A Human Approach to Leadership

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Special supplement

A Human Approach to Leadership

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.1 Vol.15 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

A Human Approach to Leadership

A Human Approach to Leadership Contents 2 Introduction A Human Approach to Leadership 6 The Making of the Modern Elder Marketplace Diana Wu David 9 Trust does not need sympathy Matthias Moelleney 13 The sustainable design opportunity offered by the global pandemic Chris Hood 17 What role will HR adopt in the new world of work and business?

Mark Thomas 23 The Working World of 2030 – A Better Place Stuart Neilson 29 Sustainability = Purpose + Prosperity + Innovation Rudi Plettinx and Michael Jenkins 1

33 Virtues in Action Lily Kelly-Radford and Patrick Cowden 39 The Importance of Creating Leadership Momentum Graham Wilson 43 Leadership in the era of self-managed organisations Peter Thomson 47 How technology is challenging traditional leadership Cliff Dennett and Sunnie Groeneveld 51 COVID-19, our remote workplace and the human factor in leadership Michael Devlin 57 Developing the art of resilience Sabine Hoffmeister

Special supplement | A Human Approach to Leadership | Introduction

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COVID-19 has proved to be a powerful catalyst for change. Amongst all the tragedy there is a hope that the corporate world will emerge out of the dark days of 2020 having learned some fundamental lessons about the human race. Faced with our vulnerability to a silent killer we have had to think about what is important in life

020 has been a turning point in history. The pandemic has disrupted life across the globe, leading to millions of deaths and crippling large parts of the world’s economies. It has made leaders stop and think about their priorities more powerfully than any other recent event.

Just one year ago, in the introduction to a previous special edition of Global Focus, we referred to the changing world, reflecting that “parts of the corporate world have continued along the existing path ignoring many of the changes happening around it. It is as if many organisations believe they are immune from societal, economic and technological change, continuing on their course in the assumption that many of the disruptive factors are just short term and if ignored for long enough will disappear.�

How things have changed since then!

COVID-19 has proved to be a powerful catalyst for change. Amongst all the tragedy there is a hope that the corporate world will emerge out of the dark days of 2020 having learned some fundamental lessons about the human race.

Faced with our vulnerability to a silent killer we have had to think about what is important in life.

The pursuit of wealth and power are pointless if you are faced with threats to the survival of your business or even your own life. How employers treat their people during the crisis is a measure of their social conscience and the responsibility they take for the welfare of their community.

In many western economies almost half the working population have been working from home during this, the biggest peacetime disruption to daily life. Managers who themselves are working from home have had to adjust to remote relationships with their people. They have been 2

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A Human Approach to Leadership

forced to let go of daily supervision and manage by outcome. They have discussed purpose and goals with their teams and then left them to achieve results, trusting that the freedom will not be abused.

And, much to the surprise of many managers, productivity has been maintainedand teamwork has not suffered badly.

Now employees have experienced a new way of working, the vast majority do not want to return to their old workplace full time when the crisis is over. There will be times when it is appropriate to get together but they don’t see the need to return to daily commuting. We will be entering an era of hybrid working where employees have much more control over when and where they work. This has profound implications for leadership, as things shift from command and control to guiding and empowering. Attracting the best talent from Gen Z will require managers to keep up with their expectations of freedom, flexibility and trust.

Somehow, when we think of the best leaders or even the best organisations, we projec human traits onto them. Traits like resilience, agility, humility, authenticity, trust, empathy or even kindness. In the last year these qualities have risen to the top of the pile. Indeed, even before the pandemic there was growing evidence that these human factors were increasingly important to business success. Yet, when we look at the routines and processes that exist in organisations around the world, by far the 3

vast majority of them focus solely on improving operational efficiency and effectiveness. Yes, it is key that revenue, profit, market share and financial returns measure up to what we promise our shareholders. But if the human factor is so key in the transition to the new digital and agile future everyone is striving for, then where are the architectures and blueprints that ensure enough time, resources, and attention are paid to that one crucial factor of our success?

Leaders have been talking about purposeful organisations that focus on a wide set of stakeholder needs rather than narrow financial targets. They have realised that sustainability is as important as profit and the values behind an organisation’s culture are as important as shareholder value. But turning this good intent into practical action is a struggle. Where can leaders find guidance on how to weave the goodness of

Special supplement | A Human Approach to Leadership | Introduction

If the human factor is so key in the transition to the new digital and agile future everyone is striving for, then where are the architectures and blueprints that ensure enough time, resources, and attention are paid to that one crucial factor of our success? humanity into the DNA of organisational design and operational excellence? Where are the companies that have discovered that missing (yet so crucial) link which brings these wonderful human virtues into our daily business routines? Where trust is ever present, where kindness is the norm, where empathy and appreciation define every interaction we have.

This series of articles from the Future Work Forum and EFMD provide some useful guidance for leaders who are facing this challenge. They point out practical ways to increase sustainability and run organisations with a sense of purpose. They show how trust, kindness and empathy are not just hollow words of intent but are built into everyday leadership actions. They paint an optimistic view of the world of work in 2030 and challenge HR to adopt a new role in this new world. And they show how traditional leadership is being challenged by technology.

We are living through an exciting and challenging time in the development of leadership. It’s taken a virus to knock us out of our complacency and force us to rethink many assumptions that govern the world of work. COVID-19 has accelerated the rate of social and economic change and leaders cannot afford to be left behind.

Mike Johnson Chairman and Founder, FutureWork Forum Eric Cornuel President, EFMD

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A Human Approach to Leadership

By Diana Wu David

The Making of the Modern Elder Marketplace

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Special supplement | The Making of the Modern Elder Marketplace | Diana Wu David

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he world is getting greyer. 10,000 people in the US turn 65 years old every day. By 2025, the population aged 65 or above in China may hit 300 million. The number of Americans aged 50 and above who are working has grown significantly over the past decade, and is expected to keep increasing. In many countries the seasoned worker is also the fastest growing part of the workforce.

This demographic shift is the next tsunami in the future of work – large scale, anticipated in the abstract, but a blind spot for most leaders.

Companies overlook this resource at their peril. Few companies have given serious thought to reimagining the role of the modern elder for competitive advantage. In 2015, PwC conducted a survey of global CEOs and found that 64% had a diversity and inclusion strategy, yet of those, only 8% included age as a dimension of their strategy.

Fewer than half of companies worldwide factor longevity into their strategic planning.

100k 65+ The world is getting greyer.

10,000 people in the US turn 65 years old every day

By 2025, the population aged 65 or above in China may hit 300 million by 2025

The advantages of workers aged fifty and over include their experience, professionalism, work ethic, lower turnover, and knowledge. They continue to be the most engaged age cohort across all generations. 65% of employees aged 55+ are considered to be ‘engaged’ based on survey data, while younger employee engagement averages 58% to 60%. The level of employee engagement has implications for both retention and business results. It takes only a 5% increase in engagement to achieve 3% incremental revenue growth.

Perhaps most interesting is data on the cost of senior workers for those who see the benefits, but fear greater costs. Contrary to common perception, workers over 50 do not cost significantly more than younger workers. Shifting trends in reward and benefit programs have created a more age-neutral distribution of labour costs.

The incremental costs of adding talent aged 50 and over results in only minimal increases in total labour costs and may be far outweighed by the value that they add.

Living, Learning and Earning Longer Companies have been focused on the millennials and incoming Generation Z. Now ‘perennials’ or older workers who have decided to continue working are the new focus for HR policy and management. How do we engage the older worker? How do we take advantage of their wisdom in a way that benefits the company as a whole without alienating younger workers?

How should we pay these supposedly expensive resources?

Three emerging trends on the horizon point to promising possibilities: 6

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A Human Approach to Leadership

One lesson is that there is no end period for learning.... the 100-year life is opening up more oscillations between work and learning, and for longer. People are reskilling throughout their lives and using that knowledge to launch second and third careers

Redefining the Returnee Programme Once the province of parents coming back from childcare, returnee or apprenticeship programs are being extended to older workers who want to retrain.

Born out of the success of its returnee programme, one programme at Barclays is dedicated solely to workers over the age of 50.

In the UK, the Barclays ‘Bolder’ Apprenticeship is aimed at creating jobs for older people through retraining, regardless of their age or social circumstance. Since its launch in 2015, the programme has recruited over 80 apprentices, growing the bank’s number of older apprentices from 4% to 20%.

Often, just modifying existing policies to make them more age inclusive can better accommodate a multigenerational workforce. Extending a parental leave policy to cover caregiving leave for any loved one – elder, partner or child – can go a long way in ensuring the offering is relevant to your workforce across various life stages.

For those wanting to spread their entrepreneurial wings, start-ups are benefiting from the opportunity to tap into the wisdom of experience, often paired with younger employees just starting out. Priyanka Gothi, founder of the Wise@Work platform that matches seniors with new job opportunities, says that many of her clients looking to hire are attracted by the idea of a part-time person with experience and wisdom to help mentor young teams with more grit than experience. In fact, many seniors are starting new companies themselves. In America those between 55 and 65 are now 65% more likely to start up companies than those between 20 and 34, according to the Kauffman Foundation.

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Long-life Learning Universities woke up to the promises of adult learning decades ago and mainly focused on filling time for those with the luxury of leisure and income for extended education.

Business schools have sensed an attractive market for this sector with Advanced Management Programs for exiting CEOs and business owners.

What can we learn from these programmes that might help us make a broader path for people to continue contributing more, for longer?

One lesson is that there is no end period for learning. As explained by London Business School professors, Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, the 100-year life is opening up more oscillations between work and learning, and for longer. People are reskilling throughout their lives and using that knowledge to launch second and third careers.

Second is that companies have a strong role to play in the learn-to-work, work-to-learn process.

Aviva realised that a third of their 17,000-strong UK workforce was over the age of 45 and was the fastest growing segment of their employee base. However, anecdotal stories of tapering career development after the age of 50 were common.

Sending the message that the company would develop and invest in its employees at 55 in the same way they did at 25, they instituted a check-up on work, wealth and wellness for every employee over 45.

If there are needs to fill, companies with foresight can provide training or partner with universities to collaborate and reskill older workers for longer-term success and competitive advantage.

45+

Aviva realised that a third of their 17,000-strong UK workforce was over the age of 45. Sending the message that the company would develop and invest in its employees at 55 in the same way they were at 25, they instituted a check-up on work, wealth and wellness for every employee over 45

20%

Since its launch in 2015, the Barclays ‘Bolder’ Apprenticeship has recruited over 80 apprentices, growing the bank’s number of older (50y+) apprentices from 4% to 20%

Special supplement | The Making of the Modern Elder Marketplace | Diana Wu David

Return of the Guild With the current retirement age in most companies and countries leaving workers several decades to continue working, the rise of semiprivate networks is helping to organise people and companies to create new value. Author and idea maven, Seth Godin, anticipates, “These entities will become ever more powerful as the economies of the firm begin to fade, replaced by the speed and resiliency of trusted groups.”

For seasoned workers, these ‘guilds’ can be as simple as a network of people with similar interests sharing ideas and projects to groups certified at advanced levels. Future Work Forum is a global think tank with bi-monthly calls to share members’ expertise and collaborate for maximum impact.

Critical Eye, in Asia and Europe, is a peer-to-peer board community for information and ideas. Mercer has been evaluating retired employees as a network of potential subcontractors that might take on extra work from time to time, already trained in the style, standards and values of the firm. The opportunity for firms to tap into this kind of senior expertise, once only accessible via personal networks, is now easier than ever.

With widespread disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic requiring companies to rethink HR policies, now is the time to rethink standards, policies, and practices to support a well-functioning multigenerational workforce. The opportunity is manifold: retain market-valued intellectual capital, raise the stability and engagement of highly skilled employees and deliver products and services designed by a representative workforce stand to benefit. Companies without strategies to integrate this shift in demographics into their workforce planning will miss out as their competitors move ahead.

About the author www.futureworkforum.com/?dt_portfolio=diana-wu-david

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A Human Approach to Leadership

By Matthias Moelleney

Trust does not need sympathy

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he American industrialist Jean Paul Getty is said to have once stated that contracts are useless. If you can trust your partner, you don't need contracts, and if you can't trust them, contracts are useless. The well-known saying of trust and control should be reversed: Control is good, trust is better. Trust is well researched, we know how it is created and how it can be lost again, how it can be strengthened and how it has to be earned.

In the traditional world of work, there were guidelines, rules and regulations to a necessary extent as a basis for cooperation and, in addition, a leadership that actively intervened when the self-coordination did not work. Over time, processes and instruments were also established to replace a lack of trust with elaborate control systems.

Team cohesion and team trust were mentioned on many occasions, but when trust proved not to be robust enough, especially in difficult times, the control systems already mentioned were in place to help out.

This is completely different in the modern, agile world of work. The time of transactional management is over; the role of managers is changing from that of an authorising supervisor to that of a coach, who is enabling and supporting self-organisation. The legitimation of leadership no longer comes from disciplinary power, but from exemplary influence on the development of the organisation. On the one hand, this increases the demands made on guidelines, rules and regulations, because without traditional leadership, which was able to compensate for regulatory gaps through situational decisions, a tighter network of rules 9

and a great deal of individual responsibility and discipline in their application are needed. However, in order for this tightly woven network of rules not to paralyse or even suffocate an organisation, a new quality of trust between all members of the organisation is needed. Trust is transformed from ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’.

There are many concepts and methods for increasing trust, especially in connection with training in team-building. Such exercises are mostly about opening up the group members for better cooperation and convincing them of the benefits of this for themselves and the organisation. At least in the short term, these types of training are often successful, but the 'work trust' built up through them often proves to be not very resilient. What we have neglected so far is the question of the prerequisite for trust. For many people it is absolutely clear that trust is not possible without sympathy.

They can only trust someone they like. This is understandable, especially in the private sphere, but if we apply the same principle in the professional world, it is not good enough.

If, in my team or in my company, I only trust those I like, groups automatically form: on the one hand those whom the manager likes, on the other hand those whom he or she personally dislikes.

An inner circle and an outer circle, so to speak, and often the inner circle even has special privileges or at least receives more attention and appreciation. Such a situation can arise, for example, when the supervisor takes over an existing team and therefore has not hired the members of that team. He or she will probably

Special supplement | Trust does not need sympathy | Matthias Moelleney

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A Human Approach to Leadership

find some of them likeable, others not, and the foundation for the inner and outer circle is already laid. The whole thing is further accentuated when new employees are being hired and the manager chooses the candidates he or she likes.

One of the main problems is the difference in esteem. The decisive factor is the varying lengths of time that managers spend with individual employees. From birth, humans know intuitively that getting attention is the most important thing in the world. For babies it is absolutely vital to get attention because they are not able to feed themselves alone and independently. We do not lose this basic need for attention throughout our lives. The need for appreciation in a company is in this sense just another expression of the need for attention.

We all know that we naturally tend to spend more time with people we like than with those we like less. In this respect, superiors also tend to spend more time with the staff of the inner circle.

This is noticed by the staff of the outer circle and it widens the gap between the two circles. Networks have no chance to develop in such an environment and approaches to self-organisation have a high risk of failure.

If one wants to avoid the ‘sympathy trap’, all those involved must learn that there is another prerequisite for trust which must take the place of sympathy, and that is knowing the other person very well. It is important to get to know all team members personally, not only through their work identity, but through their whole personality, their values and motives, their talents and limitations. The test of whether this has been successful would be simple: Let's ask managers if theyare able to spontaneously give a good presentation about the personal values and motives of their employees. If you know your employees really well, you also have a chance of becoming a real team and not just a group with an inner and outer circle.

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Special supplement | Trust does not need sympathy | Matthias Moelleney

In order to develop and establish such trust-based approaches, a corresponding image of humanity and other leadership concepts are needed. Both research and consultancy meet this challenge with the approaches of shared leadership (cf. 1 – 5). Consequently, large parts of leadership research have shifted their focus in recent years from the vertical manager-employee relationship to the horizontal collaboration level and have begun to develop new concepts for this. In this context, leadership is understood as a social exchange process in which all members of a team can become effective regardless of their hierarchical position.

The American researchers Creary, Caza and Roberts have addressed the topic of confidencebuilding without the prerequisite of sympathy in their interesting contribution "Out of the box? How managing a subordinate's multiple identities affects the quality of a manager-subordinate relationship" (cf. 6). They examined how taking into account multiple identities affects the quality of a managersubordinate relationship. By these different ‘identities’, they meant that all people have other identities in addition to their identity as an employee or manager, for example within their family, as a member of a sports club, a political party or another organisation. Approaches which consciously integrate these different identities in the relationship between supervisor and employee and help perceive the other as a facetted personality outside the job are called inclusionary strategies.

The opposite model, namely, limiting oneself exclusively to the job dimension of the human being, is the so-called exclusionary approach.

In their analyses, the researchers found that real added value can only be created through cooperation if all those involved behave in an inclusionary manner. This means that they do not just look at the other team members from the perspective of the working relationship but are also interested in facets of the personality that lie outside the work routine. Of course, this is not

If you know your employees really well, sympathy plays a lesser role for you, and you also have a chance of becoming a real team and not just a group with an inner and outer circle meant to promote a voyeuristic intrusion into the privacy of colleagues, but as an honest interest in personality. At the HWZ we have found a good and very motivating concept to facilitate this in-depth acquaintance in the approach "Beyond Leadership" (cf. 7), in which resilient connections between the participants develop quasi automatically in a consistently appreciative manner.

This results in two requirements for those responsible for developing sustainable, agile organisations. On the one hand, they must create an environment that is conducive to cooperation and create a resilient level of trust through authentic, exemplary action. On the other hand – and at the moment there is still a great deficit here – they must overcome the link between trust and sympathy and create the conditions for people to take an interest in each other as people and not just in their professional functions.

References 1. Drath, W. H., McCauley, C. D., Palus, C. J., Van Velsor, E., O'Connor, P. M., & McGuire, J. B. (2008). Direction, alignment, commitment: Toward a more integrative ontology of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 19(6), 635 - 653.

2. Mihalache, O. R., Jansen, J. J., Van den Bosch, F. A., & Volberda, H. W. (2014).

Top management team shared leadership and organizational ambidexterity: A moderated mediation framework. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 8(2), 128 - 148.

3. Alvesson, M., Blom, M., & Sveningsson, S. (2017). Reflexive leadership: Organising in an imperfect world. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.

4. Wellman, N. (2017). Authority or community? A relational models’ theory of group-level leadership emergence. Academy of Management Review, 42(4), 596-617.

5. Uhl-Bien, M., & Arena, M. (2018). Leadership for organizational adaptability: A theoretical synthesis and integrative framework. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(1), 89-104.

6. Creary, Caza & Roberts (2015) "Out of the box? How managing a subordinate's multiple identities affects the quality of a Manager-Subordinate relationship", Academy of Management Review, 2015, Vol. 40(4), 538-562.

7. Moelleney & Sachs (2019) “Beyond Leadership”, SKV-Verlag, Zurich.

About the author www.futureworkforum.com/project/matthias-molleney/

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A Human Approach to Leadership

By Chris Hood

The sustainable design opportunity offered by the global pandemic

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Special supplement | The sustainable design opportunity offered by the global pandemic | Chris Hood

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simple proposition has emerged from the personal experience of most knowledge workers during the last six or seven months.

Working from home... works! Not on its own necessarily, and not for everyone, but as a broad idea...it works.

With that understanding – that the rows and rows of desks that we find in today’s modern offices are no longer necessary, at least not in the numbers that previously existed – we have an opportunity to shrink corporate footprints and turn the COVID-19 pandemic into a turning point in our battle against climate change .

The workplace strategists of the world have been telling business leaders for many years that there were kinder, more effective workplace ecosystems that didn’t require as much stress, cost, or time lost in accomplishing our work.

They didn’t require individuals to come into the office all day, every day, and sit at a desk trying to concentrate while others around them were on conference calls, chatting or otherwise creating disruptions. Despite the evidence and the anecdotes of those who had been working remotely for years, there was still doubt as to the level of trust that could be reasonably placed upon the shoulders of individuals. But guess what? Human nature came through! Individuals rose to their responsibilities, confronted the challenges, corrected the things that weren’t working and were privileged to view a new world which, for many, worked really quite well.

Logically it seems not unreasonable to forecast that this position of trust will continue, that the advances in good will, productivity, improved work-life balance and the other positive surprises that have emerged from our mostly digital experiences will also continue. With this adjustment

we should expect an associated refocusing on those activities which may properly reside in something we used to call the office. These might be expected to include: • Complex, instant, fusion of knowledge to address high value, fast moving challenges • Living creativity, serendipity and innovation associated with high value initiatives • A place to access unique facilities and equipment that can’t be provided at home (for example labs) • Activities that are confidential, sensitive or governed by regulatory requirements • Someone who could work from home but whose high need for social interaction leads them to believe they need to be in the office • The potential for unstructured learning and knowledge sharing • A place for people that can’t (or prefer not to) work from home because they don’t have the facilities at home • Availability of hands-on help desks • Host and present to customers • A place for social interaction Not all these activities are requirements all day, every day, for the individuals to whom these activities apply, nor is the office as we used to know it the only place where many of these needs can be addressed. A whole ecosystem will continue to evolve using third places such as public spaces, co-working spaces and other places of hospitality, without making long-term commitments for access, capacity and control. These third spaces, in conjunction with homeworking, will increasingly serve as alternatives to fixed enterprise space and contribute towards the reduction of the permanent footprint of the organisation. They will also enrich the diversity of choices open to employees as 14

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A Human Approach to Leadership

Never

1% 32% 4%

Less than once a week

42% 12% 17%

Once a week

52%

2 or 3 times a week

6% 32%

Every day ./ most days

3% 0%

10% Post-Covid

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Pre-Covid

Figure 1 Percentage of the population who worked from home (Pre-Covid and preferred Post-Covid)

potential working locations. The fact that these choices increasingly start appearing at, or closer to, home reinforces the potential for a very different carbon-footprint profile associated with “how we go to work”.

Recent experience with a number of large organisations sets a strong expectation that Corporate real estate footprints will reduce in size, and that additional layers of deep thought, ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking, will be devoted to minimising the boat anchor-like qualities of our inflexible office portfolios. This highlights the possibility for a meaningful reduction in the carbon footprint. With individuals travelling less to work, a decrease in the carbon footprint of getting to work also becomes logistically possible.

How much of a difference can we make?

Recently three different organisations with whom we are working participated in surveys of employees and their managers, inviting them to compare their pre-pandemic workstyle and their preferred post-pandemic work pattern.

Figure 1 is an example of the results from one organisation but all three had very similar results. The black bars express the previous pre-pandemic reality, and the grey bars relay preferences for the future, relative to employees’ desire to work from home.

In summary, before the pandemic 74% of employees at this company either never worked 15

from home, or did so less than once a week.

Now, 84% are either working from home most days or 2-3 times a week. That is revolutionary.

Embracing these views, our team went on to calculate the space reductions of the three companies with the following results: • Organisation one: 42% reduction • Organisation two: 46% reduction • Organisation three: 39% reduction It should be understood that the space reductions were net calculations which embraced increases in space to accommodate for increased collaboration, socialising etc. The point is that the potential space reductions are not trivial. Major occupancy cost reductions are possible net of the need to invest in reconfiguration to address the new focus: less focus on concentrated, contemplative work and more on the collaborative and the social.

This reduction in space, should it be applied across the majority of the knowledge workforce, has the capacity to change the face of cities: to permanently reduce the demand for office space and to surface new opportunities which repurpose the excess space to, for example, address the housing needs of growing populations and to take pressure off the commuting stress and capacity demands prevalent in so many great cities.

This capacity to avoid new construction and reduce commuting is the big win for the environment. It reduces carbon emissions for commuting, operational carbon emissions for

74%

Before the pandemic 74% of employees at this company either never worked from home, or did so less than once a week. Now, 84% are either working from home most days or 2-3 times a week. That is revolutionary!

Special supplement | The sustainable design opportunity offered by the global pandemic | Chris Hood

building operation and embedded carbon emissions from the avoidance of new construction.

The challenge, however, remains as to how prepared organisations are to host the dialogue required to satisfactorily work their way through the myriad points of view that need to be countenanced as they seek to build a response.

• Whether to acknowledge the post-Covid preferences of employees • The attitudes and reactions of people managers • The pressure upon organisations to 'do the right thing' for the environment, from employees, partners, customers, governments • Those who seek to attract top talent to their organisations • To real estate and IT organisations challenged to create superior workplace experiences while also being charged to reduce cost • Bottom line improvement in business performance • The global warming imperative

Each one of these interests is an area of expertise in and of itself, but experience suggests that few leaders are ready and skilled to enter such a multi-faceted reconciliation of such wildly diverse interests.

Starting here, right now, one is driven to declare the importance of quickly developing our future business leaders to be successful in the space between disciplines and not necessarily to require that they be a master of any one of them. It is vital for people in positions of responsibility not to shy away from the areas they don’t understand or are not familiar with, but to get involved and quickly learn to become conductors of new orchestras with different instruments, playing different tunes. We cannot follow our way to success on this issue.

We need leaders like Bernard Looney of BP who is prepared to completely set aside the previous activities of the company and emerge with a new and inspiring view of the future and their role in it. Having an oil company reimagine energy is an inspiring example of the transformational thinking that is needed to help us continue life as we knew it, on this planet.

Using global warming as the call for action can we reimagine the arrival of a new driver that rises to the top of our agenda of priorities? Do we have the leaders who can help us make sense of the issues we need to confront? Let’s challenge the business schools and executive educators to quickly teach leaders to be design-thinkers, to embrace big ideas and to get out of their comfort areas in the search for bold new ideas.

Time to embrace the opportunity Climate change is a topic that should exist in any responsible risk management scenario and yet it rarely forces itself on to the top priority list.

The longer we delay, the more difficult it will become. Through COVID-19 we have been handed a great opportunity to make a difference. Let’s look at the workplace through a new prism and recognise that each business, no matter how small, has a chance to not only make a significant reduction in their carbon footprint but also to create an improved workplace experience for all.

About the author www.futureworkforum.com/project/chris-hood/

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A Human Approach to Leadership

By Mark Thomas

What role will HR adopt in the new world of work and business?

C

OVID-19 has had a devastating impact on the world. Governments and businesses have been challenged as never before. Leaders are struggling to not only manage the immediate, but also the long-term impact for their businesses.

The crisis has dramatically exposed many businesses for their lack of any kind of organisational resilience. As customer demand evaporated, Zombie companies saddled with enormous layers of debt and a lack of cash reserves expired almost overnight. A survey by the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported that over 50% of UK businesses only had enough cash to last six months! Consequently, the challenge of developing organisation resilience and sustainability is now top of the leadership agenda. One important question linked to this challenge is, what role will HR play in shaping the new world of business and work?

For a long time, the HR profession has struggled with a brand and identity issue. What is HR’s role?

Is it strategic enough? How does it add value?

Since the early 2000s, American academic and consultant Dave Ulrich championed a model that has influenced most of the world’s HR functions.

By illustrating how effective people management strategies can result in increased shareholder value, Ulrich advocated a distinctive set of roles for the function. Whilst Ulrich’s business partner model was universally adopted, it is debatable whether it produced the desired outcome of putting HR at the centre of organisations. Some detractors have argued that Ulrich’s model made HR more difficult to do business with! Others have

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For a long time, the HR profession has struggled with a brand and identity issue.

What is HR’s role? Is it strategic enough?

How does it add value?

argued that it resulted in a de-skilling of the function, as traditional roles were deconstructed and outsourced.

The HR function also has a long history of fad surfing; endlessly seeking what’s new as opposed to focusing on business fundamentals. Many functions have proved themselves slow when rising to opportunities that have placed people at the centre of the business agenda. Whether through movements such as customer service, quality or, more recently, ‘lean’ and ‘agile’, HR has often allowed other functions such as engineering or information technology to seize the initiative and champion the approach. The consequence has been to further fuel the debate about HR’s ability to demonstrate a value-added contribution.

There is little doubt that HR functions have been working 24/7 to address the restructuring challenges and ‘terms and conditions’ fallout of the coronavirus. Many airline, retail, service and hospitality businesses are on ‘life support’.

Companies are having to succumb to the brutal commercial imperatives of reducing costs and preserving cash at all costs. Severe restructuring programmes are ongoing and result in many staff experiencing ‘victim or survivor’ trauma.

50%

A survey by the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported that over 50% ofUK businesses only had enough cash to last six months!

Special supplement | What role will HR adopt in the new world of work and business? | Mark Thomas

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A Human Approach to Leadership

One of the world’s most successful capitalists, Larry Fink, founder of BlackRock, is recently quoted as saying, “Going forward, there is going to be a lot more focus on society, customers, clients, family and employees.” Developing future organisational capability, sustainability and success in that agenda is something towards which many high-quality HR professionals can contribute.

Whilst this is an immediate and inevitable consequence of the crisis, HR professionals need to be alert and keep their eyes on the bigger picture. The current default position of severe cost cutting and headcount reduction may not be sufficient to guarantee long term survival. Many companies currently disappearing are products of failed markets, leadership and business models; many were in deep difficulties before the crisis.

The virus simply pushed them over the edge!

Amidst the brutal restructuring, the current crisis has also, rather ironically, placed people at the centre of organisations and redefined who the 'most valued and important people' are!

Amidst the savage cost cutting, eternal issues such as trust, openness and transparency are fast re-emerging. Protecting the health and safety of staff will be key to generating future loyalty and emotional engagement; key differentiators for the winning businesses of the future.

People are also asking “how did our leaders do during the crisis?” Answers to this question will have a huge impact on the return of many businesses to the new world. Traditional style leaders will be tested by a new agenda 19

of stakeholder capitalism that elevates the environment, social contribution and justice, to new heights. Paying lip service will no longer suffice.

One of the world’s most successful capitalists, Larry Fink, founder of BlackRock, is recently quoted as saying, “Going forward, there is going to be a lot more focus on society, customers, clients, family and employees.” Developing future organisational capability, sustainability and success in that agenda is something towards which many high-quality HR professionals can contribute.

But it’s going to be a tough task for HR professionals, and some are perhaps already falling into the trap of old-style HR. The financial and economic pressures are already drowning out calls for a ‘new way’ of operating. Leadership mindsets pre-occupied with short term survival, coupled with spreadsheet myopia, will look to silence radical discussions about new business, organisation or people agendas. Yet we know that resilient organisations don’t simply survive over the long term, they also prosper, develop and grow. A key learning of the crisis is that it is people that are at the heart of organisations. It is people on the intensive care ward, the supermarket checkout,

Special supplement | What role will HR adopt in the new world of work and business? | Mark Thomas

Some of the Critical Questions HR Will Need to Facilitate • What is our business doing and learning from the crisis?

• How do we deal with people we are having to say goodbye to?

• How easy were we to do business with?

• How much of what we did has proved irrelevant?

• What can we do better, faster and at less cost to our previous ways of operating?

• How do we add value to our customers in the future?

• What are our future business priorities and actions?

• How do we help people re-engage with colleagues and customers?

• How do we focus people on the right things as we try to accelerate out of the crisis?

• How do we reskill large numbers of our people for a new future?

• How do we re-energise people around any new ways of working?

the refuse truck and transport depot that have made the critical difference; not leaders or middle managers but people in the engine room.

In recent times, HR’s thought leadership agenda has been dominated by themes involving purposeful roles, fluid and flexible working contracts and enhanced learning and development opportunities. The HR community has consistently stressed the need to develop fully engaged and resilient employees with a view to developing agile teams to produce high-performance organisations.

The HR toolbox of the last decade is ideally suited to a new world of work and business. Many companies that have been successfully navigating the crisis have displayed these capabilities and attributes; underpinned by a strong sense of people power that has responded to the demands of the crisis.

A cursory examination of HR’s recent playbook of programmes and offerings reveals that it has a lot to offer in terms of building new organisational capability and resilience, in a post-Covid world: • Networked organisation – working with partners in new and radical ways e.g., customers, suppliers and stakeholders • Virtual organisation – simplifying structures and processes for a new organisation together with home and distance working • Holacracy – where organisation power is distributed throughout the organisation via distinct, autonomous yet symbiotic teams, rather than vertically • Personal development: e.g., mindsets and skills for developing wellbeing, building resilience and navigating the new challenge 20

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A Human Approach to Leadership

The great COVID-19 experiment of working from home has shown that most people can be trusted to do the right thing. So, HR professionals will need to champion and implement their full repertoire of tools to help facilitate an engaged and motivated workforce for a new era of working life. Greater levels of flexibility and approach to all aspects of people management will need to become the default position

of home and distance working • Talent development: e.g., for bunker busting existing business and organisational paradigms and developing mindsets to constantly disrupt and reinvent • HR Digital and Analytics – moving to more immediate and personalised means of communications and developing real insights into people’s needs and aspirations • Preparation for a surprising future: developing agility, flexibility and adaptability of policies, processes, contracts and digital systems • Learning organisation: e.g., highly relevant micro-learning and self-directed learning that address the need to re-equip entire workforces with new skills and capabilities • Team performance and appraisals, including self-appraisal in a virtual world – utilising digital tools to track feedback and performance • Culture development e.g., fostering purposeful and energised people engagement. Developing a culture where powerful questions that involving speaking truth to power become the norm • Compensation: aligning with the new dynamics – gig economy, flexible work practices – career breaks, study breaks • Regulatory compliance – responsiveness to changing social policies and employee and customer agendas So how does HR rise to the challenge? Firstly, HR leaders and professionals need to set out a 21

challenging and ambitious agenda within their organisations. They need to alert their leadership teams to the dangers of falling into the trap of a ‘business as usual’ model and inertia. All aspects of the business and organisation need to be subject to intense review. Extracting full learning from the crisis will demand a new culture of powerful conversations that “speak truth to power” and seek to confront all aspects of how a business operates. HR leaders and professionals need to play a central role in structuring and facilitating these conversations at all levels of their organisation. The outputs of which will form the basis of a new way of generating customer value and engaging with all key stakeholders.

The great COVID-19 experiment of working from home has shown that most people can be trusted to do the right thing. So, HR professionals will need to champion and implement their full repertoire of tools to help facilitate an engaged and motivated workforce for a new era of working life. Greater levels of flexibility and approach to all aspects of people management will need to become the default position. HR will need to move from a ‘one size fits all’ approach to a new personalised level of staff engagement where the individual as opposed to the group need is satisfied. HR leaders will have a critical role in leading from the front and influencing their wider leadership colleagues on the benefits of a new type of work-employee agenda.

The winning organisations of the future will not just be those companies that seize the opportunities to deconstruct and radically

Special supplement | What role will HR adopt in the new world of work and business? | Mark Thomas

reshape their business models whilst at the same time exercising prudent and well-judged financial disciplines. The winning organisations of the future will need to radically transform their employee relationships and re-engage emotionally with their people as never before!

Equipped with a highly appropriate and resourceful toolbox of people and organisational solutions for a post-Covid world, HR professionals have an amazing opportunity to pursue an agenda and journey of creative destruction and reinvention.

The ultimate goal being a successful, resilient and sustainable organisation underpinned with a real sense of purpose and fully engaged people. Time will tell if HR can rise to the challenge.

About the author www.futureworkforum.com/project/mark-thomas/

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A Human Approach to Leadership

By Stuart Neilson

The Working World of 2030 – A Better Place

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Special supplement | The Working World of 2030 – A Better Place |Stuart Neilson

COVID-19 will accelerate the pace of change in the workplace. It will bring about the enforced adoption of remote and agile working and will consequently reshape how companies communicate and use office space.

T

he Vision By 2030, over 70% of the workforce will be comprised of generation X and millennials.

The economic effects of COVID-19 will feel like a distant memory and work itself will be integrated into a broader holistic lifestyle .The working world will be thriving as human respect and kindness take centre stage.

70%

By 2030, over 70% of the workforce will be comprised of generation X and millennials

Navigating change But what of the journey? What will leaders and businesses need to navigate to make this vision a reality? In the short term the challenge of stabilising the global economy will need to be overcome, employers will need to create a safe environment for employees to return to work and millions of workers worldwide will need to be re-skilled. Office space will need to be repurposed with every organisation needing to find a way to successfully accommodate remote working. Leaders will need to develop new skills to cope with the pace of change, the rapidly changing demands of employees and customers and meeting sustainability targets.

Company structures will be much flatter and encourage rapid communication and decisionmaking at all levels. What has become known as ‘reverse mentoring’ will be common place, where the most junior employees mentor the most senior employees on matters of technology and generational culture differences.

COVID-19 will accelerate the pace of change in the workplace. It will bring about the enforced adoption of remote and agile working and will consequently reshape how companies communicate and use office space.

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AI will continue to develop and increasingly take on administrative tasks previously seen as the domain of humans. This development will create a continuous learning and upskilling requirement for the workforce who will be forever embracing and learning new skills to retain their employment.

Emerging roles HR as a function will be playing an increasing leadership role in every organisation as it becomes the focal point for ensuring employee well-being and providing advanced remote working solutions.

It will take the lead in creating and scoping new and relevant roles in the workplace. The following roles and job titles will be common place: Ethical Technology Advisor, Freelance Relationship Officer (Gig Economy Manager), Employee Well-being Manager, Robot Liaison Manager, Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Work-From-Home Facilitator.

AI and Robots AI will continue to develop and increasingly take on administrative tasks previously seen as the domain of humans. This development will create a continuous learning and upskilling requirement for the workforce who will be forever embracing and learning new skills to retain their employment. Companies will offer employees the opportunity to constantly retrain with the support of in-house training and remote learning platforms.

We will have learnt how to live with AI and robots both at work and in our family lives.

Digital technology and innovation will advance at such a rapid rate that companies will need to retain incredible flexibility and agility. They will need to be constantly challenging what they do and how they do it to keep pace with the arrival of disruptive solutions. No industry will be exempt from the impact of technological disruption.

In top-performing companies, innovation will be a constant behaviour and not a strategy.

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Special supplement | The Working World of 2030 – A Better Place |Stuart Neilson

Social conscience made compulsory 2030 will be the moment the United Nations measures the success or failure of their 18 Sustainable Development Goals. There will be varying degrees of success by country based on the amount of focus governments have given to the goals and the economic stability they have experienced.

Manufacturing companies will source both globally and locally to mitigate against the risks of supply chain disruptions caused by further pandemics and geo-economic disruptions.

The companies that survive will have embraced the importance of having a social conscience and will be led by compassionate leaders who truly care for the well-being of their employees and the state of our planet. Every company will be measured against KPIs that extend beyond the traditional profit and loss account. It will be a regulated requirement to meet sustainability targets and be annually audited with an Impact Assessment.

Standards will be set, and global compliance guided by companies like B Corps, a global movement designed to support businesses who care about all stakeholders and who seek to help create a better economic system and world for everyone.

Generation Z and Millennials: the catalyst for change The retirement of baby boomers and the transition to a working population dominated by values and beliefs of the Millennials and Gen Z will have a profound effect on many aspects of the working world. These highly tech-savvy generations will have high expectations of employers in terms of environment, access to latest technologies, constant learning, variation, and freedom to create their own work space.

The work pattern for many people will be to work wherever whenever they choose, with the onus on the completion of tasks and projects within a timeline rather than a 9-to-5 office existence. How this is achieved and where resources are located will become less important. This will give rise to a wider global talent pool and global sourcing. The flexible and short-term nature of job roles will mean employees will take ‘time out’ to pursue other life priorities and interests. Candidate selection will be helped by a worker rating system, based on how effectively the worker completed their last assignment.

Companies focused on attracting the best talent will invest heavily in promoting their brand and the services and support they can provide to the employee. They will tailor their employee benefits and support to meet the needs of their employees and make the working experience more rewarding. In-house crèche facilities, well-being support and fitness trainers will be commonplace.

As technology facilitates the ability to work remotely and robots become more common place, there will be a parallel focus on human interaction. Office space and ‘cave’ environments will be used to bring people together, and it will be possible to cut them off from technology ‘interference’ at the touch of a button or voice command. This type of environment will also be used as a high performance collaboration hub.

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360°

As business threats and talent emerge from less predictable sources, today’s leader will have to operate with a 360-degree antenna and open mind to every possibility

New leadership Leaders will have recognised the strong relationship between culture and performance and the difference that can be made by nurturing respect and kindness in the workplace.

These behaviours will become increasingly treated as important KPIs in the operational execution of a business plan.

Successful leaders will have learned how to lead remotely and have a blend of skills with the ability to combine high empathy with strong results orientation. They will fully embrace diversity and be great listeners with the authenticity to build high levels of trust.

They will have an in-built respect for both people and the planet, ensuring their company remains highly agile and willing to constantly reinvent itself. Great leaders will understand the power of data but also be able to make decisions quickly from simple insights.

A personal investment in self-awareness and a commitment to being the best they can be will be core traits. Long gone will be the dictatorial, command and control leader of the past who lacked empathy and only worked to their own agenda. This type of leader will have been driven to extinction by the new generations in the workplace who have refused to be led by fear and who demand so much more from their working lives and employers.

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The good leaders will be in tune with global events and trends and always be ‘looking around the corner’ to predict future trends, threats and opportunities. They will always be examining external events and factors that could inform their business, while simultaneously prioritising employee well-being.

The phrase “best practice and talent does not necessarily sit within our four walls” springs to mind. Every employee needs to understand the purpose of the organisation and the important contribution their role makes, and the good leader will make this a priority. Good leaders will have successfully met the corporate sustainability targets that have accompanied the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and engaged their organisation in a new set of goals.

As business threats and talent emerge from less predictable sources, today’s leader will have to operate with a 360-degree antenna and open mind to every possibility.

In summary the great leader of 2030 will have the ability to ‘connect and inspire people’ of every generation, gender and background.

They will have successfully found a way to deal with the mega trends that have affected the work place over the previous ten years including Generational Impact, Digital Acceleration, Climate Change, Globalisation, Humanisation, and Big Data.

Special supplement | The Working World of 2030 – A Better Place |Stuart Neilson

The great leader of 2030 will have the ability to ‘connect and inspire people’ of every generation, gender and background. They will have successfully found a way to deal with the mega trends that have affected the work place over the previous ten years including Generational Impact, Digital Acceleration, Climate Change, Globalisation, Humanisation, and Big Data

For leaders to grow multi-dimensionally as outlined above, they will need to demonstrate they are ‘forever learning’, to invest the necessary time in self-development and to ensure this mindset is deep in the culture of the whole organisation.

We have every reason to look at the future of work with a high degree of optimism. The next ten years will be an era of enlightenment where social and human well-being learns to successfully combine with world of business.

The working world will have learned the true meaning of embracing diversity and the power of human potential. It will have learned how to treat everyone with the respect they deserve.

A new, more compassionate leader will emerge who cares about all stakeholders and, most importantly, the health and happiness of employees.

The working world of 2030 will make everyone feel valued, give people the opportunity to blend the priorities they have in life and create the platform to explore their dreams. What more could we wish for?

About the author www.futureworkforum.com/project/stuart-neilson/

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A Human Approach to Leadership

By Rudi Plettinx and Michael Jenkins

Sustainability = Purpose + Prosperity + Innovation

The Planet will survive, Humanity might not 29

Special supplement | Sustainability= Purpose + Prosperity + Innovation | Rudi Plettinx and Michael Jenkins

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e would argue that to date, and due to COVID-19, sustainability as ‘the new way of doing business’ has been side-lined and largely ignored. The clock is ticking, and short-term business thinking still prevails.

“We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment” noted Margaret Mead (1901-1978), American anthropologist Instead of innovating, we are hell-bent on pursuing old business models, turning to layoffs and cost savings to ensure the survival of the business. There is nothing wrong with that, but by doing so we have lost the perspective of the bigger picture.

Our proposition – “Sustainability = Purpose+Profits+Innovation” – will require a mindset shift in behaviours and leadership. It is about having an optimistic view of the future.

Embracing a circular business model, for example, will bring us plenty of fresh and exciting business opportunities – but to get there will require us to embrace innovation and take a positive and opportunistic view of what lies ahead.

To achieve these objectives, we will need to optimise our current operations, by improving cash flows and EBITDA out of the current business instead of maximising shareholder value by paying dividends and by ceasing share buy-backs, which add short-term value only to shareholders and executives with share options. Reinvesting the money in a circular business model through innovation from products and services is, in our view, the only way to go.

The result will be recurring sustainable EBITDAs and cashflow coming from a business that is not only sustainable, but has also embraced sustainability.

Furthermore, a Purpose-driven business will be more profitable, create prosperity for all stakeholders and prove satisfactory for shareholder value creation due to recurring EBITDAs and improved cash flows. Business owners might even gain market share and see a better bottom line compared to sticking with traditional business models. A business that is creating a Better

Business and a Better Tomorrow contributes to the survival of humanity and makes our planet a better place to live.

So what is needed, now? Five Key Leadership Factors We feel that a particular set of leadership factors working together – namely Purpose, Plan, Culture, Collaboration and Advocacy – are what will underpin the best approaches we could take now and into the future. These will be, without a doubt, the essential qualities for corporate sustainability through to 2030 and beyond.

Let’s take a closer look at these five key leadership factors, with a focus on Purpose.

Purpose: WHY we do what we do? Why does the business exist? For too long we have followed the mantra that profit maximisation and shareholder value were the only reasons for the existence of a business.

This way of thinking elicits a vehement “No” from us: for a business to exists, it must be Purpose-driven – in order to maximise stakeholder prosperity and value. Purpose also must be real. An expert on Millennials, Generation Z and the impact of purpose and sustainability, Jeff Fromm pointed out in an article in Forbes (16 January 2019) that: "Purpose isn’t profitable when it’s disingenuous.

It must be real. In this age of digital transparency customers can see through it and will redirect their spend elsewhere."

He cites Unilever as a good example where its “Sustainable Living” brands – such as Knorr, Dove and Lipton – are growing 50% faster than its other brands and make up more than 60% of the company’s growth, thereby showing that it is certainly possible to balance Purpose with Profit.

The evidence also shows that people who work for organisations with a purpose that they believe in, and buy into, will stay longer, be happier and perform better. 2020 Glassdoor data for Unilever in the UK gives the company a rating of 4 stars out of five, with 86% of employees saying that they would recommend the company to a friend. The Glassdoor average is 56%. Purpose makes a huge difference.

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So organisations that link their Purpose to sustainability – and who can prove that they are genuine in doing this – stand to benefit more than those who don’t.

Purpose – and with it the idea of purpose-led organisations – is emerging once again after a surge some ten or so years ago following the Global Financial Crisis. What’s important for us to notice is that the presence of purpose centre stage in corporate strategising today might be the start of a repeating pattern akin to what happened in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. At that time, people welcomed the potential to do things differently and for a year or two it seemed that might happen. But for the most part in fact, organisations didn’t change or mend their ways. So if the pattern were to repeat itself, we might start to see purpose waning in intensity in about five years’ time.

We need to make sure that doesn’t happen.

To do so will require advocating for a different kind of leadership – and different kinds of behaviours – to ensure that purpose stays at the heart of organisations and that we continue to agitate to make the workplace more human while at the same time achieving our organisational and business objectives.

As a Deloitte Insights article (“How brands that authentically lead with purpose are changing the nature of business today”, 15 October 2019) puts it: "Purpose-driven businesses truly embed purpose in every action, aiming to leave an enduring impact on people’s lives. Increasingly, customers are looking to engage with companies that help them achieve their goals. Whether it’s Kellogg’s aim to 'nourish families so they can flourish and thrive' through nutritious breakfast cereals; Patagonia being “in business to save our home planet”; or Sumo Salad aspiring to “make Australia a healthier and happier place”—orienting business around purpose can help companies drive their operations toward outcomes people value, and in turn, deliver what stakeholders value."

Certified B Corporations are also a new kind of business that balance purpose and profit. They are legally required to consider the impact of their 31

decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. This is a community of leaders, driving a global movement of people using business as a force for good.

New beginnings We propose that we can all benefit from starting afresh. This means recognising that old behaviours are unlikely to achieve what we need to them to achieve as we move into a potentially very different type of existence, one characterised by more frequent and quite possibly more destructive global disruptions. We believe that putting purpose first – and underpinning it with deeply human values such as altruism, compassion and empathy – is the way to go.

Plan: WHAT do we do, and what do we aspire to do as an organisation?

Culture: HOW do we do things around here?

Collaboration: WHO should we work with in other businesses and in other sectors of society in order to be more effective? We believe this will require partnership in all aspects of civil society, business and academia.

Advocacy: WHERE we use the authority of a given business to encourage others to act in the interests of advancing sustainable development.

You could decide to be passive and adopt a “wait and see” approach, a “this movement will blow over” position. “Wrong,” we would say. Procrastination cannot be the order of the day. Why? Well, the transition from maximising profits to satisfying stakeholder value will require us to embrace a different type of leadership. The models from the last century or even the last few decades will not do it for us. The revolution and force of disruptive innovation, insurgents and upstart market entrants will only accelerate. The time to act is now.

The scale and systematic nature of the sustainability challenges thrown up by the global forces of change de facto make individual approaches to problem solving obsolete. To address them we have to become the ‘genius of the “and”’ when it comes to realising the best businesses can offer in terms of co-operation –

Special supplement | Sustainability= Purpose + Prosperity + Innovation | Rudi Plettinx and Michael Jenkins

Sustainability is more than a marketing, feel-good exercise.

It is about disruptive innovation and defining new recurring EBITDAs. And there will be winners and losers. The losers will be the ones that hang on to old, obsolete business models of the past century, such as the “make to waste” model, while the winners will be the ones that see sustainability as a new way of doing business

and that means both collaboration and competition.

Whatever form of advocacy we go for will not be effective if we do not collaborate and form partnerships across businesses, sectors, academia, civil society and policymakers.

We need to recognise that some of the future change-critical leaders may yet not exist and that new, innovative, entrepreneurial businesses we can’t yet foresee will eventually displace some of the best-placed and well-respected companies and organisations currently in existence.

Therefore, sustainability is more than a marketing, feel-good exercise. It is about disruptive innovation and defining new recurring EBITDAs. And there will be winners and losers. The losers will be the ones that hang on to old, obsolete business models of the past century, such as the “make to waste” model, while the winners will be the ones that see sustainability as a new way of doing business, combining purpose with profit and challenging their value chains to embrace circular business models from cradle to cradle.

This will be a balancing act between short-term gains, survival versus long-term perspectives and recurring gains in the future. It will also require us to invoke a sense of altruism too – in order to push home the message. The efforts we make now in furthering the sustainability agenda and in encouraging strategic thinking around sustainability will ultimately benefit the people of the future who don’t even exist yet. Our descendants.

So, on which side of history would you like to be?

Sustainability will challenge the future of business leadership, which is why we need to move fast to model new behaviours. Failure to do so will effectively put the survival of humanity itself at stake. The planet will regenerate itself with or without humans and while we have still the keys to our success in our hands, the clock is ticking.

About the authors www.futureworkforum.com/project/rudi-plettinx/ www.futureworkforum.com/project/michael-jenkins/

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A Human Approach to Leadership

By Lily Kelly-Radford and Patrick Cowden

Virtues in Action

How kindness can transform the workplace for sustainability of the organisation

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cross all cultures, since the beginning of time, there has been a sense of organised humanity. We suggest that kindness has always been a universal quality of this, although its manifestation may take various cultural forms.

Kindness in the workplace is our focus and the source of the change, or spark, we want to advance. It is the root of what we want to express.

It involves the virtues of empathy – which is most important – along with humility, compassion, love, and respect.

Kindness is the application of all these virtues combined.

Thus, acts of kindness can be considered ‘virtues in action’. And through these, we can see the power of kindness unfold in respect, listening, appreciation, trust, and caring. In short, to truly see and hear others.

The foundation of our thinking is that leadership, like kindness, is for the benefit of others. Yes, kindness is directed at others, but it also provides numerous benefits for the person who initiates it

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A human-to-human business philosophy Think of kindness as the trigger to elevate each of us and all that we do for one another.

The foundation of our thinking is that leadership, like kindness, is for the benefit of others. Yes, kindness is directed at others, but it also provides numerous benefits for the person who initiates it.

In an organisational setting, the individual engages in these behaviours to benefit the group and the individual people who comprise it. As leaders develop their organisation’s human potential, this developed potential provides the advancement of organisational goals and ultimately the sustainability and success of any business.

However, the organisation is not just infrastructure – it is the organisation of human beings to accomplish goals. If we believe this then why would we take the humanity out of the organisation or separate the humanity from the people running the organisation?

The notion that only the rational self is more valued than the humanised self has been supported for years. And this has coloured our understanding of leadership behaviour. Leadership is seen solely as the rational being that considers kindness only an occasional approach to engagement. This has created a model of leadership that prevents leaders from using their ‘kindness muscle’ to bring balance – which is sorely needed – to the mission of the organisation.

Special supplement | Virtues in Action | Lily Kelly-Radford and Patrick Cowden

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How to install kindness in the organisational process As leaders, it is incumbent on us to make the space for kindness to manifest. Leaders should realise that they own the structure, the protocols of the organisation, and thus the organisation itself. They are the ones that can create the psychological space for kindness to become part of the fabric of the organisation.

You can make space for kindness by: • Allocating meeting space and time to embed acts of kindness into the flow of your business processes, regardless of when and where they may take place.

• Scheduling meetings and appointments with consideration for worktime boundaries and personal needs and obligations.

• Balancing required tasks with their impact on team members’ schedules and lives. Not all tasks warrant deadlines that keep people working after hours. Leaders should control the schedule so harsh deadlines aren’t the norm.

• Emailing with care using discipline to think through what’s being asked of the worker. Most experienced managers batch email into fewer, and less random and careless messages. Make it clear that the work can be handled within respectful work hours and turnaround times.

Some of the biggest errors in work and safety were related to sleep deprivation.

• Arranging meetings, deadlines, and required travel in a way that accommodates the schedules of single parents, multigenerational families, and caregivers. This is especially important for global work. Plan with respect for responsibilities.

• Creating a pace that supports and encourages individual health and wellbeing. We’ve all heard bosses boast “we don’t eat lunch here”. Don’t be that person!

• Acting as a host in the workplace, providing assistance for people when they’re in the building, be they vendors, job applicants, or recently hired colleagues.

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• Speaking to people with a greeting – asking how they are – before launching into a request or assignment. If someone is struggling, pause and offer to lighten the load.

• Onboarding new hires so they have the support needed for them to be successful. Allowing new people to struggle with unfamiliarity is passive hazing.

By taking steps like these, effective leaders become the catalyst for the power and energy of kindness and basic human respect. This will spread throughout the organisation – suppliers, partners, customers, employees, families, and communities – and become integral to the brand – and its reputation.

The relationship between kindness and decisions Much has been written about the predisposing factors for kindness. While some people discuss nature, others refer to nurture as accounting for the variance. Regardless of our attribution about the etiology of kindness, let’s acknowledge that kindness creates a full-fledged vigorous implementation for tasks that individuals engage in. We love to do good for those that do good for us.

There is a measurable relationship between acts of kindness and our ability to see more, understand more, learn more and, therefore, decide and act better than before.

Special supplement | Virtues in Action | Lily Kelly-Radford and Patrick Cowden

‘Application’ refers to the applied practice of engaging in kind behaviours and creating a routine. This routine must be installed in an organisation in order to propagate, to become endemic. It’s like installing a new version of operating software that will enhance a device’s functions and improve performance

For the recipients of these acts and onlookers, one can observe how nurtured souls go further, sacrifice more, and achieve more. We have also seen how many employees are motivated to achieve more for their team and colleagues and not just for themselves. Being kind and demonstrating goodness can create a culture with higher calling and standard for respect.

If you could download a Kindness app ‘Application’ refers to the applied practice of engaging in kind behaviours and creating a routine.

This routine must be installed in an organisation in order to propagate, to become endemic. It’s like installing a new version of operating software that will enhance a device’s functions and improve performance.

Most organisational routines need to start and articulate steps that are repeated each day in order to achieve excellence. As noted earlier, kindness feels good to the giver and receiver, so the routine that started it is easily passed along.

It’s possible to create space for kindness in any increment, from six seconds to sixty minutes.

By doing this we want to ask readers what it would look like if you were to repeat a practice each day. What steps can be created to inspire more kind interactions? Kindness interactions, in turn, lead to stronger connections and deeper relationships which promote work outcomes and organisational committment.

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What are some organisational acts of kindness that you could institute near term and long term?

Near term: establish a check-in every morning and consider holding a check out before staff depart. This can be as simple as two minutes per person to see how they’re doing – to ask, to listen, to appreciate, and to acknowledge one another in every encounter we share.

Longer term: rethink onboarding processes so they ensure people new to the organisation or new to a department are properly introduced to the job, the resources, and the people they’ll need to know to be effective. Expecting people to figure these out for themselves probably does more to isolate individuals than to energise them as contributors and team players. Rethink any process that brings people together to cooperate; that’s where the potential of inserting kindness will have the biggest effect. We work better together in those places where kindness and trust are at the highest possible level.

To start imagining routines, consider the metaphor of an operating system and model. If an operating model changes one must also change the operating system. And if we are to institute an operating system for kindness we must consider what the code is. What is the specific line of code that we would write for an organisation to fundamentally practice daily, that would shift the operating system into a new update?

Just like writing a line of code to change a program, you have to build virtues in action into the work processes. Then repeat it over and over, until it becomes culture.

If the old line of code were Leader to Follower (LtF), perhaps the new code might be Person to Person (PtP) to create more kindness. This single shift can encourage those who have historically seen themselves as subordinate in power, to initiate acts of kindness. It would empower employees to initiate kind acts in all directions, not just toward direct reports but including acts that are upwardly and laterally directed. Instead, all employees would take responsibility for this in all they do. It would create a base code that would eliminate the hierarchy which places the burden of responsibility on the identified leader.

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Just like writing a line of code to change a program, you have to build virtues in action into the work processes. Then repeat it over and over, until it becomes culture

Special supplement | Virtues in Action | Lily Kelly-Radford and Patrick Cowden

99%

It’s generally assumed that initiatives like this come from those at the top, however the leaders of an organisation only make up approximately one percent of the organisation’s full population. It’s the other 99% that can establish the new kindness code

Once kindness embeds itself through daily routine into every PtP interaction, we achieve an exponential effect in the quality of organsational impact and speed. More kindness equals more energy, more resilience, more motivation, more engagement, more creativity, more openness, more quality, more speed, more cooperation, more performance, more results, more everything.

And, yes, more well-being, joy, and happiness.

Where does this begin? With you Think of the old saying, “If it is to be, it’s up to me”.

It’s generally assumed that initiatives like this come from those at the top, however the leaders of an organisation only make up approximately one percent of the organisation’s full population.

It’s the other 99% that can establish the new kindness code. The leaders are accountable for creating the space for it to happen.

This larger segment of leaders controls the culture – the power rests in the populace and individually, it’s a contribution to the advancement of the organisation. And therefore, to the advancement of all of us. The improvement of the Human Condition: it’s time to get started, one small act of kindness at a time.

About the authors www.futureworkforum.com/project/lily-kelly/ www.futureworkforum.com/project/patrick-cowden/

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A Human Approach to Leadership

By Graham Wilson

The Importance of Creating Leadership Momentum

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Special supplement | The Importance of Creating Leadership Momentum | Graham Wilson

H

ow to lead and create a way forward in a fast-moving and ambiguous world.

Developing leaders It’s clear that we now live in a world full of confusion, ambiguity and disruption. The pace of change has outstripped our ability to keep up with it. Things don’t seem to work the same way anymore. It’s like someone has changed the rules on how to lead. Back in the day we were taught to be decisive, to give clarity, to drive results.

The challenge now is how do we do that if we are unsure of the way forward?

The way we develop our leaders needs to be updated. We can’t expect them to learn leadership as if they were still at school being taught by subject matter experts, where every subject had a separate teacher, in a separate classroom, sharing their passion and narrow expertise. Yet today’s universities and business schools are still using this model.

The Strategy Professor says that the most important thing in business is a good strategy, then another will say that culture eats strategy for breakfast! The Finance Professor says it’s all about the numbers, and the Marketing Professor emphasises the importance of marketing… and so it goes on. Unfortunately, our world doesn't separate that easily. It's never “OR thinking”; it's always “AND thinking” that counts.

Strategy, culture, finance, operations, marketing, and innovation are all important. And other elements are too. Which presents a challenge when we take the complexity of leadership, decode it, and simplify it. If we are going to give leaders a chance going forward, we need to break things down into a number of key disciplines and create a framework to translate the disciplines into action and a way of working.

A New Leadership Manifesto The New Leadership Manifesto addresses this problem. It is based on more than 27 years of developing over 85,000 of the world's best leaders for all different cultures and contexts, researching, debating and exploring what great leadership looks like. It has been decoded into a clear set of ten disciplines based on what leaders actually do in today’s world.

1. They create a high performance environment where success is inevitable 2. They awaken possibility in people to deliver extraordinary results 3. They operate with boldness, simplicity and speed 4. They understand themselves and have a story to tell 5. They inspire action 6. They create high performance teams 7. They innovate 8. They manage ambiguity and kill risk 9. They educate 10. They deliver with pace Living the disciplines To live these disciplines, leaders need to be 100% authentic in their leadership brand, building on strengths. They are happy being vulnerable and can be themselves, sharing their leadership philosophy. This builds trust and a positive, healthy and happy environment.

Purpose is at the heart of everything good leaders do. They are bold and have the courage to go out on a limb when needed. They use stories and examples to give meaning and inspire action, creating a real sense of value.

Teamwork comes naturally to them as they are comfortable with collaboration, empowerment and autonomy.

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The culture they create encourages people to come up with great ideas to add value and improve performance. They innovate in every aspect of business and are relentless discoverers, exploiting technology and platforms. In a rapidly changing world they have to be mentally tough and resilient, and be comfortable with paradoxes.

A good leader helps people and the organisation to learn by inspiring curiosity and developing and nurturing capability. They lead with questions and only tell people the answers when direction is absolutely needed. They translate strategy into meaning and inspire action, delivering through people and teams.

Leaders cannot just pay lip service to these disciplines. They need to adopt a way of working, a way of creating routines and rituals, that is based on a set. As a result of many great discussions and conversations with leading practitioners and many workshops focused on decoding what leadership should look like in the future, “The Leadership Flywheel” was invented.

This is a practical approach that can be adjusted depending on the context and situation of the leader. The core is a leadership philosophy of making a positive impact on our world. Leaders do this by being themselves, being collaborative and being impactful, leaving a positive legacy.

Here is how they do it: Making a Positive Difference Great leaders make a positive difference to people's lives by creating a high-performance environment where success is inevitable and performance can flourish. They awaken the possibility in people to deliver extraordinary results.

They care, build confidence and inspire action.

They do this by being purpose led. For an increasing number of businesses and their employees, the pursuit of profit is no longer enough. It’s about purpose and profit.

Leadership questions to think about: • What are you doing to make a positive difference in people's lives?

• What's your leadership purpose?

• What's your legacy?

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Being Yourself In order to make an impact and leave a legacy, leaders have to be trusted first. They need to be able to build an authentic leadership brand.

By being themselves, leaders will develop greater trust, better collaboration and ultimately enable their success. As proposed by Goffee and Jones, they must answer the question, “Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?” “Being more you, with skill” is key advice. It’s about playing to leaders’ strengths, developing their skills and making sure they use them.

Leadership questions to think about: • What is your leadership brand?

• What are your strengths?

• What is your story?

• What is your leadership philosophy?

• What are your purpose and values?

Being collaborative In today's world it's not possible for leaders to have all the answers. They need to work with others and collaborate to achieve success. They do this by being well networked with groups of people inside and outside of their organisations. Open innovation is becoming vital for their success.

There is also a rise in the need for conversational leaders, leaders who can run great meetings and workshops, ensuring the add value. They also need to be comfortable working with remote and virtual teams. Leaders need to be able to create high performance teams and sustain team performance, creating teams which can grab opportunities, solve problems and innovate quickly.

In today's world, leaders are no longer the subject-matter experts, with all the answers.

Instead they need to be the owners of the process.

Leadership questions to think about: • Do I have a range of collaboration tools?

• Have I developed my dialogue and conversational skills?

• Do I develop high-performing teams?

• Do I sustain high performance?

• Do I craft solutions?

Being yourself and being collaborative will of course help, but the most critical action for leaders is to be clear on what they should be doing and creating momentum in that direction

Special supplement | The Importance of Creating Leadership Momentum | Graham Wilson

POSE | VISIO N | | PUR VA EXT T LU N O ES C LEADING SELF WHO | WHY | WHAT | HOW

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Figure 1 The Leadership Flywheel

Being impactful There is where “The 10 Leadership Disciplines of The New Leadership Manifesto” comes into play. It is about personal productivity and the ability to influence and persuade others in order to get things done.

Being yourself and being collaborative will of course help, but the most critical action for leaders is to be clear on what they should be doing and creating momentum in that direction.

Leadership questions to think about: • Do I translate strategy to action by giving meaning?

• Do I start with explaining ‘why’ first rather than ‘what’ we need to do first?

• Do I hold people accountable?

• Do I ensure people are engaged and enabled?

• Do I regularly review and develop actions?

Pulling all this together The key question is how to make all this work.

How to translate it all to action. This is where the Leadership Flywheel comes in.

The Leadership Flywheel is a continuous process of reviewing, previewing and learning.

Here is how you apply it as a leader.

It starts with understanding the context you are in – knowing who you are, why you do what you do, what you should be doing and how to do it.

Once you are clear about that, you need to know how to build winning teams. You know how to create and sustain high performance teams. Once the team is in place you can collaboratively create a winning strategy and agile plan. Then communicate it with meaning to all stakeholders.

Next you need to align the system to the plan using systems thinking. Gain momentum through your ways of working: learning, evaluating ideas, deciding on what to implement and then delivering the improvements at pace. It’s then about building momentum by focusing on your strengths, evolving, innovating, and going again.

That’s how to create success in today’s world.

About the author www.futureworkforum.com/project/graham-wilson/

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A Human Approach to Leadership

By Peter Thomson

Leadership in the era of self-managed organisations

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Special supplement | Leadership in the era of self-managed organisations | Peter Thomson

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he COVID-19 pandemic has provided us with a unique opportunity to stand back and look at the world of work in a new light. Many assumptions about the way we structure organisations and how we run them have come into question. The role of leaders is under more scrutiny than ever before.

Lessons from home working At the beginning of 2020 anyone suggesting that 40% of the workforce could work from home would have been thought to be mad. The idea that this would also improve productivity would have fallen on deaf ears and thinking that people could combine home working with childcare and home schooling was clearly ridiculous. It’s amazing what we can do when a pandemic confronts us.

What we have learned from enforced home working is not just that many jobs can be performed remotely but that people can work very effectively without being closely managed. It has challenged the need for all those team meetings, face-to-face sessions and management guidance.

It has shown that given freedom and responsibility, employees will not simply sit idly waiting to be told what to do, but they will use their initiative to overcome the challenges and get on with the job. As a result it has raised an interesting question about the role of managers and the added value of all the bureaucracy we have built up in our organisations.

Self-management taking off There was already a growing movement of organisations who have shed layers of management and genuinely empowered employees. The pandemic has accelerated this trend and shone a spotlight on some successful examples of self-managed organisations. For the last 20 years companies such as Semco in Brazil, W L Gore in the USA and Mondragon in Spain have been cited as novel examples of running with minimal management interference. More recently Buurtzorg in the Netherlands, Haier in China and Matt Black Systems in the UK have shown that

organisations can be run from the bottom up with true autonomy being given to individuals or teams.

Up until now these companies have been the outliers but now they are entering the mainstream of work organisation.

The pandemic has pushed us to a tipping point.

There is no going back. It has opened up the possibility of dramatic restructuring of organisations and a massive improvement in productivity. And it makes us question the added value of management and leadership. To understand this revolution we have to challenge the assumptions built up in twentieth century hierarchical structures and look again at getting work done effectively. To illustrate this let’s go back to first principles.

How it works All organisations make commitments, for example in contracts with clients, and they need to satisfy these commitments. They promise to do something in the future for a price and to a standard. They add value to an input and produce an output whilst covering their costs. They also commit to complying with legislation and regulations applicable to their business. Somehow they need to share this out amongst the employees.

In a one-person business, this devolution is simple because it occurs within the mind of a single individual. They enter contracts, agree commitments, arrange their resources and plan activities to satisfy them. Overall, these tend to be efficient organisations because there is no wasted effort coordinating separate people.

In larger organisations the contractual and legal commitments must be divided, planned, communicated, sequenced, coordinated, monitored, recorded and reviewed. In addition, the necessary resources must be provided to the right people at the right time. These tasks are the primary role of a management team.

Traditionally these organisations have been divided into functions and run by a hierarchy adopting the principles of a centrally planned 44

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A Human Approach to Leadership

economy. This is mediated by ‘hours of work’ in contrast to the output-based operation in the small company. The ‘contract-based’ operations of the small organisation (work finishes when the job is complete) have been converted to a ‘time-based’ operation in a large company (work finishes when the bell rings).

Improving productivity Larger organisations can produce increased efficiency within each function if the function can be kept working at maximum capacity. However, the overall efficiency tends to drop because of the costs and ineffectiveness that occur between the functions and throughout the hierarchy. The management and administrative labour used in this approach often escalate to 30% of the workforce and more than 40% of the labour costs. This is not adding any direct value to the process of meeting the customer commitment. For the workforce there is also a tendency to lose sight of the outcome and become disconnected from it. Their contribution starts to resemble ‘a cog in a machine’. Workforce disengagement is a common result, requiring additional management and supervision. These all conspire to produce low overall productivity.

An alternative approach is to devolve all commitments to individual employees whilst keeping labour costs to a minimum and maximising engagement. A good example of this is Matt Black Systems, an aerospace company that has increased productivity per employee by 500%.

The basic principle is simple, all work is contractual, with all individuals making specific voluntary commitments. People are expected to be multiskilled; everyone carrying out the basic value-adding operations of sales, design, production (or service provision) and control (organisation and record keeping). The more value an individual adds, relative to their costs, the more reward they can extract from their work. Innovation and efficiency are rewarded both through pay and by the fact the job becomes easier.

Most contracts extend beyond the capability of a single person and rather than resorting to costly management, the company created an internal market where individuals collaborate directly. In 45

this way the organisation forms itself into a network of supply chains reaching from customers, through the internal network out to external suppliers.

Without a management team, costs have tumbled allowing for a big increase in the pay for the productive staff. Focusing on a “contractbased” approach has proven to be more effective at delivering against commitments whilst providing highly engaging and rewarding jobs.

Impact on management This has major implications for management.

In the case of Matt Black Systems, the two directors of the company closed down their offices in the building and chose to work from home. They deliberately did not want to interfere in the day-today running of the operation, leaving the employees to make the decisions. Other organisations have not gone quite as far as this but are running with almost no managers. Buurtzorg, for example, has 16,000 employees, two line managers and a staff group of 100 people. There are many more examples in the excellent book Humanocracy written by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini. So, If it’s possible to run organisations with far lower overheads and less management bureaucracy, increasing productivity massively, why are there not more leaders following this trend?

The answer is obvious when you think about the way most current organisations work. The successful leader in the past has been one who is powerful and decisive, who impresses the shareholders with a personal vision and surrounds himself (it’s usually a man) with people who think similarly. They like having power, enjoy being in a position of authority and in many cases are ruthless in the way they treat people. They ‘know best’, which is why they are paid hundreds of multiples of the average salary in the rest of the organisation. They come in, make the ‘difficult decisions’ stripping assets, cutting the workforce and implementing top-down financial controls. They promote people who think the same way and get rid of the ‘rebels’ that dare to think otherwise.

This explains why it’s so difficult for existing organisations to change. There is no incentive for

80k

Haier, the Chinese manufacturer of white goods, has evolved from the traditional pyramid structure to a series of micro-enterprises employing 80,000 people, all of whom act as entrepreneurs

Special supplement | Leadership in the era of self-managed organisations | Peter Thomson

There is no incentive for the existing leaders to reduce their own position of power and it’s not in their psychological make-up to want to do so. They have always lived in a world where power, information and authority come from the top and they cannot conceive of running an enterprise any other way

the existing leaders to reduce their own position of power and it’s not in their psychological make-up to want to do so. They have always lived in a world where power, information and authority come from the top and they cannot conceive of running an enterprise any other way. They will shuffle people around on the organisation chart, reorganise divisions and tinker with the operations of the business, but are stuck with the hierarchical, siloed model that is the only one they know.

Actions for leaders To survive in a competitive market, leaders must slim down the management and administrative overhead in their organisations. A good example is Haier, the Chinese manufacturer of white goods, which has evolved from the traditional pyramid structure to a series of micro-enterprises employing 80,000 people, all of whom act as entrepreneurs.

During the process they removed the entire middle management of 12,000 employees giving each individuals the choice to become a real entrepreneur or leave. This has been so successful that Haier has now expanded to other countries, taking over GE Appliances in the USA in 2016. They have successfully applied their self-management model here and continue to prove that it works across multiple cultures.

Management bureaucracy may be threatened by self-management models, but leadership should still flourish. These successful examples show that, given a sense of purpose and freedom to use their initiative, employees can produce extraordinary results. The role of the leader becomes one of identifying and communicating shared outcomes, listening to the ideas generated by the workforce and providing them with the support to achieve their goals. Leaders are no longer the wielders of power, controlling operations. They become the enablers of employee productivity and innovation, by creating an engaging culture and removing the bureaucratic barriers that stifle so many businesses today.

About the author www.futureworkforum.com/project/peter-thomson/

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A Human Approach to Leadership

By Cliff Dennett and Sunnie Groeneveld

How technology is challenging traditional leadership

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Special supplement | How technology is challenging traditional leadership | Cliff Dennett and Sunnie Groeneveld

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xperiences with virtual meetings One of the biggest challenges for leaders during the pandemic has been adapting to virtual meetings. In the past it’s been the person with the loudest voice in the room, or the one who gets to interrupt first, who usually has the most influence.

Now it’s more likely to be the person with the best microphone, fastest broadband or good lighting who gets to influence others.

On screen, leaders can’t rely on the trappings of status any more. They can’t call people into their big office and intimidate people. Microsoft Teams or Zoom is a more level playing field.

When technology doesn’t work, the first inclination for leaders is to revert back to face-toface meetings instead of fixing the technology problem. Yet, while virtual meetings seem to work when run well, and face-to-face meetings arguably also work, but mix the two and it’s difficult to get the balance right. The remote participants are likely to be at a disadvantage and if they are travelling, and on a mobile link it’s even worse.

Leaders are used to being able to get people together to achieve results and this means their calendars are stacked up with meetings. Many of these are badly run and there has been little education on how to organise and facilitate meetings. Some leaders have developed skills in setting up, coordinating and running physical meetings but they need to ask themselves some questions given the current circumstances: How do I react to these changed conditions? What is my responsibility? How am I going to delegate? Can we achieve this goal without having a meeting?

In adopting remote meeting technology we have tried to replicate sitting around a table in a virtual meeting instead of designing the experience from scratch. Maybe many meetings can be distributed in time as well as space. Can apps such as WhatsApp or Slack be used for decision making?

In corporate settings, technology is all about efficiency, cost savings, measuring and gathering data. Compare this with the world of entertainment where it’s about involvement, drawing people in and getting emotional buy-in. When business processes are designed the technology is not seen as a tool for engagement of employees, it’s seen as a way of automating human activities.

Good leaders have mastered the art of running virtual meetings and keeping the flow going by stopping people all trying to talk at the same time.

Until recently, leaders could get away with poor meeting skills. Now they need the skillset to know which tool to use in these new circumstances. But who in the organisation worries about this? IT is concerned with technology, HR thinks about the people but nobody is thinking about how decisions are made. Things fall between the cracks because nobody other than the CEO is responsible for the way technology impacts culture. In corporate settings, technology is all about efficiency, cost savings, measuring and gathering data. Compare this with the world of entertainment where it’s about involvement, drawing people in and getting emotional buy-in. When business processes are designed the technology is not seen as a tool for engagement of employees, it’s seen as a way of automating human activities.

Managing culture and change The digital transformation agenda for any company should be with the CEO. He or she should be concerned about managing the culture of the company, and digital technology plays an important part in this. It’s not just all about the speed of production, it’s also about the quality of work life.

The games industry has developed techniques for making activities enjoyable even to the point of being addictive. Some of these design features should be included in work activities to make them enjoyable as well as efficient.

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Leaders in the past have been good at running a business and have also had to make changes as an extra activity. Typically they’ve spent 80-90 percent of their time on the current tasks and the rest on managing change. Change has been seen as an extra burden that nobody liked. Now the priorities have altered. More and more leaders are spending most of their time changing business, not just running it. This requires a different set of skills. Leaders have to understand that change is constant and that they have the power to make it into something positive.

Digital technology is a tool that amplifies what you want to achieve. It is there for the CEO to use to inspire people and excite them. It should create enthusiasm amongst employees and inspire them to follow the leader. It should be seen by leaders as a force for good and an aid to bringing in positive change. Running the business is not their priority any more, they are there to make change.

Digital leadership There is now an MBA in Digital Leadership being run at the HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Zurich. The first semester emphasises that technological change and cultural change are equal. So if, for example, you want to introduce some collaboration software but have a company that is completely siloed, and people don’t trust each other or feel like sharing, then the best collaboration tool in the world won’t work. For this solution to work you also need to have people confident in sharing beyond their teams, where there is an open feedback culture.

This course teaches people how to manage technology and culture together as part of organisational change. Then the last semester covers digital vision. Leaders need to be able to review all the new technologies, such as blockchain, and form an opinion on what is relevant to their company and what makes sense for them to adopt.

They need to be familiar with the case studies that drove value for other businesses. Maybe they should be spending some time with the Artificial Intelligence start-up that has a cool piece of software that everybody is writing about.

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Once leaders have seen what technologies are available and the opportunities they create, they can find the ones that are interesting and potentially useful. They can then formulate their personal foresight for the digital future of the business, and because it’s something they believe, they will be able to communicate it effectively.

Leaders need to be able to provide clear direction on digital technology, but they don’t need to be technical experts. They have to know enough to be able to ask the right questions.

Traditionally, when the world was changing at a manageable pace, the leader had all the answers.

Now they are uncomfortable because they don’t have detailed knowledge of the digital world. The solution is for leaders to admit they don’t know everything but instead to be a critical mind and ask the right questions.

90%

Leaders in the past have been good at running a business and have also had to make changes as an extra activity. Typically they’ve spent 80-90 percent of their time on the current tasks and the rest on managing change. Change has been seen as an extra burden that nobody liked

Special supplement | How technology is challenging traditional leadership | Cliff Dennett and Sunnie Groeneveld

A good leader is the person who is most inquisitive, which is a different set of qualities from those of the hero leader of the past. Experience is still useful, but when someone thinks they have nothing new to learn, that’s a problem

The inquisitive leader The self-worth of a leader is now coming from a different place. It no longer can be justified through their knowledge, it must be justified through the questions they ask. A good leader is the person who is most inquisitive, which is a different set of qualities from those of the hero leader of the past.

Experience is still useful, but when someone thinks they have nothing new to learn, that’s a problem.

Leadership is about working out which questions to ask, so you don’t just end up solving the wrong problems really well.

Think like an entrepreneur The COVID-19 pandemic has made people step back from assumptions about how we get work done. Before this crisis we assumed that the old way of doing things was the only way. Now the world of work is very different, are we using people in very different ways to get things done? Leaders need to escape from conventional thinking and look at how their organisation works. They need to ask “What are we trying to do and how do we achieve it?”, rather than, “Here’s how we do things.”

What’s needed is entrepreneurial thinking and being prepared to change in-built assumptions.

Leaders need to accept that they have assumptions and test them. For example, they may assume that people get more done when they are in a group. But they should find a way of testing ideas out and be prepared to change their assumptions. They should look at the way meetings are held to see if they are good ways of making decisions. Maybe there are technology tools that are more effective.

Everyone has assumptions, biases, lenses and life experiences. Leaders are no exception. What

you see depends on who you are. Digital technology is a powerful tool that can reinforce biases, as is evident from social media where selective information is fed to people depending on their preferences. If that moves into the corporate environment, decision processes are influenced by algorithms repeating old decisions. Human ingenuity recognises that there is a digital filter bubble and it becomes a problem if leaders don’t recognise it. They need to ensure they are getting a balanced information diet.

IT as a strategic tool Leaders need to keep learning and build up know-how in the role of technology in organisations.

They need to understand that technology can reinforce existing structures and amplify unconscious bias, and can therefore work against change. People who all think the same are rewarded while the rebels, who dare to challenge the status quo, get thrown out. Existing systems get automated and become rigid. Big data can be used to reinforce impersonal decisions without thinking through what impact it will have on individuals.

To succeed in the digital age, leaders need to view information technology as a strategic tool for attracting and retaining key staff, rather than only seeing it as a way of driving efficiency and saving money. It’s a way of keeping people engaged and making work fun. Technology should be taking the routine work away from individuals, releasing them to use their creative human skills which cannot easily be replaced by a machine.

About the authors www.futureworkforum.com/project/cliff-dennett/ www.futureworkforum.com/project/Sunnie-Groeneveld/

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A Human Approach to Leadership

By Michael Devlin

COVID-19, our remote workplace and the human factor in leadership

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he coronavirus has exposed what is working and what is not, as we adapt how we manage our teams and workplaces. What can leaders learn from the crisis? They don’t need a post-Covid transformation plan; they need a ‘listening plan’. Employees want to know their situation is understood.

The big bang that COVID-19 brought us is that, overnight, most of the planet was working remotely.

At first glance this is a picture of new-found personal freedom, a more relaxed environment and, with no more commuting, a couple more hours of sleep a day. But a darker side has emerged for many through solitude, anxiety and the mental distress of being isolated behind a computer for months on end.

This article attempts to chart the ‘history of the present’ of workplace changes brought by COVID-19 – as seen through the eyes of a group of young professionals and mid-career leaders.

In today’s data-driven world, this account is unapologetically anecdotal. It is based on conversations with a group of current and future leaders who share their candid views and personal experiences and comment on leadership skills that are needed today, and in the post-Covid world of work. As they commented on personal experiences, it was agreed that all inputs will be anonymous.

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‘Motivation’ is probably the key word for the COVID-19 workplace dilemma.

Our contributors feel that this needs to be the core strategy for leaders if they are to succeed in emerging from the crisis with inspired teams

On balance, the contributors see remote working as a positive development. Overnight, old habits of presenteeism and meetings-formeetings-sake became irrelevant, as employers had no choice but to trust their team’s potential to self-manage. Generally, things are working out well, they say…if we can all stay motivated.

‘Motivation’ is probably the key word for the COVID-19 workplace dilemma. Our contributors feel that this needs to be the core strategy for leaders if they are to succeed in emerging from the crisis with inspired teams. The key to motivation, they advise, is to have more focus on the human factor in their management style.

Special supplement | COVID-19, our remote workplace and the human factor in leadership | Michael Devlin

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A Human Approach to Leadership

Post-Covid? What will change?

What won’t come back?

12 months ago, work-from-home policies allowed occasional time out of the office, and linked more flexibility to seniority – younger professionals needed to earn their managers’ trust. Today, after tasting the remote world for a year, this group says that their peers have little interest in returning to this workplace of the past.

“We were convinced that everyone needs to be physically together work effectively,” says our tech manager. “2020 has proved this wrong – our team is delivering well in a remote workplace.” He predicts that a full week in the office will be the exception as the world emerges from COVID-19 work styles.

Our contributors advise leaders that they will attract and retain the best talent, and earn the respect of staff, by creating a work environment that listens to peoples’ work-life preferences.

The group reflected on how they saw leaders responding to the COVID-19 workplace.

• One company assessed the situation in April 2020 and reacted decisively with the message: “plan to work from home until the end of the year, possibly longer… Tell us what do you need to work effectively from home.”

• Several organisations drastically shifted workplace policies. Two cancelled plans to move to new city centre offices, instead scaling back fixed office space and informing staff of a new policy: presence in the office will be on a rotating basis, maximum 2-3 days per week. A consulting practice has reduced the number of desks to less than the total staff number, with presence in the office not required. There are no personal desks, teams are empowered to “self-organise how they work and meet”, and there will be monthly face-to-face meetings and social events where staff presence is required.

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• Other leaders sent mixed messages, delaying decisions and continually speaking of getting back to the office asap. Observations from some international agencies (EU, UN) saw that decisions took longer; the first discussions about appropriate office equipment at home came only after seven months of home working.

Onward…back to the ‘old normal’?

Our marketing professional sees that many leaders will return to the ‘old normal’ as soon as they can. In interactions with recruiters, she queried expectations for on-site working; many want everyone to return to full-time in the office.

“Scanning the job market you can clearly see companies with flexible working policies. Three of four companies I spoke with recently are calling for staff to be back in the office as soon as is feasible. Looking at job descriptions posted on the web, many mention ‘back to office asap’?

I don’t click on these offers.”

Special supplement | COVID-19, our remote workplace and the human factor in leadership | Michael Devlin

The contributors also mention the grind of endless Zoom/ Webex/Skype calls, catch-up and group meetings. They see many colleagues working longer hours, taking fewer or no breaks and having days without going outside

But we lost social interaction…

The 2020 remote work experience has revealed serious human relations issues. All those interviewed voiced concerns that the loss of face-to-face and social interactions are affecting the quality of professional exchanges and have a visible impact on some people’s mental health.

Our regional director worries that Zoom catch-ups cannot replace the dozens of informal interactions that make face-to-face work useful and productive: in the corridor, over lunch, coffee or a beer after work. He wonders how many potential killer innovations were lost in 2020, not finding their way onto a cocktail napkin sketch due to a lack of social interaction.

Or opportunities missed because reduced social contact stopped the usual processes of bringing teams together, getting buy-in, smoothing disagreements or sparking new ideas. He feels that a reduced lack of social interaction puts a drag on innovation. “I miss the learning that comes for social interaction and spontaneous encounters,” he says.

The reality of anxiety, solitude and mental health Stories of depression and mental health issues were cited in every conversation. Our marketing professional says that her global consultancy has several members in the team of 50 that have taken depression-related medical leave. The company now has coaches on-call to engage to speak with staff.

The contributors also mention the grind of endless Zoom/Webex/Skype calls, catch-up and group meetings. They see many colleagues working longer hours, taking fewer or no breaks and having days without going outside.

Our tech manager comments: “Humans are social animals. We thrive on personal and group contacts. I have a good social circle, so COVID-19 has not threatened my wellbeing. But many people in my network have been living alone for months; some with few contacts outside the office. COVID-19 forces us to look at ourselves differently. Last year, we had to quickly figure out how to work together under the new rules. We did that. But the real question is how do we get through the current crisis together – what kind of person do I want to be; how can we help each other?”

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A Human Approach to Leadership

Leaders don’t need a post-Covid transformation plan, says our start-up CEO, but a ‘listening plan’, where employees see that their concerns are important to leaders. “Smart leaders understand that they can motivate their teams with a work culture that fits peoples’ styles and family situations"

The human factor as a leadership strategy?

So, faced with this seismic shift, how many of our leaders see the situation as a routine problem to be managed, or as something else that requires them to address people’s deeper concerns?

Our contributors’ consensus is that credible leadership and building a resilient organisation are all about being closer to people’s feelings.

“The human factor in leadership is not just nice to have. It’s what makes the difference,” says our tech manager.

Leaders don’t need a post-Covid transformation plan, says our start-up CEO, but a ‘listening plan’, where employees see that their concerns are important to leaders. “Smart leaders understand that they can motivate their teams with a work culture that fits peoples’ styles and family situations. If we are happier at work, this translates to higher satisfaction, staff retention and value for the organisation,” she says.

Our marketing professional’s consultancy was merged into a new global network last year, with a CEO many layers removed from regional staff. “I didn’t initially remember the new CEO’s name, but was touched by the human tone of his emails to all staff as the COVID-19 crisis unfolded. This gives the impression that he cares about the team.”

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Special supplement | COVID-19, our remote workplace and the human factor in leadership | Michael Devlin

Even if a leader is far from staff, if they are armed with accurate data – and a heart – they can find ways to connect at a human level, responding to personal situations that colleagues are experiencing

Even if a leader is far from staff, she says, if they are armed with accurate data – and a heart – they can find ways to connect at a human level, responding to personal situations that colleagues are experiencing. “For example, empathising with young professionals working alone from home, or single mothers. It’s possible to have a personal connection through email,” she comments.

Our data services director says that for real results leaders need to gain people’s trust and go beyond the workplan and performance tracking. “I motivate my team with heart and passion. I am there for them, understanding and flexible. I invest a lot of energy to get to know each person. If people trust you and see your vision, they will be with you to build something bigger together. When the first crisis hits, our team stays together. Every leader can choose.

Some prefer an authoritarian style…mine is enduring.”

The conclusion is clear. Leaders can expect a better ROI of this approach over ‘pragmatic’ command-and-control management. Given the choice….who would you rather work for?

About the author www.futureworkforum.com/project/michael-devlin/

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A Human Approach to Leadership

By Sabine Hoffmeister

Developing the art of resilience

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Special supplement | Developing the art of resilience | Sabine Hoffmeister

I

f we required a reminder of our need for resilience, the pandemic provides it.

Everybody has to go through difficult times in their life; some more than others. But the way we manage these situations determines how we are going to handle similar situations in the future and what we learn from them.

“Hard times build determination.”

The global pandemic has thrown up many challenges and challenged us to the very core of our existence. Not only have hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives but many have lost their livelihoods and face the prospect of slowly rebuilding their futures. If there was ever a time to be resilient, it is now.

Resilience is the strength that enables people to overcome crises without long-term impairment. Resilient people who have been knocked back come back stronger than ever.

The good news is that resilience can be a learned behaviour and developed over time.

There will always be circumstances in life that cannot be changed but these do not determine our lives; our decisions and actions do. The outcome will be determined by our perspective and our thinking

Design the life you want to live To build resilience it is necessary to consciously design the way one lives life.Many people drift through life without thinking.

We can learn from the story of the Cherokee who was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said, “A battle is raging inside me… it is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

Looking at the children with a firm stare, the old man continued, “This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”

After thinking about this for a minute, one of the children asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee replied: “The one you feed.”

To design the life you want to be able to live, it is important to know which ‘wolf’ you feed.

Why is building resilience beneficial?

There will always be circumstances in life that cannot be changed but these do not determine our lives; our decisions and actions do. The outcome will be determined by our perspective and our thinking. Reframing the old ‘story’ could lead us to the conclusion that we are not dependent on fate, but by creating awareness we are able to recognise things earlier and find a way to cope.

The people who cope with difficult situations are those who know deep inside that they will overcome the challenges; they never let themselves become a victim. Those who cope less well can experience a combination of depression, addiction, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Resilience helps us deal with difficult circumstances, challenges and strokes of fate.

It helps us to respond flexibly and creatively in a crisis and adapt more easily. It can also have a positive impact on health and wellbeing.

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A Human Approach to Leadership

How to strengthen your resilience muscle: Using the letters of ‘resilience’, we can find all the necessary behaviours and skills that will help us cope with the challenges and stressful times in business and life R – Reality E – Energy S – Self I – Imagination L – Letting go I – Innovate E – Empathy N – Networking C – Compassion E – Evolve R – Reality Resilience starts with understanding reality through reflection and then accepting that reality!

Too often, we are in ‘denial mode’ and adopt an ostrich-like approach. Accepting the inevitable and reflecting on the current situation helps to create a sense of awareness and urgency which is key to get into action or even ‘survival’ mode. To take things as they are and accept what cannot be foreseen, like the virus, is a necessary insight to start to deal with a ‘problem’.

Positive thinking is a good thing, but if it leads to ignoring reality, there is no exit out of the denial phase. The reflection process is the start of building the muscle. Accept that life means change. Life may not go back to ‘normal’ but it will move on and there will be new opportunities to thrive.

E – Energy Life is about energy. Whatever we want to do or achieve in life requires energy.

Energy is the basis for all our activities, thoughts, dreams or successful work or fulfilling relationships.

Key to all of this is to nurture oneself, care for oneself and others. Our body, mind and soul are a unit and by ensuring that all are in harmony, we will provide the energy necessary to meet challenges.

Mindset, Mindfulness and Movement: these three M’s can help us to start the day right.

How we begin our day can have a profound impact on our mood and energy for the rest of the day. Creating deliberate and intentional morning 59

routines will help us to get aligned with what we do, how we do it and how we feel about it. An emotional balance and physical strengths carries us through the day instead of sinking into a vortex of negative and overwhelming thoughts. Meditation, Yoga, and Relaxation techniques can all help.

S – Self The more we understand ourselves, the more we can make the best use of our talents, and focus on where we can do most good. Avoid those activities that act as a drag on your energy. A sense of purpose in life is what drives us and solution orientation can help to guide us there. Meaning and meaningfulness fuel our existence. If we search for the areas where our purpose is being fed, our ability to solve problems is maximised. The positivity and achievements that come from following a purpose are self-perpetuating.

Special supplement | Developing the art of resilience | Sabine Hoffmeister

I – Imagination Meditation, Magic Journeys, Affirmations, Visualisation and realistic ‘what if’ scenarios can be very helpful to create ‘feel good’ moments and to connect people towards a compelling future and vision. Let your mind fill with good feelings and a positive outcome.

Our brains don’t care whether things happen in reality or just in our minds. Our thoughts lead to biochemical reactions that trigger motivation and subconsciously move us towards our envisioned goals.

Resilient individuals cancel their limiting beliefs, and replace them with supporting beliefs.

They say to themselves “I am strong, I am successful, I am determined, and I am focused.

I have faith in the future.”

L – Letting go…

To undertake something new, people need the space to do so, to let go of old beliefs and rituals. The situation and the ups and downs can make us feel caught in an emotional, physical and even economic storm that never seems to end. But behaving in the same way as we have always done, will lead to the same results.

Rituals are not fixed, they are constructed and reconstructed over time, but they are often responsible for holding people back. To become resilient it is helpful to find out what is holding us back and find new tools to help navigate through these obstacles. New routines and habits help people to move forward.

I – Innovate The pressures of whatever challenge we are facing tends to produce a closed mindset. It is vital to open our minds to new possibilities if we are to be resilient. This means taking full responsibility for one’s actions and reactions, questioning if it’s possible to act differently.

Staying open to new ideas, and being curious with an accepting, confident attitude generates optimism. Remembering the many situations you’ve dealt with successfully, and referring back to how you handled them, will provide a good base from which to build innovative solutions.

E – Empathy Everyone needs support as they navigate the new paths; helpful colleagues and friends to provide advice and guidance. Getting people to feel that they want to help someone on this journey takes huge levels of empathy. Showing concern for how others are managing in difficult times, how they are feeling ,will determine the extent of their support in return.

N – Networking Building social relationships and accepting support and help in difficult times is crucial. In times of physical distancing, it’s important to keep up social networking. Connecting with like-minded people, joining mastermind groups, meeting people virtually or in real life, listening and finding other perspectives all contribute to resilience.

A close emotional relationship with at least one reference person that conveys safety and reliability is critical. When we have positive experiences with people and show them gratitude, find our tribe and team up with others, we can achieve more together.

C – Compassion Compassion helps us to really understand the problems and sufferings others have to deal with. It isn’t a fluffy soft skill but is made up of courageous actions that can powerfully impact organisations.

E – Evolve Dealing successfully with circumstances and challenges gives us the chance to evolve, to thrive and reach a higher level. Each problem-solving process leads us to a higher level of consciousness and a stronger state of resilience.

In conclusion Knowing that resilience can grow over time, and strengthen with our every experience, provides hope to everyone facing a crisis today. Leaders who embrace the skills and behaviours above will learn to deal, cope and grow through whatever life brings.

This will prepare them for the future challenges.

About the author www.futureworkforum.com/project/sabine-hoffmeister/

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