Tag: trust

Posted on

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

Posted on

The Controversial Frontier – Re-Establishing Trust: The Battle for Objective Education

Co-authored by Geoff Hudson-Searle, Scott Siegel and Scott Schlesinger

It’s hard to quantify exactly how important trust is for a business. For business owners, a lack of trust is your biggest expense. It may take years for a manager or an executive to develop the trust of his or her employees, but there are only moments to lose. Without trust, transactions cannot occur, influence is destroyed, leaders can lose teams and salespeople can lose sales. The list goes on. Trust and relationships, much more than money, are the currency of business.

It’s hard to deny that the last few years have been turbulent on many world societies. Research from Mental Health America shows how much mental health has been impacted in the wake of the macroeconomics, geopolitical and behaviors of others: Anxiety screens were up by 634% from January to September of 2023, with depression screens up 873%.

Stephen Covey American educator, author, businessman, and speaker once said:

“If I make deposits into an Emotional Bank Account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build up a reserve. Your trust toward me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to. I can even make mistakes and that trust level, that emotional reserve, will compensate for it.

My communication may not be clear, but you’ll get my meaning anyway. You won’t make me “an offender for a word.” When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.”

In “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” author and motivational speaker Stephen R. Covey introduced the concept of the emotional bank account. ‘’Much like a financial bank account, we make deposits and withdrawals to our emotional bank accounts. But in this case, rather than money, we’re building up and withdrawing from a reserve of trust with other people. Our deposit currencies are positive actions (e.g., honesty, kindness, integrity, gestures of goodwill), while the withdrawals are activated by negative actions, like ignoring a partner or team member’s problems, disrespect or not meeting commitments.’’

The Emotional Bank Account operates on the principle that every interaction we have with others either adds to or withdraws from the account’s balance. Positive interactions, such as showing empathy, expressing appreciation, and offering support, are deposits that build trust and goodwill. Conversely, negative interactions, like breaking promises, showing disrespect, or being unresponsive, result in withdrawals that erode trust and damage relationships.

According to Stephen Covey, there are six types of major deposits we can make to someone else’s emotional bank account:

– Understand the individual — Keep in mind the old saying and walk a mile in their shoes. Show interest in their lives, their worldview, their hopes and dreams.

– Attend to the little things — Always show respect. Prove that you think of them and care with small gestures: kind words, courtesy and little acts of kindness.

– Keep your commitments — Avoid rash promises. When you do make a promise, keep it. Show up on time, make that meeting and don’t blow off that phone call.

– Clarify expectations — Don’t automatically assume others know what you’re talking about. Define your expectations — not only for yourself, but for them.

– Show personal integrity — Be honest. Define your vision, and then show everyone that you’re not exempt from following the guidelines you set out.

– Apologize when you make a withdrawal — No one’s perfect. Offer a sincere apology, admit any mistakes and take responsibility for your actions.

When an emotional bank account has more deposits then withdrawals the people involved in that relationship will trust each other.

Ridvan Foxhall, Occupational Therapist and Educator, states: “One of the key foundations of a strong relationship is trust. In order to build trust, one must continually make deposits of honesty, kindness, unconditional love, patience, all of those essential virtues that strengthen any relationship. In doing so, we build large reserves in the emotional bank account.”

We need to build trust between students and universities.

A degree of trust is implied in the relationship between students and the university. Higher education is about more than studying or the distribution of “knowledge units” in a society; it is about learning and whole-person development. Students enter university trusting that their time in class, the people they meet and the communities that surround them will shape their development.

The exchange of trust goes both ways. University staff and faculty, for their part, trust students to be open-minded, sincere, and diligent in working towards the goal of learning.

Universities must prioritize programs that promote students’ whole-person development, equipping them with essential skills such as effective communication, time-management, collaboration, hardiness and leadership. By doing so, universities honor the implicit trust placed in them by their students and prepare them for success in both their careers and personal lives.

Mutual respect, a higher-order value based on a recognition of the worth of the other person, is necessary to build trust.

Philosopher Stephen Darwall at Yale University describes trust as an attitude of the heart, a form of confidence in someone and an implicit invitation for them to trust themselves too. Behind this is the deeper reality of our shared humanity and learning over time to exercise empathy and try to understand those we disagree with, looking beyond the beliefs to the person who holds them.

Commitment to the worth and well-being of their students, along with the capacity to deliver holistic education that serves this, is the condition universities should fulfil to warrant trust. Compassion and understanding enable these conditions to be fulfilled.

At its heart, higher education is not only about administering knowledge; it is about guiding a whole person, and that involves care and courtesy. Higher education is entrusted to see through points of disagreement – no matter how deep – to the person beneath and to engage students to work for a better future, inviting them to trust themselves in that process.

Determining the value of a university-level education is a complex endeavor that goes beyond the examination of course content. As parents and employers, we want to ensure that individuals graduating from a university have the skills to compete in a global economy.

In order to thrive in business, universities must provide a comprehensive evaluation of critical thinking skills, a facet that often leaves parents and employers grappling with questions about the student’s ability not only to absorb information but also to analyze and tackle complex problems.

The significance of critical thinking becomes even more pronounced when considering its role in shaping a student’s readiness for future professional endeavors. In the professional world, the ability to analyze complex situations, make informed decisions, and articulate well-supported viewpoints is critical.

A recent report by the New York Times stated that nearly 80% of students in one Ivy League school received A or A-. With so many high grades given out, how do we hold universities accountable to ensure students can engage in critical thinking and not simply memorize text?

Imagine a scenario where a recent graduate, who graduated with top grades from a prestigious Ivy League school, enters a very important business meeting. The task at hand involves analyzing market trends, making strategic decisions, and presenting well-supported proposals.
However, despite the stellar academic record, the graduate finds themselves grappling with the practical application of critical thinking in a real-world setting. The disconnect between academic achievement and professional readiness raises questions about the effectiveness of current assessment methods.

In such instances, Generative AI could act as a guiding compass, providing personalized insights and evaluations that extend beyond grades, ensuring that graduates are truly equipped for the dynamic challenges of their future careers.

Generative AI is an advanced technological tool that plays a transformative role in higher education by comprehensively assessing and evaluating critical thinking skills. Unlike traditional methods focused solely on academic content, Generative AI provides a nuanced understanding of students’ abilities to articulate well-supported viewpoints across diverse disciplines, fostering a personalized and adaptive approach to learning.

This technology serves as a valuable ally, going beyond memorization to emphasize the practical application of critical thinking in real-world scenarios, thereby becoming an essential component in navigating the multifaceted challenges of higher education and preparing students for the demands of their future professions. In essence, will the student be ready for the “real world”.

Generative AI serves as an unbiased and unemotional companion in the educational journey, logically assessing not only the depth of knowledge but also the subtle development of crucial critical thinking skills. It provides professors and parents with a holistic understanding of their student’s cognitive abilities and adaptability in navigating the challenges that they will encounter once they graduate.

One pivotal aspect of critical thinking is the ability to articulate a well-supported point of view. In disciplines such as business, law, and social sciences, students are frequently tasked with presenting evidence-based arguments. In a business ethics class, for instance, students may be required to analyze a case study, formulate ethical viewpoints, and defend them with factual evidence.

Generative AI can assist in evaluating the clarity, relevance, and persuasiveness of students’ arguments. It becomes an unemotional tool that not only assesses academic content but also gauges the practical application of critical thinking skills in real-world scenarios. This capability becomes particularly significant in preparing students for the demands of their future professions.

By using a few representative algorithms such as:
• Sentiment Analysis for Depth Assessment
• Argumentation Mining for Logical Structure
• Content Relevance Scoring
• Dynamic Clustering for Group Insights

The integration of Generative AI in educational assessments allows for a more personalized and adaptive approach to learning. It can identify individual strengths and areas that require improvement in critical thinking skills, tailoring educational experiences to better meet the needs of each student. This adaptive learning model enhances the overall educational experience, fostering a more supportive and effective environment for intellectual growth.

A representative and unbiased scorecard for a student is presented below:

Fundamental Concepts:
• Limited understanding of foundational marketing concepts.
• Basic understanding but struggles to apply concepts consistently.
• Adequate grasp of fundamental marketing principles.
• Proficient understanding, applies core marketing concepts effectively.

Application of Critical Thinking Strategies:
• Difficulty in applying marketing strategies to real-world scenarios.
• Basic application but inconsistent in connecting strategies to outcomes.

As we contemplate the crucial role of critical thinking in preparing students for the challenges of the real world, it is evident that universities must be held accountable for providing a comprehensive evaluation of these skills.

The prevalence of high grades in prestigious institutions raises concerns about the effectiveness of traditional assessment methods. It’s time to advocate for a paradigm shift in higher education and Generative AI offers a holistic assessment that goes beyond academic content, ensuring a personalized, unbiased, unemotional, and adaptive learning experience. Let us collectively champion the integration of Generative AI in educational assessments, fostering an environment that not only measures knowledge but also cultivates the critical thinking skills essential for our students to thrive in the complex landscapes of the professional world. The future readiness of our children depends on it.

Finally, higher education has plenty of big-time problems today, from falling enrollment and rising student debt to admission scandals and sports corruption. Beyond hurting the reputations of individual schools, these problems could undermine support for academia more broadly. So, it’s critically important for universities and colleges to double down on building (or rebuilding) their relationships with stakeholders.

Higher education has a huge built-in advantage over many other major organizations. Of the four groups that you could identify as the most credible advocates for an institution, three are fundamental to higher education: academic experts, a person like yourself (students, alumni and parents of both groups), and employees.

Academic institutions will reach a lot more people—and reach them more effectively—if a message is amplified by a loyal army of ambassadors. In addition to sharing stories with these influential proponents, schools need to treat them like the essential partners they are.

Given the nest of problems it has, higher education needs to invest in trust. What schools put in today will build the endowment of tomorrow.

As Warren Buffet American businessman, investor, and philanthropist once said:

“Trust is like the air we breathe – when it’s present, nobody really notices; when it’s absent, everybody notices.”

This article is the expressed opinions and collaboration between two senior-level industry board professionals on their views and perceptions and additional and individual contributions from:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-schlesinger2001/: who is a Data, Analytics & AI Practice Lead | Innovator | Experienced CDO/CAO | Thought Leader | Adjunct Professor.

Scott Siegel is a results-oriented and visionary technology leader. He specializes in strategic partnerships with C-Level executives and the integration of emerging technologies to optimize operations, enhance productivity, and drive cost efficiencies through the application of AI. Scott’s focus centers on cultivating a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration, aligning innovative strategies with business goals to fuel organizational growth. With a proven track record, he has directed cross-functional teams in the development and implementation of cutting-edge AI algorithms and models, revolutionizing data analysis, pattern recognition, and predictive capabilities for shopping events using generative AI.

A trailblazer in advancing neuroscience analytics, he leverages this expertise to unveil deep consumer insights, drive data-driven decision-making, and enhance customer experiences. His leadership extends to championing the adoption of data mesh architecture, enabling scalable and decentralized data ecosystems for improved democratization and agility.

He is extremely adept at developing and executing innovation strategies, leading implementations for Data Governance, Analytics, and Regulatory Privacy Compliance across diverse industries. As an advocate for AI-driven solutions, he evaluates and incorporates emerging technologies such as computer vision into business processes, products, and services.

With a commitment to excellence, he mentors and develops high-performing teams, ensuring they grow within a culture of innovation. Collaborating with executive leadership, Scott aligns analytics initiatives with overall business strategy, facilitating data-driven decision-making throughout the organization. His commitment to sharing insights is reflected in many published articles, showcasing a dedication to thought leadership in the technology and analytics space.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottsiegel1/

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.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffsearle

Posted on

Rethinking the Purpose and Trust of Leadership

Over the past five years, there’s been an explosion of interest in purpose-driven leadership. Academics, business experts, and even doctors make the case that purpose is a key to exceptional leadership and the pathway to greater well-being.

Despite this growing understanding, however, a big challenge remains. Few leaders have a strong sense of their own individual purpose, research and experience show, and even fewer can distill their purpose into a concrete statement or have a clear plan for translating purpose into action. As a result, they limit their aspirations and often fail to achieve their most ambitious professional and personal goals.

To harness the power of corporate purpose, CEOs and other senior executives must pressure-test that purpose with their teams, employees—and themselves.

But what does that really mean, and does it make a difference?

There’s been considerable interest in the notion of “purposeful” and “purpose-driven” leaders and organisations in recent years, driven by growing levels of distrust and disillusionment with what are often regarded as the short-termism, financial imperatives driving contemporary firms. Typically, the attributes of purposeful organisations – societal responsibility, values and ethics – are simply translated into the qualities that characterise their ideal leaders. But what type of leaders do purposeful organisations really need?

Purpose is an aspirational reason for being that inspires and provides a call to action for an organisation, its partners, stakeholders, and society as a whole. Strategic research has consistently shown that purpose enables organisations to perform well in times of volatility. The research joins a growing body of evidence demonstrating that a strong and active purpose raises employee engagement and acts as a unifier, makes customers more loyal and committed to working with you, and helps to frame effective decision making in an environment of uncertainty. The EY Global Leadership Forecast 2018 found that getting purpose right builds organisational resilience and, crucially, improves long-term financial performance.

Don’t assume a lack of discussion equals agreement. Don’t assume that your organization’s purpose is good enough, goes far enough, or that your colleagues even see eye to eye about it. Have the courage to participate in tough discussions and learn where things stand.

Independent research from Linkage found connections between purposeful leaders and business results: The companies they led had 2.5 times higher sales growth, four times higher profit growth, five times higher “competitive differentiation and innovation” scores, and nine times higher employee engagement scores. Companies that create lasting leadership impact differentially invest in developing purposeful leaders; and they take concrete steps to assess the organisational dynamics that shape leadership performance.

So exactly what is Purposeful Business Leader?

My extensive research into the subject came up with the following structure of what makes a Purposeful Leader:
 Purposeful leadership and its constituent components – moral self, commitment to stakeholders and vision – are important in influencing a range of employee outcomes, including intent to quit, job satisfaction, willingness to go the extra mile, sales performance and lower levels of cynicism. Alongside this, ethical leadership approaches also emerge as central for employees’ experience of their work. Employers should consider ways of creating and embedding a purposeful and ethical approach throughout the organisation.
 Vision is especially important for employees and leaders alike to provide a sense of direction to guide activities. However, multiple or conflicting visions can emerge over time and in different departments or units, causing a sense of confusion and uncertainty, and so organisations should aim for alignment around a set of core themes.
 There is much that organisations can do to foster an environment conducive to purposeful and ethical leadership; appropriate central policies, leader role-modelling, training and development, and the organisational values and culture can nurture purposeful leaders. 41
 Constraints in organisations revolve around time and resource pressures, unrealistic targets, communication errors such as over-communication, remoteness of the centre, and cultural factors such as risk-aversion. When seeking to develop a purposeful approach to leadership, organisations should attend to issues such as these that may sabotage their efforts.
 Organisations tend to focus on a limited range of stakeholders and discount others from their decision-making. However, this can lead to an imbalance in how the organisation relates to its wider setting.

Leadership is central to transformation success. Companies with a systematic and well-supported approach to activate leaders see transformation success rates that are three times higher than those of their competitors. Yet leader engagement has decreased significantly since the pandemic—a drop of roughly 40% in two years.

The current business environment creates a paradox for leaders. Increased complexity and volatility mean that companies face a constant need for change. Yet the accelerating pace of business means that CEOs often struggle to manage complex transformation programs. Success requires a new approach to leadership—research shows that CEO engagement has a dramatic impact on transformation success. Aligning leadership with a powerful purpose is one of six attributes empirically identified as an essential component of short- and medium-term company performance.

Leaders of future-built companies are generative across the head, heart, and hands—as one team. The head refers to reinventing business to serve people, planet, society, and shareholders; the heart involves inspiring and enriching the human experience; and the hands entails executing and innovating through supercharged teams. Among companies that fully engage the head, heart, and hands, 96% see a sustained performance improvement, compared with just 33% that partially engage.

Leaders focus on a purpose that goes beyond the bottom line. Increasingly, leaders need to develop an authentic purpose to create value for people, for society and for the planet—not just investors. Moreover, they must embed environmental, social, and governance (ESG) into their overall strategy, not keep it off to the side.

Companies face common barriers. A shift in C-suite behaviours can help organizations drive faster end-to-end, cross-functional outcomes and overcome common barriers around near-sighted business targets, insufficient funding, and business unit misalignment. Building and scaling generative leadership across the organization and beyond the C-suite requires following a set of six key principles—relevance, impact, flexibility, integration, immersion, and coaching.

The Next Steps for Leaders

Building a reinvention for leadership is a process. Building for the future through leadership is a process that takes continued effort over time. Yet it pays financial and nonfinancial benefits as companies move up in terms of their maturity.

Many organizations mistakenly neglect the heart aspect of transformation. Leading with the heart is the most valuable to employees, but leaders most commonly neglect this dimension. Starting with a purpose and spearheading authentic ESG efforts are foundational to the leading with the heart, both with high impact across people and business results.

Purpose has power. The key to leadership from the heart and the head begins with a purpose among the top three success factors for transformation, having a clear purpose ranks first. Purpose aligns every element of the business; it is how employees see themselves as part of something bigger, regardless of their role. Purpose has tremendous impact when done well—companies with a clear purpose have 8% less turnover, a two-fold increase in productivity, and 3.25 times the involvement in transformation initiatives. Perhaps most important: they are twice as likely to have a high TSR.

Let’s now look at some of the most recognised model leaders from the past:

The Ability to Initiate Change — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Good leaders are never satisfied with the status quo and usually take action to change it. In addition, strong leaders bring about change for the common good by involving others in the process. Roosevelt. sought practical ways to help struggling men and women make a better world for themselves and their children.

His philosophy was, “bold, persistent experimentation…Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” Being willing to take risks by trying new ideas and involving others in the process of change is a key quality of strong leaders.

Inspiring a Shared Vision — The Leadership of Martin Luther King

Leaders, through their words and actions, must have the ability to draw others into a common vision by telling others where they intend to go and urging them to join in that vision.
Martin Luther King’s vision of a country free from racial segregation and discrimination, so poignantly expressed in his famous “I have a dream…” speech, exemplifies this critical leadership trait. King had a vision of a better America, and his ability to bring both whites and blacks together to march against segregation changed America profoundly.

Model Leadership — Mohandas K. Gandhi

Strong leaders not only need to have a vision and the ability to initiate change, but they must also model the values, actions, and behaviors necessary to make the vision reality. Gandhi not only created and espoused the philosophies of passive resistance and constructive non-violence, but he also lived by these principles.

According to Indira Gandhi, “More than his words, his life was his message.” By choosing to consistently live and work in a manner that exemplified the values he believed in, Gandhi engendered trust, becoming a role model for others looking to affect change without resorting to violence.

Encouraging the Heart — The Leadership of Winston Churchill

On December 29, 1940, London was hit by one of the largest aerial attacks of World War II. Somehow, St. Paul’s Cathedral survived. Two days later a photo showing a silhouette of the dome of St. Paul’s, surrounded by smoke and flames ran in the paper with a caption that read, “It symbolises the steadiness of London’s stand against the enemy: the firmness of right against wrong.”

Churchill recognized the importance of St. Paul’s as a morale booster. His instructions were clear on that December night, “At all costs, St. Paul’s must be saved.”

Rewriting The Laws of Nature For The Betterment of Humanity – Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein is perhaps the most famous scientist of the 20th century. The prized physicist had a profound impact on our understanding of the universe, including basic concepts such as time, light and gravity.

To this day, his work is being used to guide physicists to new frontiers, helping us to understand our significance on the grandest scale.

In addition to his timeless quotes and deep sense of humour, Einstein is remembered for overcoming adversity. His ability to keep a positive attitude and provoke creative thought experiments were at the centre of his genius. More than 60 years after his death, the world remembers not a man who spent years working at a patent office, but a man who changed the world.

The Embodiment of Liberty and Great Emancipator of Slaves – Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was more than just an American hero; he represented the dawn of a new era in human civilization based on freedom, self-government and equality.

Lincoln rapidly modernized the economy without sacrificing his values. By 1860, he secured the Republican Party presidential nomination and was elected president. Lincoln’s victory prompted southern slave states to form the Confederate States of America.

To this day, Lincoln is synonymous with the principles of liberty, democracy, equal rights and unification.
His willingness to stand alone on issues he believed in made him one of the most beloved and memorable leaders in modern history.

The Physicist Who Proved That Determination and Positive Thinking Can Triumph Over Even The Most Severe Limitations – Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking probably had every reason to give up on life.

Diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at the age of 21, he would spend most of his life severely disabled to the point where he controls his communication device through movement of his cheek muscles.

Despite his debilitating condition, Hawking became arguably the most well-known theoretical physicist since Albert Einstein. Hawking is known for his groundbreaking work on cosmology, quantum physics and black holes.

Hawking came from humble beginnings. The eldest of 4 children, Stephen was born in England during the Second World War. By his own admission, Hawking didn’t spend a lot of time studying.

That didn’t stop him from graduating with full honours before pursuing a PhD in cosmology at Cambridge University.

Much has been written about Hawking and his thought-provoking theories on the universe. He has received worldwide acclaim not only for his work, but for his determination in overcoming a severe disability.

When he was originally diagnosed with ALS, he was given only two years to live. That was over 50 years ago. On overcoming his disability.

Hawking’s attitude comes from his sheer refusal to make excuses for his disabilities. His ex-wife Jane Hawking attributed his outlook on the world to a combination of determination and stubbornness. As Hawking clearly demonstrates, both traits have their pedigree.

Leaders must be able to encourage the hearts of those who share their vision, providing a sense of confident optimism even in the face of enormous difficulties.

Traditional skills have not been supplanted but they now co-exist and very visually have survived with a mix of new factors, in your mind was Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln or Stephen Hawking a Purposeful Leader?

When creating an organisational shared purpose the essential questions to ask are:

What is the shared purpose that;
 Articulates a clear purpose for your organisation. Focus on answering the why questions. We all know what our organisations do. Purpose is about asking why we exist in the first place, what our employees and stakeholders care about, and what resonates with customers.
 Use purpose as a lens for everything you do. Let purpose guide the solutions you offer, how you treat your customers, and how you engage your workforce.
 Communicate success stories to all constituents. Stories perpetuate purpose. Each time people repeat them, purpose entwines more closely with day-to-day business.
 Integrate purpose into the company’s DNA. Reinforce purpose through the day-to-day customer and employee experience. Treat purpose as a commitment to stakeholders and publicly update on its progress.
 Focus on leaders. Help them develop their own “why.” Work with all leaders to articulate their own purpose as it relates to the overarching purpose for the business. Then, help them do the same for their teams and employees.
 Develop key skills. Purpose-driven leaders form teams, inspire, and motivate in a fast-changing world. They develop psychological safety and agility.

Uncovering authentic organisational purpose can come quite simply from finding ways to be of service. What’s needed today is for all leaders to look beyond profit and ask, ‘What do I have that could help someone right now?

Where can I practice abundance where there is short supply?’

Organisations will be changed by their actions to make a difference in these times of crisis. Connecting with employees at a human level as we enter into one another’s home offices and living rooms, meeting children and pets on the screen, is organically changing and strengthening cultures. It’s happening today by default; tomorrow leaders can shape their cultures with lessons learned by design. Leaders and organisations that count on their core culture and values and make a difference while pivoting to solve for the future will emerge from the fires of this crisis and thrive.

Finally, leadership has got to step up, if you want to save your job in the next 10 years, you need to adopt a balance between IQ, EQ, SI, DI, WI and trust intelligence. Emotional intelligence isn’t just an idea for leadership anymore, it’s a prerequisite for the trust toolbox.

The way to build trust and drive home purpose is to master honest communication and include employees and stakeholders in key decisions.

“We’ve seen fax machines, long emails, instant messaging, all kinds of collaboration tools come, go and sometimes stay. Business is about communicating with purpose, active listening, empathy. More trust has got to be to put into the executive leadership. Trust is the glue.”

The more emotional intelligence leadership teams employ across teams, the more you’ll see an increase in trust because people will see it’s not just words but actions. At IBEM, we commissioned a trust report back in January 2020. Even before I commissioned the research, I knew what to expect.

“69% of everyone surveyed said they don’t trust CEO or line manager.”

I would take that as applicable across all business and commerce. We’ve got to communicate more, build trust within organisations more. We can’t deliver anything without fixing this problem.

Inclusion of people into the decision-making process helps cement purpose and values.”

Vincent Thomas Lombardi was an American football coach and executive in the National Football League, who once said:

“A team is not a group of people who play together, a team is a group of people who trust each other.”

The continued success of my 5th book, Purposeful Discussions, was published across some of the biggest issues in business today, purpose driven outcomes, which lead to my 6th book, The Trust Paradigm.

The best business leaders begin by framing trust in economic terms for their companies. The best leaders focus on making the creation of trust an explicit objective. Like any other goal, it must be measured and improved. It must be made clear to everyone that trust matters to management and leadership.

It’s clear from the news that the leaders of some of our most influential governments and corporations are making morally questionable decisions. These decisions will lose the trust of society, customers, and employees.

No amount of electronic communication – staff intranet, corporate social media, marketing emails – will fix this, yet many organizations assume this can replace meaningful dialogue even though this is the only real means of building trust and high-functioning #relationships.

Pathway to The Trust Paradigm

You can order your copy of the book on all formats now Amazon: audible hardback kindle softback

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Audible-The-Trust-Paradigm/dp/B0BP2ZR6MV/

Or visit #TheTrustParadigmBook website:
https://thetrustparadigmbook.com/

Posted on

Focus in Leadership

Corporate leaders today are measured by a new yardstick. The supreme test of a CEO and board of directors is now the value they create not just for shareholders, but for all stakeholders.

The shift to stakeholder capitalism creates pressure for corporate leaders to try to satisfy a wide range of constituencies with different, sometimes conflicting interests and perspectives. Earning their trust is key to navigating this tricky terrain.

Research shows that trust is the key to success. Yet growing distrust, cynicism and misinformation are eroding confidence in corporate impact and Environmental Social & Governance (ESG) claims.

To prosper in the age of stakeholder capitalism, companies must actively cultivate the trust of employees, investors, customers, regulators and corporate partners: developing strategies to understand these stakeholders more intimately, implementing deliberate trust-building actions, tracking their efforts over time, and communicating openly and effectively with key stakeholder groups.

We have entered the trust era: a time where (mis)information is omnipresent, individual perceptions reign supreme, and digital security and data privacy are constantly threatened. Now more than ever, stakeholders expect organizations to do the right things and do them well.

These expectations range from entrusting an organization to safeguard one’s private data to requiring a company to have a strong stance on Environmental Social & Governance (ESG) issues.

Trust also drives performance. When stakeholders trust an organization, their behaviors will reflect that trust can affect more traditional key performance indicators that directly affect financial performance. Trust elevates customer and brand loyalty, which can lead to revenue. It enhances levels of workforce engagement, which can result in increased productivity and retention. And the data confirms it.

Trustworthy companies outperform non-trustworthy companies by 2.5 times, and 88% of customers who highly trust a brand will buy again from that brand. Furthermore, employees’ Trust in their leaders improves job performance, job satisfaction, and commitment to the organization and its mission.

Despite the data, however, many leaders and organizations still view trust as an abstract concept. Trust should be managed proactively because, when trust is prioritized and acted upon, it can become a competitive advantage. An organization that positions trust as a strategic priority—managing, measuring, investing in, and acting upon it can ultimately build a critical asset.

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 environments.

Leaders serve as role models for their followers and demonstrate the behavioral boundaries set within an organization. The appropriate and desired behavior is enhanced through the culture and socialization 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.

A good case study is Disney – it strives to design work environments that inspire optimism and drive innovation for all employees, at all levels. And because of this recognize that maintaining an inclusive, supportive workplace requires mindful attention and intention, we continually adapt to the evolving needs of its people. The company’s intention is to put the responsibility for an inclusive culture in the hands of its leaders and employees through comprehensive education and engagement efforts.

We all watched Walt Disney Company (DIS) shares soared last week after the company released its fiscal first-quarter 2024 earnings. The stock had its best day in over three years after the company made a flurry of announcements and markets got a sense that CEO Bob Iger’s turnaround plan has started to show results on the ground.

Since returning to Disney, Bob Iger has inspired hope among employees and investors that he could turn around the entertainment giant — and faced tough challenges, people were a large part of the strategy that gave rise to the changes in fortunes.

To help bridge the trust gap we recognise that organizations 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.

To create such a settlement, businesses need to see themselves as part of a diverse, interconnected, and interdependent ecosystem – one that involves government, regulators, individual citizens, and more. Trust within and across this ecosystem is key to its long-term sustainability and survival.

That’s why trust needs to be restored to the heart of the business world.

Posted on

Design led innovation… the driver of accelerated economic growth

President John F. Kennedy once observed that the word “crisis” in Chinese is composed of two characters; one representing danger, the other opportunity. He may not have been entirely correct on the linguistics, but the sentiment is true enough: a crisis presents a choice.

This is particularly true today.

How are executives responding? As might be expected, 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.

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 yearly global CEO report show 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.

Less well understood is that she/he is also the ultimate integrator, charged with identifying the issues that span the enterprise and formulating a response that brings all the right resources to bear. To do that well requires a broad range of contradictory perspectives: outside in and inside out; a telescope to see the world and a microscope to break it down; a snapshot view of the immediate issues and a time-lapse series to see into the future with the right lens.

Throughout the world, organizations are seeking ways to streamline their processes and improve employee experiences. One way that is presenting itself as the ultimate panacea to enhancing the customer journey is to create dialectical leadership’ and ‘distributed leadership’ and combine them depending on the situation, to achieve a balance between various contradictory elements such as the ‘tug-of-war between efficiency and creativity’, and demonstrate organizational adaptability.

While strong communication is critical for teams to succeed, businesses need cross-departmental collaboration to move the needle and achieve their overarching goals There is a name for this approach—a holistic growth strategy. The goal of a holistic growth strategy is to unite every department to work together as one cohesive unit. While each team has a different specialty, people complete their tasks with the bigger picture at the forefront of their minds. Each employee will understand and be focused on how their work contributes to the company’s holistic goals, like scaling, boosting return on investment (ROI) and retaining customers. Driving sustainable, inclusive growth requires the right mindset, strategy, and capabilities.

Here are some steps that could help foster successful growth. Companies are now shifting away from that kind of mindset in favour of a more holistic approach. The latter involves considering the impact that every change is going to have on the entire organization, and not just specific functions or departments. The reason behind this approach is to attain a business transformation that is embedded in the very culture of the organization; is aligned with the organization’s purpose, and embraced equally by every single employee– not just enforced upon members by the managers. Such a shift means that the organization holds employees and leaders across each department accountable for their roles in the success of the business. An organization that takes a disjointed approach to implement technology only risks having a section of its employees lacking the skills needed to keep up with today’s fast-paced, disruptive and dynamic business environment.

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.

That’s nonsense; others within the organization often have already sorted through similar problems. Understanding that early in one’s tenure reduces wasted effort and can inspire new bursts of collaborative creativity. 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.

This means that decisions should be refined on an ongoing basis. The need to be “right” must be set aside in favour of continual learning. What was once called “flip flopping” will now be called “learning.” An example of nimble decision-making is an organization that offers training to help participants combine data-based decision-making with intuitive decision making to leverage the power of both. They make decisions at the appropriate point to support the process of experimentation. When experiments are run, participants learn, and prior decisions will be revisited when appropriate and updated. Leaders and their employees must value adaptability, flexibility, and curiosity.
All of these skills and aptitudes support an individual’s ability to navigate rapid change. Employees must remain flexible and focused on the face of ongoing change. They need the capacity to feel comfortable and supported by their colleagues so that they can adapt to planned and unplanned change with creativity and focus.

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. 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.

To create such a settlement, businesses need to see themselves as part of a diverse, interconnected and interdependent ecosystem one that involves government, regulators, individual citizens and more. Trust within and across this ecosystem is key to its long-term sustainability and survival. That’s why trust needs to be restored to the heart of the business world.

Positive habit formation is a method that successful athletes have tried and tested. It entails identifying what behaviour is required to achieve a win and establishing a routine to reinforce this. To apply it in business, ask yourself: what consistent actions do I need to start taking that would improve my overall performance? For instance, if meetings with a certain colleague often overrun, it’s worth considering how that time is being used, adopting a more efficient format and then embedding this through repetition. Great performance is as much about the purpose and culture of the organisation. These beliefs are found in the vision, ethos and values, leadership, the strategy and plans, in people, and importantly that people are trusted to make things happen. Reconnecting with your purpose and values will make it possible, when this crisis has passed, to look back with pride at how your company responded.

Culture always matters, but it matters now more than ever. If these core attributes are applied to the business then high-performance leaders must have an overwhelming desire to lead and that the desire to lead must be for the right reasons. It is only through having this overwhelming desire that they will have the emotional energy, enthusiasm, stamina and drive to undertake the unremitting pressure and sustained hard work required to turn an average organisation into a high performing one.

Events have changed our world and the way that we work in an extraordinarily short time. It is becoming increasingly evident that we will have to live with and adapt to these changes for a long time and it is far from certain that we will ever return to life exactly as it was before the pandemic. These changes bring with them great challenges and risks. These are uncharted and difficult waters to navigate. However, in our view there are also great opportunities, and these challenges can be met where leaders are able to move from a crisis management mindset to thinking about how to run their businesses differently, with a strong focus on culture.

Company’s that get this wrong run the risk of poor conduct, low staff morale and ultimately, weak future performance. However, those that find ways to nudge behaviours in the right direction have the chance to build business models and resilient cultures that adapt to the new circumstances with positive outcomes for customers, employees and investors.

It’s important to have a holistic strategy that enables people to work effectively with colleagues regardless of location. Key to this is a shared purpose and a sense of cohesion. This strategy should be driven from the top and include all teams. Equip and trust your people to build and use capabilities that suit them. Provide support from a mental wellbeing perspective help people find ways of working and connections that work best for them in this new world of work. AI can be used to help employees make better decisions and focus on higher-value tasks, whilst also boosting inclusivity and sparking creativity.

Your people are the heartbeat of your business. Leaders must ensure people have the right skills and technology to succeed and the ability to innovate wherever and however they work. They must meet the needs of every individual embracing diversity in all forms. An effective culture gives people not only the means to be productive but the drive to innovate, adapt, and progress. Support the workplace with technologies that suit remote, office, and frontline workers while keeping them secure. Organisations need an integrated and intelligent approach to security, powered by the cloud and AI. Customer trust is everything. Therefore, ensuring employees have access to the information they need, wherever they are, whilst maintaining security, privacy, and regulatory compliance is vital. Key to the hybrid workplace is human centred design and complemented is a technology platform that allows strategic direction and a strong culture.

Finally, 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.

As Tim Brown, former CEO of IDEO, once said:

“The transformation of a business-as-usual culture into one focused on innovation and driven by design involves activities, decisions, and attitudes. Workshops help expose people to design thinking as a new approach. Pilot projects help market the benefits of design thinking within the organization. Leadership focuses the program of change and gives people permission to learn and experiment. Assembling interdisciplinary teams ensures that the effort is broadly based. Dedicated spaces such as the P&G Innovation Gym provide a resource for longer-term thinking and ensure that the effort will be sustained. Measurement of impacts, both quantitative and qualitative, helps make the business case and ensures that resources are appropriately allocated. It may make sense to establish incentives for business units to collaborate in new ways so that younger talent sees innovation as a path to success rather than as a career risk.”

Posted on

The Loss of Trust in Tech and Leadership

There is much debate on the management of people, it seems that whatever media source to turn too you will see debate on 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.

Leadership is a competency and a skill set rather than an inherited set of traits that high-performing organisations recognise and prepare their organisation accordingly. Organisations that have high levels of employee engagement enjoy high performance on every key performance indicator from employee turnover to return on investment and shareholder return. Creating an engaged environment is a culture, not a program and must be approached systemically not tactically.

In organisations that means building a common language of leadership at all levels to have an immediate and lasting impact on business results, not just knowledge, wisdom or behaviours.

A bad example of trusted leadership is the chaos that continued to erupt as hoards of employees exited from Twitter/X after Elon Musk’s iron-fisted demands.

So far Musk’s leadership style is headed in the wrong direction. Trust in a leader allows organizations and communities to flourish, while the absence of trust can cause fragmentation, conflict, and even war. That’s why we need to trust our leaders, our family members, our friends and our co-workers, albeit in different ways.

Trust is the new disruptor, one that businesses must master to realize the full power of data and new intelligent technologies.

As businesses and governments transform to meet new challenges, it’s essential to embed Trust Intelligence into the core of their operations.

In the workplace, team psychological safety must be a top priority if businesses want to create a successful enterprise. And, more importantly, psychological safety contributes to an inclusive, diverse, and accepting workplace. A workplace where team members feel safe to express themselves.

It’s crucial to prioritize high psychological safety to create a high-performing team.

As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. Team cultures reflect the actions and reactions of their leaders. Leaders who fail to establish and support psychologically safe team environments can cause irreparable negative consequences and damage to the organization.

Enterprises powered by trust will be able to deliver on all three transformation drivers: people, technology and innovation. They’ll be able to leapfrog their competitors. To shape new markets.

Leaders must manage with stability and certainty during economic uncertainty, not add more confusion and disruption.
Trust is at the foundation of healthy relationships. At its core, trust is the willingness of one party to be vulnerable to the actions of another.

It is an expectation that two parties will act in a way that is mutually beneficial. For these reasons, trust is a key element of effective communication, teamwork, employee commitment and productivity. It leads to stronger working relationships and a healthier organizational culture.

Placing people at the centre of your corporate culture effort will enable positive shift and unlock long-term value for the organization. Culture work typically follows a major company event commonly a shift in strategy, a new CEO, a merger or acquisition, digital or functional transformation, regulatory changes, increasing calls for inclusivity, or unethical behaviour events.

On the flip side companies sometimes are forced to deal with narcissistic leaders whose behaviour can be relentless and ruthless. So is their legacy: it creates lasting organizational damage.

People embrace low integrity and individualism when both leaders and the company culture support those behaviours. Aligning culture across every level of the organization so that it enables your strategy is essential to moving with agility in a time of unprecedented change.

As external pressure mounts, leaders should take action to create a blueprint for purpose and culture that delivers short- and long-term value for employees, customers and investors. Culture isn’t the soft stuff, it’s the real, human stuff. And it’s time we got that right for each other.

As Brian Chesky, Co-founder and CEO, Airbnb once said:

“Why is culture so important to a business? Here is a simple way to frame it. The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing.”

Posted on

Building the High-Trust Driven Organisation


There is a strong connection between a high-trust culture and business success. In fact, the connection is so strong that strategy-minded leaders, who care deeply about the financial well-being of their business, should make building a high-trust culture a top priority.

The disruptive world that we all now operate within is a crucible within which resilient leadership is now forced to redefine. Acting without perfect information, often with only a few hours or days to spare, CEOs need to guide their organisations through the daily myriad of decisions and challenges, with significant implications for their company’s whole system; employees, customers, clients, financial partners, suppliers, investors, and other stakeholders, as well as for society as a whole.

Considering the fact that all entities are primarily made up of people, it is important for individuals in any organisation, nation or global community to trust each other and themselves to get the work done.

Indeed, not only is trust between people necessary for the success of any endeavour, but it is also essential for any entity to even exist.

Trust starts with transparency: telling what you know and admitting what you don’t. Trust is also a function of relationships: some level of ‘knowing’ each other among you and your employees, your customers, and your ecosystem. And it also depends on experience: Do you reliably do what you say?

In times of growing uncertainty, trust is increasingly built by demonstrating an ability to address unanticipated situations and a steady commitment to address the needs of all stakeholders in the best way possible.

Transformation and Change

The converse in high-trust cultures is equally true. When the trust goes up in an organisation, the speed will go up and costs will come down. Your ability to collaborate goes up, as does your ability to attract, retain and engage people. When trust goes up, you’ll see people sharing information, not being afraid to make mistakes, more creativity, higher accountability and greater energy and satisfaction. When you move the needle on trust, you move all kinds of other needles with it.

As businesses and governments transform to meet new challenges, it’s essential to embed trust intelligence into the core of their operations.

I wrote a blog in January 2022, ‘Leadership needs to lead with Trust Intelligence (TI)‘ which defines why the five Intelligences; IQ, EI, SI, DI and WI.

As humans we need a balance of skill, competence, morality and ethic behaviours to be truly effective in this new world, however, all these intelligences need to be within the TI umbrella to truly be effective.

Moral and ethical leadership is the key to a successful business, yet it’s clear from the news lately that the leaders of some of our most influential governments and corporations are making morally questionable decisions. These decisions will lose the trust of society, customers and employees.

Trust is the foundation of high-functioning relationships and can only be achieved by meaningful dialogue. It is clear that this is not happening. Instead, we’re using electronic communication, where it should never be used.

Enterprises powered by trust will be able to deliver on all three transformation drivers: people, technology and innovation. They’ll be able to leapfrog their competitors. To shape new markets. To lead to better futures.

It’s hard to quantify exactly how important trust is for a business. For business owners, a lack of trust is your biggest expense. It may take years for a manager or an executive to develop the trust of his or her employees, but only moments to lose. Without trust, transactions cannot occur, influence is destroyed, leaders can lose teams and salespeople can lose sales. The list goes on.

Trust and relationships, much more than money, are the currency of business.

Trust is the natural result of thousands of tiny actions, words, thoughts, and intentions. Trust does not happen all at once; gaining trust takes work. It might take years of calling on a certain client to break through and fully gain their comfort and trust. Yet in spite of the importance of trust in the business world today, few leaders have given it the focus and nurturing it deserves.

Building, maintaining, and sustaining trust is essential, and it is one of the central tenets of Human Resource Management (HRM) theory to actualize such organizations that have a high trust intelligence within them.

This means that HR professionals have the new task of building trust, and more importantly, maintaining and sustaining it so that organisations continue to thrive and differentiate in the new competitive marketplace.

While many factors determine whether a particular organisation is a high-trust or low-trust environment, the key aspect is the organisational culture which needs to encourage trust between the employees and the organisational stakeholders and within the employees.

Organisational Culture is the codified and implicit set of rules or codes of conduct by which organisations operate and hence, the way in which organizational culture is defined, maintained, and upheld is indeed important for organizations to function.

The importance of every organization and HR Function requires clear instructions from Boards, Senior Management and Executive leadership to codify policies and rules or codes of conduct that determine how employees must behave and act in their interactions with each other and with the larger organisational ecosystem.

This is contingent upon the HR function to first assist the stakeholders in defining the rules, and then ensuring that such rules are consistently maintained and enforced, and perhaps, the most important aspect here is that such codes of conduct must be upheld meaning that during times of crisis, the HR function must indeed “co-create” or must back up words with action and execution.

A key challenge for any HR professional is to ensure that cultural factors and socio-cultural influences do not come in the way of actualizing a high-trust organisation.

Authentic cultures are not formed by values posted on the wall; they are the result of leaders being purposefully committed to living those values and willing to personally change in order to model the behaviours and actions that maintain integrity.

When values are real, employees and customers know the enterprise is authentic and true to its culture. Especially in a crisis, comparing actions to values is a litmus test of a company’s authenticity.

Culture, we know, is the core of resilience, but it alone is not enough. Other work by our company has shown that organisations that accelerate performance during good times and bad are able to mobilise, execute, and transform with agility.

Today, a company’s foresight, ability to learn, and adaptability will set it apart.

Companies strong in these areas have leaders who are future-focused, demonstrate a growth mindset, are able to pivot quickly in times of rapid disruption, and maintain resilience to navigate their organisations.

Trust is the Glue

Trust is at the foundation of healthy relationships. At its core, trust is the willingness of one party to be vulnerable to the actions of another. It is an expectation that two parties will act in a way that is mutually beneficial. For these reasons, trust is a key element of effective communication, teamwork, employee commitment and productivity. It leads to stronger working relationships and a healthier organisational culture.

Because of the inherent vulnerability involved in trusting relationships, it is widely understood that trust must be earned. This is true whether it is between two colleagues, a manager and an employee, or even between an employee and the organisation at large. In some instances, it can be hard to build and sustain because individuals may not be aware of the unintentional ways that they have broken the trust of their colleagues.

Once Trust is Broken

A lack of trust in the workplace is the virus that can create a diseased workplace culture. It often begins with leadership and spreads throughout the team, leading to a cycle of unhealthy responses that affect engagement and productivity.

As a leader, if you don’t trust your team, you’re likely either micromanage or withhold information and work on initiatives on your own or with a select group of people. This can create a vicious cycle, as your team may respond by pulling back even further, so you’ve created a perfect storm in this self-fulfilling prophecy of distrust.

Trust helps to make challenging conversations easier – this has been written in my new book “The Trust Paradigm” : making 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.

Mark Herbert, my Co-author of ‘The Trust Paradigm‘, states:

“It is my belief that an important part of empathy is the ability to trust and be trusted. When your employees feel that you care, then you have earned their trust. If they trust you, they will take more risks with you and be more open with you. People will talk openly with you only when they trust you. As trust builds, there will be more sharing of information, feelings, and thoughts. The more you share, the easier it is to relate to one another. Building trust is something that takes time and effort. It involves both you and the other person in the relationship. The level of trust is what makes each relationship unique.”

From swift decisions to shutter offices, institute work-from-home policies, and scale the technological tools to stay connected to customers and stakeholders, agile leaders have assessed the risk and pivoted quickly.

They must also reassess the medium and long term, building on past crisis interventions and associated learnings to evolve operations and innovate to meet changing needs, all while staying true to their culture.

To explain, trust is as much a function of personality as it is about the societal culture from which people come.

Many sociologists have pointed out, most Western nations are implicitly high-trust ones, and while developing countries do have high-trust cultures, it is often the case that due to the diversity of such cultures, there are challenges arising from cultural norms as far as building and maintaining trust is concerned.

Clarity of thinking, communication, and decision-making will be at a premium.

Those CEOs who can best exhibit this clarity, and lead from the heart and the head, will inspire their organisations to persevere through this crisis, positioning their brand to emerge in a better place, prepared for whatever may come.

Crises like these, with deep challenges to be navigated, will also lead to opportunities for learning and deepening trust with all stakeholders, while equipping organisations for a step change that creates more value not just for shareholders, but for society as a whole.

From time to time, we lose our bearings as individuals, especially when facing overwhelming challenges, as we are today faced with a changing global environment; it is in these moments that we lean into our core, our character and personal values, to find strength and focus on what really matters.

Leaders facing the unprecedented times and circumstances of the moment are also looking to their organisation’s core, its communal culture and values, to inspire resilience, unleash agility, and help employees to thrive, not simply survive.

It’s also important to recognise and address the emotions of all stakeholders.

This is not just about charts and numbers. Narratives can be powerful ways to acknowledge the fears that naturally surface in times of crisis, while at the same time framing the opportunity that can be achieved if stakeholders come together and commit to overcoming the challenges that stand in the way.

A recent survey carried out by DataPad for and on behalf of International Business and Executive Management asked employees questions on ‘trust and respect’ in relation to their executive leadership, heads of department and their immediate line managers.

The closer the manager’s role was to the respondent, the more likely it was for the employee to answer positively. Immediate managers were trusted ‘a lot’ by 48% of those who responded and ‘a little’ by 36%. Sixteen percent of immediate managers are not trusted at all.

Working with CEOs over the years, I have found that thriving cultures are those that are purpose-driven and characterised by vitality and a growth mindset.

Organisations where leaders are purposeful and intentional and open to personal change, and where every employee has a voice and is actively engaged in living the organisation’s values, are those with thriving cultures.

Many organisations entered into this crisis with such a culture. Others were struggling. But, like the process of glass blowing, in which beautiful structures are created by manipulating molten glass in a hot furnace, we have observed healthy and resilient cultures emerge from the fires of crisis.

At their core, organisations are shadows of their leaders. Leaders who greet crisis with perspective and compassion, confront the current reality with optimism for the future, demonstrate personal resilience, and inspire that resilience among their employees are those who will make the difference.

In final summary, indeed, the necessity of maintaining trust is complemented by the behaviour of leadership during any business or economic cycle, when it becomes necessary to return to “First Principles” or the Raison D’etre of

Existence which when translated into plain English means the core of what it means to work for such organisations.

In the same manner in which government, business and personal crises threaten the character of individuals and how they respond is indicative of their personality, organizational impact is the core trust or the glue that binds the organisation, and hence, how the leadership responds determines whether the Trust intelligence has broken down or is very much in existence.

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 the culture and socialisation process of the newcomers.

To conclude, leaders need 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.

To create such a settlement, businesses need to see themselves as part of a diverse, interconnected, and interdependent ecosystem one that involves government, regulators, individual citizens, and more.

Trust within and across this ecosystem is key to its long-term sustainability and survival. That’s why trust needs to be restored to the heart of the business world.

As Stephen M.R. Covey once said:

“Contrary to what most people believe, trust is not some soft, illusive quality that you either have or you don’t; rather, trust is a pragmatic, tangible, actionable asset that you can create.”

Posted on

Trust is the Superpower for Man + Machine and Global Change

The acceleration of global integration has ushered in a new, interconnected world that defines our future.

Trust is the superpower that lays the foundation to emerge. To establish trust, leaders need to create a culture that values transparency, authenticity and the courage to fail.

We build trust through a pattern of selfless acts giving our time, attention and resources to others without the expectation of material return. Selfless acts, such as extending unexpected rewards or offering additional support during heightened times of stress, tighten our human bonds, strengthen our psychological safety and help make our sense of fear more manageable.

• Trust creates a sense of shared mission, unleashing meaningful purpose.
• Trust creates a feeling of security, unleashing resilience and collective cooperation.
• Trust facilitates healthy risk-taking and activates a growth mindset, unleashing imagination.
• Trust helps us connect as individuals, unleashing happiness and compassion.
• Trust opens the door to possibility, unleashing transformative practice.
• The speed of this innovation is accelerating and we will see even more change in the future than ever before.

The question, however, as we come to face rapidly changing realities, how do we solve for enhanced employee satisfaction, better customer experience and energetic execution of business strategy?

How do we weave long-term value creation into daily operations? Is the pace of global change sustainable?

The globalisation machine has brought great riches to those able to adapt, but left others further behind, leading to increasing inequality within countries. Another feature of globalisation is that it has bred interdependency, exposing the global population to cascading risks, from financial crises to pandemics and cyber-attacks. Our actions now affect others in ways that were unimaginable in a disconnected world.

Notwithstanding, humans don’t just have the ability to adapt. They have the power to assess, process, and grow. Flourishing in the face of change requires mutual trust, a mindset open to possibility and ongoing practice both on the individual and corporate levels.

We now live in a world where virtually anyone can bring about mass destruction. Cyber has become the new nervous system and will become ever more vulnerable as the internet-of-things technology sees explosive growth. New technologies also threaten the very fabric of our society. An Oxford University research group says 47 percent of US jobs are vulnerable to machine intelligence and perhaps as much as 35 percent of UK jobs.

A seismic shift is underway. Thanks to new technologies that enable frequent, low-friction, customized digital interactions, companies today are building much deeper ties with customers than ever before. Instead of waiting for customers to come to them, firms are addressing customers’ needs the moment they arise—and sometimes even earlier. It’s a win-win: Through what we call connected strategies, customers get a dramatically improved experience, and companies boost operational efficiencies and lower costs.

Research has identified four effective connected strategies, each of which moves beyond traditional modes of customer interaction and represents a fundamentally new business model. These strategies have been described as; a response to desire, curated offering, coach behaviour, and automatic execution. What’s innovative here is not the technologies these strategies incorporate but the ways that companies deploy those technologies to develop continuous relationships with customers.

Most companies still interact with customers only episodically, after customers identify their needs and seek out products or services to meet them. You might call this model buy what we have.

In it, companies work hard to provide high-quality offerings at a competitive price and base their marketing and operations on the assumption that they’ll engage only fleetingly with their customers.

Let’s explore specifically the aforementioned strategies:

Respond to Desire; this strategy involves providing customers with services and products they’ve requested—and doing so as quickly and seamlessly as possible. The essential capabilities here are operational: fast delivery, minimal friction, flexibility, and precise execution.

Curated Offering; with this strategy, companies get actively involved in helping customers at an earlier stage of the customer journey: after the customers have figured out what they need but before they’ve decided how to fill that need. Executed properly, a curated-offering strategy not only delights customers but also generates efficiency benefits for companies, by steering customers toward products and services that firms can easily provide at the time. The key capability here is a personalized recommendation process. Customers who value advice—but still want to make the final decision like this approach.

Coach Behaviour; both of the previous two strategies require customers to identify their needs in a timely manner, which (being human) we’re not always good at. Coach-behaviour strategies help with this challenge, by proactively reminding customers of their needs and encouraging them to take steps to achieve their goals. Coaching behaviour works best with customers who know they need nudging. Some people want to get in shape but can’t stick to a workout regimen.

Automatic Execution; all the strategies we’ve discussed so far require customer involvement. But this last strategy allows companies to meet the needs of customers even before they’ve become aware of those needs. In an automatic-execution strategy, customers authorize a company to take care of something, and from that point on the company handles everything. The essential elements here are strong trust, a rich flow of information from the customers, and the ability to use it to flawlessly anticipate what they want. The customers most open to automatic execution are comfortable having data stream constantly from their devices to companies they buy from and have faith that those companies will use their data to fulfill their needs at a reasonable price and without compromising their privacy.

There is a revealing quote often associated with management theorist and proponent of systems thinking W. Edwards Deming: “In God we trust; others must provide data”. Deming died nearly thirty years ago, but the business world has embraced his philosophy ever more tightly since then. Today we are surrounded by astonishing amounts of data, and our ability to parse, analyze, and interpret them would likely be beyond even his far-seeing mind.

With the coming of Big Data—and the opportunity it gives for providing nuanced, ever-more personalized analysis, interpretations, and solutions to problems—it can at times seem that all future decisions will only be taken inside the ‘black box’ of the processing unit, hidden from human view and comprehension.

Increasingly we are seeing why this is not best practice. For me, all analytics should start with the human—not, as is often the case, with the data.

Twenty-five quintillion bytes of data are generated every day. That’s 25,000,000,000,000,000,000.

In this era of data abundance, it’s easy to think of these bytes as a panacea – informing policies and spurring activities to address the pandemic, climate change or gender inequality – but without the right systems in place, we cannot realize the full potential of data to advance a sustainable, equitable and inclusive future.

As our global challenges grow increasingly urgent, it is clear we need to approach data in a new way.

Business analytics should offer a structured, systematic way for leaders and teams to approach business problems. There should be systems that allow us to leverage the underlying data to support the intuition of individuals, and certainly not replace the decision-making capabilities and experience of domain experts who should be guiding the process.

It is not only organizations that need to have expertise in evaluating and analysing data. Data-driven decisions are now so prolific that we all, as individuals, have an interest in better understanding how these processes and systems operate.

There is a common misconception that recruiting an expert in data analytics or data science is going to lead to quick solutions to every problem you have. Very often the new talent with data expertise does not have the domain expertise required to fully engage with and understand these problems to begin with. Not, at any rate, at as broad and deep a level as you would need in order for them to bring about optimal and innovative solutions.

To unlock the real value of these new data analytics hires, they should be partnered with your domain experts—people with a very sharp intuition about the right questions to ask and the issues your team or organization ought really to be caring about.

In order for technology to reach its full potential, company leaders need to be transparent and instill trust for data sharing. Research by the British Science Association revealed a vast lack of trust in artificial intelligent machines, with fears of being ‘taken over’ by technology. This suspicion is a major barrier to close relationships forming between technology and humans a relationship that is needed in order for technology to work. As an example, artificial intelligence is in fact not artificial at all, it is an astute web of intelligence surfacing the most pertinent elements at the right time for the right purpose and enabling humans to make the choices that are right for them.

While some may think artificial intelligence is a long way from affecting their day to day, companies must get a handle on how best to utilise its superpowers before it’s too late. Action is the true measure of technology either taking action on our behalf because we have chosen them to do so, or informing action that we take. We’re on the cusp of a generational change in how we think about computing. While the capabilities of machines and the capabilities of humans are different, they work so much better together. The power and accuracy of AI complements the creativity and emotion of humans. Together they are more powerful than either is alone.

Final thought, with trust as the end goal, it’s crucial that the design of new technologies be fully consistent with an organization’s and community’s values. The challenge for organizations is to anticipate unexpected implications of the tools and innovations that they build and avoid reinforcing existing social inequalities, as well as consider the ethics of the elimination of existing jobs on the future workforce.

A great quote by Paul R. Daugherty, “Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI”, sums up the final thought perfectly:

“The simple truth is that companies can achieve the largest boosts in performance when humans and machines work together as allies, not adversaries, in order to take advantage of each other’s complementary strengths.”

Posted on

Customer trust and value – do companies undervalue their customers?

There is much debate on customer trust and do companies undervalue their customers, it was Warren Buffet who once said “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

When we start to look at the customer value, this term has several definitions, any correct measure of the term should be described as customer lifetime value. Companies can increase this value by acquiring more customers. Equally, companies can destroy customer value in a variety of ways: to boost revenue, to cut labour costs and to reduce operating costs. Leadership and when reviewing the importance of customer value should make this a business priority.

Investors always ask difficult questions, however, it is widely understood the importance of customer value, many growth-stage companies preparing for an IPO or exit are in the main focused on acquiring customers that are unprofitable, but project earnings on future expected earnings from multiple products or services.

Leadership must gain and maintain the support of board members and investors by educating them about an employee based engagement program aligned to strategy. Leaders need to demonstrate to investors and board members that the decisions made will yield strong equitable returns, in the form of increased customer acquisition and retention, growing revenues, lower costs to serve and measures to improve customer value.

It is always an easy option to blame a companies short termism on shareholder pressure and a bias towards quarterly financial reporting. But managers share the blame when they fail to educate investors about the customer value their company creates or when they resort to quick profits instead of investing in long-term customer loyalty and value.

It would be irresponsible for any leader to ignore such a proven source of profitable growth. Boards and shareholders should demand that companies grow customer value, support the necessary investments, and push for new accounting standards that make the returns on these investments visible.

The true purpose of a business, Peter Drucker said, is to create and keep customers. Most managers understand this, but few behave as if they do. Under relentless earnings pressure, they often feel cornered, obliged to produce quick profits by compromising product quality, trimming services, imposing onerous fees, and otherwise short-changing their customers. This short-termism erodes loyalty, reducing the value customers create for the firm.

Any strong relationship is built on a foundation of trust and that includes the relationship between brand and customer. Whilst world events have tested that bond in many ways, it has also created an opportunity for brands to better understand customer values, make commitments that align to those values, and then deliver on their promises.

By acting with stakeholder values as their guide, brands can demonstrate trustworthiness and drive customer loyalty, employee motivation, and repeat purchases. A Deloitte survey conducted last May shows that 88% of customers who highly trust a brand have bought from that brand again, and 62% of customers who report highly trusting a brand buy almost exclusively from that brand. Meanwhile, 78% of employees who highly trust their employer also feel motivated in their jobs.

According to the “Edelman Trust Barometer,” consumer trust in businesses to “do what is right” averages only 53 percent globally. The report states that banks and other financial services firms are the least trusted industries for the second straight year. Only 45 percent of respondents trust financial services firms to do what is right. And even the best-performing industry—technology—garners the trust of only 79 percent of those surveyed worldwide. This status quo is not sustainable, from a customer or business standpoint.

The need for a trust-based relationship can’t be denied. But marketing executives who want to build customer trust have one question: How?

It starts with building a framework and guiding principles, which can be translated into specific actions for employees to take during interactions with customers. In their book The Trust Paradigm, Geoff Hudson-Searle and Mark Herbert identify six drivers of trust based on intent and competence that any organization can operationalize:

• Empathy
• Accountability
• Transparency
• Customer experience
• Employee empowerment
• Employee recognition

Building trust requires cooperation among multiple functions, including product development, information security, talent, and marketing strategy, among others. However, coordinating trust efforts across disciplines can be challenging, since different roles are responsible for different activities across the enterprise. While some functions, such as marketing strategy, have a clear owner, ownership of others, such as product road map and corporate culture, is more distributed across the C-suite.

Some companies are addressing this fragmented trust environment by establishing new roles that better encompass the multiple facets of trust, such as chief trust officer. This represents an important shift in mindset based on the acknowledgment that trust is an enterprise wide issue requiring executive-level coordination.

Organizations can take the pulse of their trust efforts by considering four components of trust, as identified by a Deloitte survey: humanity, transparency, capability, and reliability.

Together, humanity and transparency characterize a trusted brand’s messages, while capability and reliability guide that brand’s actions. Marketers can bolster trust by isolating each of these signals, identifying areas for improvement, and ensuring that brand messages match actions.

As organizations begin to address trust more holistically, marketers can help drive change by shifting the focus to values. While brands have historically considered demographics such as location, age, and gender when segmenting audiences and crafting messages, such categories are, at best, a proxy for how customers may act. By pivoting from demographic- to values-based segmenting, brands can more effectively influence customer behavior. Segmenting by values establishes an empathetic connection, which can make people more open to trusting a brand’s intentions, according to Deloitte’s Values Compass research. Further, by understanding people’s values, brands can ensure that the promises they make align with what their audiences care about most.

The Values Compass research shows that most people share some combination of eight cardinal values: ambition, trying new things, curiosity, sharing with others, belonging, caring for others, control, and learning new things. Among those values, belonging and control have risen to the forefront of many people’s minds during the pandemic, and trust is connected to control. In fact, a 2020 Deloitte study found that, across population demographics, control increased in importance by 31% after COVID-19 became widespread.

To be able to deliver on their promises and meet customers’ evolving, value-based needs, brands need to align their intentions with their actions (or competency). This depends on cooperation among all members of the C-suite—not just the CMO (or even the newly appointed chief trust officer). Here are some steps all leaders can take to steer their organizations toward more trusting relationships:

Enlist everyone. While clear functional owners exist in most organizations, securing trust requires collaboration. This means developing cross-functional teams that align on trust-related KPIs, assigning ownership for those KPIs, and developing a road map for closing the gap between intentions and competency.

Choose trust competencies wisely. How a company demonstrates trustworthiness may depend on organizational goals. If, for example, customers value transparent and ethical data usage, it may be important to incorporate straightforward messaging on how the organization will use and protect customer information.

Expand the marketer’s toolkit. It’s hard to deliver on trust when the marketing department mirrors the skills of an ad agency. Delivering holistically on trust depends on talent with a wide range of skill sets, including expertise in product development and analytics as well as a deep understanding of revenue models.

In the transformative age, with more data changing hands and more technology used in decision-making, trust is more important than ever. It’s trust that enables organizations to create value and capital markets to function properly.

With richer insights from deeper data analysis, you can look at risk afresh. You can make smarter choices, from what you should mitigate to what you can embrace. With trust comes the confidence to make bolder strategic moves. It’s trust that will help you seize the upside of disruption

With the help of technology, companies today sweep up huge amounts of customer data. But they tend to be opaque about the information they collect and often resell, which leaves their customers feeling uneasy. Though that practice may give firms an edge in the short term, in the long run it undermines consumers’ trust, which in turn hurts competitiveness.

To build trust, companies must be transparent about the data they gather and offer consumers appropriate value in exchange for it. Simple legal disclosures aren’t enough, however; companies must actively educate their customers and incorporate fairness into their products and models from the start. Companies that get this will win consumers’ goodwill and business and continued

Finally, within the C-suite, a CEO may see trust as delivering on a pledge to bring innovative products and services to the market, while the CMO may view trust in terms of brand messaging and experience. Outside of the C-suite, trust is contingent on what customers or employees and even partners value most. Regardless of the setting, trust breaks down when there’s a gap between what an organization promises and what it delivers.

With the proper tools and strategy in hand, marketers can help organizations close that gap, build a deeper bond with customers, and ensure a stronger enterprise for the future.

A great quote that provides deep insigt to the topic:

“As organizations begin to address trust more holistically, marketers can help drive change by shifting the focus to values.”

Posted on

The Changing Landscape of Leadership: leaders needs to lead with trust

As leaders, our ability to deal with global disruption whether it impacts our organization’s supply chain, sales and distribution capability or cash flow is regularly being tested.

Whether we’re talking about disease outbreaks or financial crises, events beyond any individual or organization’s control can force us to sharpen our ability to lead in unpredictable times.

As global disruption ebbs and flows, what role should leaders play, and what strategies can you deploy to get ahead of this unpredictable curve?

Earlier this year, Odgers Berndtson released its Leadership Confidence Index 2022. It found confidence in leadership had almost doubled in the past two years, jumping from 24% in 2020 to 42% in 2022.

It is a striking statistic, and from it, one thing can be deducted with certainty; around the world, more leaders than expected are performing better than they were before the pandemic. Yet the statistic tells another tale. More than half of leaders did not perform well and lost the confidence of their teams and organizations. These juxtaposing circumstances reveal much about the global state of leadership performance and leadership acquisition today.

How we arrived at these circumstances is clear. COVID-19 resulted in a crisis where business as usual no longer existed.

In the newly created environment, many leaders rose to the challenge, adapted to the new state of play, and realigned their organizations with skill and purpose.

Ultimately, the pandemic provided an environment in which the best leaders could show ‘what they were made of’ and their capabilities shone through. If there was a single sentence summing up these types of individuals, it would be: “leaders who people will follow, not because they have to but because they want to.”

Yet 58% of leaders did not fall into this category. Unable or unwilling to adapt they stuck rigidly to the playbook of the past, applying outdated skills to a novel situation. Often, these were leaders more at home talking to their boards about share price and public opinion than having an honest conversation with those they led. Their capabilities centred around achieving market share and growth as opposed to managing disruption, or more importantly, inspiring teams to deliver results during disruption.

Many didn’t know what hit them, and were unable to swim in the current of the new world, and have or are currently being replaced. It has resulted in a new cohort of leaders worldwide.

This new breed of leader is organizationally facing. They understand that the board and their people are of equal importance. Their decision-making is often inclusive, they place trust in their senior executives and genuinely care about those they lead – not because it’s in vogue but because they genuinely value them.

These leaders often have a different thought process from their predecessors.

Their skills lie in reading market signals and adapting to them swiftly. They are strategists and change agents who can ‘see around corners’. They can extrapolate from major trends and take advantage of the findings, turning change into opportunity, and importantly inspiring others to deliver on that change. Behaviourally, they are more akin to an entrepreneur than a traditional manager; innovative, brave, humble, and naturally inquisitive with a desire to learn. Above all else, they embrace and even thrive on disruption.

Such a dramatic change to the leadership paradigm has dramatic consequences. Globally, the number of leadership searches has increased exponentially. Across APAC the search industry has seen 43% growth, while the reshuffle of executives in South America has resulted in double the normal number of searches we would make for general managers in Chile, Peru, and Argentina. In the UK, and across the U.S., the story is the same – explosive demand for new leadership talent.

Much of this demand can be laid at the feet of the pandemic. 58% of leaders were not up to the challenge and therefore need replacing. But another, more significant factor is also at play here; the expectation of the disruption to come. Our own Index reveals the majority of executives (79%) believe the level of future disruption will either increase or maintain at the same pace.

And we know that the majority of boards feel the same way and want to future-proof their organizations against this disruption with the sort of leader who can manage and take advantage of it.

But the supply is scarce, and on top of this, regional conditions have upended the leadership acquisition market. Across counties in APAC, zero-tolerance lockdowns and stringent work permits have resulted in an exodus of strong talent. Combined with a limited local supply and deglobalization shifting the traditional leadership footprint to other countries in the region, the pool of high-performing leaders is now almost completely different.

In South America, tourism has been in freefall, the cost of many raw materials has exploded, and crop yields are expected to be lower while the price of fertilizer has shot up. Political instability and a withdrawal of significant investment have added to the disruption. Even countries like Chile that have become accustomed to relative stability now face uncertainty. For leaders, the economic environment has been rewritten. Many are retiring and more are being replaced.

In the U.S. and the UK, technology transformation much like it is elsewhere in the world is no longer just a sector but a function of every industry. It’s challenging everything from business models and back-office operations to the very products and services a company sells. For years, the notion that leaders should be tech-savvy has been gaining momentum. Now it’s an absolute necessity, with a core skill being the ability to know which technologies to invest in, and which ones not to.

And across every industry and country, supply chain chaos, rising inflation, and the ESG and diversity agendas are near-universal challenges that are a leader’s responsibility to resolve.

The current climate has become a catalyst for exponential demand and short supply. What makes a high-performing leader is very different from what it was before the pandemic. At the same time, the business environment has altered who those leaders are, where they come from, and the types of skillsets they have. On the one side boards expect more of their leaders and on the other, there is a shortage of leaders who can genuinely deliver on these new expectations.

Yet they are out there. To find them, it will often require an organization to ‘go outside their lane’ and look for leaders in adjacent or even completely different industries.

It will mean genuinely leaning into diversity and inclusion and searching for leaders who are nothing like what has come before.

And it will mean enabling individuals from the second layer of senior management and helping them to step up. Above all, it means disregarding the traditional blueprint of what a leader should be and embracing the new leadership paradigm.

As a comparison, The Harvard Business Review recently released a study that examined how 1,890 senior executives around the world view their organization’s ability to manage disruption. The results were quite staggering: Only 15% of respondents expressed a reasonably high level of confidence that their leadership team is “fit to lead through future disruption,” while 61% reported being “tentative” and 24% are outright “worried.” The two top reasons given by executives who worry the most were lack of vision/buy-in and resistance to change inside their organizations.

The Conference Board, a global business membership and research association, noted similar findings in its C-Suite Challenge 2020 report: “CEOs’ internal concerns include talent and skills shortages, disruptive technologies, and building an innovative culture.”

Trust in our culture at large, in our institutions and in our companies is significantly lower than a generation ago.

In any normality trust is paramount, but given current world events, never has there been more need for increased trust, a shared understanding and language to talk about the specific behaviours 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 behaviour, 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 vulnerably, 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.

Trust means ‘uncompromised by doubt’. In the workplace, people can’t do their best work if they doubt others’ intentions or capabilities, the direction or viability of the organization, or, most importantly, if they doubt their own ability to keep up with the demands placed on them. This is especially true in today’s environment of complex change and ambiguity when employees are being asked to do more with less.

Leadership trust is reciprocal and created incrementally. To inspire trust from others, leaders need to also show trust in them. Over time these relationships build and maintain the trust that teams and organizations need to take action in a fast-paced world.

Our research underscores the need for trust in organizations. In high-trust environments, people show up and to do their best work. They gain productive energy, creativity, speed, and better results. They align around a common purpose, take risks, support each other, and communicate openly and honestly.

Effective leadership requires knowing how to build and keep trust, whether it’s with individuals, on teams, or across the organization.

Finally, there’s no question that disruption will continue to define the course of business and organizations. The challenge for you as a leader is to develop the mindset and organizational culture that will turn the forces of disruption into a catalyst for strategic thinking and creative execution. The term ‘trust’ has been overused forever and, during the last decade, considerably devalued. In The Trust Paradigm book, the authors aim to take the concept back to its essentials and to re-evaluate how real, meaningful trust can be incorporated into management and leadership.

A great quote by American Academic – Clayton M. Christensen:

“We have found that companies need to speak a common language because some of the suggested ways to harness disruptive innovation are seemingly counterintuitive. If companies don’t have that common language, it is hard for them to come to consensus on a counterintuitive course of action.”