Companies Do Not Transform. PeopleDo.
Visual via Midjourney
Organizations everywhere are struggling with change and seeking new ways to grow especially in these Tectonic Times .
Many specialists help them find a way forward.
A cavalcade of consultants, convey and communicate with countless charts, a curated combination of choices to the C-Suite.
A flurry of futurists frame, focus, and filter the way forward with the finesse of fortune tellers.
Masters of the Universe market M&A moves that might make multiples move upwards and manufacture many millions in market-cap.
PR professionals produce and promote points of view that position and polish to provoke the press to perceive with pristine perspectives.
While all of this may be important none of these will work without growing and changing the people in the organization.
While firms are a collection of ideas, technologies, patents, brands, ecosystems and people, it is people who are the the key. Because it is the people who create the ideas, technologies, patents, brands and eco-systems!
And in today’s AI age the technology itself is not a differentiator since everyone builds on the same half a dozen foundational models. It is the Humans who combines with the Alien Intelligence ( a better description of AI) that produce the distinctiveness and differentiation which drives value creation.
1. People and Organization the real challenge.
Michael Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face”.
Boards and leadership of firms come quickly to the realization that everything is easy until people get in the way.
Today, all over the world is there is deep concern among people in many organizations that AI is a threat to their livelihoods. Richard Edelman earlier this week at a dinner that Terence Kawaja invited us to after the announcement of the AI Lumascape (take a look it has created quite a stir) handed me the latest Edelman’s Trust Barometer flash poll which is worth reading. Here is the link to the report and one of the slides is reprinted above.
Whether it is Accenture, Bain, BCG, Deloitte or McKinsey, they all appear to be aligned that AI transformation will primarily be about people and organizations and not technology. Here is a great piece on Julie Sweet the CEO of Accenture on the need for reinvented leadership.
Telling people that change is good, threatening them with job loss if they do not change or creating communication materials and slogans to goad them into a cult like devotion to the new dear leader or the way forward rarely works in the short run and will likely fail after the threat of flagellation fades.
Too many companies are focussing on efficiency, effectiveness and enterprise technology versus talent.
Because, if there is nothing in it for them, people will out-wit, out-wait, out-pretend, and out-maneuver “management”. Until then they will fill the time genuflecting and bowing and going through the monitored motions of attending the right meetings, muttering the motivational mantras and stating the slogans required.
Today 67 percent of GenZ employees have a side gig with which they generate income, using the salary from their “main job” to create new options for themselves. After all , for 60 dollars a month anybody at any level, can have the latest Google, Open AI and Anthropic tools that run circles around what they are allowed to use at work. These tools provide all of us with cost effective and fast ways to launch AI first businesses with talent of any type (Agentic employees galore) and humans distributed anywhere in the world.
If we want our organization or our teams to grow and change we will need to deliver answers to four questions to our teams:
Why are the recommended changes good for them?
How can it help them grow ?
What are the monetary or other incentives to change?
When and where will training be provided to help them learn the new skills needed?
Change does not happen because of M&A, press Releases, re-organizations, or announcing an Open AI or some other AI partnership.
An organization changes and grows when the people in the organization change and grow.
Visual via Midjourney
2. There are two ways to change an organization: Get people to change or change the people.
What are the key ingredients that helped drive the successful transformation of companies including very large ones like Walmart and Microsoft?
Both firms had “lifers” take over as the CEO after years of each company roaming in the wilderness. They both succeeded in rejuvenating their firms by combining two different approaches:
A) Upgrading the mindset of a majority of the people at the firm.
This is best seen by the changes Satya Nadella has made at Microsoft which including moving from a “know it all mindset” to a “growth mindset”, a focus on enterprise and business professionals, a shift to openness and cloud and the elimination of the Windows Operating division. He also engineered a move away from a prickly approach of a “We vs the World” mindset to the embrace of the everything in the world including Linux with the purchase of GitHub to the Open AI investment and the hiring of Mustafa Suleyman from Google.
Through it all the focus has been on new behaviors and mindsets of people including top level and key talent.
B) A recruitment of key outsiders and high-level leaders and an investment in new people and skills.
This can be seen at Walmart. Doug McMillon who just announced his retirement, completely re-imagined the company through a combination of bringing in outsiders with acquisitions such as Jet, Flipkart, Vizio and most recently Dan Danker from Instacart to lead AI initiatives and launching highly profitable new lines of business such as Walmart Connect. But a major emphasis was als made in investing in current employees with better pay and job flexibility combined with a significant number of initiatives to up-skill employees including a one billion dollar investment in Walmart Academy.
Central to changes at both these companies ( whose market value have increased four fold (Walmart) and ten fold (Microsoft) in a decade under these leaders ) are that they combine revitalized/new leadership, a re-defined strategy and or organization with an emphasis on investing in growing and helping as many employees as possible transform themselves.
A new strategy, a new leader and a new organization are often necessary, but they are never sufficient to regain growth and manage change. To achieve this aim it is critical that the rank and file needs to be communicated with, incentivized and trained to change and grow.
Visual via Gemini Nano Banana Pro
3. The Six C’s Required of Modern Talent.
Today like never before we are living in a world of rapid transformation and change.
New industries rise and fall and the inter-connected unstoppable forces of globalization, demographic change and technology twist and toss all of us.
In this landscape how do we train talent or hone our own skills?
What will remain relevant and in demand in an age of shorter and shorter half-lives of firms and business models?
Six key skills will be essential in the future. Three of these have to do with the individual (Cognition, Creativity, Curiosity) and three on how we connect with each other and the world outside our minds including working with Agentic employees and AI Tools (Collaborate, Communicate, Convince).
Cognition is simply learning to think and keeping our mental operating system constantly upgraded. This requires deliberate practice and sustained work. Improved cognition is achievable.
Creativity is connecting dots in new ways, looking beyond the obvious and this skill will be key as AI powered computers, data crunch and co-relate faster than we ever will. To be human is to be creative. Creativity as vividly described by Sir John Hegarty is “an expression of oneself”.
Curiosity is simply being alive to possibilities, questioning the status quo and asking two questions. What If ? And Why Not ? Today the key competitor or opportunity in any category comes from outside it. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but the lack of curiosity may kill the the careers of many people.
Being cognitively gifted, creative and curious will not be enough since we are living in a connected world where eco-systems, teams and linkages are how ideas are born, value created, and long-term careers forged. It is a world where we will need to combine with five types of employees in a firm ( Full-time, Free-lance, Contract, Fractionalized and Agentic). To do so we will need to hone, build and train for three other skills:
Collaborate: Collaboration is key to work in a world where API’s (Application Protocol Interfaces) and MCP’s (Machine Context Protocols) are not just about handshakes or conversations between technology but also between individuals with different skills, teams in different countries, partners, suppliers and much more.
Communicate: Learn to write. Learn to speak. Learn to present. It may be so old school but watch the people who succeed, and they are good at communication. And all of these can be taught and learned.
Convince: Every one of us is a salesperson regardless of what we believe our title is. This is true even if we do not sell anything at work. We have to convince colleagues of our points of view. We have to convince our partners to join us on our life journey. Learn to convince and learn to sell. Story telling is a key.
Visual via Grok by xAI
4. The Four Keys to Evaluating Experienced Hires Before Letting Them In.
It is rare that a company can avoid hiring significant talent from outside if it is serious about transforming itself to change and grow. New skills, new mindsets and new blood enhances the corporate genetic pool.
But these hires are particularly fraught, and experience indicates that focusing on four key criteria can minimize the risk.
These are a) Mental Agility, b) Integrity, c) Impact and d) Fit/Chemistry.
Two of these filters Mental Agility and Fit/Chemistry require multiple interviews and two of them —Impact and Integrity —require deep investigation (background checks, references).
Mental agility is key to lead a team or a company in a world of change and only in an interview can one test for this. Similarly, chemistry matters. Too many companies bring in a wunderkind who either fails to adapt or is chewed up and spit out by the organization. While “Culture” may eat strategy for breakfast it hones its chewing skills by gnawing on the bones of outside talent.
Integrity and Impact needs to be evaluated over time and requires in depth research.
Integrity has never been more important and in today’s world trust is increasingly key.
Impact on Business can be measured through financial results but as important is how the individual has built teams, grown people and dealt with long term periods of stress or setback.
Ex-bosses and ex-direct reports are usually the ideal people to interrogate since they can provide perspective, put things into context and provide a multi-faceted picture of the person and are far less constrained than current colleagues or suppliers.
AI-Volution of Culture on December 3 at the New York Times Center.
Interested in gaining some insights, ideas and much more about how culture and people are transforming? I have comp tickets. As some of you know, I sit on the board of Quilt.AI. Many years ago, one of the co-founders fed me a $4 breakfast at a hawker center in Singapore and now they have graduated to hosting AI & Culture events in New York City. Amazing speakers in a short 4 hour action packed afternoon including Nick Thompson, editor of the Atlantic, Georgina Scholtens, CMO of Versace, and Dr. Patrick Leddin, best selling author. If you are NYC based, please join as my guest by registering for free on this link: Rishad’s Guest Link.
Better.
Despite the algorithmic armies, and agentic AI’s, everyone has agency.
Nothing is written. Nothing pre-determined. There is no “way” or some force to align with.
Chances we take. Choices we make. Changes we adapt to.
Taking a risk when given a chance. Making the right choices. Accepting change.
All up to each of us.
Three ways to become better:
1.Do the next best thing.
2. Leave things better.
3. Better our previous self.
Do the next best thing.
Our lives are a sum of our choices.
Often we face a choice.
At other time we force a choice.
To stay or to go. To help or turn away. To scroll or to read. To do this or do that.
Sometimes there is more than one choice.
Regardless of what has happened before, despite what we wish we had done or might have said in the past, what is the best next thing can we do now with everything we currently know?
That is the choice to make.
The best thing among the choices one has available, rather than agonizing over mistakes made, or choices no longer available, or that were never available.
Leave things better.
How can we leave things better?
This might be a person, a place, a task or ourselves.
At the end of every interaction how can we leave people with a sense of clarity, or belief in themselves or a renewed sense of energy?
When we leave a place can we do so in a way that our presence left it improved or enhanced?
Can we bring our craft, skill, expertise and caring to a task or a job to do it better?
Leaving people better, a place upgraded or doing a task with excellence often makes one feel better.
When we get out of our minds and ourselves and focus on others we grow.
Better our previous self.
Benchmarking against others is a good way to set standards and goals, but getting better is constant improvement versus our previous selves.
A compounding day after day that yields a better self.
Compare not to others but to oneself.
What can we do to get better today versus yesterday?
Improvement is a sum of small atomic sized habits or moves.
One more of this. One less of that.
One more of this and one more of that every day adds to one getting better.
In the end our satisfaction, contentment and happiness are a result of what we do, how we take responsibility, the decisions we stand by, and how we help others.
The next best thing. Leave things better. Better than our previous self.
Upgrading Our Mental Operating Systems.
Image by Midjourney to prompt: Upgrading our mental operating system.
In our pockets we all carry a device that has upgraded its mind 16 (Android OS) or 18 times (Apple iOS) in the past 18 years.
These same mobile devices contain applications from Open AI, or Google, or Anthropic, or xAI or some other frontier models which are improving themselves constantly and doubling their capability every few months.
How many times have we upgraded our own mental operating systems in the past 18 years?
If the future does not fit in the containers of the past then it also does not fit in the mindsets of the past.
Successful people and successful companies rarely get defeated by others.
Rather, they sometimes defeat themselves because they fail to change their frameworks, worldviews, mindsets and approaches as the world changes around them.
Their strategies go stale.
A definition of strategy is “future competitive advantage”.
Thus any company or leader working to a strategy that is more than five years old should revisit the assumptions they made years ago about the future. In a world of AI, Generational Ruptures, New Globalization and technology has empowered consumers and customers with “God-Like Power”, many firms may may be operating on an irrelevant picture of the future.
The future does not bend to us. We have to bend to the future.
We have to upgrade ourselves to remain relevant and not just be up to date but up to tomorrow.
As someone who began his career building the case for cable television four decades ago when the US had just 3 networks, to launching the first digital services over 25 years ago, to now advising Boards on AI and the Future of Work, I have come to learn the importance of constant upgrading to remain relevant.
My first book, Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in an Age of Data continues to sell well nearly six years after publication because the content was written to be evergreen but also because it was prescient about the issues we face today with most people believing the subtitle reads “Staying Human in an Age of AI”.
One of the three most popular chapters in the book along with “ The Turd on the Table” and “ Change Sucks”, is “Upgrade Your Mental Operating System”.
In “Upgrade Your Mental Operating System” I share everything I have learned over decades of practice and observation on how each of us and our companies can remain relevant.
Today the entire chapter is accessible and downloadable for free :
The 3 step process to upgrading one’s mental operating system is:
Spend an hour a day learning : If we do not invest time for learning we will become irrelevant. No if’s or but’s about it. The future belongs to leaders who are always learning vs those who are believe they are all knowing.
Build a case for the opposite of what we believe is true: New technologies are challenging some assumptions of the past such as scale is a benefit. In an AI age scale may matter less in an increasing number of categories. Another reason to build a case for the opposite case is to compensate for our tendency to surround ourselves with people who agree with us or to look for confirming data. To exercise our minds and identify our vulnerabilities we should attack our own thinking once in a while.
Focus time on making versus managing : We need to build, sell, create, mentor and guide a majority of the time we are at work versus checking in, monitoring, measuring and attending meetings. Increasingly, building knowledge bases, processing and data collection, manipulating of charts, summarizing and laying out options, are all going to be done by machines. The key is to build our HI where HI is not just Human Intelligence but also Human Insight, Human Interaction, Human Inventiveness, Human Imagination, Human Intuition and Human Inspiration.
If I were to update this chapter six years later, I would add a section on Remaining Relevant in an AI age by incorporating the piece which is linked to below:
It details :
a) How we should embrace, adapt and complement AI.
b) The Six key skills of Cognition, Curiosity, Creativity, Collaboration, Convincing and Communication we need to hone.
c) The importance of developing a sense of self, a singular voice and a personal taste.
Here is the piece :
The future is bright.
All we have to do is upgrade ourselves to continue to thrive.
Humanity, Meaning and Work in an Agentic Age.
Mid Journey response to the prompt..humanity, meaning and work in an agentic age.
From the WSJ
“AI is now a topic of conversation at every meeting of McKinsey’s board, said Bob Sternfels, the firm’s global managing partner. The technology is changing the ways McKinsey works with clients, how it hires and even what projects it takes on.
And McKinsey is rapidly deploying thousands of AI agents. Those bots now assist consultants in building PowerPoint decks, taking notes and summing up interviews and research documents for clients. The most-used bot is one that helps employees write in a classic “McKinsey tone of voice”—language the firm describes as sharp, concise and clear. Another popular agent checks the logic of a consultant’s arguments, verifying the flow of reasoning makes sense.
Sternfels said he sees a day in the not-too-distant future when McKinsey has one AI agent for every human it employs.
“We’re going to continue to hire, but we’re also going to continue to build agents,” he said.
Already, the shape of the company is shifting. The firm has reduced its head count from about 45,000 people in 2023 to 40,000 through layoffs and attrition, in part to correct for an aggressive pandemic hiring spree. It has since also rolled out roughly 12,000 AI agents.”
And from CNBC
“This week, Amazon announced it had begun a reorganization that would result in the elimination of 14,000 roles — and said AI was a leading cause.
“The world is changing quickly,” Amazon Senior Vice President Beth Galetti wrote Tuesday. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before.”
Walmart recently signaled that it intends to keep headcount flat over the next several years, largely as a result of AI.
Goldman Sachs announced a fresh round of layoffs this month, saying it planned to reduce human roles that AI could potentially perform.
Salesforce recently reduced its workforce by 4,000, citing “the benefits and efficiencies” of AI.
These are highly-profitable, fast-growing, world-class, expertly-led firms.
There is a great debate on whether these layoffs are due to AI, or over-hiring, or flattening of organizations, but there is no doubt that most companies have swiveled from vanity metrics of number of employees to a new key metric which is revenue per employee. And in most companies employees who leave are often not replaced by other employees but rather their jobs are eliminated or substituted by an AI Agent. “
This according to CNBC despite some misgivings as to whether AI is actually delivering ROI:
“Out of 1,250 firms surveyed by Boston Consulting Group for a September report, 60% said they had seen “minimal revenue and cost gains despite substantial investment” in AI.
Only 10% of the organizations involved in a similar Deloitte survey said they were getting “significant return on investment from agentic AI,” or systems that can make decisions beyond simply following prompts”
What happens when our jobs get replaced by agents or we soon find ourselves with more agentic co-workers than human co-workers? What happens when our incomes get reduced or eliminated or let us say we get some sort of basic universal income and told to stay at home ( a hysterically delusional rant when the current system struggles to fund basic health care to millions who are employed!)
Over the past few weeks I have spoken with dozens of leaders and experts around the world in various areas including AI and in all this noise there are some clear signals though exactly how all of this will play out is anybody’s guess. Things are too fluid, moving too fast and too early for anyone to say they really know how things will unfold, but there seems to be some broad agreement that it is likely that:
a) We may have passed peak jobs as jobs and work gets uncoupled. There may be more opportunities for work but fewer full time jobs.
b) Most companies are struggling to move from a “job/experience focussed” mindset to a “work to be done/expertise approach.”
c) HR and Talent departments will be critical to transformation because most of the challenges are organizational and human and not about technology.
d) Still too many companies are using AI like they might use electricity to make candles more efficiently and effectively, versus realizing that like the advent of electricity the very work of the firm, the organization and the competitive set are all going to be dramatically different. Stop making candles since there will soon be no need for them in an age of electricity. This is a change of the system problem versus making the existing system more efficient problem.
e) A generational shift in expectations and mindsets is causing a rupture between what the senior managers and Board of a company believe and what the next generation of talent believes, expects, sees and experiences. This shift is being accelerated by AI which is reducing the value of knowledge and experience but raising the value of learning and unlearning.
f) Unsaid but not far from peoples’ minds are questions of meaning, purpose and role of humans and our own future. Many people are wondering whether they are building and training the wood chip machine that they will be put into. Most are realizing that we need to upgrade our skills, build our networks, manage our balance sheet so we have options and not depend on our company. We are headcount in a highly competitive client focussed profit maximizing enterprise and not members of a “family.”
Four conversations that prepare us for whatever might come.
Whether you are graduating from school or in the final decade of your career, whether you are self-employed person or the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, whether you are parent or not, whether you understand and care about technology or not, one way to prepare for the future is to learn from from four conversations filled with usable insights and ideas.
My guests were in Chicago, London, Dubai and Cape Town South Africa. They are a distinguished engineer, a best selling strategist, a mother of GenZ kids and a 25 year old. Wide spectrum thinking with specific next steps, tactics and approaches that give you actionable inspiration for the coming wild and potentially wonderful age…
They are all free to listen to and free of any advertising or promotion. Just a gift…( the links below are for Apple podcast but you can find them on Spotify and YouTube)
Conversation 1: Humanity, Humans and Meaning in the Agentic Workplace.
Omar Imtiaz, Distinguished Enterprise Architect at Salesforce on the transformative impact of AI on human work. With a background of decades in computer science and IT, Omar argues the importance of the shift from technology-driven to human-centered transformation with AI enhancing human capabilities rather than replacing them. Advocating for a collaborative approach where AI and humans work together, he reminds us that meaning, purpose and emotional engagement is the future of the workplace, unleashing a completely new generation of creativity.
But Omar clarifies why this will be difficult and some of the real challenges humans and firms will face. Our conversation touches on “Move 37” , on being “speciest”, why with agentic capabilities companies will not need different specialized departments, and how Salesforce and its Agents jousted with each other…
Omar joins us in his personal capacity. The opinions shared are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Salesforce. Nothing here is confidential, proprietary, or advice; it’s a general discussion of industry topics.
Conversation 2: How is AI reshaping who holds power in the knowledge economy?
Sangeet Paul Choudary, the best-selling author of Platform Revolution and Reshuffle explains how artificial intelligence is re-stacking the way knowledge is created, distributed, and monetized, and what this means for workers, companies, and the future of competitive advantage.
Just listen to him explain how AI is like the Container Ship and you will see and understand more about AI in 10 minutes that you might have before. We discuss why individuals need to and can do to stay above the algorithm. Why despite all the technology that can replace them, Radiologists and Sommeliers continue to thrive and how we can all future proof our careers by learning from them.
His book Reshuffle is the one I am recommending to every Board and leader and once they read it they often ask to speak to Sangeet. Take a listen and you will in 40 minutes be better qualified on strategy and career thriving in an AI Age than most people who keynote at conferences on these topics…
Conversation 3: Alex McCann on the The Death of the Corporate Job.
Alex McCann is a writer, community builder, and founder of TrueNorth, an AI-powered career coach designed to help people build meaningful careers by starting with self-discovery, not job titlesWhat if the corporate job is no longer the default path to a meaningful career? Alex McCann, founder of TrueNorth, explains why so many young professionals feel lost at work, how Gen Z is redefining success, and why the future may belong to those who start with self-discovery instead of job titles.
Through TrueNorth, his MidWeek events in London, and his newsletter Still Wandering, Alex helps people in their 20s and 30s navigate uncertainty, question outdated career narratives, and define success on their own terms. His work is grounded in a simple belief: you can’t build a fulfilling career until you understand what meaning means to you. Alex now focuses on giving Gen Z and Millennials the tools, language, and community to design lives and work they can truly stand behind.
Conversation 4: Jillian Reilly on the courage to choose yourself.
Jillian Reilly is a founder, author of The Ten Permissions , mother of two GenZ boys and keynote speaker. Having spent her 30-year career working in social, organizational, and individual change across Africa, Asia, and Central Europe, Jillian’s focus is on helping people unlock their ability to navigate change and accelerate growth and learning. Jillian’s upcoming book, The Ten Permissions, guides readers in permitting themselves to update how they operate in the 21st century and design lives that fully leverage the possibilities of this disruptive world.
In our conversation one will learn why each of us need to unleash, unhook and unfurl ourselves from a system of expectations, measures and approval that holds us down. Jillian shows us what we need to leave behind to thrive in the world we are moving to. Change begins with each of us and Jillian shares what we need to do. Listen and you will come away different and see your obstacles disappear and learn to rethink your beliefs in a new light.
A range of free resources to prepare for next here: https://rethinking-work.io/
Looking Back: Five Learnings.
This past week I was fortunate to be honored at an event in NY. After acknowledging the other recipients who are in the prime of their careers ( very much like the 350 leaders in the audience) and thanking those who enabled my success, I shared five learnings that that have proved useful to finding success in work and life with the next generation.
1. Repair/Practice Resurrection.
In any career and sometimes in a single year we will believe we have arrived at Good Friday. We feel that all is lost and our future potential has been crucified. But let us never forget to focus on Easter Sunday and raise ourselves up again.
To do so we need to practice repair.
“Everything that has a shape breaks”- Japanese Proverb
But…
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”- Ernest Hemingway
And…
“Repair is the creative destruction of brokenness”—Elizabeth Spelman
Read more about how to repair…
2. Generosity as a strategy.
If strategy is future competitive advantage, generosity is smart for individual or company strategies.
Generosity builds good will which is both an asset and a moat.
It is an asset in that it can be tapped in the future.
It is a moat because when an individual or a company has been generous in times of trouble their employee or customer are less likely to switch to a different firm for a lower price or higher pay.
Generosity is also a key differentiator because often when a person or firm needs help when they are down and out there are few people willing to help. Those individuals and brands who do help during these troubled times stand out. Their showing up in to offer help when others might not, burns into the emotional and mental memory of the recipient and is rarely forgotten.
Emotional connections are harder to sever or replace than financial connections.
Read more on Generosity…
3. Upgrading Our Mental Operating Systems.
My book “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data” includes a chapter called ‘Upgrade Your Mental Operating System” which ends with these key takeaways:
1. Regardless of how senior or established employees are, they all possess the capacity for growth and relevancy in changing times.
2. Organizations need to set aside time for people’s mental self-improvement. They can encourage employees to escape digital routines and engage in tasks and conversations that stretch their minds.
3. Today there are many amazing new ways of self-learning and improving of which every person can take advantage of.
Here is how to learn to learn…
4. Combine roots and wings.
To succeed as an individual or as a firm one must have roots and wings.
Roots provide stability, a place to stand, a passed along tradition and a sense of history.
But roots alone which are important to ensure one does not get blown away by the winds of change might anchor one too much to the past and to a status quo which may no longer be relevant.
Thus, the importance of wings.
The ability to raise oneself and see above the horizon, to look down with new perspectives and to ensure that the roots which feed us do not wither by failing to adapt to a new world.
Roots nourish via what we were and where we came from and what we did.
Wings encourage us to go where we need to and to blaze new trails which will lay down tomorrows roots and are a highway to what we will accomplish
Read more about Roots and Wings…
5. Think like an immigrant.
World class leaders and companies rarely get defeated.
They decide to defeat themselves by a) not taking emerging competitors with new models seriously, b) paying scant attention to underdogs with fewer resource and different approaches, and/or c) by refusing to align with the forces of the future and take the hard decisions to get there.
We can all learn from immigrants.
a) Immigrants often think like outsiders.
Individuals and companies that thrive over the long run view their business from external perspectives and not just internal perspectives.
b) Immigrants often think like underdogs.
Underdogs use technology, drive, and ingenuity to find ways to leverage what they have or what others have to change the rules of the game.
They do not view the moat surrounding the castle as a something to navigate but a source of material to flood the castle with by changing the rules of the game!
c) Immigrants think with an emphasis on the future
Short or mid term sacrifices and pain is endured to build a future for themselves and families just like great companies think beyond the quarter and the year but in long time periods.
Read more about how to Think like an immigrant…
These five learning will serve everyone, everywhere, decade over decade.
Even if one does not work these will help us all lead thriving and fulfilling lives…