As a complexity leadership scholar, the past year has been witness to what we and complexity theorists in the organizational sciences have been saying since the 1990s: the world is increasing in complexity and if we are to keep up with it, we must apply new ways of thinking (Anderson, 1999; Stacey, 1995; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). Traditional top-down and ‘hero’ models of leadership help us know what it is like to lead on an individual basis as a manager having to motivate and inspire a subordinate, or a CEO having to position an organizational strategically. They do not, however, capture the lived experience of navigating leadership in a complex world. For this we must better understand how leadership enables people and organizations for adaptability (Uhl-Bien and Arena, 2018).

The good news is that businesses largely get it. The complexity of the past decades has forced business organizations to be lean and agile. As a result, when the pandemic hit, they were able to pivot and rapidly implement adaptive solutions to complex challenges: remote work in business, telehealth in medicine, online education in schools, and expanded takeout and ghost kitchens in the restaurant industry. The bad news is that public-sector and political leadership lag behind. Many still largely operate in outdated governance and political systems mired in bureaucracy and cronyism that work against collaborating for the greater good, resulting in countless unnecessary deaths and a traumatized healthcare workforce – the consequences of which we will be dealing with for years. For all those who argue that leadership doesn’t matter, 2020 proves them wrong: leadership can be, literally, the difference between life and death.

作为一名复杂性领导力学者，过去的一年见证了我们和组织科学领域的复杂性理论家自 1990 年代以来一直在说的话：世界变得越来越复杂，如果我们要跟上它，我们必须应用新的方法思考 (Anderson, 1999 ; Stacey, 1995 ; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007）。传统的自上而下和“英雄”领导模型帮助我们了解在个人基础上领导是什么感觉，因为经理必须激励和激励下属，或者 CEO 必须战略性地定位组织。然而，它们并没有捕捉到在复杂世界中驾驭领导力的生活经验。为此，我们必须更好地了解领导力如何使人和组织具有适应性（Uhl-Bien 和 Arena，2018 年）。

好消息是企业在很大程度上得到了它。过去几十年的复杂性迫使商业组织变得精益和敏捷。因此，当大流行来袭时，他们能够调整并快速实施适应性解决方案以应对复杂的挑战：商业中的远程工作、医学中的远程医疗、学校的在线教育以及餐饮业中扩大的外卖和幽灵厨房。坏消息是公共部门和政治领导层落后。许多人仍然在过时的治理和政治体系中运作，这些体系和政治体系深陷官僚主义和任人唯亲的泥潭，不利于为了更大的利益而进行合作，导致无数不必要的死亡和医疗工作者的创伤——我们将多年来应对其后果。对于所有那些认为领导力无关紧要的人来说，