The Business Awards 2024 – Skopje – Macedonia

The sun went down on a beautiful day in Skopje – Macedonia this week, the red carpet and torches were in place, the champagne was ready, and The Business Awards 2024 had commenced.

Skopje is the capital and largest city of North Macedonia. It is the country’s political, cultural, economic, and academic centre. Skopje lies in the Skopje Basin. Scupi is attested for the first time in the second century AD as a city in Roman Dardania.

Hotel Alexander Palace was the centre of the domestic business world on Wednesday 17th October, for this spectacle of an event.

Biznis Lider had to be commended for the success of a spectacular event that brought the finalists of the top 100 companies together to celebrate its success.

The Top 500 companies were reviewed through a strict evaluation by revenue category in Macedonia, the companies have a total revenue of 21.2 billion euros.

The goal of the awards was to encourage the development and strengthening of a positive business climate through the promotion of high business practice of the largest and most profitable companies, as well as the largest employers.

My keynote focused on collaboration, and international growth, and coming together to celebrate ambition, sustainability, innovation, diversity and resilience. It’s important that we celebrate business success stories and the role that this talent and ambition is playing in driving the Macedonian economy. A copy of my slides for the event can be found below.

The business professionals and individuals dealing with the great challenges of today’s disruptive and disrupted business world now have renewed responsibility for what business does best: they must innovate, invest and grow their organizations.

The business awards were a critical mission to shape the Macedonia’s future together, while recognizing the accomplishments of key businesses seeking to improve new standards in the business community through a prestigious awards ceremony, this set a strong message to leadership in businesses, senior officials, ambassadors and representatives from the diplomatic corps in Macedonia.

The awards focused on the spotlight, the cameras were live and the audience of 400 people applauded extraordinary leaders from Macedonia. Inspiring as a beacon for leadership excellence, uniting visionaries who, through innovation and resilience, shaping a future defined by impactful contributions. And which illuminated the path for future leaders, fostering a community that champions innovation, impact, and a shared vision for a better economy.

The main focus was to recognize, inspire and connect business leaders, entrepreneurs, investors and innovators who have contributed to the economic growth and development of Macedonia.

The goal of the awards was always is to encourage the development and strengthening of a positive business climate through the promotion of high business practice of the largest and most profitable companies, as well as the largest employers.

Leadership is about excellence, uniting visionaries who, through innovation and resilience, shape a future defined by impactful contributions.

The business professionals and individuals dealing with the great challenges of today’s disruptive and disrupted business world now have renewed responsibility for what business does best: they must innovate, invest and grow their organizations.

Change and transformation can be radical and painful, yet many wait until circumstances force their hand even when they know that change must, and should, come. Whether change has been forced upon you, or whether you are openly seeking and embracing transformation, this book will arm you with tips, advice and techniques to spark fresh thinking about the status quo and inspire the innovation your circumstances demand for the creation of a better business environment.

Trust is one of the most vital forms of capital a leader has today. Amid economic turbulence and global uncertainty, people are increasingly turning to their employers and business leaders as a source of truth, rather than their institutions and government officials. Trust, which can be defined as a belief in the abilities, integrity, and character of another person, is often thought of as something that personal relationships are built on.

At one level, we are facing unprecedented opportunities. An interconnected world with tremendous, possibly unlimited, potential. Our ability to communicate instantly through multiple mediums is phenomenal. Online educational capabilities can elevate entire nations.

At another level, we are facing unprecedented risk – a war with no end in sight, raging inflation, fractured supply chains leading to food insecurity, millions of migrating people seeking safety, opportunity, or both, and climate change resulting in stronger hurricanes.

The Business Awards celebrated with a star-studded and excellent cabaret.

B.J. Fogg says celebration can be as simple as looking in the mirror and claiming, “Victory.”

Celebration is an event, not a destination. It’s the little pause where we survey the road we’ve travelled and the mountain we’ve climbed. We can have a snack, with our colleagues or friends, rather than alone in our office. We rest, we catch our breath, we contemplate the next opportunity ahead, before descending to climb again. But the fact that the interval is brief doesn’t make it unimportant, or harmless if neglected. Celebrating achievements great and small is high octane fuel for further achievement. We don’t just celebrate the win; we celebrate to win.

The challenge for people and businesses today is how to navigate through these two views, both of which are very real. We clearly cannot predict the future.

Organisations can gain resiliency and trust through having sound leadership at all levels and strong cultures founded on purpose, responsibility, and accountability. Long-term agility and growth come from that.

If this is implemented in conjunction with clear, concise direction from top management, and in such a way that the middle and lower layers within the company are fully engaged, then the results can be meaningful. However, it is not a one-and-done endeavour.

Even after the company is fully aligned behind a compelling strategy, leaders must continue to reinforce resiliency and trust from the top.

After all, the goal is not to simply navigate today’s needed changes but also to create an organization poised for more change, and sometimes this requires reinvention to travel the terraine.

On Thursday 18th October Geoff was invited to the Slovakian National Day in Skopje – Macedonia.

A meeting with Madam President of Northern Macedonia-Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova and the Slovakian Ambassador in Macedonia, H.E. Henrik Markus gathered with senior politicians and ambassadors from other countries.

The speeches called for the deeper continued economic collaboration.

The Importance of developing business links with companies support its economic potential by providing capital to enhance existing industries, boosting infrastructure and productivity and creating employment.

The choir performed the national Anthem of Slovakia and Macedonia to the audience.

Final thoughts, resilient leaders possess the ability to overcome obstacles and maintain focus on their objectives, regardless of the challenges they encounter. They exhibit a sense of determination and perseverance that inspires others to follow their lead.

Moreover, resilient leaders can effectively manage stress and maintain a positive mindset even in the face of adversity. They do not let setbacks derail them, but instead use setbacks as opportunities for growth and improvement.

Resilient leaders are not only successful in the short term, but also in the long term. This is because resilience enables leaders to adapt to and thrive in ever-changing business environments. They can anticipate and respond to market trends, navigate industry disruptions, and seize new opportunities.

Additionally, resilient leaders are effective in managing and developing talent within their organizations. They create an environment that encourages growth and innovation, attracting top talent and retaining them for the long term.

As the business landscape continues to evolve in Macedonia, the role of resilience in leadership will become even more critical. Resilient leaders will be at the forefront of navigating future challenges and guiding their organizations to success.

In a rapidly changing world, leaders will face increasingly complex challenges. Resilience will be essential in managing uncertainty, adapting to technological advancements, and leading diverse teams.

In summary, resilience is a critical trait for CEO’s to possess to effectively lead their organizations. By being resilient, CEO’s can navigate through ambiguity, manage diverse teams, and drive organizational growth. Resilience enables CEO’s to make sound decisions, address conflicts, and adapt to changing market conditions, ultimately ensuring the long-term success of the organization and the economy.

As Fredrick W. Smith – CEO of FEDEX once said:

“Leaders get out in front and stay there by raising the standards by which they judge themselves – and by which they are willing to be judged.”

DOWNLOADS (PDF):
– “BUSINESS LEADER” AWARDED THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MACEDONIAN COMPANIES FOR 2023 – Article
– Geoff Hudson-Searle – Slides From the Event

Carleton University’s Ethics and Public Affairs

Geoff Hudson Searle – IBEM – Carleton University’s graduate Ethics and Public Affairs – Slides

Geoff Hudson-Searle was nominated as an international guest speaker to the students in Carleton University’s graduate Ethics and Public Affairs (EPAF) program,

The group combines ethical analysis with social science to gain a comprehensive understanding of the options for solving particular public issues.

Considering the loss of trust and confidence in the world today; government, business and in relationships generally. Indeed, trust makes the world go round and right now we’re experiencing a crisis of trust.

I will be presenting a comparative analysis of trust in the public sector/government vs trust in the private sector. And why are members of the public distrustful of government and business.

Prior to the launch of ‘The Trust Paradigm Book’, I gave an interview on London Live, these themes that were discussed, are core to the observations and decay of trust in societal today.

Trust is one of the most vital forms of capital a leader has today. Amid economic turbulence and global uncertainty, people are increasingly turning to their employers and business leaders as a source of truth, rather than their institutions and government officials. Trust, which can be defined as a belief in the abilities, integrity, and character of another person, is often thought of as something that personal relationships are built on.

Please find the slides below (PDF):

Geoff Hudson Searle – IBEM – Carleton University’s graduate Ethics and Public Affairs – Slides

‘Transforming Business Culture with AI: A Constructive Conversation

Geoff Hudson-Searle partnered with The University of Southampton Business School in Westminster – London across an incredibly important topic: ”Transforming Business Culture with AI: A Constructive Conversation”.

Geoff Hudson-Searle, with Associate Professor Jelena Petrovic debated and challenged CEO’s, Board of Directors and Strategy and Technology Professionals:

1. Senior Leadership and the Board of Directors on GenAI and Artificial Intelligence
2. Fostering a culture of continuous Learning and Innovation in the AI-driven environment.
3. People, strategy and genai alignment; creating a psychological safe environment
4.Collaboration within an organisation to maximise benefits of GenAI and build AI-related skills.

Building the talent and culture required to activate the benefits of tech-enabled transformations requires a fundamental change in whom industrials recruit, how they recruit, and how the recruits do the work. In parallel, companies need to shift their cultures to focus on the end user, collaborate across silos, and foster experimentation.
These modifications are critical for attracting and retaining the digital talent it takes for an industrial company to launch and sustain a tech-enabled transformation and to thrive.

Together, humans and AI can redefine the future of work, ensuring success in a technology-driven world

Are we entering a new age of wisdom

Oscar Wilde wrote: “With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.”

I recently had a very in-depth philosophical discussion with a good friend and associate, a fascinating discussion, regarding the change and disruption of leadership’s perspectives in wisdom

I have written on the subject of The four Intelligences; IQ, EI, SI, DI and why we need Wisdom Intelligence (WI)

For most of human history, age and experience were assumed to bestow wisdom, and wisdom was assumed to be a good thing. Youthful genius has been recognized since ancient times, but it wasn’t wisdom’s competitor. A figure like Isaac Newton, whose breakthroughs in optics, calculus, and physics all came in his twenties, or brilliant young poets like Thomas Chatterton and Rupert Brooke, were seen as possessed of an inborn, uncontrollable, even divine genius.

Besides, youthful genius hardly figured outside science and art. A mathematician like Evariste Galois might do paradigm-shattering work by twenty, but building fortunes and businesses required years of patience, prudence, and occasional boldness. In larger enterprises, you rose, not leapt, to the top: you paid your dues, did the work, and waited your turn.

In politics, a brilliant start was a sign of a promising career: Thomas Jefferson and William Gladstone were both recognized as stellar minds, but their political careers still unfolded over decades. The professions required both up-to-date knowledge and experience: a great physician or lawyer had to know the latest developments in their fields, but also possess the maturity that came only from years of practice. Across all these realms, greatness required maturity and wisdom, which could not be learned, only acquired.

Wisdom is the art of knowing what really matters and making good decisions to improve our own well-being and, more importantly, that of others. There lies the real key.

The quest for wisdom is an age-old effort. It’s one many have recommended.

It’s been said to be as useful for finding inner contentment as it for fueling external successes. It’s a more prudent way of interacting with reality.

While not everyone’s definition of wisdom is the same, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to distinguish it by a mode of deeper understanding. One that goes beyond just the knowing we commonly associate with the range of intelligence’s; IQ,EI, SI, DI.

When we think of the acquisition of intelligence, we think of new information inspired by a perspective-shift that tells us a truth about one aspect of reality.

Wisdom goes further than that. It strips that same information down to its essence so that it can relate the underlying principle of that knowledge to the existing information network that exists in the mind.

It’s the connectedness of this network that separates it from mere intelligence.

The more links between each pocket of information, the more valuable the whole network will be when tackling any other problem. It adds an extra dimension to each mental model contained in the mind.

Simply knowing this doesn’t make a person more equipped to soak in wisdom, but with awareness and practice, new thinking patterns and imagination can be created.

Machine intelligence is undeniably becoming a significant part of our lives. Artificial intelligence (AI) aims to create an intelligent machine with human-like functionalities. Intelligent machines, now equipped with a learning model, make decisions, and humans living in this world benefit from their assistance, whether it is clinical diagnostics, an independent vehicle, a framework that determines whether we get credit or not, and so on The unparalleled speed with which the field of AI is advancing and showing its impact on different domains of life is marked by growing concerns.

AI-enthusiasts suggest that AI will be developed to augment human efficiency however, intellectuals and the common man are worried about the possibility of AI taking over humans As it is said, ‘good for us, to God for us,’ the potentially catastrophic risk comes with having an AI system that learns from data alone.

Human wisdom and artificial intelligence will enhance each other’s comprehension and utility and can support each other’s development. Thus, the AI models should be built to preserve our human qualities, decision-making, and moral aspirations, or probably the best parts of our beliefs. Therefore, fabricating Artificial Wisdom (AW)
advancements will require broad cooperation among computer scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and ethicists In simpler terms, AW will reflect the characteristics of wise people.

AI may be perfect in doing certain performances such as writing an essay, but it cannot substitute, say, for the musical performance of a child which is appreciated and encouraged by relatives and friends. This kind of human interaction is what makes us humans grow as persons, having bodies and staying in multi-modal interactions with others.

The acceleration of capitalism and the growth of the technosphere has not only diminished the space for life on Earth but has also shrunk the domains where we can live these interactions, such as extensive ritual practices of communities engaging all senses. If we can make AI productive and create resources to counter these malicious trends, so be it. Human wisdom will reign over artificial intelligence.

Historically, the boss typically has been older than the staff. But in the last few decades, several trends converged that made it more common for employees to have younger managers. One catalyst is the shift from seniority-based promotions toward those based on merit, according to a research article in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Also, as the pace of technology innovation increases, companies promote more tech-savvy younger workers into supervisory jobs. Meanwhile, older workers are staying employed longer due to such things as the disappearance of early retirement schemes.

We’re in the midst of two enormous demographic shifts in the workplace that seem to be at odds with each other.
We’re living longer and working longer either by choice or necessity. In the last century, the 65+ age group has grown five times faster than the rest of the population and, by 2031, according to a recent Bain & Co. estimate, employees 55 and older will constitute a quarter of the global workforce.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly half of the increase in the number of people participating in the U.S. labor force between 2016 and 2026 is attributable to those 60 and older.

Anupam Kher, who is a successful actor and gold medallist, reached out to his grandfather, seeking guidance. He asked, “Dadaji, why am I going through such a tough time? I just want to go back to Shimla.” His response was a game-changer: “Beta, you’ve worked so hard to get where you are, and your parents have also supported you.
Remember one thing, ‘Bheega hua aadmi baarish se nahi darta’” (A man who is drenched is not afraid of rain.)

This timeless piece of advice from his grandfather profoundly shifted his perspective. It taught the value of resilience and the strength that adversity can build within us.

He went on to share that throughout his career, he had faced numerous storms, but learned to embrace them with open arms, understanding that each challenge is an opportunity for growth. He said I am grateful for the wisdom my grandfather shared and for the life lessons that have come my way.

I recently watched Anupam in “New Amsterdam”, an American medical drama television series, based on the book Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital by Eric Manheimer. The series aired on NBC, with 89 episodes over five seasons. One of America’s oldest hospitals welcomes a new maverick director in Dr. Max Goodwin, who sets out to reform the institution’s neglected and outdated facilities to treat patients and saves lives.

The Cast Ryan Eggold – Dr. Max Goodwin, Jocko Sims – Dr. Floyd Reynolds, Freema Agyeman – Dr. Helen Sharpe, Janet Montgomery- Dr. Lauren Bloom, Tyler Labine – Dr. Iggy Frome, Anupam Kher – Dr. Vijay Kapoor

Series 2 Episode 1 Your Turn

Max works to find a new normal three months after the accident and the birth of his daughter; Kapoor grapples with the stigma of age vs wisdom; Iggy has a successful day that inspires a life-changing idea; Reynolds deals with a new intern.

Companies should recognize that they lose by worshipping youth and discounting experience. When venture capitalists “let young founders go it alone” and run companies rather than pair youthful founders with industry veterans: the consequences have been predictably disastrous.

Young male founders hire young male employees, and spend huge money building kooky office frat houses…. This huge, dynamic industry, which is generating so much wealth, has walled itself off from most of the workforce, telling millions of people that they cannot participate.

This situation obviously shortchanges a lot of workers, but it also hurts tech companies by depriving them of talent.

There’s also a case to be made that discarding or excluding older workers deprives an industry of valuable talent and experience, and actually makes it narrower, less innovative, and even less entrepreneurial. The disappearance of an older generation of executives has meant that industries as a whole is taken less seriously by its clients, overestimates the novelty of every new technology, and lacks the perspective to differentiate noisy events from deep and truly meaningful changes.

Aziz Shamim argues that rather than creating products to eliminate disease, end poverty, or educate the poor, today youthful “tech culture is focused on solving one problem: What is my mother no longer doing for me?” A decade ago, business professor Vivek Wadhwa is an Indian-American technology entrepreneur and academic who studied tech company founders, and found that the most successful were in their late thirties or older. More recently, work by the Kauffman Foundation concluded that successful entrepreneurs are actually getting older: they’re increasingly likely to be in their fifties or even sixties.

Further, history teaches us that industry is exactly where it needs to be in which people are able to make contributions throughout their lives. Creativity come in two kinds: young geniuses who make conceptual breakthroughs, and old masters whose work matures over decades. This holds true in art, music, movie, and even economics. The world would be poorer if it only recognized Van Gogh and Picasso, and ignored Rembrandt and Vermeer.

Finally, we should recognize that creativity lives can be long, and that even youthful prodigies have surprising second acts. Clint Eastwood’s legacy will probably rest less on his roles as Rawhide’s Rowdy Yates or “Dirty Harry” Callahan, and more on his work as a director, which has been his main focus since he turned seventy in 2000.

Had Steve Jobs not had a second act in his fifties, the world might never have seen the iPod, iPad, and iPhone. No one ever argued that Lord of the Rings would have been awesome if only it had appeared when J.R.R. Tolkien was in his twenties, rather than his sixties. Lord of the Rings wouldn’t have been better if written by a younger, less experienced J.R.R. Tolkien.

For all these reasons, it’s high time to rethink our preference for youth and disdain for wisdom. The world needs, and should be able to make room for, both.

The great Aristotle once stated when discussing Metaphysics :

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

The Difference Between Product vs Business Model Innovation

How many times have you heard the saying welcome to the world of “Changing Your Lens,” a powerful tool and approach that can transform the way we tackle problems. This concept revolves around the idea of altering our perspective to address challenges more effectively.

A great quote by Stephen R. Covey:

“To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.”

Changing one’s lens in leadership involves adopting new perspectives and paradigms, and building on innovation, empathy, and adaptability.

This transformative approach opens avenues for growth and collaboration. It enriches decision-making by considering diverse viewpoints and encourages a more inclusive and dynamic organisational culture. Leaders can leverage this shift to better navigate challenges, inspire teams, and drive positive change.

Broadened Perspectives: Shifting perspectives allows leaders to interrupt their current thinking, break any beliefs they have of a particular situation and can see beyond traditional boundaries. By embracing diverse viewpoints and considering various angles, leaders gain a more comprehensive understanding of situations. This broadened perspective enhances decision-making, strategy development, and problem-solving.

Enhanced Innovation: A changed lens creates an environment conducive to innovation. Leaders who actively encourage thinking outside the box and value diverse ideas create a culture that thrives on creativity. This not only leads to innovative solutions but also cultivates a dynamic and forward-thinking organisational culture.

Improved Adaptability: Leadership demands adaptability, and changing one’s lens is a powerful tool in building this trait. Adaptable leaders can navigate uncertainty, respond to change effectively and guide their teams through transitions. This flexibility allows leaders and their teams to remain relevant and resilient in a rapidly evolving business landscape.

Empathy, Compassion and Connection: A shifted perspective encourages leaders to empathise with their team members and situation. Understanding different viewpoints and acknowledging individual experiences builds stronger connections. Using a compassionate approach (empathy plus action) builds a positive work environment, enhances team morale, and promotes a culture of collaboration.

Inclusive Decision-Making: Leaders who change their lens prioritise inclusivity in decision-making. They recognise the value of diverse voices and experiences, ensuring that decisions are representative and considerate of all stakeholders. This inclusivity not only leads to better decisions but also promotes a sense of belonging within the team.

Enhanced Problem-Solving: Problems become opportunities for growth when leaders change their lens. They approach challenges with a fresh mindset, seeing possibilities where others see obstacles. This mindset shift fuels effective problem-solving, encouraging resilience and perseverance in the face of adversity.

Personal and Professional Growth: Changing one’s lens is a catalyst for personal and professional growth. It challenges leaders to continuously learn, adapt, and evolve. This commitment to growth not only benefits the individual leader but also sets a positive example for the entire organisation.

Building Trust helps to make challenging conversations easier, teams more integrated and employees more engaged. Exploring ways in which trust can be built can help individuals and companies create stronger relationships and healthier cultures.

Trust within organisations boosts productivity and employee engagement, helps leaders and teams to focus on what is important and reduces friction. Furthermore, while an issue of cross-generational relevance, organisational trust is particularly important to the younger members of the workforce: millennials and members of Gen Z.

Transparency, enablement and a culture of trust boost their loyalty and commitment, while a lack thereof can be a primary reason to leave an employer.

Therefore, building trust within organisations is not only key to withstanding current challenges, but will pay off in the future. To inspire decision makers to lead with the next generation in mind, leaders have more work to do to leverage the power of trust in their organisations, and this presents the opportunity for new paradigms

Appreciating the ease or product replication globally it is always believed that there is a journey of discovery relating to business models and business model innovation which is profound.

This ultimately leads to a discovery of what is the core job to be done for customers and does your business model play in the blue ocean or red ocean. Business model innovation is currently untapped in most organisations and is a wonderful approach to reinventing the customer experiences of the future. Most organisations fail to take this opportunity. The ability to truly define one’s distinctive competitive advantage is critical as businesses look to define and innovate around their current and future business models.

Managing through change is complex and requires a well thought approach. Many attempts at business model innovation fail. To change that, executives need to understand how business models develop through predictable stages over time — and then apply that understanding to key decisions about new business models.

Surveying the landscape of recent attempts at business model innovation, one could be forgiven for believing that success is essentially random. For example, conventional wisdom would suggest that Google Inc., with its Midas touch for innovation, might be more likely to succeed in its business model innovation efforts than a traditional, older, industrial company like the automaker Daimler AG.

But that’s not always the case. Google+, which Google launched in 2011, has failed to gain traction as a social network, another great example is Daimler, who has built a promising venture, car2go, which has become one of the world’s leading car-sharing businesses. Are those surprising outcomes simply anomalies, or could they have been predicted?

To our eyes, the landscape of failed attempts at business model innovation is crowded and becoming more so as management teams at established companies mount both offensive and defensive initiatives involving new business models.

We’ve decided to wade in at this juncture because business model innovation is too important to be left to random chance and guesswork. Executed correctly, it has the ability to make companies resilient in the face of change and to create growth unbounded by the limits of existing businesses. Further, we have seen businesses overcome other management problems that resulted in high failure rates.

For example, if you bought a car in the United States in the 1970s, there was a very real possibility that you would get a “lemon.” Some cars were inexplicably afflicted by problem after problem, to the point that it was accepted that such lemons were a natural consequence of inherent randomness in manufacturing.

But management expert W. Edwards Deming demonstrated that manufacturing doesn’t have to be random, and, having incorporated his insights in the 1980s, the major automotive companies have made lemons a memory of a bygone era.

To our eyes, there are currently a lot of lemons being produced by the business model innovation process — but it doesn’t have to be that way.

In my experience, when the business world encounters an intractable management problem, it’s a sign that business executives and scholars are getting something wrong that there isn’t yet a satisfactory theory for what’s causing the problem, and under what circumstances it can be overcome.

This is what has resulted in so much wasted time and effort in attempts at corporate renewal. And this confusion has spawned a welter of well-meaning but ultimately misguided advice, ranging from prescriptions to innovate only close to the core business to assertions about the type of leader who is able to pull off business model transformations, or the capabilities a business requires to achieve successful business model innovation.

The difference between product vs business model innovation is that it is not the attributes of the innovator that principally drive success or failure, but rather the nature of the innovation being attempted. Business models develop through predictable stages over time and executives need to understand the priorities associated with each business model stage.

Business leaders then need to evaluate whether a business model innovation they are considering is consistent with the current priorities of their existing business model. This analysis matters greatly, as it drives a whole host of decisions about where the new initiative should be housed, how its performance should be measured, and how the resources and processes at work in the company will either support it or extinguish it.

McKinsey’s Growth Categorization – Growth Strategy

A small but growing number of companies are business reinventor’s, setting a new performance frontier for their companies.

Research shows that 8% of companies, are moving to adopt a strategy of horizon 3 reinvention.

Horizon 3 unlocks benefits including improved financials, the ability to achieve perpetual breakthrough innovation, increased resilience in the face of any disruption and an enhanced ability to create value for all stakeholders.

86% of companies are transformers. They focus on transforming parts of their business rather than the whole and tend to treat transformation as a finite program rather than a continuous process.

6% of companies are what we call optimizers, focused on functional transformations limited in scope and ambition. Technology is not a significant enabler of their transformations.

It is well-documented that people need their interactions with technologies and other complex systems to be simple, intuitive, and pleasurable. When done well, human-centred design enhances the user experience at every touch point and fuels the creation of products and services that deeply resonate with customers. Design is empathic, and thus implicitly drives a more thoughtful, human approach to business.

The essence of design thinking is human-centric and user-specific. It’s about the person behind the problem and solution, and requires asking questions such as “Who will be using this product?” and “How will this solution impact the user?”

The first, and arguably most important, step of design thinking is building empathy with users. By understanding the person affected by a problem, you can find a more impactful solution. On top of empathy, design thinking is centred on observing product interaction, drawing conclusions based on research, and ensuring the user remains the focus of the final implementation.

Design thinking informs human-centred innovation. It begins with developing an understanding of customers’ or users’ unmet or unarticulated needs. The most secure source of new ideas that have true competitive advantage, and hence, higher margins, is customers’ unarticulated needs. Customer intimacy, a deep knowledge of customers and their problems helps to uncover those needs.

There are clear financial benefits to pursuing horizon 3. Companies that use reinvent using horizon 3 report generating higher incremental revenue growth, more cost-reduction improvements and higher balance-sheet improvements than companies in transformation.

Finally, the external environment has moved from a VUCA world to a BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible) where the contextual operating environment is accelerating at a pace that we can barely keep up with. Today more than ever these entrepreneurial leadership characteristics are needed in all industries and at all levels in organisations.

‘’Entrepreneurial Leadership’’ is a positive leadership mindset that emphasizes the strategic management of risk and dynamic changing ecosystems. Entrepreneurial leaders look for new opportunities and ways to innovate as individuals and as part of a team. These qualities often contrast with traditional leadership methodologies that emphasize following processes and procedures in an orderly, predictable way to minimize risk.

Leaders need to harness the power of relationships, put people first, enabling them to take on and solve daunting challenges enabled by a mindset that turns problems into opportunities that creates economic and social benefit.

Passion for ownership and collaboration, thriving in uncertainty, relentless optimism about the future, deeply inquisitive, open to new experiences and unique skills of persuasion are powerful mindsets and beliefs demonstrated by entrepreneurial leaders. The best entrepreneurial leaders are good at experimenting, learning and iterating that unleashes an ability to unlearn and relearn at an increasingly faster rate.

Implementing business model innovation can be challenging, as it requires a fundamental shift in perspective and the mindset and how a company operates. It requires a deep understanding of customer needs and market trends and the willingness to take risks and experiment with new ideas.

Business model innovation is the art of enhancing advantage and value creation by making simultaneous and mutually supportive changes both to an organization’s value proposition to customers and to its underlying operating model.

At the value proposition level, these changes can address the choice of target segment, product or service offering, and revenue model.
At the operating model level, the focus is on how to drive profitability, competitive advantage, and value creation through these decisions on how to deliver the value proposition:

1. Where to play along the value chain
2. What cost model is needed to ensure attractive returns
3. What organizational structure and capabilities are essential to success

Business model innovation is also critical to business transformation. Many organizations share a common set of concerns: What type of business model innovation will help us achieve breakout performance? How do we avoid jeopardizing the core business? How do we build the capability to develop, rapidly test, and scale new models?

Inspiring an organization to change is not a trivial undertaking, but given the current strategic environment, it’s a critical one.

In conclusion, as businesses look to drive growth and competitiveness, it is increasingly essential for them to move from product innovation to business model innovation. By reimagining a new approach that includes entrepreneurial leadership and how it creates, delivers, and captures value, a company can stay ahead of the competition, tap into new revenue streams and markets, and remain relevant in an ever-changing business landscape.

A quote by Buckminster Fuller – an American theorist and systems architect.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Luck or coincidence

When something positive or good happens to you or occurs in your life, are you able to take credit for it or do you attribute it to something like luck, good fortune, or even just a fluke or coincidence?

There are many times we can get stuck in a negative mindset, only letting our brains focus on and attribute the negative events that take place as something we are in control of or cause. However, this same negative mindset or thinking can affect our ability to view the positives that we accomplish as our own accomplishments.

What do people say about an orchestra maestro or conductor who brings a group of individual musicians together and then directs them to perform brilliantly and beautifully?

When the orchestra produces perfectly, the conductor is praised highly for their brilliance in melding all of these individuals together into one finely tuned unit.

There are public acclamations and applause because, under the tutelage of this conductor, each one performs in perfect harmony with all of the others.

None of the individual musicians brings unharmoniously sounds into the mixture. And the praise all goes to the maestro.

The dictionary defines ‘luck’ as “The force that caused things, especially good things to happen to you by chance and not of a result of your own efforts or abilities.” And coincidence is “a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.”

I recently took a trip to the US and was recommended by a very dear friend to read a fascinating book by Paulo Coelho: “The Alchemist – a fable about following your dreams”. It has sold more than 65 million copies worldwide in more than 50 different languages, making it an international bestseller.

It follows the story of a shepherd boy named Santiago who travels to Egypt after having a recurring dream about a treasure that awaited him there.

If you have never read this book before, I highly recommend it. If you have, then you’ll know just how insightful and inspirational the story of a simple shepherd boy who decided to follow his dream can be. Possibly one of the most meaningful reads with purpose that I have ever read.

Interestingly in the book it describes the force of luck and coincidence. Luck and coincidences are recurring aspects in the Alchemist. Santiago was blessed with good luck when he met with the King of Salem, who guided him into pursuing his dreams.
However, he later experienced bad luck in Tangiers when the very man whom he thought he could rely on for help ended up stealing all of his money. Santiago worked like a good luck charm for the crystal merchant because his presence brought in many customers and fortune. It was a coincidence for Santiago to meet with the Englishman, who was also very familiar with the two stones, Urim and Thummim. Both of them also shared the same path to their destination and were in search of a “treasure” of some sort.

Luck and coincidence really plays a big role in this story as it determines the plots. So many things have happened to Santiago that was determined by luck either it is bad or good, it is his luck as when he was robbed it was bad luck on his side as he lost his money but then by what happened he meets the crystal merchant which was good luck as he gained a job and a kind master who helped him through his hardship.

What maktub means that its written and can’t be changed, and it’s used because the merchant who is a muslim and speaks in arabic and this is a word used in the Quran to say that our lives have been decided by allah from the day they were born and it’s maktub. It shows the reader how Santiago and the merchants know that their fate is written for them so they have to follow it, but each in a different way.

Paulo Coelho on Luck, Coincidence, and Faith

As Denis Waitley once said: “Life is inherently risky. There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing.”

Taking risks is not the secret to life, but taking risks does mean we are never at risk of doing nothing.

Too many people ‘play it safe.’ This is the playground of mediocrity. It is where average people live. They colour inside the lines, and always play by the rules. They fear the unknown, and rarely if ever venture outside the boundaries. People who ‘play it safe’ are predictable. Their life is run by rules and routine. Their actions are often dictated by the opinions of others. This is the crowd that fights to keep things the same…

Risk-takers are entrepreneurs, however, they are a different and extraordinary breed. They live in the realm of possibility and greatness. They are not afraid to live beyond the boundaries and to colour outside the lines. To them, there is no such thing as failure; only experiments that did not work. Risk-takers are marked by a sense of adventure and passion.
They care little for the accolades of the crowd. They are more focused on squeezing everything they can out of every moment of time. They are not afraid to ‘boldly go where no one has gone before.’

Everyone has a story, despite difficulties in family life and professional setbacks, the journey to success is the learnings we all have, we all possess the determination, drive and skills to create a successful and happy life, the bigger question is if we choose to use these skills…..for the great of good.

Think about it. Try naming one historical figure that made a difference by playing it safe and being average. The vast majority of successful people are remembered for the difference that they made in their lifetime. And that difference required them to take risks and challenge the status quo.

We are inspired by people who go beyond the norm and push the boundaries of possibility. Mediocrity, on the other hand, does not inspire. Nor does it lead to greatness. Success, however you define it, will elude you unless you are willing to push the limits you have placed on yourself, and that others have placed on you.

The Orville brothers would have never made their historical flight if they had listened to the naysayers. Henry Ford would have never invented the automobile if he had paid attention to his critics. David would have never defeated Goliath if he had allowed his own family to discourage him. The list goes on and on.

Every major breakthrough in history, in business, science, medicine, sports, etc. is the result of an individual who took a risk and refused to play it safe. Successful people understand this. Their innovation is the result of their adventurous spirit. They invent, achieve, surpass, and succeed because they dare to live beyond the realm of normal

Change has a funny habit of teaching you much about yourself; it goes to the core of your own weaknesses, strengths and eccentricities. Leadership forces you to stay true to yourself and recognize times when you are at your best and worst; the key is to stay focused and to make decisions that will look at continuous improvement. Even though this may be small, incremental change, it is positive change you can build upon even though you may be in quicksand.

Business has taught me much about life, learning and sharing knowledge and life stories with my employees and associates. My hopes, fears, beliefs, values and dreams were tested to the limit. I learned that only the difficult things in life truly bring satisfaction, and that achievement is proportional to the struggle needed to get there.

I believe we are not forming relationships because of the environment we live in, the world of technology, the fast paced, instant access, immediate response world, we receive things immediately, therefore we expect everything instantly, we are conditioned to having it all “now”.

Brene Brown puts these words into great prospective:
“I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.”

As with the greatest things in life, the magic only happens when things are given time to breathe, when thoughts are clear, when the mind is at peace. It is only in this environment that love can flourish. The magic ingredient to love is finding peace within your own mind; for when your mind is at peace others will be at peace. It is with this level of peace that bliss exists.

Listen to what your relationships are telling you: love and listening go hand in hand. To love unconditionally you must have the ability to listen to what another person is asking of you; not listening to what your emotions and desires are telling you, but really listening to what that person is asking of you. When we listen to what another requires above our own needs then we create trust, and we create understanding; when we understand things, the fear goes away. It is only then can we become selfless, allowing the time for love to flourish unconditionally.

Like The Alchemist the question is always: “How much do you truly want your dream, and do you have the courage to pursue it?”

“Love never keeps a man from pursuing his destiny.”

True love will never put a blockade between you and your dreams. Be it the love of your family, friends or significant other, if the people who surround you do not support, encourage or urge you in the direction of your destiny, they may not be the best people to keep in your company.

You are a product of your environment — choose yours carefully. Surround yourself with the doers, the believers, the dreamers and the thinkers. Only they will lift you higher.

“The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself… no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.”

Fear holds many of us back in life. The fear of failing, of rejection and of other’s opinions can impact us so heavily that we only fail ourselves by our own inaction.

We’ve heard it many times before: The thought of something is often worse than the thing itself. It is no different than fearing failure if we go in search of our dreams. Don’t underestimate your own resilience.

“People are capable at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”

There is no such thing as too old or too young when it comes to chasing your dreams. There is no such thing as a right time or a wrong time, either. It is simply a matter of deciding what it is you want to do and taking the necessary steps to get there.

Wherever we are in the world, and in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, only we can decide to take the leap of faith and make our dreams realities.

“When you want something, all the Universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

What you think about, you bring about. If you put all your focus, energy and positive thoughts toward whatever it is you want, you’d be amazed at what opportunities come knocking.

Whatever it is, however, it happens, if you want something badly enough, it’s as if the stars re-align and are only too willing to give to you whatever your heart desires. Call it fate, coincidence, beginner’s luck or whatever sits best with you, but when you put that time and energy into something with all you have, you will manifest it into your life.

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight.”

Advocates of people worldwide have sworn that success in life cannot come about without great failures. No matter how many times you get knocked back, rejected or turned away, either personally or professionally, the key is to never accept defeat.

Always move forward and never stop learning. See your failures as valuable lessons on the road to success, learn from them, grow with them and never give up on your dreams.

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

You will meet many a person who will share opinions regarding your life and your work, whether you ask or not.

Some will agree with you, some won’t. C’est la vie! You will never, ever, please everybody.

At the end of the day, the only person you need compare yourself to is the person you were yesterday. As long as you’re working toward your own happiness, don’t let the opinions of others divert you, especially those from people who have not yet found their own paths in life.

We are all unique, what we decide to do with our time is entirely up to us; listen to your heart and answer only to yourself.

“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”

The greatest riches we can ever hope to have are the ones that make us truly happy. Where do you find your happiness? To where does your heart call?

It may be a profession, a hobby, a place, a person, a pet or a lifestyle, but it’s only when we stop and acknowledge what it is our hearts want that we will find our greatest treasures. These are the treasures that will bring joy and happiness into our lives; this is where the heart is.

“The Alchemist” is a book that is full of wisdom and valuable lessons that can inspire us to live more purposeful and meaningful lives. The book encourages us to follow our dreams, trust in the journey, and embrace the challenges and opportunities that come our way.

I would like to leave you with some thoughts on love and purpose. I believe every single person on the planet has love to give whether we like to recognize this or not, love if directed in the right way or focus can create amazing things, however, love in the opposite can destroy.

So many of us, for reasons only we can answer, do not implement, execute or action our true and resolute feelings.

Unfulfilled love creates a cavity between our present and our true potential. You have all heard of the saying ‘if only’ or ‘it might have been different if’, we all need to chase our dreams, you need to be careful what you wish for, because it may just come true. Unfulfilled love can only create negative and malicious intent which takes us away from our ultimate desires and purpose in life.

Taking the first step or leap of faith is hard. It involves risks, learning of new things and getting to know new people. Making sure the direction is right can also be trying. But when there is no step, your vision or dream will not come true.

Once you have made up your mind, take the first step, however small the first step is.

Each of us thrives on being successful and in doing so we often forget the difficulties lying in the path to success. We set targets and want to achieve them right away, but we are humans and may fall short on those goals.

Often in life, you make a journey that changes the meaning of life as you knew it. I believe every single person can be extraordinary for something if directed in the right way and if circumstances can take them there for the great of good, amazing things can happen.

Finally, I used to think that omens were magical and rare. But in The Alchemist, omens are both real and common.

When I look back at my trip, I see that there were all sorts of markers for me to follow. I just hadn’t realized until I looked for them. I had stopped listening to my heart because it stopped making sense. Like Santiago, my heart was afraid.

It was afraid of failure. It was afraid because there were no guarantees that anything remarkable would come out of the trip. For the longest time. The Alchemist just as it did for Santiago, if I listen and watch with intention, great things can manifest.

As Friedrich Max Müller, who was one of the great scholars of the nineteenth century once said:

“A flower cannot blossom without sunshine and man cannot live without love”

The CEO Journey and why Resilient Leaders are a Business Imperative

I recently had coffee with a Global VP of HR of an exceptional technology firm in London. We often meet to discuss many strategic topics and met to discuss my new book, “The Trust Paradigm”.

During the course of coffee we decided to focus on one of her questions: ‘What is the journey today for CEO’s’’

Interestingly enough I wrote an article back in 2015 called “The CEO Journey”, which discussed why CEO’s sustaining growth and value in a company comes from making the right strategic choices and then aligning the business model and operational performance, stakeholder requirements and risk management to those choices.

It is clear the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) has ultimate responsibility for the success of their organisation, and despite having one official title, their job actually encompasses a whole host of different roles, styles, behaviours and skills.
Every CEO is on his or her own journey and will face very different and specific circumstances along the way. They need to be cognisant of their personal ambitions and agenda and align it with the best interests of other stakeholders in the organisation and the people within it.

However, very little data exists on what CEO’s think, feel and do at the various phases and stages that typify the experience, how they tend to perform over time and what factors are most important to them at various points in the journey. Having worked with CEO’s and C-Suite leaders for over 20 years, it sparked our interest to look into this intriguing topic more deeply to capture insights that others can learn from.

Understanding these patterns – and the critical moments experienced by CEO’s will, according to The CEO 100 publication, “enable a new dialogue between boards and CEO’s” as well as being able to recognise “the typical stages of value creation which can empower boards to drive accountability, support CEO’s at each stage in the best possible ways and think about the sustained success of the organisation”.

The value for CEO’s is that it can help to manage expectations, plan ahead most appropriately, build trust and transparency with key stakeholders and continually adapt to the changing context of their tenure. Even being able to relate to stories and examples from other CEO’s can offer, if nothing more, reassurance that others are also experiencing a host of similar challenges and a steep learning curve in their often lonely, yet exciting role.

Steven J. Stein, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and the founder and executive chair of MHS, a leading international behavior analytics company who once stated: ‘The way we look at resilience has changed. We used to think it was grit, being strong, getting through it. Now it has shifted to more self-awareness and responsiveness to the people around you.’

CEO’s today are tasked with navigating an extraordinarily complex business environment. The level of disruption they must contend with is at an all-time high — up 200% over the past five years. According to Accenture the vast majority (93%) are dealing with 10 or more global challenges to their business. Future shocks and new disruptions are certainly coming. The need for resilience has never been more urgent.

I have always believed as a core human trait, resilience is written into our DNA, a default code that helps us survive and adapt in the face of disruptions large and small. Given its central role in human flourishing, resilience has been studied across the fields of positive, cognitive, and clinical psychology.

For decades, researchers have also studied it through the prism of neuroscience, coaching, leadership, and philosophy. More recently, this key attribute has been put to the test, as 2020 made resilience scholars out of just about everyone. Yet, resilience is more than meets the eye.

Resilience goes beyond merely weathering storms – it’s about using adversity as fuel for growth. In leadership, resilience empowers CEO’s to meet challenges head-on, keep a positive outlook, and motivate their teams to push through. Resilient leaders stay cool under pressure, think strategically, and find innovative solutions to tricky problems.

Critical for leaders in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing business scene, resilience enables them to view setbacks as momentary hurdles rather than impassable walls. Resilient leaders embrace failure as a chance to learn and continuously improve.
By demonstrating resilience, CEO’s inspire their teams to adopt a similar mindset, creating a culture of perseverance, determination, and adaptability qualities crucial for success in today’s competitive business arena.

Resilient leaders possess key traits that help them navigate challenges gracefully and effectively. One such trait is self-awareness, allowing leaders to understand their strengths and weaknesses, leveraging strengths, and seeking support when needed.
Another crucial trait of resilient leaders is emotional intelligence. They have a keen ability to understand and manage their emotions and those of others, enabling effective communication, relationship-building, and team motivation.

Moreover, resilient leaders are adaptable and flexible, embracing change and being willing to adjust strategies and approaches when necessary. This flexibility enables them to thrive in dynamic and unpredictable environments.

Resilient leaders also prioritize self-care and well-being, understanding the importance of taking care of themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally. By practicing self-care, they ensure they have the energy and resilience to lead effectively and inspire their teams. Resilient leaders are lifelong learners, constantly seeking opportunities for growth and development, whether through formal education, mentorship, or self-study. This commitment to learning enables them to stay ahead of industry trends and adapt to new challenges.

Furthermore, resilient leaders foster a culture of trust and open communication within their organizations. They encourage their team members to share their thoughts, ideas, and concerns openly, creating an environment where everyone feels valued and heard. This open communication allows for collaboration and innovation, leading to better problem-solving and decision-making.

Resilient leaders lead by example. They demonstrate integrity, authenticity, and ethical behavior in all aspects of their leadership. By setting a positive example, they inspire their teams to do the same, creating a culture of trust, respect, and accountability.

CEO’s, as leaders of organizations, face unique challenges that require a high level of resilience. From dealing with organizational crises to managing stakeholder expectations, CEO’s must be able to weather the storms that come their way.
CEO’s encounter a myriad of challenges regularly, including managing ambiguity and uncertainty, making decisions based on incomplete information, or in rapidly changing circumstances.

For example, imagine a CEO of a technology company who is faced with the decision of whether to invest in a new emerging technology. The CEO must weigh the potential benefits against the risks and uncertainties associated with the technology. This requires a resilient mindset to navigate through the ambiguity and make a well-informed decision.

Besides, CEO’s are also tasked with managing diverse teams and ensuring collaboration and cohesion. This involves navigating conflicts, motivating employees, and fostering a culture of inclusivity.

Consider a CEO who oversees a global organization with employees from different cultural backgrounds. The CEO must have the resilience to understand and appreciate diverse perspectives, manage conflicts that may arise, and create an inclusive work environment where everyone feels valued and motivated.

CEO’s are responsible for planning and executing strategies that drive organizational growth. This includes identifying and capitalizing on market opportunities, managing resources effectively, and staying ahead of the competition.

Take the example of a CEO in the retail industry who is faced with the challenge of expanding the company’s market share. The CEO must have the resilience to analyze market trends, develop innovative strategies, and lead the organization through the implementation of these strategies to achieve sustainable growth.

Resilience plays a vital role in helping CEO’s overcome the challenges they face. By cultivating resilience, CEO’s are better equipped to handle uncertainty and make sound decisions in ambiguous situations. They maintain composure in high-pressure scenarios and inspire their teams to stay focused and motivated.

For instance, a resilient CEO who is faced with a sudden economic downturn can remain calm and composed, assess the situation objectively, and make tough decisions to steer the organization through the crisis. This ability to stay resilient in the face of adversity inspires confidence in employees and stakeholders, fostering a sense of trust and stability.

Furthermore, resilience enables CEO’s to navigate conflicts and address issues effectively. They approach conflicts as opportunities for growth and seek win-win solutions that benefit all parties involved.

Imagine a CEO who encounters a conflict between two key executives in the organization. A resilient CEO would approach the conflict with an open mind, actively listen to both parties, and facilitate a constructive dialogue to find a resolution that not only resolves the conflict but also strengthens relationships and promotes collaboration.

Resilient CEO’s are also adept at managing change and adapting their strategies to evolving market conditions. They embrace innovation and encourage their teams to continually seek new opportunities for growth.

For example, consider a CEO in the technology industry who realizes that the market is shifting towards a new disruptive technology. A resilient CEO would proactively adapt the company’s strategies, invest in research and development, and foster a culture of innovation to stay ahead of the competition and capitalize on the emerging market opportunities.

Resilient leaders possess the ability to overcome obstacles and maintain focus on their objectives, regardless of the challenges they encounter. They exhibit a sense of determination and perseverance that inspires others to follow their lead.
Moreover, resilient leaders are able to effectively manage stress and maintain a positive mindset even in the face of adversity. They do not let setbacks derail them, but instead use setbacks as opportunities for growth and improvement.

Resilient leaders are not only successful in the short term, but also in the long term. This is because resilience enables leaders to adapt to and thrive in ever-changing business environments. They have the ability to anticipate and respond to market trends, navigate industry disruptions, and seize new opportunities.

Additionally, resilient leaders are effective in managing and developing talent within their organizations. They create an environment that encourages growth and innovation, attracting top talent and retaining them for the long term.

As the business landscape continues to evolve, the role of resilience in leadership will become even more critical. Resilient leaders will be at the forefront of navigating future challenges and guiding their organizations to success.

In a rapidly changing world, leaders will face increasingly complex challenges. Resilience will be essential in managing uncertainty, adapting to technological advancements, and leading diverse teams.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of resilience in leadership. Leaders who were able to pivot quickly, make tough decisions, and inspire their teams in the face of adversity were the ones who successfully steered their organizations through the crisis.

In summary, resilience is a critical trait for CEO’s to possess to effectively lead their organizations. By being resilient, CEO’s can navigate through ambiguity, manage diverse teams, and drive organizational growth. Resilience enables CEO’s to make sound decisions, address conflicts, and adapt to changing market conditions, ultimately ensuring the long-term success of the organization.

“A Chief Executive is a leader, a trendsetter, somebody who is ahead of the curve and leads their business by example.” The unexpected is the new normal, meaning leaders need to be agile, adaptive, engaging, and inspiring with the ability to deliver positive results reliably. The view from CEO’s in our network was very much that ‘everyone is in it together’ and you must nurture strong relationships if you are to build trust, encourage the development of others and listen to trusted colleagues.

The importance of developing strong relationships with key stakeholders early on is an important reflection from many CEO’s. By breaking up the journey into a series of phases, I believe this helps to better prepare CEO’s for what they might prioritise at points in their journey. Insights clearly highlight the lack of preparation before and after the pre-appointment stage to set the CEO up for a smoother start which is more in line with their expectations.

As Fredrick W. Smith – CEO of FEDEX once said:

“Leaders get out in front and stay there by raising the standards by which they judge themselves – and by which they are willing to be judged.”

Building your workforce into a community and a team

Co-authored by Geoff Hudson-Searle, and Ex-Lieutenant Colonel Oakland McCulloch,

It is always a pleasure to join forces with my good friend, ex-Lieutenant Cornel Oakland McCulloch. I have always said the biggest issues in the world today are Leadership without Purpose, Trust, Community which has an obvious correlation to Societal and its Impact to the World. Geoff Hudson-Searle is an expert and practitioner, discussing the role of leadership in creating trust. I was interviewed on London Live at 6pm a short while ago, discussing the issue of trust and the various elements that create community trust, no big surprise that we discussed Leadership Purpose and why we need to build Community trust to really create a positive change to Societal.

“Today’s leaders have a responsibility to inspire the leaders of tomorrow.”
– Lieutenant Colonel Oak McCulloch

Whether it’s leading a group of people in an office setting, managing teams remotely, or more likely, leading a hybrid workforce, it’s critical for leaders to build and maintain trust with their people.

Leadership trust creates the stable foundation for employees and their organizations to flex, adapt, and thrive in times of continuous change.

The behaviors that build trust are the very behaviors that manage change. Trust building helps teams step into ambiguity, stay committed to managing the unknown with confidence, and embrace change as an opportunity to learn, grow, and do great work together.

• Trust is an essential part of a functioning society.
• Public trust has eroded dramatically in the last two decades.
• Leaders can take steps to build trust and improve performance within their organizations.

Trust is an essential component of a free, democratic society. Faith in the process of laws and elections leads to a decrease in violence, an increase in social programs, and a willingness to sacrifice temporary individual interests in favor of collective societal interests. Political trust is especially important in times of crisis when citizens need reliable guidance from political leadership. For example, in the event of an epidemic, which always carries risk and uncertainty, it is essential that citizens trust the advice of public health officials in order to protect themselves and their communities.

Unfortunately, political trust has declined dramatically in the last few decades.

There has also been a decrease in trust in employer leadership, with workers decreasingly confident in employers’ leadership abilities, and willingness to deal fairly and honestly with them.

This is a problem because trust is associated with better performance. People perform at their peak when they can trust their coworkers to do their part, and they believe in management’s plan, and they think management has at least some interest in their well-being. Trust in the organization encourages workers to invest their best efforts rather than just getting by, and follow guidance from leadership even when they may not see an immediate benefit.

Rebuilding trust is a long-term project that will require a massive collective effort, and long-term policy success. In the meantime, there are some steps that leaders can take to build trust locally in their own organizations.

I reviewed a recent study of more than 140 top leadership teams, team members reported greater psychological safety at work when they regularly shared information and developed relationships of mutual influence with others. Interpersonal trust, information sharing, and mutual influence increases overall group psychological safety — a key driver of team performance and innovation.

A shared understanding and language to talk about the specific behaviors that affect trust can result in more productive conversations about team performance. Those conversations can even create stronger bonds between leaders and employees.

But leadership trust isn’t a one-off initiative. It requires continued effort from all team members. And it takes leaders who are willing to show integrity, change behavior, and take on the hard work of collaborating across boundaries and dealing with differences.

Research shows that trust represents a core human need we all have: to trust others, to be trusted in return, and to trust in ourselves. When trust is present, people align around the purpose of their team, embrace goals and objectives, willingly collaborate, and are empowered to do their best work.

When trust is absent, or made vulnerable, work becomes more difficult and takes longer to execute. With the pace of change in today’s organizations, leaders need trust more than ever before.

Building trust with the communities we serve is critical to living our mission. When nonprofits are initially formed, purposeful missions are created with a desire to fulfill an unmet need. From that point forward, things get complex. The people, systems, and processes that make a nonprofit work can separate us from the very people we set out to serve.

We probably think we spend a lot of time listening to our communities and, in many cases, nonprofit leaders do just that. The key is to move from just hearing to active listening. Active listening requires you to listen not just for the facts being shared, but the values and emotions behind the facts.

Listening creates trust, asking questions, seeking clarification, and encouraging others to share their perspective can help create a sense of belonging by building trust. By centering your mission in your conversations with your community and actively listening to their responses, you build confidence that you are working towards a shared impact.

It is also important to listen to every constituency; not just the people who are easily accessible or who make the most noise. By establishing inclusive communication channels that encourage participation from all viewpoints in service of your mission, you have an opportunity to build trust.

Finally, trust is not just a nice-to-have, but an absolute necessity. It serves as the glue that holds relationships, families, organizations, and societies together. When trust is present, it creates a positive environment where people feel safe to take risks, share ideas, and be authentic. This fosters innovation, collaboration, and growth, making trust a powerful multiplier that accelerates processes, reduces costs, and increases efficiency.

Trust is more than just about competence and reliability; it also encompasses character, integrity, honesty, and doing what is right, even when no one is watching. It builds bridges, heals wounds, and creates lasting connections within communities. Often, organizational performance issues can be traced back to underlying trust issues

Trust is not built overnight; it requires vulnerability, empathy, and a willingness to extend trust first. When we trust, we open doors to new possibilities and unlock the potential within ourselves and others. Trust is the foundation of meaningful relationships and endeavors, and it serves as the currency of leadership in creating a better world.

Remember that trust is the key to creating high-performing teams, thriving organizations, and harmonious communities. Trust has the power to transform individuals and societies alike.

Today I have the distinct pleasure of introducing a fellow author, retired Lieutenant Colonel Oakland McCulloch and good friend– he is a speaker and the author of the 2021 release, “Your Leadership Legacy: Becoming the Leader You Were Meant to Be.”

Over to you Oak!

Thank you, Geoff.

I have overseen many different organizations over my 40 plus years of being a leader. Some were well-functioning organizations when I took charge and others were not. My goal taking charge of any organization was always the same – to make it better.

In my experience the best, most efficient and most effective organizations are the ones that become a community, instead of just a workforce. In a work community the people who work there actually get to know each other and care for and about each other. If your organization just has a workforce then people come to work, draw a paycheck, and go home. It should not be hard to figure out which type of workforce you want in the organization you are leading.

The first step to building a community instead of a workforce is to get to know the people you have the privilege to lead. It all starts with you. If you don’t get to know the people who work for the organization then others will not take the time to do it either. You, as the leader, must set an example for the others in your organization.

There are several ways to start building those personal relationships between you and your team, and between the people of your team.

Start by making an effort to get out from behind your desk and out of your office. Everyday get out and meet the people you lead where they work. I tell leaders your goal should be to go out and find one person each day and find out something new about that person. To really get to know them and to start to build the trust that is needed, don’t ask only about work, ask about their personal life. What is their spouse’s name? What are their kids’ names? What sports do their kids play? What are the person’s hobbies? What do they like and don’t like? If you make this effort, you will be surprised not only by what you learn about the people you are leading, but you will also find that others will take your lead and start to talk with each other.

If your organization is like most, the people in your organization may not even know the other people who work there. In many organizations, especially larger organizations, people may know each other’s names but they could not tell you who they are if they saw them walking down the hall. This is because they text or e-mail or call them on the phone throughout the day, but do not have a face-to-face conversation with others in the building. There is an easy way to fix this.

Make every Friday a no text, no e-mail, no phone call day inside the building. If you want to talk or pass a message to someone inside the building you must get out of your chair and go find that person. All communication inside the building on that day must be face-to-face. You will find that your people will start to get to know each other very quickly. You will notice them stopping to talk to each other when they pass each other in the hallway.

The second step to building a community is to turn the workforce into a team. You want the people working in the organization to feel they are a vital part of the team, not just someone who works there, draws their paycheck and goes home. There are several ways to accomplish this.

A way to get started in this direction is to emphasize team collaboration and effort on projects. You can even go so far as assigning projects to a group, a team, that you select to work together. The people on that assigned project will not only feel like part of a team, but will also get to know the people they are working with better as well.

Establishing shared team goals will help you begin to build a team instead of just a workforce. People will start seeing that they are not just an individual who works in the organization, but that they are a valued member of the team. I would also go as far as making sure each member of the team understands their role as a member of the team in accomplishing those team goals.

The third way to build strong teams is to celebrate successes and wins, no matter how small.

Everyone likes, and needs, positive recognition for their effort. When you give this positive recognition for successes and wins, it will again reinforce that they accomplished this as a team, not as an individual. This encourages them to work together to accomplish the project they have been assigned and take pride in the accomplishments of the team.

Lastly, if you truly want to build a team out of your workforce then hold special events.

These special events can be simple or as elaborate as you want or can afford. I would encourage you to have an event at least once a quarter. If you can do them once a month that would be even better. The events that have worked best for me in the past have been a luncheon, catered by the company. This is a great way for people to get to know each other, especially if you make it a requirement that people have to sit at a table with different people at each event. This is also a GREAT place to celebrate, very publicly, those successes and wins.

If you truly want to develop your workforce into a team it takes a conscious decision and effort on your part as the leader. It will not just happen. The ways to help this process along are not hard. The hard part is for you the leader to actually make the effort to make it happen. Once the process is started and starts to take hold you will be amazed at how quickly it happens and the results you will see. Building a team really is the best way to get the most out of your people and to make your organization the best it can be.

Blaine Lee Pardoe American author and military historian once said:

“When people honor each other, there is a trust established that leads to synergy, interdependence, and deep respect. Both parties make decisions and choices based on what is right, what is best, what is valued most highly.”

This article is the expressed opinions and collaboration between two senior-level industry board professionals on their views and perceptions on the subject matter:

Oakland McCulloch was born in Loudon, Tennessee, and raised in Kirkland, Illinois. After graduating from high school, he attended the United States Military Academy at West Point for two years. He then graduated from Northern Illinois University and received his commission as an Infantry Officer through the Reserve Officer Training Course in 1986.

In his 23-year career in the Army Oak McCulloch held numerous leadership positions in the Infantry and Armor branches. He assisted in disaster relief operations for Hurricane HUGO in Charleston, South Carolina, and Hurricane ANDREW in south Florida.

His operational deployments include Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia and Iraq as a General’s Aide-de-Camp, the Congressional Liaison Officer in support of operations in Bosnia, and the Operations Officer during a Peace Keeping deployment to Kosovo.
He held instructor positions at the US Army Ordnance School, the US Army Command and General Staff College, the Australian Command and Staff College, the University of South Alabama, and Stetson University. His last position in the Army was a three-year tour as the Professor of Military Science at the University of South Alabama where he led the training and commissioning of Lieutenants and tripled the size of the program in his three-year tour.

LTC McCulloch retired from the Army in September 2009 with over 23 years of active service and joined the staff at the Bay Area Food Bank as the Associate Director. He was also the Vice Chair for Military Affairs at the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Mobile Rotary International Club. LTC McCulloch left the food bank in December 2010 to become the Senior Military Science Instructor and recruiter for the Army ROTC program at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. In his 9 years at Stetson, the program grew from 15 Cadets to over 100 Cadets. In October 2013, he became the Recruiting Operations Officer for the Eagle Battalion Army ROTC program at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University where he has more than doubled the size of the program in 6 years. Cadet Command selected LTC McCulloch as the top recruiting officer, out of 274 recruiters, for 2019. LTC Oak McCulloch published his first book in February 2021 – “Your Leadership Legacy: Becoming the Leader You Were Meant to Be”.

LTC McCulloch earned a Bachelor of Science degree in History from Northern Illinois University in 1987 and a Master of Military Arts and Science in History from the United States Army Command and General Staff College in 2002. He received thirty-one military service awards including the Bronze Star, eight Meritorious Service Medals, and the Humanitarian Service Medal.

LTC Oak McCulloch is married to the former Kelly Smyth of Wauconda, Illinois. They were married at Fort Sheridan, Illinois in 1987 and they have two children, Oakland Vincent McCulloch and Caileigh Nicholson. They also have a granddaughter, Ryleigh Jade Nicholson, and two grandsons Christopher Bryce Nicholson and Oakland Maverick McCulloch.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oakland-mcculloch-34293256

Geoff Hudson-Searle is a senior independent digital non-executive director across regulation, technology, and internet security, C-Suite executive on private and listed companies, and serial business advisor for growth-phase tech companies.

With more than 30 years of experience in international business and management he is the author of seven books: Freedom After the Sharks; Meaningful Conversations; Journeys to Success: Volume 9, GOD in Business, Purposeful Discussions, The Trust Paradigm and Scars to Stars Volume 3 and lectures at business forums, conferences, and universities. He has been the focus of radio/podcasts and TV with London Live, Talk TV, TEDx and RT Europe’s business documentary across various thought leadership topics and print media with The Executive Magazine, Headspring/FT, Huffington Post, The Sunday Times, Raconteur, AMBA, BCS, EuropeanCEO, CEOToday across his authorisms.

A member and fellow of the Institute of Directors, associate of The Business Institute of Management, a cofounder and board member of the Neustar International Security Council (NISC) and a distinguished member of the Advisory Council for The Global Cyber Academy. He holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration. Having worked for corporate companies Citibank N.A, MICE Group Plc, Enigma Design, MMT Inc, Kaspersky Laboratory, Bartercard Plc, and RG Group around the world, Geoff has vast international experience working with SME and multinational international clients. International clients with which Geoff has worked include the British Government, HP, Compaq, BT, Powergen, Intel, ARM, Wartsila Group, Atari, Barclays Bank, Societe Generale, Western Union, Chase and Volvo.

Geoff has worked in a broad range of industries including software, technology and banking which has given him a range of different experiences and perspectives of what can work, the importance of good people, process and how these can be applied and amplified to deliver results in different scenarios and paradigms. Geoff is known for bringing in a fresh viewpoint and sometimes challenging the status-quo with a strategic approach delivering successful change management programmes and launching companies and products internationally that deliver results. Geoff’s areas of expertise lie in brand strategy, business communications, business integration, business development and improvement, capital raise activities, pre-IPO planning, capital raise transactions, M&A with full P&L responsibility, which ideally equips him to strengthen global companies, develop SME and international business, and marketing strategies.
The trust Paradigm
At Amazon: buy now

LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geoffsearle

Entrepreneurial Leadership

There has been much discussion around transformative innovation that explores new horizons and potentially disrupts business models, and whether this requires an entrepreneur mindset.

‘’Entrepreneurial Leadership’’ is a mindset that emphasizes the strategic management of risk and dynamic, changing systems. Entrepreneurial leaders look for new opportunities and ways to innovate as individuals and as part of a team.

These qualities often contrast with traditional leadership methodologies that emphasize following processes and procedures in an orderly, predictable way to minimize risk

Leaders need to harnesses the power of relationships, puts people first, enabling them to take on and solve daunting challenges enabled by a mindset that turns problems into opportunities that creates economic and social benefit.

Passion for ownership and collaboration, thriving in uncertainty, relentless optimism about the future, deeply inquisitive, open to new experiences and unique skills of persuasion are powerful mindsets and beliefs demonstrated by entrepreneurial leaders. The best entrepreneurial leaders are good at experimenting, learning and iterating that unleashes an ability to unlearn and relearn at an increasingly faster rate.

I’m always on the lookout for inspiration, and fortunately, I can find it almost anywhere. It’s one of the reasons
I love to travel. Since the senses are heightened around new circumstances, it’s an opportunity to reconnect to the world sensorially.

For many years I had the fortune to travel to Finland on business, the country values its people and offers many socially responsible programs, like free higher education. Its weather has also had a profound impact on its people. Winters are cold and there is a hardiness to the people as a result of dealing with that cold. The Finns use the word ‘’Sisu’’ to describe their character.

According to Wikipedia, the true meaning of the word Sisu:

“Cannot be translated properly into the English language. Loosely translated to mean stoic determination, bravery, guts, resilience, perseverance and hardiness, expressing the historic self-identified Finnish national character.”

Sisu is a great ideal that can be found at the heart of every entrepreneurial endeavour: contained within its English translation is the combination of guts, grit, resilience, determination, and bravery. It takes a combination all of the above to take a concept from idea to reality. Those who have changed our world had Sisu within them.

Sisu refers to mindset. In her book “Mindset,” Carol Dweck talks about two types of mindsets: one is fixed while the other is growth-oriented. By fixed, Dweck means that a person might think that they are born with a certain amount of talent and it won’t change. If you can’t sing, for example, you never will. A growth mindset is focused on learning: I can’t sing… yet. The yet is the most important part of the growth mindset.

Professor Carol Dweck – Leadership and the Growth Mindset

Perseverance, from my perspective, means one is not ready to give up yet, and therefore Sisu can be considered a growth mindset.

How are executives responding in todays new business world? As you may expect, they are largely focusing on maintaining business continuity, especially in their core. Executives must weigh cutting costs, driving productivity, and implementing safety measures against supporting innovation-led growth.

Unsurprisingly, investments in innovation are suffering. The executives in a recent survey by McKinsey & Company showed that they strongly believe that they will return to innovation-related initiatives once the world has stabilized, the core business is secure, and the path forward is clearer. However, only a quarter reported that capturing new growth was a top priority (first- or second-order) today, compared to roughly 60 percent before the crisis hit.

Possibly the most important discussion around business today, design lead creativity and innovation is about spearheading business reinvention and the disruptive economy.

Innovation, the successful implementation of new ideas, is an important driver of economic growth.

At IBEM combining our collective wisdom and experience we have developed a number of systematic models and approaches that can greatly assist on this journey of entrepreneurial leadership.

We start off with our entrepreneurial leadership canvas which defines a set of skills an attributes of an executive team that we believe are more fit for purpose for the future we face. This has been compiled with input from senior global executives and top thought leaders from academia. This forms the bedrock of all supporting models and approaches and when used in this context has the ability to unlock both strategic and cultural innovation.

We unpack the view of the three horizons of growth and how portfolio theory can have on growth aspirations with H1 running the core business, H2 transforming the core business and H3 innovating brand new businesses.

Appreciating the ease or product replication globally we commence a journey of discovery relating to business models and business model innovation. This ultimately leads to a discovery of what is the core job to be done for customers and does your business model play in the blue ocean or red ocean. Business model innovation is currently untapped in most organisations and is a wonderful approach to reinventing the customer experiences of the future.

Most organisations fail to take this opportunity.

Through our deep experience in building a design thinking school we demonstrate the power of this approach and how it can be used as a catalyst for innovation and driving a more human centred approach that is deeply embedded in empathy mapping.

Change is complex and in many cases not undertaken in a manner that uplifts and unlocks mindsets and beliefs. With our experience working with Harvard Professor John Kotter on his 8 steps of change process we believe this to be a wonderful foundation for any transformational change programme.

Successful innovation creates customer value through new products, services and processes, giving rise to new markets and economic growth, as well as contributing to higher productivity, lower costs, increased profits and employment. The central role of innovation in creating future prosperity and quality of life is widely acknowledged and accepted. Innovation drives long-term economic growth, and states that:

Innovation… has long been viewed as central to economic performance and social welfare and empirical evidence has confirmed the link between innovation and growth. This means that all businesses must understand the importance of innovation and develop an innovation culture to strengthen its efforts and outcomes. In addition to its growing importance and profile, innovation culture has also evolved in line with developing thinking about the scope and nature of innovation in a disruptive economy.

There is a huge gap between aspiration and reality – McKinsey & Company’s yearly global CEO report shows that 84% of world leaders are still operating in a horizon 1 strategy. Leaders who use vision to navigate the future often employ strategy to help them steer their organizations more effectively toward its destination.

To lead with vision, however, requires a fine balance among what matters today, what we anticipate will matter tomorrow, and how we can create the future through inspired, collective effort. There are three horizons that leaders should understand to ensure that vision unfolds as one would hope.

To define the horizon thinking:
• Horizon 1 ideas provide continuous innovation to a company’s existing business model and core capabilities in the short-term.
• Horizon 2 ideas extend a company’s existing business model and core capabilities to new customers, markets, or targets.
• Horizon 3 is the creation of new capabilities and new business to take advantage of or respond to disruptive opportunities or to counter disruption.

Leaders need to see beyond the short termism, uncertainty and address the risks while finding the opportunities in digital disruption, the economy, and geopolitical uncertainties, this requires a horizon 2 and horizon 3 approach. CEO’s are the company’s ultimate strategist.

In my experience, innovative cultures start with a philosophy and a tone one analogous to the classic parenting advice that children need both “roots and wings.” As an innovation leader, you must ground creative people in accountability for the organization’s objectives, key focus areas, core capabilities, and commitments to stakeholders. Then you give them broad discretion to conduct their work in service of those parameters. Obsessing too much about budget and deadlines will kill ideas before they get off the ground. Once your scientists understand that they are ultimately accountable for delivering practical products and processes that can be manufactured affordably, you can trust them to not embarrass you by wasting a lot of money and effort.

This trust helps forge an innovation culture. Innovation parenting also pays attention to innovators’ social development. Millennials, in particular, will expect and seek out opportunities to interact with people who interest and excite them exchanges that should, in turn, build innovation energy. To help individuals see where their work fits in the knowledge ecosystem, encourage relationships with colleagues in the internal innovation chain, from manufacturing to marketing and distribution. I ask my new hires to generate a list of who’s who at Corning within the first few months on the job. This helps them overcome the assumption that many hold that they must do everything themselves.

Innovation culture is made up of practices that support and strengthen innovation as a significant aspect of progress and growth.

It includes all structures, habits, processes, instructions, pursuits, and incentives that institutions implement to make innovation happen. It values, drives, and supports innovative thinking in order for it to be successful on an organizational level. To fully understand the importance of your company’s innovation culture you need to know how this impacts what employees do or say at work every day. This will help establish specific behaviours within the organization such as communication patterns between departments during meetings or who gets credit for new ideas when they come about.

While most business leaders now believe having a diverse and inclusive culture is critical to performance, they don’t always know how to achieve that goal.

Continuous innovation stimulates revenue growth and helps companies perform better during economic downturns.

Fixation on top-line growth can skew innovation efforts, resulting only in innovative gains from the low-hanging fruit of incremental growth.

Disruptive innovation is only possible when the entire organization is set up for an innovation mindset, a process that starts with proper leadership training. In this environment, nimble decision-making is a companion to rigorous experimentation. Team members must make the best decisions possible as quickly as required. These decisions must be open to re-examination as new information surfaces.

Trust is one of the most vital forms of capital a leader has today. Amid economic turbulence and global uncertainty, people are increasingly turning to their employers and business leaders as a source of truth, rather than their institutions and government officials. Trust, which can be defined as a belief in the abilities, integrity, and character of another person, is often thought of as something that personal relationships are built on.

A high-trust organization is one in which employees feel safe to take risks, express themselves freely, and innovate. When trust is instilled in an organization, tasks get accomplished with less difficulty because people are more likely to collaborate and communicate with each other in productive ways. As a result, outcomes tend to be more successful. No heroic leader can resolve the complex challenges we face today. To address the important issues of our time we need a fundamental change of perspective. We need to start questioning many of our taken for granted assumptions about our business and social environment.

Leaders serve as role models for their followers and demonstrate the behavioural boundaries set within an organisation. The appropriate and desired behaviour is enhanced through culture and socialisation process of the newcomers. Employees learn about values from watching leaders in action. The more the leader “walks the talk”, by translating internalized values into action, the higher level of trust and respect he generates from followers.

There are countless reasons why a growth mindset is important for business. There are several iconic brands that have adopted a growth mindset, including Apple, Bloomberg, and General Electric, and are known as innovators in their space. A fixed mindset can hinder growth and stops innovation from flourishing – a major problem for companies looking to get ahead of the competition.

One of the world’s most well-known and successful companies, Microsoft, switched its culture to a growth mindset when CEO Satya Nadella took over in 2014. In his words, prior to this mindset shift, “Innovation was being replaced by bureaucracy. Teamwork was being replaced by internal politics. We were falling behind.” Once Microsoft consciously started examining its work culture and implementing the attitudes of a growth mindset, including valuing innovation even if there’s failure along the way, the company truly transformed. As one employee put it, “The culture at Microsoft changed from ‘know-it-all’ to ‘learn-it-all’.” This ultimately helped Microsoft continue to lead in the technology space.

A growth mindset dramatically improves a company culture, but it must be practiced by senior leadership before junior employees will feel comfortable taking on the same mindset.

According to one study, employees that are in a company that values a growth mindset are 47% likelier to say their colleagues are trustworthy, 65% likelier to say that the company supports risk taking and 49% likelier to say that the company fosters innovation. To sum it up, employees value working at a company that fosters a growth mindset.

Companies that encourage a growth mindset must communicate what that mindset entails clearly with employees, so they know it’s okay to take risks, try new things, and potentially fail. According to the NeuroLeadership Institute’s Idea Report, “Growth Mindset Culture,” support from top leadership is critical for success in an organization. Sixty-nine percent of organizations used top leaders to communicate, teach, and role model growth mindset throughout the company.

Educating and instilling a growth mindset into company culture is a worthy cause for organizations looking to continue to innovate and stay ahead of their competition. When top leaders within a company embrace a growth mindset, the entire organization will follow suit.

Finally, to help bridge the trust gap we recognise that organisations need to work with each other and with wider society to identify practicable, actionable steps that businesses can take to shape a new relationship with wider society: a new ‘settlement’ based on mutual understanding and a shared recognition of the positive role that business plays in people’s lives.

The essential practices underpinning distinctive innovation have not changed in this time of crisis, but the relative emphasis and urgency of where businesses should focus has.

Above all, organizations need to realize that innovation, now more than ever, is a choice. Regardless of the relative emphasis and order, which for years have helped leading innovators more than double the total returns to shareholders compared to laggards, will continue to be critical in navigating and emerging even stronger from this crisis.

In the words of Professor Carol Dweck – Mindset: The New Psychology of Success:

“Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.”

Reimagining a changing leadership in HR – How recruitment can help build the organization

Co-authored by Geoff Hudson-Searle and Gimena Uhrich

HR is undergoing a significant shift with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. This transformation is driven by the need for greater optimization and cost efficiency, as well as the desire to enhance the employee experience.

The use of generative AI, and other new technology, is enabling HR teams to work more efficiently with data, find talent with future-fit skills, and improve decision-making. To succeed in transformation, organizations need to embrace a multi-dimensional approach aligning processes, systems, skills, content, and strategy around the employee experience.

Oscar Wilde once said: “A cynic knows the cost of everything, but the value of nothing.”
Indeed, the same can be said for organisations that view their workforce as a cost, rather than an asset to be nurtured and developed over time.

Many modern-day organisations have now come to the realisation that it is the firm’s intangible assets, such as the knowledge and skill of their employees, that is fundamental to creating value and attaining a sustainable competitive advantage over rival firms.

Organisations today find themselves operating in a knowledge economy, and this raises many questions as to how firms can facilitate the creation, development and sharing of knowledge among its employees. Hence, the management and measurement of human capital (HC) has become an issue of great strategic importance.

Managing talent well has become crucial for finding opportunity in the midst of change, as leaders must shape a workforce with the skills to deliver on strategy now and in the future. Financial capital isn’t the main limiting factor in rising to today’s challenges – talent is.

The key to success is a talent-first mindset. Too many organizations go from initiative to implementation without thinking about the talent required. By putting talent first, the human resources function becomes a true driver of business value. We establish talent management as a distinct competitive advantage, matching talent to where the most value is at stake.

By delivering on dynamic talent allocation, closing skills gaps, and transforming core systems, we partner with organizations to build the talent capabilities they need to sustain and scale impact.

The most important resource in any economy or organization is its human capital—that is, the collective knowledge, attributes, skills, experience, and health of the workforce. While human capital development starts in early childhood and continues through formal education.

Human capital is much more than a macroeconomic abstraction. Each person has a unique, living, breathing set of capabilities. Those capabilities belong to the individual, who decides where to put them to work. The degree of choice is not limitless, of course.

People are the products of geography, family, and education; their starting points matter. Having career options also depends on an individual’s abilities and attributes, their networks, their family obligations, the health of the broader labour market, and societal factors.

While we recognize these constraints, career moves are nevertheless an important mechanism for expanding skills and increasing earnings. The patterns within our data set show that moving into a new role pays off—and even more so when someone lands a new position that stretches their capabilities or represents a match that better utilizes their skills.

Not all companies are equally good at developing people. Size is not the differentiator, as we find that small companies can be just as adept as their larger counterparts in this area. But companies with the strongest organizational health, those that offer more structured training for their employees, and those that provide more opportunities for internal advancement seem to stand out.

People join these companies to build knowledge and networks, understanding that their experience will provide a valuable signal to other employers for the remainder of their careers. Early career experience at these companies helps employees go on to become more upwardly mobile.

Companies can help individuals grow—and establish themselves as great learning organizations and magnets for talent in the process. Three priorities stand out:

Understand the potential in people as well as their current knowledge and skills. Most employers can benefit from challenging the status quo of how they select people for open roles. Instead of searching for “holy grail” external candidates whose prior experience precisely matches the responsibilities in an open role, leading organizations create systems for evaluating candidates based on their capacity to learn, their intrinsic capabilities, and their transferable skills.

This requires designing assessments that are fit for purpose, focusing on the few core skills that matter for success in the role. It also involves removing biases that pigeonhole people into the roles they are already performing; this point is particularly important when it comes to existing employees.

Research by McKinsey shows more than half of all role moves undertaken by individuals involved a skill distance of more than 25 percent—and this implies that people often have latent capabilities that are not recognized by their current employers. If someone’s track record shows the acquisition of new skills over time, it probably means that person is capable of learning more. Employers should be less constrained about recruiting candidates from traditional sources and backgrounds and more open to people who have taken unconventional career paths.

Embrace mobility. Global studies show more than 80 percent of all the role moves individuals made involved changing employers. Since there is no fighting the fact that talented people will move, the key for employers is becoming part of this flow.

Employers can aim to beat the odds on both sides of this 80-20 dynamic. On one end, they can attract the best candidates among the big talent pool that is always searching. On the other, they can boost the productivity and engagement of valued employees who stay.

To ensure that proven employees don’t have to go elsewhere to advance, organizations should set the expectation that part of a manager’s job is developing people who will go on to other things. Each role should have clear paths toward future roles, with skill requirements delineated at each stage. One way to do this in a large organization is to create an internal digital platform where employees can access learning modules and find their next opportunity.

Mobility is experience, not just upward progression. Lateral movement is a neglected opportunity for many organizations. When talented employees do move on, celebrate them as success stories—and don’t close the door on welcoming them back in a different capacity in the future.

Strengthen coaching, particularly early in an employee’s tenure. A great deal of skills development happens day to day on the job. Coaching and apprenticeship can maximize this effect. Our research suggests that the first few years of a career are foundational, and the same is true for the first year in any new job. Formal onboarding is not just an orientation session but a six-month to one-year period that should involve a thoughtfully created journey.

Organizations can provide the tools for a running start, including a manager committed to delivering coaching and facilitating connections. Even after hitting their stride, employees need ongoing opportunities to learn; this can pay off in the form of higher morale and reduced attrition.

In a June 2023 Gallup survey, 65 percent of US workers said that learning new skills is an extremely or very important factor in deciding whether to take a new job, and 61 percent said it was extremely or very important in deciding whether to stay at their current job. Formal learning and development programs that prepare employees for future roles are part of this, but it is difficult to make them effective. Companies that are true learning organizations build their own formulas, customized to their needs.

The evolution of technology in recruitment has significantly transformed the way companies attract, engage, and hire top talent.

Many innovative tools and platforms, from AI-powered candidate screening systems to sophisticated recruitment software, have driven this transformation.

These are designed to streamline processes, automate time-consuming tasks, enhance efficiency, and ultimately deliver better hiring outcomes.

The role of technology in recruitment has seen a significant evolution, transforming the way companies attract, engage, and hire top talent. From advanced candidate matching systems and gamified assessment tools to AI recruitment tools, chatbots and recruitment marketing platforms, technology is reshaping the recruitment landscape.

These technologies offer numerous benefits, including increased efficiency, improved candidate experience, and enhanced ability to reach a wider pool of candidates. They also provide valuable data and insights that can inform recruitment strategies and decision-making.

In this context, working with tech-savvy recruiters becomes a strategic advantage for both candidates and companies. Technology recruiters, adept at leveraging the latest recruitment technology, can streamline the hiring process, ensuring that companies find the right fit efficiently. They utilise technology in recruitment to its fullest potential, from AI recruitment tools for intelligent screening to tech for recruiters that assists with candidate engagement and onboarding.

For candidates, these recruitment agencies offer a seamless and engaging experience, often enabled by AI and other innovative technologies. They ensure that candidates are matched with roles that align with their skills, experiences, and aspirations, thereby improving job satisfaction and retention in the long run.

However, while the benefits of technology in recruitment are clear, it’s equally important to maintain a balance with traditional, human-led strategies. Technology can support and enhance the recruitment process, but it can’t replace the human touch. Personal interactions, intuitive judgement, and relationship-building are central to recruitment and still play a crucial role.

As we move forward, recruiters should embrace the opportunities that technology offers, while also recognising the value of human connection. By striking the right balance, they can leverage the best of both worlds to attract the best talent.

In the ever-evolving world of recruitment, staying abreast of the latest technologies and trends is key. It’s clear that technology will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping the recruitment industry. However, it’s the combination of technology and human insight that will truly drive success in recruitment.

As priorities pivot toward purpose and wellbeing, companies must meet candidates where they are, not rely on assumptions. They must walk the talk on social impact to earn trust and loyalty. With clear guidelines for supporting mental health, enacting diversity efforts and balancing innovation with empathy, organizations can transform hiring.

A great quote by Vern Dosch, CEO at National Information Solutions Cooperative and Author of ‘Wired Differently’:

“We can never fall short when it comes to recruiting, hiring, maintaining and growing our workforce. It is the employees who make our organization’s success a reality.”

This article is the expressed opinions and collaboration between two senior-level industry board professionals on their views and perceptions on the subject matter.

Geoff Hudson-Searle is a senior independent digital non-executive director across regulation, technology, and internet security, C-Suite executive on private and listed companies, and serial business advisor for growth-phase tech companies.

With more than 30 years of experience in international business and management he is the author of seven books: Freedom After the Sharks; Meaningful Conversations; Journeys to Success: Volume 9, GOD in Business, Purposeful Discussions, The Trust Paradigm and Scars to Stars Volume 3 and lectures at business forums, conferences, and universities. He has been the focus of radio/podcasts and TV with London Live, Talk TV, TEDx and RT Europe’s business documentary across various thought leadership topics and print media with The Executive Magazine, Headspring/FT, Huffington Post, The Sunday Times, Raconteur, AMBA, BCS, EuropeanCEO, CEOToday across his authorisms.

A member and fellow of the Institute of Directors, associate of The Business Institute of Management, a cofounder and board member of the Neustar International Security Council (NISC) and a distinguished member of the Advisory Council for The Global Cyber Academy. He holds a Master’s degree in Business.

Gimena Uhrich is a dynamic and results-oriented professional with a deep passion for seamlessly integrating HR and technology.

With a degree in Business Administration and Management, with complementary training in Human Relations, she presents a unique combination of experience in strategic management and planning, labor relations, and talent acquisition.

Throughout her career, Gimena has consistently demonstrated a deep understanding of the HR landscape. Her ability to leverage technology to improve processes has been instrumental in successfully leading clients. After accumulating experience in prestigious international companies such as Ernst and Young, Accenture, and Unilever, a decade ago she embarked on her entrepreneurial journey and founded INHAUS, a distinguished HR consultancy.

As a forward-thinking entrepreneur, Gimena’s proactive talent management and leadership have elevated INHAUS to the status of a trusted partner of industry leaders. In 2021, she co-founded MENTA, an AI integrated into her HR projects, combining efficiency with a human touch.

Today, Gimena is part of an outstanding team of partners leading INHAUS’ global expansion, in the Americas and European markets, to further consolidate INHAUS as a major player in the global HR consulting arena.

Outside work, Gimena enjoys marketing, photography, and communication, reflecting her passions inside and beyond INHAUS.