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            [post_content] => The IMI People Strategy Network kicked off a series of in-person events, due to take place throughout 2023. The series represents the return to in-person events, after a pivot to virtual during the pandemic.

This year’s first speaker was Ade McCormack, a former technologist, with a background in astrophysics and software engineering, who today advises leaders on transformational matters.

Ade started off by talking about disruption. It’s a buzzword that has certainly gained a lot of traction in recent years, but what does the word “disruption” actually mean? Firstly, it’s all about challenging the status quo.

Covid definitely shook things up, sometimes in a positive way. But while the majority of leaders most likely think they’ve responded well, that’s not the case at all. As soon as we got back to a relatively steady state, we could see leaders and organisations slip back into their old habits. This has even been evident in organisations that we look to as cutting edge, for example those which have begun to force staff back into the office. But the truth is that there is no “new normal”. From here on out, our lives will be characterised by large amounts of disruption.

In fact, humans are not particularly wired for this modern world. We’re wired to live in tribes, and in situations that cause short bursts of anxiety (like a life or death situation), not chronic anxiety like we tend to experience in the working world.

Ade moved on to talking a bit about how organisations haven’t really progressed from the factory model that worked well during the industrial revolution. The factory model is about rigid processes – something goes in at one end and comes out at another, after being processed in some way. Efficiency is very important here, but efficiency stifles innovation!

Humans are used as tech placeholders in the factory model – people are cogs in the machine, needed to perform a specific task. When it comes to technology, today is the fastest day we’ve ever experienced, and the slowest day we will ever experience. So, in a world full of disruption, it’s not enough to simply sprinkle your organisation with “tech pixie dust” and hope that technology will save you. The new definition of talent is doing something a robot or algorithm can’t, which is of value to the market. Our ability to be creative, bring diverse things together, and pick up on weak signals in small data sets is what set humans apart.

The industrial era was about creating synthetic certainty. While this may have been good for the factories and the government, but it wasn’t necessarily good for the citizens. Thanks to disruption, the world has shifted from the state of synthetic certainty to a new state of hyper uncertainty. Whereas in synthetic certainty, past successes were indicative of future successes, this is no longer the case.

How has industrial era shaped our lives, and how might that change with further disruption? The most obvious answer to this is that the Monday to Friday, 9am – 5pm model might erode fully. Already, younger generations are working more flexible hours, which don’t adhere to this. The next is the commute to work, and the need to be in a big city to get the job you want. Remote working can facilitate employees from a much wider geographic range, and cut out the commute all together.

The factory model is dystopian, and no longer effective. But Covid has shaken us up from our slumber, and we can now think about exactly what the role of humans in an organisation should be. Our strength lies in the fact that we have creativity and the ability to perform tasks that AI and other technology just can’t do.

In summary, we need to get to a model where leadership is contextual. Think of a football match – the captains don’t run next to each player, telling them what to do next. In the moment, the player closest to the ball acts as the captain. As we enter this new, post-strategic planning world, getting through each day is the primary job.

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IMI Corporate members can enjoy access to webinars, in-person events and other benefits. You can find out more about Corporate Membership here.

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            [post_title] => Event Insights: The Mindset for Success with Dr Ruth Gotian
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Farah Barry

Farah Barry

10th Mar 2023

Related Articles

Event Insights: Talent Management in an Increasingly Unpredictable World
Event Insights: The Mindset for Success with Dr Ruth Gotian

Event Insights: Leading Beyond with Dr Eden Charles

In the first IMI Mini-Masterclass of 2023, Dr Eden Charles gave IMI members some thought-provoking insights into the purpose of leadership, and how we can be aware of the differences between some key concepts like equality, equity and justice.

Eden has drawn on his experiences growing up in the working-class area of Brixton to inform the advice he now offers to leaders and aspiring leaders. Firstly, leaders are people who disrupt their own thinking, their own knowledge, and their own perspectives. It’s through disrupting themselves that they can begin to disrupt others.

Eden asked our business leaders to answer a simple question in the webinar chat: What is the purpose of your leadership? The answers were wide-ranging, from “to support and develop my team” and “to guide, challenge and inspire”, to “help the organisation reach its goals” and “be a good listener”. The purpose is the most important foundation of leadership.

For a second small activity, Eden asked us to envision what our leadership would look like, visually. Again, we got a range of answers, from a mighty lion, to a blissful nursery of plants. Take some time to think about what your own style of leadership would look like. Does the way in which you lead help other people? Does it help our society to survive and thrive?

Eden finds that many people just want to become a leader because they’re ready to take the next step in their careers, not because they have the purpose planned out. That’s simply not enough in a world that’s facing existential challenges like ours is.

Leadership is done with and through others. As a leader, you don’t need to have all the answers, but what you do need is a clear vision and a way of supporting other people to help create the outcome you want. Leadership should be relational and inspirational – helping people to feel like they are something, and that they can achieve something.

And what’s the difference between leadership and management? Management is about getting by – doing the things that need to be done. But leadership is about transcending. It’s about the vision, and it’s about who they are and what they believe they can do. Leaders need to ask difficult questions and find different ways of doing things. This is why leadership (but not necessarily management) can exist at any level of the organisation. It’s accessible to anyone who is willing to take a proactive role.

With leadership and change being inextricably linked, it makes sense to discuss the different orders of change. Eden laid out three of these for us, but it was brought up in discussion that there might even be a fourth order. That’s something for you to reflect on.

The first order of change is to improve the existing. This is what a lot of policies (in organisations and even in politics) are based on. The first order is about improving things that are blatantly wrong. That’s where the notion of equality comes in – giving everyone the same tools to fix the problem, rather than identifying the source and giving individuals tools that are helpful to their specific situation.

The second order is determining the underlying causes. What is causing the issue and what drives it? For example, it’s finding out where racism or sexism comes from. But the issue with the second order is that you’re still working within the same paradigm, and solutions will still be based on the interests of the group that has the control and the power.

Which brings us to the third order, which is transforming self for action. You can have the understanding of what a change requires, but you have to look at yourself in order to develop the ability to actually make that change. If you want to live by certain values that enable humanity to flourish, what do you need to do?

Eden talks a lot about diversity throughout his session. A lot of us go to work supressing who we are – whether that takes the form of changing our accents, changing the way we dress in order to fit in, or behaving in certain ways. We need the kind of leadership that can bring together people from different backgrounds and work on how we can move forward with them, rather than making them adapt to certain constructs. Leaders need to think about how we use their differing perspectives to achieve shared goals.

It could be said that there are three components to leadership:

Discovery: Appreciate what people have done, recognise their strengths. If you want to bring about change, part of your job is to recognise what is new and notice it and recognise it, but not just that – you also need to make it available for other people.

Dream: Imagine what might be! We need leaders who are dreamers. People who can think about the impossible and the ridiculous, and how they can utilise it.

Design: We need people who can practically design a new future. Leaders who can think about ways of working that can make a real difference.

In summary, it can be said that leadership always needs a purpose, and that purpose should help our society flourish. If you’re leading for the sake of leading, you simply won’t be successful.

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IMI Members get access to a range of in-person and virtual events. To find out more about membership please visit this page.