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What makes our identities unique?

An interesting subject that seems to be appearing more and more is: ‘what makes each individual unique’ – back in 2016 I wrote a blog called ‘Can we create our own identities from reinvention? which discussed whether we can reinvent our own identities.

Well, exactly what makes us unique?

Psychologists have explored the tricky question of how our sense of uniqueness and identity develops. When a child is born, it has no clear idea of where ‘myself’ ends and ‘the external world’ begins.
It takes a while before the limits are established. And not until the age of two will a child begin to lose its preoccupation with itself, and start to become interested in other people. It is at this time that pronouns begin to appear in its vocabulary ‘my’, ‘me’, ‘you’, ‘I’ and usually in that order. And while the child is two it goes through a stage of rebelliousness and wilfulness in which it suddenly becomes domineering, endlessy, inquisitive, and impatient when its wishes are not gratified straightaway.
The child seems to be waking up to the fact that it has an identity of its own which needs to fit in alongside the identities of other people, and is simply testing out the limits of its powers and freedoms.

However, there are multiple theories about what makes us unique, some related and some not so interconnected. We have been pondering the topic for thousands of years – the ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all theorised about the nature of human existence as have countless philosophers since.
With the discovery of fossils and scientific evidence, scientists have developed theories as well. While there may be no single conclusion, there is no doubt that humans are, indeed, unique. In fact, the very act of contemplating what makes us human is unique among other animal species.

Apart from our obvious intellectual capabilities that distinguish us as a species, humans have several unique physical, social, biological, and emotional traits. While we can’t know precisely what is in the minds of another being, such as an animal, and may, in fact, be limited by our own minds, scientists can make inferences through studies of animal behavior that inform our understanding.

Humans also have unique memories, that Professor Thomas Suddendorf calls “episodic memory.” He says, “Episodic memory is probably closest to what we typically mean when we use the word “remember” rather than “know.” Memory allows human beings to make sense of their existence, and prepare for the future, increasing our chances of survival, not only individually, but also as a species.

Memories are passed on through human communication in the form of storytelling, which is also how knowledge is passed from generation to generation, allowing human culture to evolve. Because human beings are highly social animals, we strive to understand one another and to contribute our knowledge to a joint pool, which promotes more rapid cultural evolution. In this way, unlike other animals, each human generation is more culturally developed than the preceding generations.
Profesor Thomas Suddendorf once said about these stories:

“Even our young offspring are driven to understand others’ minds, and we are compelled to pass on what we have learned to the next generation…. Young children have a ravenous appetite for the stories of their elders, and in play they reenact scenarios and repeat them until they have them down pat. Stories, whether real or fantastical, teach not only specific situations but also the general ways in which narrative works. How parents talk to their children about past and future events influences children’s memory and reasoning about the future: the more parents elaborate, the more their children do.”
Thanks to our unique memory, acquisition of language skills, and ability to write, humans around the world, from the very young to the very old, have been communicating and transmitting their ideas through stories for thousands of years, and storytelling remains integral to being human and to human culture.

Clues about the evolution of our extraordinary minds: Thomas Suddendorf

The big question is: what defines us?

In recent years, many traits once believed to be uniquely human, from morality to culture, have been found in the animal kingdom. So, what exactly makes us special?

Ever since we learned to write, we have documented how special we are. The philosopher Aristotle marked out our differences over 2,000 years ago. We are “rational animals” pursuing knowledge for its own sake. We live by art and reasoning, he wrote.

Much of what he said stills stands. Yes, we see the roots of many behaviours once considered uniquely human in our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. But we are the only ones who peer into their world and write books about it.

We see the roots of many behaviours once considered uniquely human in our closest relatives
“Obviously we have similarities. We have similarities with everything else in nature; it would be astonishing if we didn’t. But we’ve got to look at the differences,” says Ian Tattersall, a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Charles Darwin, in his book ‘The Descent of Man’, wrote that humans and animals only differ in degree, not kind. This still stands true but Professor Thomas Suddendorf says that it is precisely these gradual changes that make us extraordinary and has led to “radically different possibilities of thinking”.

And it is these thoughts that allow us to pinpoint to our differences with chimpanzees. That we do so is because they are the closest living relative we have. If any of the now extinct early humans were still alive, we would be comparing our behaviour to them instead.

Still, as far as we know, we are the only creatures trying to understand where we came from. We also peer further back in time, and further into the future, than any other animal. What other species would think to ponder the age of the universe, or how it will end?”

We have an immense capacity for good. At the same time we risk driving our closest relatives to extinction and destroying the only planet we have ever called home.

Finally thoughts, no matter how you look at it, humans are unique, and paradoxical. While we are the most advanced species intellectually, technologically, and emotionally, extending our lifespans, creating artificial intelligence, traveling to outer space, showing great acts of heroism, altruism and compassion, we also continue to engage in primitive, violent, cruel, and self-destructive behavior.

As beings with awesome intelligence and the ability to control and alter our environment, though, we also have a commensurate responsibility to care for our planet, its resources, and all the other sentient beings who inhabit it and depend on us for their survival. We are still evolving as a species and we need to continue to learn from our past, imagine better futures, and create new and better ways of being together for the sake of ourselves, other animals, and our planet.

As Kallam Anji Reddy once said:

‘Everyone has a purpose in life and a unique talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals.’

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Have we forgotten leadership and the foundation of business planning?

One of the questions I hear frequently from emerging and current leaders is this one: “How has leadership changed from 10 years ago and what do I need to understand about running a successful enterprise that I don’t know today?”

Well the reason is simple: only 14 Percent of CEOs Have the Leadership Talent to Execute Their Strategy.

The data in Global Leadership Forecast 2018 shows that organisations with effective leadership talent outperform their peers. Yet very few organizations manage this high-value asset in an integrated, cohesive way.
Even after spending more than $50 billion annually* on developing their leaders, many companies still don’t have the bench strength to meet their future business goals. And despite the spending, investments are often fragmented and see a lack of returns.
Leadership models and development programs abound; few ties to business goals. Worse yet, there’s scant evidence that they actually work. What’s needed is a coherent, integrated leadership strategy.
A well-crafted blueprint ensures that companies have the right talent, at the right cost, and with the right capabilities to deliver today and into the future. Yet, this report found less than one-third of the HR professionals surveyed feel their organisations have an effective leadership strategy. Companies that do have such strategies in place report better returns on their investment in talent. They consistently feature deeper leader bench strength and stronger leaders at all levels.

Many leaders are living under an identity crisis. They are uncertain about how to lead in a more diverse, transient, multigenerational environment that requires them to embrace diversity of thought – and they fail to see the potential opportunities this represents to both workplace and marketplace success.

When leaders become too comfortable with a one-size-fits-all approach to leadership, they conversely become uncomfortable with the uncertainty and change that more successful leaders embrace as part of the job. Complacent leaders are at risk of becoming irrelevant because they are unable or unwilling to course correct their style, approach and attitude to the environment of change they must lead through.

Leaders fail in their primary role and responsibility of enabling the full potential in people and the business they serve because they don’t know the difference between substitution and evolution. Instead of leading the organization and its people to continually evolve, they get stuck in a cycle of complacency and the substitution of activities associated with it. As a result, the company cannot grow or its growth cannot be sustained.

The result is a major shortfall in competent, clued up global leaders.

According to a 2017 report by Price Waterhouse Coopers, 75 percent of hiring managers believe leadership skills are hard to find in new recruits. And a Deloitte study found a whopping 87 percent of companies aren’t effective at building global leaders.

What could be more vital to a company’s long-term health than the choice and cultivation of its future leaders? And yet, while companies maintain meticulous lists of candidates who could at a moment’s notice step into the shoes of a key executive, an alarming number of newly minted leaders fail spectacularly, ill prepared to do the jobs for which they supposedly have been groomed.

Look at Coca-Cola’s M. Douglas Ivester, longtime CFO and Robert Goizueta’s second in command, who became CEO after Goizueta’s death. Ivester was forced to resign in two and a half years, thanks to a serious slide in the company’s share price, some bad public-relations moves, and the poor handling of a product contamination scare in Europe.

Or consider Mattel’s Jill Barad, whose winning track record in marketing catapulted her into the top job—but didn’t give her insight into the financial and strategic aspects of running a large corporation.

Ivester and Barad failed, in part, because although each was accomplished in at least one area of management, neither had mastered more general competencies such as public relations, designing and managing acquisitions, building consensus, and supporting multiple constituencies. They’re not alone. The problem is not just that the shoes of the departed are too big; it’s that succession planning, as traditionally conceived and executed, is too narrow and hidebound to uncover and correct skill gaps that can derail even the most promising young executives.

However, Harvard Business School released some research into the factors that contribute to a leader’s success or failure, the findings found that certain companies do succeed in developing deep and enduring bench strength by approaching succession planning as more than the mechanical process of updating a list. Indeed, they’ve combined two practices: succession planning and leadership development, to create a long-term process for managing the talent roster across their organisations. In most companies, the two practices reside in separate functional silos, but they are natural allies because they share a vital and fundamental goal: getting the right skills in the right place.

A final thought: to succeed in the 21st century workplace and marketplace, leaders must come out from under their identity crisis and embrace diversity of thought so that those they lead can overcome their own identity crises and reach their full potential. They must embrace risk and change as opportunities that others may fail to see as such. And they especially must understand the difference between substitution and evolution: one leads to the trap of complacency, the other leads to a path of growth and continued success. In the end, the wise leader knows their subject matter expertise and specifically what their leadership (identity) solves for – in support of the organisation’s evolution.

Perhaps the underlying lesson is that good succession management is possible only in an organisational culture that encourages candor and risk taking at the executive level. It depends on a willingness to differentiate individual performance and a corporate culture in which the truth is valued more than politeness.

A.P. J. Abdul Kalam once said:

“When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.”

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Are we too busy to connect to real people?

I recently had a meeting in the City of London with a group of executives – the interesting fact was when I left the boardroom, there was this picture on the wall with the words:

‘Do more things that make you forget to check your phone’

– which prompted me to write this blog.

The facts, do we actually have time for our most precious relationships, do we give the time to build lasting relationships around trust and values or do we constantly feel we can always do better with the latest api or technology app?

Let’s face it: Technology is everywhere, but the more we depend on it, and the more we use it when we don’t really need it, the harder it becomes to create meaningful relationships — and sometimes, it actually makes things more difficult.

Is it really best to brainstorm an upcoming project with your co-worker over email, or would it make more sense to walk over to that person’s desk and have a face to face discussion? Can you actually go a whole dinner without checking your smartphone? Is it necessary to charge your phone right by your head at night?

In February, 2017 I wrote a very interesting blog ‘Has Technology Killed Love and Romance?’. The attributes that have now come to define us and the overexposure that the 21st century human is subjected to leaves no dearth of psychological problems. More and more people each year are diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety problems. This becomes a detriment when it comes to business and personal survival with relationships. With dissatisfying home, office or academic environments the relationship in many cases becomes the dumping ground for emotional baggage.

I challenge you to try going without technology when possible you will be surprised how great it feels (and how little really happens when you’re out of touch). While some business people avoid e-mail and mobiles during their time off, others find it tough to remain out of contact.

According to the study conducted by a group of international researchers, anyone who devotes more than four hours daily on screen-based entertainment such as TV, video games or surfing the web, ups their risk of heart attack and stroke by 113 percent and the risk of death by any cause by nearly 50 percent compared to those who spend less than two hours daily in screen play – and this is regardless of whether or not they also work out.

A very interesting TEDx video by Leslie Perlow – Thriving in an overconnected world, Leslie Pernow argues that the always “on” mentality can have a long-term detrimental effect on many organizations. In her sociological experiments at BCG and other organizations, Pernow found that if the team – rather than just individuals – collectively rallies around a goal or personal value, it unleashes a process that creates better work and better lives.

A very good friend of mine, Moran Lerner, is a behavioural and experimental psychologist with expertise in the fields of Cognitive Behavioural Innovation, computational intelligence and human-machine interaction. Moran has founded/co-founded over 20 market-leading global companies with 14 successful exits in Computational Intelligence, Biomimetics, Interactive Gaming and Behavioural and Bio Engineering over the past 20 years.

We often explore new and creative ways of listening, engaging, working together, learning, building community and being in conversation with the other. We are more connected than ever through technology and at the same time the disconnect with ourselves, others and our environment is growing.
We need ‘Meaningful Conversations’ to help us reconnect, going beyond our egos and our fears to build strong relationships, communities, networks and organisations, so that through collaboration.

Anyone who has sat on a Caribbean beach this summer will be familiar with the thrill of mobiles producing an instant response among supposedly off-duty executives. Mobile phones, BlackBerries, iPads, WiFi and sub-miniature laptops make it all too possible to pack the office along with your luggage. But how in touch or out of touch should businesspeople be?

So, what happens if you run your own firm?

You might have the big salary that comes with the top job, but little time to enjoy it.

Can CEOs ever release their grip and truly take a break?

The biggest obstacle to disconnecting is not technology: it is your own level of commitment or compulsion when it comes to work. If you work 80 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, you may find it pretty hard to get your head out of the office – and even harder to break the association between hearing the ping of an incoming email and immediately shifting into work brain.

If you told somebody 50 years ago that the most world-changing invention of the near future was telephones you could carry around in your pocket, they’d probably look at you like you were insane. But it’s true — mobile phones (and the data networks that have grown with them) have drastically reshaped the way we live in thousands of different ways.

Remember when horror movies had people menaced by slashers with no way to call for help? Remember unfolding confusing paper maps, trying to find where you were on the road? Remember racking your brain to think of that actor who played a robot on that one show? All of those things are gone thanks to Google and the incredibly powerful networked computers we carry in our pockets.

With great power comes great responsibility, however, and scientists are starting to learn that spending so much time staring at our phones is actually doing some damage to our physical, social and intellectual lives.

Here a few reasons why you should balance you time on your device:
– It damages your eyes – Experts advise that prolonged screen usage can be seriously detrimental to eye health

– It makes people perceive you negatively – Studies from Takashi Nakamura – Professor in computers in human behaviour reveal that frequent peeks at your device might damage your friendships as much as your eyes.

– They carry bacteria – A study conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine determined that one out of every six cell phones in England is contaminated with fecal matter, and 16 percent of them carry the E. Coli bacteria.

– It’s bad for your neck – “Text Neck” has been springing up more and more in the last few years. The human head is a heavy object, and our neck and spine are designed to keep it up at a certain angle.

– It makes driving dangerous – Recently released results from a new Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) naturalistic driving study continue to show that distracted driving is a tangible threat. The study showed that a staggering 213,000 accidents involved cell phone usage.

– It makes walking dangerous – Phones can distract you on the street just as much as behind the wheel. In fact, an increase in pedestrian deaths last year was partially due to distractions caused by smartphones – some countries including the Netherlands – the Dutch town of Bodegraven has come up with a clever new way of keeping phone-obsessed pedestrians safe as they cross the road, a strip LED traffic signals installed in the pavement that glow red or green, allowing pedestrians to see if it is safe to cross, even if their eyes are glued to their phone screens.

– It can damage your hands – We have all heard about “cell phone elbow” and “Blackberry thumb.” We’ve heard that looking down at a smartphone puts pressure on the spine and may damage your eyes. We are now experiencing “text claw,” a soreness and cramping in the wrists, forearms and fingers resulting from overusing our phones. But now we’re learning that such overuse might lead to temporary pain or even a deformity of your pinky finger.

– It’s bad for sleep – Many people have a hard time putting down their cell phones before bed — when your Twitter interactions are going crazy, that temptation to take just one more look is hard to resist. Unfortunately, a number of studies have revealed that using LCD screens — especially close to your face — can upset your natural sleep cycle.

– It makes you stressed – A study at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden attempted to measure the effects of cell phone usage on people in their 20s over the course of a year, the study connected mobile phone use and stress, sleep disturbances, and symptoms of depression among young adults.

– It can make you hallucinate – even when you’re not looking at your phone, it can still mess with your mind. A professor at Indiana University-Purdue University conducted a study on “phantom pocket vibration syndrome” — i.e. people thinking that their cell phone was vibrating to alert them even when it wasn’t. In her survey, 89 percent of undergraduates reported thinking that their mobile was vibrating even when it wasn’t. The fact that our brains are being rewired to constantly expect this stimuli can also lead to stress, with another study observing significantly elevated anxiety levels in subjects separated from their phones for an hour.

– It is altering your brain – this last one isn’t a definite negative — scientists still don’t understand exactly what is happening — but it’s troubling nonetheless. A study from the National Institutes of Health hooked up 47 people to PET scanners and observed their brain activity while a cellular phone was kept close to their head. The scientists observed a visible increase of about 7 percent, but as of yet don’t know its cause or what kind of long-term effects it will have. What we do know, however, is that the radiation is up to something in there, and are you really willing to take that risk?

“Most people check their phone every 15 minutes or less, even if they have no alerts or notifications,” Larry Rosen, psychology professor and author of The Distracted Mind . “We’ve built up this layer of anxiety surrounding our use of technology, that if we don’t check in as often as we think we should, we’re missing out.”

Rosen’s research has shown that besides increasing anxiousness, the compulsion to check notifications and feeds interferes with people’s ability to focus.

Besides the wasted time, there’s also the psychological grind that comes from spending too much time on your phone. Several studies have shown social media can be bad for your mental health, and Facebook admitted last year that passive use of its social network can leave people in negative moods. Researchers are still trying to figure out what long-term effects channelling so much time and energy into our devices will cause.

Some large investors are even pressing Apple to develop new tools to help users curb their phone addictions, saying that a feeling of dependency is bad for the company’s long-term health.
Fortunately, you don’t have to wait for Apple – you can simply become more deliberate about how you use your phone.

One group of business people at The Boston Group, a consulting firm, discovered just that when they participated in an experiment run by Leslie Perlow, who is the Konsuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at the Harvard Business School and author of the book, “Sleeping With Your Smartphone”.

As described in her book. the group found that taking regular “predictable time off” (PTO) from their smartphones resulted in increased efficiency and collaboration, heightened job satisfaction, and better work-life balance.

Four years after her initial experiment, Leslie Perlow reports, 86% of the consulting staff in the firm’s Northeast offices including Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. were on teams engaged in similar PTO experiments.

Final thought….. If you use your phone less, you’ll end up with more free time. Much of this will be in small chunks, such as when you are in the elevator, waiting in line of on the train. These can be great opportunities to take a deep breath and just do nothing (which can be a surprisingly relaxing and restorative experience).

You’re also likely to find yourself with longer periods of time to fill. In order to keep yourself from reverting to your phone to entertain you, it’s essential that you decide on several activities you would like to use this time for and then set up your environment to make it more likely that you will stick to these intentions.

For example, if you say you want to read more, put a book on your coffee table, so when you flop down on the couch at the end of a long day, your book will be within eyesight and reach. If you want to practice playing music, take your instrument out of its case and prop it up in the hall, where it will be easy to grab when you have a few spare moments. If you want to spend more time in mindfulness take the time to schedule time for meditation and practice it daily. If you want to spend more time with your family or a particular friend, make plans to do so and put your phone in your pocket or bag for the duration of your time together. Smartphones are habit-forming, so think about the habits you want to form.

As American author Regina Brett once said:

“Sometimes you have to disconnect to stay connected. Remember the old days when you had eye contact during a conversation? When everyone wasn’t looking down at a device in their hands? We’ve become so focused on that tiny screen that we forget the big picture, the people right in front of us.”

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What is required to be an effective leader in today’s totally disruptive business world?

A discussion and running theme that seems to be on every leadership and executive director’s mind, is ‘what is required to be an effective leader in today’s totally disruptive business world’?

Experts have opined for decades on the reasons behind the spectacular failure rates of strategy execution.
In 2016, it was estimated that 67% of well-formulated strategies failed due to poor execution.
There are many explanations for this abysmal failure rate, but a 10-year longitudinal study on executive leadership conducted by my firm showed one clear reason.
A full 61% of executives told us they were not prepared for the strategic challenges they faced upon being appointed to senior leadership roles.
It’s no surprise, then, that 50%–60% of executives fail within the first 18 months of being promoted or hired.

Becoming a disruptive leader is not a straightforward journey, no matter your background. It requires the embrace of wholesale change, the nurturing of innovative thinking and behavior, and the management of outcomes rather than resources. It requires a personal transformation that many will choose not to make.

Over the past year, we’ve been struck by how many times we’ve heard C-suite leaders use these words, or very similar ones, to describe the strengths they believe are critical to transforming their businesses, and to competing effectively in a disruptive era.

What’s equally striking is how difficult organisations are finding it to embed these qualities and behaviors in their people. That’s because the primary obstacle is invisible: the internal resistance that all human beings experience, often unconsciously, when they’re asked to make a significant change.

Cognitively, it shows up as mindset — fixed beliefs and assumptions about what will make us successful and what won’t. Emotionally, it usually takes the form of fear.

Amazon changed how we buy things. Netflix transformed how we consume videos. And companies like Airbnb and Uber have shaken up the hotel and transportation industries.

A few years ago, digital disruption was something that happened to someone else. Now, no company is immune.
Disruptive technologies, products, services and business models are being introduced almost daily. So executives need to take charge of their organisation’s response to ensure long-term business success.

But while many organisations are eager to “get ahead of the curve” on digital, there’s no instruction manual or template on how to do it successfully.

A recent KPMG survey of chief executives and chief information officers found that while most are concerned about digital disruption, few are adequately prepared to address it.

Although digital may be disrupting your business model, it also creates opportunities for those that embrace change. Organisations that don’t will find it increasingly difficult to catch up as technology continues to advance rapidly.

So where do you start?

First, understand how digital disruption is affecting your products, services and business model. Then develop a digital strategy. That includes acquiring the necessary digital skills and getting the company to buy into the required changes.

KPMG’s CIO Advisory survey shows this won’t be easy.

The majority of CIOs (58 percent) and almost half of the CEOs (43 percent) are involved or very involved in their firm’s digital business strategy. But only a small number are actively leading the effort.

Given the magnitude of digital disruption, the lack of strong leadership could have a major impact on the company’s ability to adapt.

Companies must master and implement new technologies. That requires new skills, many of which are in short supply. Most CIOs in the KPMG survey cited a lack of critical skills and the limits of existing IT systems as their biggest challenges.

There are no quick solutions to these challenges. But first, companies need to develop a strategy. Without one, it is impossible to tackle the other issues.

Final thought, the complexity of the challenges that organisations face is running far out ahead of the complexity of the thinking required to address them.

Consider the story of the consultant brought in by the CEO to help solve a specific problem: the company is too centralised in its decision making. The consultant has a solution: decentralise. Empower more people to make decisions. And so it is done, with great effort and at great expense. Two years pass, the company is still struggling, and a new CEO brings in a new consultant. We have a problem, the CEO explains. We’re too decentralised. You can guess the solution.

The primary challenge most large companies now face is disruption, the response to which requires a new strategy, new processes, and a new set of behaviors.
But if employees have long been valued and rewarded for behaviors such as practicality, consistency, self-reliance, and prudence, why wouldn’t they find it uncomfortable to suddenly embrace behaviors such as innovation, agility, collaboration, and boldness?
Einstein was right that:

“We can’t solve our problems from the same level of thinking that created them.”

Human development is about progressively seeing more. Learning to embrace our own complexity is what makes it possible to manage more complexity.

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Guest-blog: Roger Phare – A Nod to the NED – the key dynamic of the modern board

We welcome back Roger Phare as our guest blogger, who is an accomplished Global Executive Director, equipped with a commanding track record over the past 37 years of bringing sound judgement and a strong commercial perspective to IT businesses, from ‘Mainframe to Mobile’.

Roger has been fortunate to have been part of the commercial computing lifespan. With a market driven approach, which he has strategically supported, a number of organisations, both at significant Board, Executive and Regional Directorship and responsibilities. An expert in corporate governance and compliance and risk management; enjoying challenging the status quo and providing independent advice to Boards whilst maintaining sound judgment, impartiality and with integrity.

In the third of this series (view Part I and Part II ), we are going to look at the role of the Non-Executive Director (“NED”), which is a highly debated subject in today’s modern board.

To provide some background, before I hand you over to Roger, as an Independent Non-Executive Director and Executive Adviser on several companies, I talk with experience across the list of attributes required of a non-executive director, which is so long, precise and contradictory that there cannot be a single board member in the world who fully fits the criteria.

They need to be: supportive, intelligent, interesting, well-rounded and mature, funny, entrepreneurial, steady, objective yet passionate, independent, curious, challenging, and more. They also need to have a financial background and real-life business experience, a strong moral compass, and be first class all-rounders with specific industry skills.

Chairmen and chief executives should use their NEDs to provide general counsel – and a different perspective – on matters of concern. They should also seek their guidance on particular issues before they are raised at board meetings.
Indeed, some of the main specialist roles of a non-executive director will be carried out in a board sub-committee (particularly the remuneration and audit committees), especially in listed companies.

The key responsibilities of NEDs can be said to include the following:
– Strategic direction
As ‘an outsider’, the non-executive director may have a clearer or wider view of external factors affecting the company and its business environment than the executive directors.
The normal role of the NED in strategy formation is therefore to provide a creative and informed contribution and to act as a constructive critic in looking at the objectives and plans devised by the chief executive and the executive team.

– Monitoring performance
Non-executive directors should take responsibility for monitoring the performance of executive management, especially with regard to the progress made towards achieving the determined company strategy and objectives. They have a prime role in appointing, and where necessary removing, executive directors and in succession planning.

– Remuneration
Non-executive directors are also responsible for determining appropriate levels of remuneration of executive directors. In large companies this is carried out by a remuneration committee, the objective of which is to ensure there is an independent process for setting the remuneration of executive directors.

– Communication
The company and its board can benefit from outside contacts and opinions. An important function for NEDs, therefore, can be to help connect the business and board with networks of potentially useful people and organisations. In some cases, an NED will be called upon to represent the company externally.

– Risk
NEDs should satisfy themselves on the integrity of financial information and that financial controls and systems of risk management are robust and defensible.

– Audit
It is the duty of the whole board to ensure that the company accounts properly to its shareholders by presenting a true and fair reflection of its actions and financial performance and that the necessary internal control systems are put into place and monitored regularly and rigorously.
An NED has an important part to play in fulfilling this responsibility, whether or not a formal audit committee (composed of NEDs) of the board has been constituted.

Now I would like to hand over to Roger!

Thank you Geoff, today I would like to discuss the role and ‘A Nod to the NED – the key dynamic of the modern board’.

Of all the Board positions the Non-Executive Director (NED) role is undoubtedly the most confusing. Not so much as to the expected outcomes of growth, compliance, shareholder returns and social responsibility but more as to the background and dynamics of the modern NED.

Why confusing?

Surely the NED role is the most historically formulated, culturally cultivated and legislatively defined of all board member roles.

Yet instead of being well defined and well-structured the NED requirement seems to be all over the place.

Part of the issue is that demand has rapidly increased due to factors such as legislation, compliance and business growth. This has spread the net further afield and created a demand over and above the previous norm.

The result of this demand there has seen “NED Membership” organisations springing up. I recently read as part of a membership promotion the following excerpt:

“If you have the right amount of experience to offer, you could become a Non-Executive Director. This could be an especially good option if you are approaching retirement because it can be a useful way to earn money without the pressures of being involved in the day-to-day decision making of a business.”

Whoa! This conjures up images of geriatric un-prepared old-boys rolling up for a four-hour board meeting; pontificating and story-telling before retiring to their local club for a large brandy and an afternoon nap in a dark leather padded armchair!

Nothing could be further from the truth for the modern NED. Guidance around “day to day” decision making is a critical part of the NED role. Four hours in the Boardroom can equate to four days spread pre and post meeting guiding and assisting the CEO & executive team. It is serious business.

A related problem is that somehow a “one size fits all” approach to NED requirements has become the prevailing attitude. Other than “Chair” type roles it seems that there is little demarcation in the nature of the role nor organisation in which the NED is required.

Contributing to this is the definition of organisation types. Most understand the concept of listed or private organisations and the duties, responsibilities and remuneration levels required by and from the NED’s. When community organisations are brought into the mix then things really go off the rails.

It starts with the concept of “Not for Profit”, equating with the concept that NED roles being “Volunteer”. To start with, Not for Profit organisations should be re-branded “Not for Dividend”. In other words, they need to be governed and run the same way commercial organisations operate with a view to making a surplus; the only difference is that those surpluses are distributed to beneficiaries rather than shareholders.

This topic is probably the subject of a whole new thread but the point is that community organisations need directors with the same level of skill and due diligence as those in the commercial world.
The question is when an ad appears that asks for applications for a NED “Volunteer, expenses only”, who is going to apply?
Yes, there is a small percentage of experienced and talented individuals who are prepared to provide their time on a “pro bono” basis and these people are to be commended. Simply having time on one’s hands and looking for an activity is not necessarily a qualification for a board position.
Even worse, to a degree, is the concept of applying for volunteer positions to “gain experience” as a Board member. This can lead to frustration and disappointment for all parties.

Yet it is not all doom and gloom. Demand for high quality Non-Executive Directors is increasing and it is generally acknowledged that the keys to success are the right recruitment, support, training and ongoing engagement. With these factors in place, NED’s can add significant value to all types and size of business.

So, here’s a nod to the new breed NED – exciting times ahead!

Roger Phare

You can contact Roger Phare via LinkedIn: Roger Phare on LinkedIn
or by email:
roger phare @ gmail .com
(remove all spaces)

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A True Christmas and New Year Message

May peace fill all the empty spaces around you, your family and your friends and your colleagues at this special time of year, and in you, may contentment answer all your wishes.

Raise a toast to yesterday’s achievements and tomorrow’s brighter future.

May comfort be yours, warm and soft like a sigh.

And may the coming year show you that every day is really a first day and a new year.

Let abundance be your constant companion, so that you have much to share.

May mirth be near you always, like a lamp shining brightly on the many paths you travel.

Work with the best of your abilities in 2019 and show to the world your power to create wonderful and superior things.

New Year 2019 may turn out to be a year when you are put on the road to everlasting success and prosperity.

Be the change that you wish to see at your workplace and take initiatives to make things better.

Wish your tomorrow is more prosperous, happy and successful than yesterday and today.

Looking forward to another year with hunger and passion to exceed at work and you are sure to meet with success.

Let new beginnings signify new chapter filled with pages of success and happiness, written by the ink of hard work and intelligence.

May the New Year bring us more wonderful opportunities for success.

Here’s wishing you the gift of peace and prosperity throughout 2019.
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What can we all learn from the cyber threat landscape of 2018?

Every year, as a co-founder and member of the Neustar International Security Council, I attend The Neustar Cyber Summit, this year the summit was held at the OXO Tower in London and there really were some very interesting findings from the summit which I would like to share.

Rodney Joffe, Chairman of NISC, started to discuss where the Internet of Things fits into the equation.

‘The first thing to recognize is that the Internet of Things is a new phrase for something that’s existed for years. The only difference is scale.
Sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, some computer science students wired a Coca-Cola vending machine to the Internet. The students wanted to solve the problem of walking down three flights of stairs to the lobby only to discover there weren’t any cold Cokes in the machine.
It was one of the first devices wired to the Internet, and anyone could connect to it and ask for the status of the Cokes. So IoT isn’t really new. It’s probably best defined as all of the devices that can be connected to the Internet that don’t necessarily look like traditional computers. Items like smart power meters, smart lightbulbs and modern home thermostats, all the way to critical medical appliances and devices, jet engines and power turbines.

Because everyone is now focused on the IoT, we’re trying to develop rules around how all people, places and things interconnect. But millions of devices and things that are out there already are not secure, so we have to find ways of securing them and making sure that everything that gets added in the future is secure.
It’s no big deal if the Coke machine is wrong, but what if a nuclear-generating turbine goes down or if all the air-conditioning systems in a city go on at the same time because the smart meters that control the smart homes were compromised?

The other thing to recognize is that the industrial IoT is much larger than the consumer IoT. The breach of Target customer credit cards started when network credentials were stolen from an air-conditioning filtration vendor that had serviced various Target stores. Those credentials were used to hack into Target’s system, then install malware on a large number of the chain’s point-of-sale devices. The end result was brand damage for Target that has reverberations today.

The facts are, in 2016, we saw a number of huge attacks — many that exceeded 1Tbps. In 2017, by contrast, we saw fewer large distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, possibly because hackers were finding little advantage in taking a company completely offline. Another explanation is that hackers were simply enjoying the success of the previous year’s myriad of extortion and ransomware-oriented attacks, as well as the many DDoS associated data breaches.

So far in 2018, however, the big attacks are back with a vengeance. Earlier this year we saw the largest DDoS attack ever recorded — 1.35Tbps — using a new type of attack called Memcached, which will be discussed later. Then, a 1.7Tbps DDoS attack was recorded. Previous amplification attacks, such as DNSSEC, returned a multiplication factor of 217 times, but Memcached attacks returned amplification records exceeding 51,000 times! In fact, the potential return from Memcached attacks is so large that they do not require the use of botnets, making them a new and dangerous risk vector.

We are hoping that these attacks will go the way of the Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) amplification attacks, which used the protocol designed to advertise and find plug-and-play devices as a vector. SSDP amplification attacks are easily mitigated with a few simple steps, including blocking inbound UDP port 1900 on the firewall. There are similar steps that organizations can take to mitigate Memcached attacks, including not exposing servers and closing off ports, but until then, Neustar is prepared.

This year we are also seeing different uses for DDoS beyond simple volumetric attacks, including what we call quantum attacks. Quantum attacks are relatively small and designed to bypass endpoint security and avoid triggering cloud failover mitigation. These attacks are being used for scouting and reconnaissance. In a recent incident, Neustar stopped a quantum attack that never peaked over 300 Mbps, but it featured 15 different attack vectors, went on for 90 minutes, and involved all of Neustar’s globally distributed scrubbing centers.
This attack came from all over the world and was designed to bypass perimeter hardware, using protocols to circumvent their defenses. The attackers behind such campaigns may start small, but they can quickly add botnets, attack vectors, and ports to get what they want.

Neustar recently thwarted what is believed to be the first IPv6 attack. This attack presented a new direction that attackers are likely to pursue as more and more companies adopt IPv6 and run dual IPv4/IPv6 stacks. We believe that IPv6 vectors will continue to emerge as organizations around the world move to adopt the new standard.

You can also expect to see more Layer 7 (application layer) attacks, including those targeting DNS services with HTTP and HTTPS requests. These attacks are often designed to target applications in a way that mimics actual requests, which can make them particularly difficult to detect. It is important to note, however, that Layer 7 attacks are typically only part of a multi-vector DDoS attack. The other parts are aimed at the network and overall bandwidth.

DDoS attacks can be found in a multitude of sizes and for any reason imaginable. They can now be used to find vulnerabilities, to locate backdoors for exfiltration, and as a smokescreen-like distraction for other activities. Today’s organized criminals are able to focus on the results that they want and simply buy or rent the malware or botnets they need to get there. Some have gone so far as to comment that criminals are getting more and more like corporations, each with their own specialization.

The simple fact is that if you’re online, you’re susceptible to an attack. Whether you are vulnerable or not is entirely up to you.

The summit and Rodney Joffe’s keynote was incredibly insightful, but where does that leave us today and how can we guard against such threats in our business and personal lives?

A New York Times report reveals another cyberattack using stolen NSA hacking tools, and experts warn computer systems are not prepared for even more widespread attacks likely in the future. Max Everett, the managing director at Fortalice Solutions, joins CBSN to discuss the threat.

Cybersecurity expert warns the world is not ready.

We can all agree over the course of 2018, global cyber threats have continued to evolve at speed, resulting in a dramatic reshaping of the cyber security landscape. Traditional threats such as generic trojans, ransomware and spam bots were transformed.

After years of focusing on individuals, malware authors will increasingly target enterprises and networks of computers.
Powered by military-grade code allegedly leaked from the NSA, threats such as WannaCry and GoldenEye wrought havoc throughout, shutting down businesses and causing unprecedented operating losses.

The effectiveness of these threats has been compounded by novel lateral movement vectors that augment zero-day exploits such as EternalBlue and EternalRomance, allowing malware to ‘hop’ from one network to another, from organisation to organisation. These targeted attacks are reshaping corporate and government digital security, whilst simultaneously causing fallout in the consumer space.

Ransomware specifically aimed at companies has also become far more prevalent. Since the re-emergence this March of Troldesh, companies have faced extremely targeted attacks that abuse the Remote Desktop Protocol to connect to infrastructure, then manually infect computers.

Certain strains of ransomware such as Troldesh and GlobeImposter come equipped with lateral movement tools (such as Mimikatz), allowing malware to infect an organisation and log clean-up mechanisms to cover their tracks.

Following a surge of market interest around cryptocurrencies that has continued through 2018 and into 2019, miners have diversified and proliferated. Traditional illicit coin miners have rushed to adopt lateral movement tactics such as the EternalBlue and EternalRomance exploits, allowing cybercriminals to infect computers in organisations and increase mining efforts.

Based on threat developments in 2018, organisations should essentially prepare for more sophisticated iterations of malware based on the same theme in 2019.

After years of focusing on individuals, malware authors will increasingly target enterprises and networks of computers. Lateral movement will become standard in most malware samples, either via password-grabbing utilities like Mimikatz, or by exploiting wormable vulnerabilities. In addition, the number of malicious attachments in SPAM emails will increase, particularly those written in scripting languages such as PERL or Python.

“All the world’s a stage/ And all the men and women merely players”; Shakespeare’s famous line makes us consider each person an ‘actor’ in their own right, with their own individual role to play. And when looking across the cyber threat landscape, this rings especially true – each actor has their own motivations and distinct part to play.
When the proverbial hits the fan, it’s typical for the victim – a business or government entity – to focus on the indicators of compromise (IoC) rather than what led to the attack in the first place.

Looking at IoCs is an essential part of a cyber defence strategy and can help victims identify who is targeting them. But it’s a reactive approach, which doesn’t help once your organisation has been breached.

This rear-facing view is also reflected in the cyber sensationalist news narrative. The media tend to focus on the number of attacks – a vanity metric – but rarely on its complexity, length, or who was behind it, and what their motivations were for attacking the organisation in the first place.

IoCs tend to change very quickly, the actor behind does not, nor their objectives and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs). For example, US-CERT’s release of the Grizzly Steppe malicious Russian activity was complex in that many of the IoCs that were provided were false positives or TOR exit nodes, making it difficult for companies to make sense of them and ingest.

As such, it’s vital that organisations look to understand the actor – their motive, opportunity and means – and not merely read into the IoCs if they are to protect themselves from potential attack.

Threat intelligence highlights IoCs around an attack, such as that the actor was using cheap outsourced labour to perpetuate the attack, was using a particular hosting platform, or shared infrastructure.

IP addresses and domain names change very quickly, but the adversary’s motive does not. Knowing this is the first step towards changing an organisations’ security stance to mitigate the threat, identifying the indicators of attack (IoAs) rather than just the IoCs. Without intelligence, this would be impossible.

The type of malicious actor organisations must deal with will differ. Some may be state-sponsored, for example, carrying out cyber espionage on behalf of a nation. Others may be hacktivists, looking to incite political change, or cyber criminals looking to make a profit.
Understanding the bigger picture beyond the impact of the attack itself is critical if the good guys are going to triumph over the bad. Intelligence plays a key role in getting to the core of that bad apple.

STIX, the standardised language to represent structured information about cyber threats, helps to store and share information on actors and TTPs. It has become the de facto standard for information sharing in cyber threat intelligence as it facilitates automation and human assisted analysis.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that intelligence is not a silver bullet. It’s a part of a wider puzzle that enterprises need to put together in order to give themselves the best chance of defence against a cyber attack.

Security needs to be seen as an architecture, embedded in the foundation of an organisation. Hygiene factors such as ongoing patch management and end-user training also need to be considered.

The human element behind an attack is often forgotten. However, analysts can create a ‘big picture’ of the lifecycle and ecosystem of hackers by adding in the more specific details.

Enterprises and governments are under a constant barrage of cyber attacks. With the threat landscape evolving and attacks becoming ever-more sophisticated, having time to stop and think about the actor behind the malicious intent may seem like a luxury.
However, businesses need to start looking at cyberattacks from the adversary’s perspective to understand what is most attractive to an attacker. Without this understanding, the problem will persist and the next newspaper headline will feature their name.

In summary, the question is not whether you will be attacked. It is when, by what, and how badly your company’s reputation or finances will be damaged. And one thing is sure in the uncertain world of cybersecurity – the wrong time to consider defence is after the attack has occurred.

James Comey once said:
“We face cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, global cyber syndicates, and terrorists. They seek our state secrets, our trade secrets, our technology, and our ideas – things of incredible value to all of us. They seek to strike our critical infrastructure and to harm our economy. “

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Does shareholder value rule business?

What is the purpose of a corporation?

It’s remarkable that after a century of management theorising, there is no agreed upon answer.

Common-sense tells us that the purpose of a business is to make money.
A conversation with almost any businessman or economist shows it to be so.
Why else would a company be in business? Many experts agree: The Economist has recently declared that the goal of maximizing shareholder value, i.e. making money for shareholders, is “the biggest idea in business.” Today, “shareholder value rules business.”

Yet two distinguished Harvard Business School professors – Joseph L. Bower and Lynn S. Paine – recently declared in Harvard Business Review that maximizing shareholder value is “the error at the heart of corporate leadership.”
It is “flawed in its assumptions, confused as a matter of law, and damaging in practice.”
Bower has long held this view: back in 1970, he told NPR that maximizing shareholder value was “pernicious nonsense.”

Jack Welch, who in his tenure as CEO of GE from 1981 to 2001 was seen as the uber-hero of maximizing shareholder value, has been even harsher.
In 2009, he famously declared that shareholder value is “the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.

Managers and investors should not set share price increases as their overarching goal… Short-term profits should be allied with an increase in the long-term value of a company.”

But despite these denunciations, the “pernicious nonsense” of shareholder value has spread.
Shareholder value thinking, say Bower and Paine, “is now pervasive in the financial community and much of the business world. It has led to a set of behaviours by many actors on a wide range of topics, from performance measurement and executive compensation to shareholder rights, the role of directors, and corporate responsibility.”

There are thus two opposing schools of thought: Shareholder value is either the best idea in business and the worst idea in the world. Which is it?

Corporate strategy on the other hand, is the overall plan of contemporary management practice, CEOs have been obsessed with diversification since the early 1960s, because almost no consensus exists about what corporate strategy is, much less about how a company should formulate it.

A diversified company has two levels of strategy: business unit (or competitive) strategy and corporate (or companywide) strategy.
Competitive strategy concerns how to create competitive advantage in each of the businesses in which a company competes.
Corporate strategy concerns two different questions: what businesses the corporation should be in and how the corporate office should manage the array of business units.

Corporate strategy is what makes the corporate whole add up to more than the sum of its business unit parts.
The track record of corporate strategies has been dismal.
A study of the diversification records of 33 large, prestigious U.S. companies over the 1950–1986 period, found that most of them had divested many more acquisitions than they had kept.
The corporate strategies of most companies have dissipated instead of created shareholder value.

The need to rethink corporate strategy could hardly be more urgent. By taking over companies and breaking them up, corporate raiders thrive on failed corporate strategy.
Fueled by junk bond financing and growing acceptability, raiders can expose any company to takeover, no matter how large or blue chip.

Recognising past diversification mistakes, some companies have initiated large-scale restructuring programs. Others have done nothing at all. Whatever the response, the strategic questions persist. Those who have restructured must decide what to do next to avoid repeating the past; those who have done nothing must awake to their vulnerability. To survive, companies must understand what good corporate strategy is.

Many post-Enron discussions about corporate governance have focused almost exclusively on the responsibilities of directors and the structure of boards and shareholders.
This is hardly surprising – after all, a company’s survival ultimately depends on the effectiveness of its board’s decision-making processes.
But boards don’t exist in a vacuum. Ultimately, board structures and decision-making cultures will depend on a company’s unique circumstances.
Large companies may also operate different levels of boards throughout their businesses. The complexity of large international organisations with many subsidiaries makes the issue of management information and decision-making more complex, and the need for directors of such vast organisations to have early-warning systems is a must.

The board of directors in any organisation is responsible for its operational, strategic and financial performance, as well as its conduct.
Boards exercise their responsibilities by clearly setting out the policy guidelines within which they expect the management to operate. They will set out the short- and long-term objectives of the organisation and a system for ensuring that the management acts in accordance with these directions.

They will also put procedures in place for measuring progress towards corporate objectives. There is therefore a clear difference between the main responsibilities of directors and managers.
In his recent book, “Corporate Governance and Chairmanship: A Personal View”, Sir Adrian Cadbury distinguishes between direction and management: “It is the job of the board to set the ends – that is to say, to define what the company is in business for – and it is the job of the executive to decide the means by which those ends are best achieved.”
They must do so, however, within rules of conduct and limits of risk that have been set by the board.

Can your board answer the following strategic questions:

· Who are our stakeholders?
· What are our stakeholders’ stakes?
· What opportunities and challenges do stakeholders present?
· What economic, legal, ethical, and social responsibilities does our organisation have towards our various stakeholders?
· What strategies or actions should we take to best manage stakeholder challenges and opportunities?
· Do you have a system for managing relationships with stakeholders?
· How do you measure results? What metrics do you use to assess and gauge stakeholder relationships?
· In a crisis how quickly can you communicate with your relevant stakeholders?
· Do you know the various methods to engage with stakeholders and when not to use it?
· Can you state how much you are spending on each stakeholder group and what your ROI is?
· Have you developed a set of rules and practices on how best to manage the process of building stakeholder reputation with each stakeholder group?

Once you have answered the above questions, then you should attempt these:

I. What strategies or actions should our firm take to best manage stakeholder challenges and opportunities?
II. Should we deal directly or indirectly with stakeholders?
III. Should we take the offense or the defence in dealing with stakeholders?
IV. Should we accommodate, negotiate, manipulate or resist stakeholder overtures?
V. Should we employ a combination of the above strategies or pursue a singular course of action?

Shareholder value: Has been called the driving force of 21st-century business.

What value do shareholders bring to the companies they invest in? Are most shareholders interested in what is best for the company, or are they in it only for the financial performance of the company’s shares?

Regenerative Capitalism is an alternative framework for capitalism that embodies a deeper purpose than merely optimising financial returns, with the goal of promoting the long-term health and well-being of our human communities and the planet.
Aligned with our latest understanding of how the universe actually works, the collaboratively created framework illuminates eight key principles backed by solid science and transdiciplinary scholarship.

Adam Smith, the founder of capitalism, said that everyone should do what is best for themself.
However, Professor Nash, portrayed in the movie “A Beautiful Mind”, starring Russell Crowe, stated that “Adam Smith was wrong!”
Commercial organizations can only succeed if everybody is doing what is best for themselves while simultaneously doing what’s best for the whole group.

Beginning in the 1990s, we witnessed extreme egocentric behavior among public companies who were motivated solely by their own financial gains. Several studies prove that self-centered and egocentric companies perform poorly as compared to companies who focus on developing innovative products, delivering value for the customer, and motivating their employees to be more productive and successful.
How can these companies deliver value to their customers or suppliers if they are only looking at their own bottom line? Too much focus on shareholder value, measured by quarterly reports, is one of the primary reasons that public companies are not realizing their full potential and that the West has been in financial chaos for the past six years.
Companies that outperform the rest – over time – build their success on a performance-based culture, driven from the outside in.

Most executives agree that it’s important to create value for the customer. The problem is that despite the good intentions of the senior management team, this mindset often doesn’t travel farther than the company core values posted in the reception lobby of the corporate headquarters.
You know the classic four: honesty, engagement, customer focus, and collaboration.
If you exchanged one company’s value statement for the values posted in the lobby of the corporate headquarters across the street, would anyone notice? Or are the values posted in the lobby of the neighboring company the same four?

Professor Solow, winner of the Nobel Prize for his theory on economic growth, found that only a portion of financial growth in the world comes from companies making money out of money.
Instead, the majority of financial growth comes from companies actually producing a product, developing a new service, or changing the way we conduct business.
Corporate leaders need to do more than shuffle numbers on a balance sheet.
Consider Steve Job’s unrelenting focus on product innovation and what Apple was able to achieve by creating the iPad, iPhone, and iPod. As we know, iTunes has literally changed the entire music industry!

The obsession with maximizing shareholder value has also impacted the way that companies approach negotiations with their customers and suppliers.

To solve the world’s economic crisis, we need brave CEOs and leaders to step up and declare, “I don’t care what the share value will be for the next two years. We might not make a profit during this period. But we are going to focus all our resources on product research and development with the goal to create the best product the world has ever seen.
We’re here to change the world! We are fully committed to delivering value and a return on investment to our shareholders. Yet it may not be in the next 30 days or even the next three quarters. I am asking our investors to look at us with a long-term view. I am asking them to stand by us and risk a much larger return on their investment if they will agree to fund the innovation required to develop a market-changing product.”

If you left Sharpies under the statement of core values that hangs in the lobby of your company, what kind of graffiti would you find scribbled on your values statement? What would your customers and suppliers write? Your corporate values are better articulated by your employees, customers, and strategic partners than by your management team and board of directors.
If there is a disconnect between your formal statement of values and the graffiti, you have work to do.

If you can build a product that will truly change the world, like Steve Jobs did several times, your shareholder value will take care of itself. Your problems will be protecting your distribution channels, defending your intellectual property, and retaining your talent. Which set of problems would you prefer? I think the answer is obvious – to hell with shareholder value.

Experience tells us that listening to your stakeholders and strive to meet their expectations—difficult or not.
Ensuring they are feeling heard, valued, and appreciated grows trust, support and credibility. Building relationships and understanding motivation takes time and effort but will make your job easier in the long run. Companies are more successful when everyone is on board and on the same page!

A famous quote by Dennis Muilenburg:

 “As we continue to drive the benefits of integrating our enterprise skills, capabilities, and experience – what we call operating as ‘One Boeing’ – we will find new and better ways to engage and inspire employees, deliver innovation that drives customer success, and produce results to fuel future growth and prosperity for all our stakeholders.”


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Does your executive board need an Entrepreneurial approach to business?

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

Recently, I was asked by Freeths LLP, an award winning and large UK legal firm, to share insights on ‘how to infuse boards with entrepreneurial spirit’ – an article that was included in their prodigious Winter 2018 edition of their Platinum Magazine.
The Freeths Platinum Magazine is sent to their top and private clients. You can read it online HERE (page 15).

This subject is increasing in board discussions and agendas, which has prompted me to continue the subject discussion, to take a deeper dive across the positives and repercussions of adapting and entrepreneurial approach to business.

If you are leading a start-up business or involved in a scale up business with potential for high growth, one of the most valuable things you should do early on is to set up an board of advisors.
Scaling an enterprise is hard work, and you only stand to benefit from drawing on perspectives, experience, and networks that augment your own.
A group of advisors committed to your success not only provides a sounding board to test and strengthen your ideas, it gives you access to important competencies and resources.

But many entrepreneurs, especially those in the early stages, find the task of building an advisory board daunting.

Whose strengths would complement their own and counter their weaknesses?

Who might bring an insight to the table that would otherwise be missed?

It can feel like an exercise in knowing what you do not know. Moreover, most people who have not formalised such a board before have not given much thought to what it takes to keep one running effectively.

Board members tend to have immense experience in at least one of these three areas: financial expertise, industry-specific knowledge, or operational management.
Over the past couple of decades, though, companies have become more interested in diversifying their boardroom both in race and gender as well as in expertise.

Today, you’ll find individuals with backgrounds in marketing, IT, and human resources in addition to the “classic” board member tracks.

The latest trend, however, is adding someone with an entrepreneurial background to your team of directors.

Boards are constantly being pulled between short term goal-oriented oversight and long term, strategically focused planning.
Entrepreneurs are generally going to default to strategic thinking and will help pull your board out of conversations that should be left to your company’s C-suite.

Entrepreneurs are often “visionaries” in the business world and offer a complementary element to boards that already favour members who are well-versed in risk management or short term, operational guidance.

This is not to say that an entrepreneur will always be right about their theories or suggestions, but their presence alone will force more conservative members to tackle some out-of-the-box thinking.

The boardroom is not generally thought of as the ‘nerve centre’ of entrepreneurism within a company, particularly a company trading on the stock exchange.
The role of a typical director is often more about audit, risk reviews and compliance, and directors may see ‘entrepreneurship’ as a risk element.

Often this means keeping one or even both eyes on the rear-view mirror, and yet maybe the biggest threat is ahead and not yet fully visible in the headlights.

Most directors have little experience or understanding of the risks posed by disrupters and technological changes. With many directors on stock exchange companies being recruited from large and established companies, few of them can boast about any entrepreneurial experience. This raises a number of questions:

Do boards need to be more entrepreneurial to detect and counter modern-day risks?

Could a board that is more diverse in terms of experience, age or culture help address this?

We live in a fast paced and rapidly changing world. Even just a decade ago, changes to markets and business challenges were slower paced. However, since the dawn of global connectivity, big data and the maturing of the World Wide Web, companies are encountering threats at a much faster pace and competition is global.

Companies face modern-day risks associated with the ‘Sharing Economy’, cybercrime or even the IoT (Internet of Things).
The threat posed by disrupters can be catastrophic and quickly bring down what was a very successful company.
The board needs to anticipate changes and be innovative in relation to these modern day risks; that is, it has to become more entrepreneurial.

Yet, though the environment in which companies now operate is constantly changing, the behaviours of directors and the majority of boards are not.

Boards spend significant time on compliance and on examining historical data on company performance and comparisons to budgets, yet the strategic role sometimes remains an annual event completed, printed and filed away for 12 months.
Directors spend limited time considering strategy at a typical board meeting, and may regard innovation as a change of state and, therefore, a risk factor.

Directors have a duty of care to their shareholders and are responsible for determining the company’s growth and survival strategies. But do boards spend enough time discussing competition, or new developments in technology, or even possible changes to regulations that may in the future impact the business?

For many boards, these areas are never discussed.

In the business world, will we ever forget Kodak and its devastating collapse, after being a highly successful business that neglected the need to change when digital photography was first introduced.
The irony is that the technology was originally developed by Kodak in 1975 and was effectively discarded because Kodak feared it threatened its photographic film business.
The digital and, at the time, much smaller companies took it on, and everything else is now history.
Although this is a classic example and a tragic one for Kodak’s shareholders and staff, there are many other examples and are likely to be increasingly many more to come.

The new disruptive technologies of the Sharing Economy such as Uber and Airbnb are having a significant impact on the market value of companies in transport and hospitality.
We should also consider the changes that have occurred in print media, including the retrenchment of many journalists because of the impact of digital media and resulting decline in advertising revenue.

Also consider the decline of Blockbuster video and the rise of Netflix. These types of disruptions in other industries could have staggering implications across many markets.

In the area of banking and finance, for example, people are starting to collaborate to exchange money and bi-pass the banks’ foreign exchange departments with the high rise of high growth and disruptive fintech companies.

Directors need to better understand threats and also assess more innovative growth strategies if their companies are to compete in the rapidly changing world in which we live in.

This means a different set of skills are needed at board level, in addition to the more traditional skills.
Business survival requires boards and directors to be more agile and predictive, particularly in relation to disrupters that could be catastrophic for their business.

Technological advances and customer behaviour can turn the business fortunes of companies around very quickly. For the modern-day director, it is necessary to be constantly aware of the external environment so that potential disrupters can be quickly detected and countered.

As a result, more effort is needed to create an entrepreneurial approach at the director level through properly managed processes and structures. This may include extending the current standard board committee structure to include a standalone innovation committee, providing leadership in innovation, and to bringing in a structured process to manage and assess opportunities and threats.

Many classic-minded board members are extremely risk averse and for good reason!

They are tasked with a great amount of responsibility to shareholders and to the overall success of an organisation.

Unfortunately, this can sometimes lead them to fear failure in such a way that it stifles success.

Many successful entrepreneurs are known for embracing small failures in order to reach large triumphs.

This attitude in support of both flexibility and evolution brings a unique and forward-thinking element to any boardroom

For the modern day director, it is necessary to be constantly aware of the external environment so that potential disrupters can be quickly detected and countered.
As a result, more effort is needed to create an entrepreneurial approach at the director level through properly managed processes and structures.

This may include extending the current standard board committee structure to include a standalone innovation committee, providing leadership in innovation, and to bringing in a structured process to manage and assess opportunities and threats.

With the growing need for businesses to fend off disruptions, as well as to create their own disruptions, it is time to consider how board meetings can evolve so that instead of spending so much time on backward looking and historical data, boards do a little bit of creative forecasting and consider the future of the business and the market.

Some suggestions are:
• Create an Innovation Committee. Increasing the time spent considering innovation will make an enormous difference to many companies.
• Spend some time discussing ‘what if’ scenarios to facilitate innovation discussions.
• Develop an opportunity management focus at the board level, instead of just a risk management focus.
• Place on the board’s agenda an item for competitive trends and behaviours and possible disruptions to the business model. Look to other industries for examples of how disruptions have been addressed.
• Encourage management to look to untapped knowledge in the staff pool (e.g. users of the ‘sharing economy’ might have a good understanding of disrupters).
• When it comes to funding a company, maybe consider other innovative methods to raise funds.

The future is bright for those who direct their focus to the headlights and away from the rear-view mirror. Being forewarned of an impending risk or threat may provide the opportunity to develop strategies and so mitigate that threat before its impact is catastrophic.

Keeping an eye on what is coming may help enable your company to be the disrupter, not the disrupted. Maybe we all need to reflect on that ‘Kodak Moment’ to see how quickly things can change.

Final thought, to achieve substantial and continued growth in the 21st century, companies will have to look beyond improving the existing business model or simply launching new products. These actions just will not generate enough growth anymore.

Growth will come from more ambidextrous organisations that excel at improving their established business model (exploitation) and excel at inventing tomorrow’s growth engines at the same time (exploration).

As Peter Drucker once said discussing Innovation and Entrepreneurship – Practice and Principles:

 “This defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship – the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”

Peter Drucker


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Not enough time… too much work

I really enjoy meeting up with my colleagues and friends, especially when we engage in ‘Meaningful Conversations’, but just recently, and more than ever, the words ‘I do not have enough time, I am on work overload and feel exhausted’ seem to be a running theme with life in general.
So the question is do we have enough focus, are we taking on too many initiatives?

One of the most persistent challenges that people face these days is “initiative overload” – driving themselves too hard and having too many projects and not enough time to get them done.
If you’ve ever found yourself working long days and weekends, and still not feeling caught up with your workload, then you know what I mean.

We all know that a big reason for this overload is the surge in expectations that’s tied to a technology-enabled and connected global economy. As email, texting, instant messaging, teleconferencing, and other electronic communications have become indispensable, people have grown conditioned to expect fast, if not instantaneous, responses to almost everything.

For example, a recent study found that when consumers contact companies through social media, 42% expect a response in one hour or less, and 67% expect a response the same day.
The same seems to be true with work assignments in companies: Customers, managers and even in our personal lives we do expect much more rapid turnaround times for getting things done.
And as people try to action faster, actions and changes to actions end up taking on more and more – and less gets finished.

Sometimes boards of directors and leaders are unaware of all the initiatives under way and their impact on the organisation. In other case’s organisational politics conspires to let initiatives continue long after they should have run their course.
Either way, overload can result in costly productivity and quality problems and employee burnout. With record low unemployment, companies that do not adjust the workload are also at risk of losing valuable talent.

So why does “Initiative Overload” happen?

In my experience, companies often lack the means (and the will) to stop existing initiatives. Sometimes that’s because they have no process for determining when to close things down.
A project might have been vital for the business when it launched, but later the rationale no longer exists – and yet the funding and the work continue.

Leadership teams often engage in prioritisation exercises that define and communicate where people should focus their energy. However, they undermine those efforts if they don’t also do the hard work of explicitly deciding what trade-offs to make and what has to stop.

For companies already experiencing ‘initiative overload’, focusing on the benefits of cutting back can make the path forward somewhat easier.

Organisations are at a great advantage when they learn how to say no, as Steve Jobs once put it, to the “hundred other good ideas that there are.”

They can then use their creative and productive energy more wisely, foster greater employee commitment and loyalty, and accomplish more in the areas that really matter.

The facts are that we’re subjected to thousands of distractions throughout the day. A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that you can be distracted simply by hearing or feeling your phone vibrate, even if you don’t pick it up.
Try putting your phone out of sight (and touch) for 10 minutes of uninterrupted productivity.

Modern technology has evolved to exploit our urgency addiction: email, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, and more will fight to distract you constantly.

Turn off all your notifications. Choose to check these things when you have time or allocate time to be distracted - say, during a break from work – and work through them together, saving time.

My final thought on the matter is, it’s not easy but once you build the good habit of turning off notifications, you can actually get to work and be more productive.

Schedule your priorities and stick to them.

Treat your highest priorities like flights you have to catch: give them a set time in advance and say no to anything that would stop you making your flight.

It pays to unplug.

If you can be reached via smartphone, email, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, you’re way too available and all these outlets are possible connections that can distract you from your purpose.

Disconnect and watch as your productivity improve.

Your smartphone might be the biggest productivity-killer of all time. Most people just can’t put the phone away.
If your phone is connected online, the temptation to stay updated about almost everything is very high. If you can, put down that phone (or power it off) for a while when in the office and witness the effect that can have on your level of productivity.

Don’t take on too much

The basic principle of success is to focus. It is what makes the difference between those who are successful and those who are not, regardless of how much talent, resource, and energy that they have.

The most accomplished and well-known people in history were known for something unique to them. Einstein pursued the theory of relativity like his whole life depended on it.

Relativity is one of the most famous scientific theories of the 20th century. Mozart was incredibly passionate about music. He was the very best for many generations before and after him. Even today, is there a second musician who could match his genius?

Spend most of your time on the right things and the rest takes care of itself.

It’s not enough to just ‘work hard’. Hard work is not necessarily a bad thing.

But hard work can be a waste of your life when it’s directed at the wrong cause. Decide what is good for you in the long term, and pursue it with all you’ve got.

Each time you have something extra to do or an additional goal to pursue, you further split your power.

Less is more

The key to focusing on the essentials in life and at work is to limit yourself to an arbitrary but small number of things, forcing yourself to focus on the important stuff and eliminate all else.

A great video by Carl Honore, who discusses ‘Thinking Slow and Smart’

When you are doing too much at a time, you are constantly switching from one task to another, constantly interrupted, constantly distracted.

Do less, clear away distractions, single-task, and get more done.

When you do too much, your work is spread thinner, you have lower quality, and people won’t spread your work like they should.
By doing less, you can create something remarkable. Something incredible worth sharing.

Prioritising and optimizing your time during the day will give you more time to focus on what matters, getting more accomplished in a lesser amount of time.

A really great quote by Nido Qubein, he once said:

“One of the greatest resources people cannot mobilize themselves is that they try to accomplish great things. Most worthwhile achievements are the result of many little things done in a single direction.”