Purpose
Most organizations experience the complexity and tensions between producing and innovating. In order to adapt to the future, these organizations need enabling leadership that creates adaptive space to facilitate and enable the necessary change process for renewal. This ability is necessary for 21st century TQM, i.e., the Emergence TQM paradigm. Guiding images such as metaphors have been suggested to support transformative change, but have only received limited research. This paper investigates the role of guiding images as a facilitating tool for leading organizational adaptability and contribute to future leadership practices of QM.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper studies three cases of organizations that were under pressure from the outside to make decisions about how to innovate. The paper studies the management team at each organization while they tackle tensions and make decisions about what to do while using a generative image to support the leadership process. The researchers gained access to key meetings to study the processes through observations that were later analyzed with the use of storyboards.
Findings
The leadership processes of handling organizational adaptability can be facilitated by guiding images. The images can be generated while managers experience tension and can help support the leadership processes of conflicting and connecting. Three types of guiding images were identified.
Originality/value
The paper contributes with practical knowledge about how to enabling organizational adaptability by supporting enabling leadership processes. Furthermore, the paper contributes to complex adaptive leadership theory in the context of quality management.