Modern Leadership.
Image by Almosthumankreative using Midjourney.
We have entered an age of de-bossification.
In many industries, particularly “White-collar” ones, the era of “bosses” is in decline.
Less of a clamoring for bosses, managers, controllers, monitors, evaluators, and paper pushers.
This shift has been driven by changing demographics, the spread of technology, the rise of unbundled and distributed work, new behavior expectations, and a re-definition of what “work” is including the rise of fractionalized and free-agent talent who work for themselves or at multiple jobs and are expected to comprise most of the workforce in the US by the end of the decade.
There is a rise in the need for leaders, guides, coaches, mentors, role-models, creators, and builders.
Leaders matter like never before but what are the characteristics of such leaders and how do we build such skills?
A long time colleague Drew Ianni and myself were very fortunate in having one hundred leaders convene in New York over one and a half days to listen to each other and begin to work together on how to best to identify, craft, discuss and enhance modern leadership skills at the inaugural salon of The Athena Project.
Ten Insights to Modern Leadership.
Every one of us can be a leader since it is a way of being and behaving while a boss is a title and requires having people reporting to them.
Many bosses are great leaders but leaders do not need to be bosses.
Leaders focus on zones of influence versus fixating on zones of control.
Leaders build wide spectrum skills versus just being full-stack. They have wide and broad horizons.
In a world of change and connections the best leaders recognize that mastery of craft alone will not be enough to navigate the complexity of leadership.
Leaders have courage. If one goes with the flow or just follows the number there is really no need for the individual.
Trust is and always will be the key currency for leaders. Today only 10 percent of CEO’s trust their CMO’s.
The best leaders are always learning and growing but never grow up. They feed not just their mental operating systems but also their physical and emotional operating systems.
Leaders recognize that companies do not transform but people do and they need to transform themselves. But transformation is a process of transition and the best leaders are managing many transitions both of their firms, the people around them and themselves.
Today's leaders think of growth in many more ways than just growing their business or focusing only on their firms. Optionality is freedom. They want to grow their own influence whether it be writing, speaking, other boards and planing for a non company career. They wish to grow their own intelligence in many areas not just focussed on things like AI but also Private Equity, Cultural Trends to be impactful in a multitude of ways. Almost everyone is thinking about how to manage a portfolio career in a world that is in transition.
Transforming from boss/manager to leader/coach is possible for those wishing to try.
As times change the best managers adapt and learn and flex into new shapes and learn new skills.
This transformation requires three conditions:
First it requires today’s bosses to accept that to grow and remain relevant they will have to change and while it may be difficult it is better than becoming irrelevant.
It also requires their leaders to ensure that new incentive systems that are more about zones of influence, growth of craft and people versus zone of control of budgets and team size are put into place.
There is an urgent need for coaching and training and patience to help today’s managers become tomorrow’s leaders.
A personal hunger supported by new incentives and buttressed with training including the opportunity to self-learn is the formula.
Talent is short and many leaders are aware of this and planning accordingly.
They know that new brooms sweep clean but old brooms know the corners.
Becoming You.
While it is important to listen to and learn from other people and be aware of what they may think of us, we should not live in other peoples minds.
Worrying about how we will be perceived or how we compare and measure up to others is like handing over the remote control of our life to someone else.
The more we ask what will they think, how will we look, and let every driver of our success and decision making come from external perception and extrinsic measures rather than internal introspection and intrinsic measures , the more likely we end up not achieving our true potential or peace of mind.
Many of the people we admire go against the way they should behave and question the status quo.
Galileo questioned whether the earth was at the center of the Universe.
Picasso invented new forms like Cubism that collapsed and re-expressed the rules.
Steve Jobs asked us to “Think Different”.
The key with these rule breakers is not that they broke rules and were fixated on just being different or not caring what others thought but that they were builders creating things that transformed and positively impacted the world of science, art, business and technology.
They did not tear down society or other people but rather got the world to see, think and feel differently.
They were about breaking rules in ways that empower, that open new horizons and drive growth.
They became themselves.
But while few can be like these giants we can all self-empower, set off toward new horizons and transform and grow ourselves by not letting external rulers drive our lives.
We can learn to compete with our elves and get better every day, versus competing with others or aligning with the changing fashions and expectations of others.
Let’s not be born as originals and die as copies.
It’s important to become who we are.
One way of doing so is to architect, sculpt and hone.
Architect.
“The way we spend our time defines who we are.” Jonathan Estrin.
One way to gain control is to architect one’s week in ways that time and its vagaries do not toss us around.
Consider setting aside an hour a day or seven hours a week to feed each of one’s physical, mental, emotional systems.
Physical operating system: A long walk or exercise.
Mental operating system: Learn or read or watch or do.
Emotional operating system: Connecting with friends and family. Helping others.
Image using Midjourney by Osoyoi
Sculpt.
“Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the sculptor’s job to release it” Michelangelo.
Every individual has one or more talents, and it is our job to find, feed and sculpt these talents.
Today we are increasingly in a world of builders, makers, creators, inventors and in sculpting something special out of raw materials is a way to find flow and make and leave one’s mark.
It may be writing or photography or video or writing code, cooking a meal, investing in a relationship, building a company or many other things but transforming and building is both an anti-dote and a homage to a transforming world.
We transform and are not just transformed.
Build things. Make stuff. Create something .Unleash potential.
We can release the statue within us or help others find the statue within them.
Image using Midjourney by Mikie555
Hone.
“To hone my voice, I read everything, from books to cereal boxes, three times: once for fun, the second time to learn something new about the writing craft, and the third time was to improve that piece.” Amanda Gorman
In a world of change we must hone ourselves to align with change since change does not care to adjust to us.
Honing through iteration, learning, re-inventing, and many other ways of enhancing excellence of craft.
For many of us in the coming years it will be how to incorporate, build on, extend, and leverage AI as a tool, enabler, extender, and idea generator for our work.
Organizational Misfit.
The future organization does not fit in the containers or the mindsets of the past.
Until around January 2020, most companies operated under the following five assumptions or beliefs:
1. The organization gives structure and directs work.
2. Tenure and experience are critical to advancement.
3. Most of the work is done inside an organization.
4. Fairness requires a common set of rules and ways of working that apply to all.
5. Most people are full-time employees of the company.
Here are beliefs that have already begun to replace current beliefs and will by the end of this decade completely supplant these traditional ones:
1. The organization enables talent to create structure and direct work.
2. Expertise and constant learning in a changing world are more highly valued than tenure/experience.
3. Most of the work is done outside an organization by suppliers and by accessing talent as needed.
4. Fairness means customizing programs for each talent and giving everyone equal access to those programs.
5. Most staff are either contract workers, freelancers, or fractionalized employees.
Because of these new beliefs and assumptions, organizations must rethink how they design everything, from compensation systems to decision-making processes.
Dump the charts!
To create a redesign that is effective now and for years to come, we need to think about structure more broadly than is typical. Most people think of business structures from an organizational-chart perspective. They envision boxes and connecting lines that indicate who reports to whom or the flow of goods and services from the company to various markets. That’s why when people talk about restructuring, they focus on things like flattening the organization and eliminating some of the lines or streamlining the supply chain.
While all of this is important, it’s just part of what needs to be redesigned. An organizational chart is a two-dimensional view—I’m advocating a three-dimensional redesign.
For years, we’ve fooled ourselves into believing that the organizational chart represents how the organization works. That was okay in less complex, less volatile times, but it’s no longer acceptable. Consider that organizational charts and maps indicate how leaders want the company to operate, but the reality often is quite different.
For instance, the maps and charts document zones of control rather than zones of influence. A title represents a position that may be vested with authority but not necessarily the authority to determine how work is done. These charts also impose clarity where there often is none. Business is messy, and operations often shape-shift based on circumstance, ignoring the flowchart. The official organizational structures are also limited in scope, failing to account for all the external partners, freelancers, and other outside groups that have become necessities.
Consider the static nature of organizational design, driven by internal factors (that is, areas of expertise) and client/customer categories. In an increasingly globalized world filled with new marketplaces and transformed by technology, this design must be more organic, adapting to external stimuli.
Tenets of organizational design.
On the most basic level, it means they must design structures from the outside in rather than the inside out. In a fast-changing world, companies must create their processes and procedures based on marketplace realities (that is, emerging competitors and changing talent mindsets) rather than relying on “the way things have always been done around here.”
They should also embrace multiple models of working rather that a single model. Given the multiplicities in workplaces today, models need to differ based on country, competition for talent, and whether the focus is on current business or innovations.
And finally, it means outcomes and goals take precedence over process and control.
Financial results, customer satisfaction, and talent attraction/retention should take priority over following strict procedures or maintaining tight control about how work is done.
Design discussed as a singular object is a mistake. Plural designs make a lot more sense.
For this reason, redesigning the structures must take the following factors into consideration:
Customer benefit. This may seem obvious, but company design often reflects internal requirements first and customers second. Given the increasing diversity and changing needs of customers, organizations should consider creating different designs for different customers. This might mean co-locating with a customer or integrating with customer suppliers
Talent advantage. In the past, points of differentiation included price, service, innovation, and so on. Today, the main differentiator is talent. Companies must organize in ways to ensure that their talent is satisfied and growing. Considering that talent often is spread across different locations, possesses different work-style preferences, and represents a wide demographic range, one organizational model doesn’t fit all. Instead, the model should accommodate the full range of talent.
Change adaption. The previous two points allude to this one: organizational design must be flexible, able to shift as changes occur. Competitors change. Laws change. Markets change. The design, therefore, must anticipate that these shifts will occur and be created in such a way that adapting a policy or revamping a process isn’t a big deal. This is an organic, evolving approach to design (versus an artificial, static one). To deliver on strategy, one needs to update the design continuously.
Permeability. Traditional designs are closed systems. Today, they need to be open. They must be capable of connecting and fusing with other companies in an increasingly con- nected, fast-moving world. A company and its deliverables grow by combining capabilities and products from different external firms or being part of those other firms’ deliveries.
Trust a key to Organizational Re-design.
To commit to this type of redesign requires trust—management must trust talent and teams to determine the best ways to drive financial results, customer satisfaction, and talent attraction and retention. By restructuring roles, talent takes the initiative while management guides and coaches.
This trust extends to empowering teams to solve problems and capitalize on opportunities in ways that make sense for their markets (rather than everyone following the mandate from headquarters). Management’s restructured role involves setting parameters—they grant their people freedom within a framework. They know where the guardrails should be erected to prevent teams from getting in legal difficulties or taking unreasonable risks.
Is your organization biased toward yesterday or tomorrow?
While many organizations have taken steps in this direction, most are not there yet. To assess redesign progress, the following questions might help:
Does your company possess agile systems and processes? Is it flexible when it comes to how and where work is done and how partnerships are initiated?
Can you deliver customized products and services? Does your organizational structure support personalization or is one particular system or process mandated?
Are the policies and protocols of your organization designed to facilitate trust among teams and customers?
This is a an extract from 2 pages of a chapter called Redesign the Structures from Rethinking Work which has been called “that rare book that simultaneously helps you look at the world, your work, and your life in new ways.”
CEO’s, Deans of Schools, Heads of Talent who have had access to the book believe it is the most comprehensive, yet distilled, highly realistic and yet future forward take to every aspect of work from strategy to talent to technology to financials. Available for pre-order. Turbocharge your career, unleash your teams and reinvent your company’s tomorrow! Learn more here.
Thriving in the Long Run.
Successful individuals and firms tend to have a commonality to their success.
Behaviors that unite them regardless of country, industry or culture they operate in.
Things that allow them to thrive consistently over long run
They all display a sense of perspective, an ability to be perceptive, a constant hunger to pioneer and a dogged constant persistence.
Perspective: With time and experience comes a sense of perspective.
An understanding that the world does not revolve around oneself or the firm.
This allows one to become more empathetic, generous and invest in relationships.
Relationships for the long run.
A sense of perspective also brings with it the realization that life and career while in one way are short in other ways they span decades and will bring a tangle of good and bad, ups and downs. To succeed one needs to grimace and march on in the bad times while not losing all sense of proportion and propriety when the force appears to be with us.
Perspective is also important to companies, so they see where they fit in their eco-systems and can determine both who to partner with but also to visualize their category broadly enough to see opportunities and threats outside a narrow slice of geography, time, or market.
Successful people and firms also put things in perspective when explaining and making their case. They place things in historical or other frameworks to build convincing stories.
Perceptiveness: The Cambridge dictionary defines someone who is perceptive as one who is “very good at noticing and understanding things that many people do not notice”.
This noticing and understanding can be about being emphatic in how one deals with people or seeing a niche or hiccup in a process that many may miss or to be self-aware of one’s weaknesses and mental models.
Today we live in a connected, collaborative world where people are looking for customized solutions. While data informs, insight and the wisdom are extracted by the perceptive.
Perception can be honed and grown and will be a key for success as it will be what helps differentiate carbon based analog feeling individuals from increasingly powerful silicon based digital computing machines.
Perception means being close to customers and market trends and to pay attention to the little signals. A combination of EQ and an increased sensitivity to the finer shade of things.
Our perception and their power and precision will be what will drive profitable results.
Pioneering: Long lasting firms innovate, invent and are idea driven. They do not let their roots tie them down but rather use roots to feed their wings to fly to the future.
These innovations can be across a range of a company’s system from supply chain to logistics to customer service to pricing to engineering breakthroughs to re-thinking their business.
To succeed as an individual eventually everyone needs to become who they are.
We need to find our voice and superpower and each of us in doing so pioneer by becoming special and differentiated in our own way.
Defining oneself is an act of pioneering.
Switching jobs, cities and goals are all acts of taking a different path and trading the known for the unknown.
These are all forms of pioneering.
Persistence: Part of persistence is continued practice.
Practice of a craft, a skill, an art.
A portion of it is patience and recognizing that the reaction to a thing is what will determine how the thing affects us and often not reacting but instead waiting is the most prudent thing to do.
A lot of persistence is recognizing that it is in the everyday doing, the everyday improvements, the everyday re-invention and repair after setbacks that forge us in the foundry and furnace of industry and life.
Persistence is practicing a daily resurrection.
It is sculpting each block of stone and placing them together that builds the cathedral.
Day by day.
Year by year.
The power of compounding skills, relationships, and returns.
How every “overnight” success comes to be…
Build Perspective. Hone Perception. Risk Pioneering. Remain Persistent.
AI, Humans and Work: 10 Thoughts.
This past Friday, I had the opportunity to present at the AI-volution of Culture 2.0 held at the Times Center in New York City. The event was created by Quilt. AI, a company on whose board I sit and featured the talk show host and comedian Trevor Noah, the incredible chef Massimo Bottura of Osteria Francescana, Katie Drummond the Global Editorial Director of Wired, and many other extra-ordinary presenters.
Given the density of talent the organizers allocated a total of ten minutes for me to speak about AI, Humanity and Work.
10 thoughts about AI, Humans and Work in 10 minutes.
1. AI is still Under-hyped. While Moore’s law doubled processing power every 18 months, AI is doubling its capabilities every six months or less.
Less than two years from Chat GPT most recent Open AI model GPT-o1 is capable of reasoning and returns output that should make every consulting company truly wonder about their business model. And this is just level 2. Coming soon is level 3 where AI works as an an autonomous agent ( probably by end of 2025) and then level 4 (AI that can create new knowledge) and finally AI that can operate like a firm before the end of the decade.
2. AI itself will be like electricity and is unlikely to be a differentiator for most firms. Every firm is likely to leverage the same foundational models such as Open AI, Anthropic, Gemini, Llama, and Mistral. Some will hope that their propreitary data they have be the differentiator. This may be true to a point but it will not be AI but how a company leverages, incorporates and supports its strategy using AI versus having a strategy for AI that will be key.
3. AI is not alive but can be thought of as a new species. Mustafa Suleyman the Co-Founder of Deep Mind and now at Microsoft has suggested that we think of AI as a new species that we are bringing into the world. How should we train, manage and consider legal and other frameworks for this species. It is not human but it will increasingly appear so.
4. Knowledge will be free and every knowledge workers job will change in 2025. Knowledge when it comes to facts, figures, data and the like will be meaningless since everyone will have the same access to information. If your firm is built on knowledge bases or your position is based on controlling knowledge it is time to re-think the model. The key will be wisdom, nuance, voice, taste as well as perspectives, points of view and plans of action around data, information and knowledge.
5. The key about AI is not to ask what AI will do to us but what AI can do for us. AI will be good for the world. It will be a slingshot that allows the small to compete with the large. It will create major breakthroughs in the field of science, education (personal tutoring for everybody possibly), medicine and many others. The CEO of GitHub predicts that we will end up with hundreds of millions of people being able to program in the next two or three years without knowing how to code helping generate a new wave of ideas and creativity. The key is to think about how to turbo-charge oneself and ones firm versus defending the status quo and fretting about change. With such a mindset the possibilities are endless.
6. The simpler questions are about efficiency and effectiveness. The real question is more existential. AI will deliver efficiencies by getting things done faster and cheaper and as importantly more effectively by unleashing insights and freeing talent to work on areas where humans excel and let the math and pattern finding and the rest be done by the machine. But the smart companies are thinking about how to re-invent, re-imagine and re-think their business. In the world we live today with distributed and unbundled work, next generation technologies and multi-polar globalization why are more companies not re-imagining their businesses versus just focussing on making yesterdays model cheaper and more effective?
7. Every company should embed, enhance and extend. Every company should at minimum embed AI into the firm’s processes to remain competitive. Better still they should enhance the company’s products and services. In addition to embedding AI and using it to enhance products and services, firms should consider how the technology will expand the definition of its products and services. A company’s best opportunities and threats are likely come from outside its immediate category and AI allows it to extend into new areas.
8. Every individual should embrace, adapt and augment. The biggest mistake any individual or leader can make is to outsource learning and expertise building to some other firm or person. Do not outsource your tomorrow and your ability to learn and grow. These are the early stages and there is not a lot of historical knowledge. As many of the long term experts in the field remind me very few of the firms that say they have deep expertise in the area even mentioned AI three years ago! Importantly the key concepts and tools of AI are easy to learn. Embrace AI by using it, learning it and finding ways to up ones AI quotient. Here is a way to upgrade one’s AI quotient. But embracing is not enough. We need to re-imagine our job and adapt what we do to reduce our exposure and time to things that machines will do well ( allocate, monitor, measure, delegate, process) and increase our exposure to what machines do less well ( create, build, mentor, guide, inspire). Finally think of how we can augment this new species. Not compete. Not ignore. Augment.
9. Future proof yourself by focussing on the 6c’s. Individuals and companies should invest in six skills to thrive in the new world. These are cognition (constant learning), curiosity ( looking ahead versus backward which is what machines train on), creativity (connecting dots in new and unexpected ways), collaboration ( learning to work with humans and AI species), convincing ( if everybody has the same knowledge the difference will be in understanding customer needs and creating stories to differentiate) and finally communication ( writing and presenting skills).
10. The most successful people and firms will go deep AI and deep HI. The true differentiator in the AI age will be HI. People will need AI to compete just as today without the web, mobile phones and other technology an individual or company cannot compete. But it will be human intelligence, human intuition, human insight, human imagination and human ideation will be the difference.