Cascading Leadership — a new way for transformative change

The “Cascade du Rouget” in Dream Valley.

Last summer, on the way down from an amazing overnight traverse hiking three mountain passes with my three sons and my friend, the amazing guide Arno de Jong, we came to this waterfall.

The term cascade in this form typically refers to a series of waterfalls falling in stages. More generally, the term cascade means:

“a process whereby something, typically information or knowledge, is successively passed on.”

Today I am sharing a method I have developed over time for achieving truly transformative change in an organisation. I call it “Cascading Leadership”.

Cascading Leadership

We all know the model of the charismatic leader (eg Steve Jobs) who has a powerful vision and, almost messianically, is able to both engage and align everyone in their organisation around this so powerfully that they all move powerfully and in the same direction and quickly align around how to achieve it.

However, this type of “top-down” leadership is increasingly shown to be too simplistic and often far less effective than it may once have been.

So, what method can you use instead that is shown to be effective?