and greater demands for ethics and meaning from members of organizations and institutions. This VUCA environment requires more than just new thinking, new metaphors, new assumptions, and a relook at the values that have been driving our leadership theories to date. What is required is not “retooling,” but rather “transformation” from the ground up. 
There is no more powerful model for such a paradigm shift than for us as Christ-followers to imitate God as the great Creator. He clearly showed us the way to make order out of chaos in Genesis 1. The leadership revolution in Christendom will not be driven by scientific thinking, quantum physics, chaos, or complexity science. Instead, the global vacuum in leadership is an opportunity for Christ-followers to demonstrate how to lead in a VUCA world by doing what we do best—imitating Christ. The remaining question is, “How are we failing and what can do about it”?

The Emergence of New Leadership Paradigms

Because of our biology, innate characteristics, and socialization, we are all initially predisposed to adopt certain leadership styles. In 4IR people are desperate for strong leaders. It is precisely why we are seeing the re-emergence of the global charismatic leader—short on content/character, but strong on championship/conviction. Unfortunately, 4IR is requiring more of us than just a return to historical notions of leadership that may have served us well in bygone eras— but “business as usual” does not work in an era where business is not usual. Yet most Christian leaders across all societal pillars have fallen in line behind strong, clueless leaders because the followers lack the courage to stand up and exemplify what it really means to be made in the image of the living God. As Christ-followers we are not called to follow the trends. We are called to be trend-setters.

Conclusion

Christ said He came so we might have an abundant life. He came to serve, not to be served. Today we are presented with unparalleled opportunities to create an abundant future. The same VUCA factors that are creating challenges are also creating unparalleled opportunities. What remains to be seen is whether Christian thought leaders today have the capacity to move beyond innovation (which has always been a focus of new companies anyway), through disruption theory (startups challenging the status quo and learning how to do things faster, better and cheaper), to what will bring about fundamental transformation of existing systems. Do we have what it takes to disrupt poverty, pandemics, lack of access to nutritional food, clean water, and energy? Disruptive tech is creating tremendous opportunities. But if our level of consciousness of who we are in Christ prevents us from utilizing the opportunities we have to create a more just and sustainable future, then we’re missing the point entirely. 

The insanely simple solution is to look at how God created order out of chaos. It starts with creativity:

Creativity is part of our mandate as image-bearers. It is easy to overlook the mandate to create contained in Genesis 1:28. But man, as God’s image-bearer (Gen: 1:26-27), is a fundamentally a creative being. Cultivating this creativity is part of our conformity to God’s image.

Creativity enables us to apply biblical truths to VUCA situations. The Scripture is our absolute authority Anything that enables us to connect biblical truth to daily life is to be valued. Sometimes applying Scripture is straightforward and obvious. Other times it takes creative thinking to bring the truth to bear upon an everyday life that can be fraught with uncertainty and ambiguity.

Creativity improves our problem-solving. 4IR problems demand intelligent solutions, and intelligent solutions require creativity. If we continue to approach exponential problems with the linear solutions being peddled by people who should know better, then we should not be surprised when we fail. On the other hand, when we face our challenges with the freshness of our God-given creative powers, successful solutions will emerge.

Creativity enhances our leadership and our ability to minister to others. Creativity is demanded of leaders. Our ability to point the way forward and to encourage people to follow is partly dependent upon our creative ability. Motivation, insight, vision, decision-making, problem-solving—all the traits we associate with leaders—are improved by creativity. Creativity, in other words, is essential for effective leadership in 4IR. So, why aren’t we able to imitate God and create intelligent solutions to address some of the challenges we face in the age of disruption? The answer is: lack of consciousness. A perfect example is Silicon Valley, home to some of the most intelligent (and richest) people on our planet. Yet, San Francisco – just down the road – has streets that are filthier than some of the world’s poorest slums. Obviously, just being smart is not enough to lead effectively.

Throughout Ecclesia and for centuries we have been teaching about salvation. But we have failed miserably as Christ-followers to develop a doctrine of transformation that will enable us to do as Paul encouraged in Romans 12:2 – be transformed by a renewed mind, understand what your gifts are, get to work serving others using these gifts and in so doing – prove what is the perfect will of God. We are called to be courageous, to be bold, to lead – to make life better – here and now. But that journey must start within first. Christ never gave a single person something that he didn’t have himself. In the same vein, we will never be able to exemplify the real power and influence over the circumstances that we’re facing globally if we don’t start with the mandate to be transformed. The good news is that we are learning.

Today, we can (and do) talk about science, technology and the need to raise a Christian CEO’s level of consciousness without being kicked out of the C-Suite. And we’re using our whole brains (the ones God gave us) to bring together perspectives from a number of complementary disciplines found in the business creativity movement; traditional strategy consulting; the new product development perspective of industrial design firms; qualitative consumer/customer research; futures research found in think tanks and traditional and divergent scenario planning; and organizational development (OD) practices – together with Christian thought leadership – to examine the effectiveness of an organization’s culture, processes and structures. We’ve learned that we still need to consult the usual consumer, market trend and competitive analyses, but to quickly look beyond them to forge creative solutions that are inspired not by McKinsey – but by Scripture.

Finally, we’re learning that to truly inspire catalytic breakthrough growth, we ourselves have to be “mavericky” and entrepreneurial. Our approach by design must be rooted in a provocative, “all-things-possible with God” perspective that demands radical rethinking, challenges the status quo and calls for us to consistently dig deeper to the place where values are born; to our consciousness. We’ve gone quantum. 
And that’s exactly how God created the earth.

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1) The Fourth Industrial Revolution can be described as the advent of “cyber-physical systems” involving entirely new capabilities for people and machines. While these capabilities are reliant on the technologies and infrastructure of the Third Industrial Revolution, the Fourth Industrial Revolution represents entirely new ways in which technology becomes embedded within societies and even our human bodies. The term was coined by Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder of the World Economic Forum. See: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/what-is-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/

2) The VUCA concept was first introduced in the early 90s by the US Army War College to refer to the multilateral world that emerged after the end of the Cold War and was characterised as being more Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous than ever before. For more information on VUCA, see: https://www.oxfordleadership.com/leadership-challenges-v-u-c-world/

3) https://www.businessinsider.com/why-is-san-francisco-so-dirty-2018-2?IR=T

4) See, https://www.amazon.com/Gifts-Greatness-Maximizing-Meaning-Transformation/dp/0615352634, for developments in the doctrine of transformation and understanding your Motivational Gifting.

[Special thanks to Donald Giannatti for the cover photo]