Mary Parker Follett and the Operating System Built for Complexity
In the early 1900s, Follett understood something profound:
People are not machines, and organizations are not factories. They are deeply social systems where meaning, power, purpose, and creativity flow between human beings.
Here are her three ideas that matter most today:
1. Power-Over vs. Power-With
Follett argued that “power-over” creates compliance, fear, and resistance.
“Power-with” creates co-creation and shared ownership.
Power-with is not soft leadership.
It is leadership built for complexity.
When the world is unpredictable, you need other minds. You need the friction of diverse perspectives. You need the collective intelligence of a group.
Power-with is the basis for the OS of adaptive leadership.
2. The Law of the Situation
Follet said:
We do not take orders from people; we take orders from the situation.
The “situation” is the combined reality of:
Context
Constraints
Purpose
Needs
System forces
Stakeholders
Emerging patterns
This principle frees leadership from ego and hierarchy. It demands curiosity, inquiry, listening, and learning.
The Law of the Situation asks:
What is the situation trying to tell us?
What don’t we yet understand?
What assumptions must we challenge?
What must we learn together?
Who sees something I don’t?
In today’s world—where no one is truly an expert because everything is shifting—leaders must stop pretending they “have the answer” and instead cultivate collective awareness.
3. Integration Through Difference
Follett believed that diversity is not a compliance checkbox. It is the engine of better problem-solving.
Differences, she wrote, are not obstacles—they are raw material. Through honest engagement, different perspectives “rub against each other” until they produce the polished, integrated idea that none of us would have reached on our own.
This is not domination.
This is not a compromise.
This is integration.
It is the genesis of innovation.
Why Follett Was Overlooked—And Why Her Time Has Come
In her era, she was probably dismissed for three reasons:
She centered the social and psychological elements of leadership long before anyone thought they mattered.
She emphasized power-sharing in a world obsessed with top-down authority.
She was a woman in a field gatekept by male industrialists.
Yet business leaders who actually listened to her—like the early founders of the Peter Drucker school of management—recognized that she was articulating the future.
What she described a century ago is now validated by complexity science, organizational psychology, and adaptive leadership research.
We are finally catching up to her.
Where We Go From Here
The leadership OS that shaped the 20th century—Taylorism—was optimized for a mechanical world.
The leadership OS needed for the 21st century—Follett’s—was optimized for a human world.
That world has arrived:
AI is accelerating complexity.
Human relationships determine innovation.
Collaboration beats control.
No one has the whole picture.
Wisdom emerges through interaction.
Follett gives us the blueprint:
Power-with, not power-over.
Shared inquiry, not centralized expertise.
Integration, not domination or compromise.
The Law of the Situation is our compass.
She gives us a Leadership OS that honors the intelligence in the room—and multiplies it.
Her century has come.