Latest / Humanity Working / Bonus Episode: The Contemporary Leader, Featuring Dr. Riza Kadilar

Transcript

Bonus Episode: The Contemporary Leader, Featuring Dr. Riza Kadilar · Humanity Working

0:05
SPEAKER_02: We've had a few leaders on the podcast recently talking about their approach to human-centric leadership.
0:13
SPEAKER_02: But a question we keep getting, and one that I love getting into myself, is how do these things need to change in the new, evolving world of work?
0:22
SPEAKER_02: So I'm really delighted to say I've got somebody who's thought deeply about this.
0:28
SPEAKER_02: He's the author of a book that I found very thought-provoking on this topic, Dr.
0:34
SPEAKER_02: Riza Cadillac.
0:35
SPEAKER_02: The book is called The Contemporary Leader: The Value of Inclusion in Successful Leadership.
0:41
SPEAKER_02: Today we're going to focus on uh on these leadership traits, and let's get into things.
0:46
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the podcast, Riza.
0:48
SPEAKER_02: Hello.
0:48
SPEAKER_03: I'm happy to be here.
0:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, really, really excited for our discussion today.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: Now let's let's start with the subtitle of your book.
0:59
SPEAKER_02: So to remind people again, the contemporary leader, the value of inclusion in successful leadership.
1:06
SPEAKER_02: Inclusion is a thread actually that ties together a lot of the leadership ideas in your book.
1:12
SPEAKER_02: Let's put aside the politics of the world for a moment.
1:16
SPEAKER_02: We may we'll get into that later.
1:18
SPEAKER_02: But what is the what would you say is the real business case for inclusion and why should organizations invest in it beyond having a reputation or beyond simply complying with law with laws?
1:35
SPEAKER_02: Give me the business case for caring about inclusion.
1:39
SPEAKER_03: Do you reason why I got really involved in politics and have the motivation to write this book?
1:45
SPEAKER_03: My daughter was 16, 17, like six, seven years ago.
1:50
SPEAKER_03: And uh at that time I was still the general manager of a French-owned bank in Turkey.
1:56
SPEAKER_03: And then my daughter was going to school, high school in Amsterdam, international school.
2:01
SPEAKER_03: So I was commuting in between two countries, two cities, and everything.
2:04
SPEAKER_03: One day I came home and she said, Dad, you are the one we need to get rid of.
2:10
SPEAKER_03: You know, I have a very good relationship with my daughter.
2:13
SPEAKER_03: But then you hear that, and I said, You know, what the hell, what's going on?
2:16
SPEAKER_03: And she's studying inclusion, diversity inclusion in school, okay?
2:20
SPEAKER_03: So as a kind of topic.
2:21
SPEAKER_03: And then she said, Dad, you are the one, gray hair, men in 50s, heterosexual, men in power.
2:27
SPEAKER_03: So you are the barrier for change.
2:32
SPEAKER_03: And luckily, I was in at the time transitioning to the Netherlands.
2:36
SPEAKER_03: So I said, Look, I'm a newcomer here.
2:38
SPEAKER_03: I I don't care.
2:39
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm the middle-aged man in power in Turkey.
2:42
SPEAKER_03: Okay, I have this status, power, and everything.
2:44
SPEAKER_03: But here in the Netherlands, I'm a newcomer, not necessarily gray hair, I don't even kind of necessarily speak the language, so I don't even account a job yet.
2:53
SPEAKER_03: So I will transition myself into a new life.
2:58
SPEAKER_03: So then I realized nobody wants to be a barrier for change.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:02
SPEAKER_03: So then I started to look into my position, whether I'm really stopping the whole concept of inclusion, diversity in my uh workplace, or in as part of my kind of you know, personality, because I was born in one country, lived in so many others, so I got involved working with different cultures and everything.
3:24
SPEAKER_03: So then I realized that this is a topic that really is embedded anthropologically in humanity.
3:33
SPEAKER_03: Dr.
3:33
SPEAKER_03: Harari claims that Homo sapiens was not necessarily the smartest or strongest or whatever of all homos, but he claimed that Homo sapiens was the one who knew how to best collaborate.
3:47
SPEAKER_03: And then they conquered the world.
3:50
SPEAKER_03: So all through history, the communities that knew how to kind of collaborate and get organized better progressed more.
3:59
SPEAKER_03: And in order to reach that, we created the whole systems of belief systems, education systems, the military systems, or whatever you name it, in order to make sure that people are alike and that they get better coordinated, collaborated, and function better.
4:16
SPEAKER_03: So that happened all through like I don't know how many thousands of years.
4:20
SPEAKER_03: But today, maybe there's a change.
4:23
SPEAKER_03: And maybe because of this change, we are here to talk about inclusion.
4:27
SPEAKER_03: The change came maybe thanks to the pandemics, maybe came thanks to the technology, maybe the whole democratic movement.
4:34
SPEAKER_03: But at the end of the day, today, we have a new challenge.
4:37
SPEAKER_03: We have a challenge to co-create, to know how to co-create with people who are not like us, who were born in different places, who believe in different gods, or who have different ways of seeing things.
4:50
SPEAKER_03: They have different perspectives and everything.
4:52
SPEAKER_03: But putting all together, for example, with the vaccination for the pandemics, the whole humanity worked together, all those labs all over the world.
5:01
SPEAKER_03: We learned that by collaborating with people who are not like you, you can create, you can still better create, co-create.
5:08
SPEAKER_03: And there's also these demographics in Europe.
5:12
SPEAKER_03: There are many countries where the part of the population who were not born in that country is more than 10%.
5:22
SPEAKER_03: It's just third thing.
5:24
SPEAKER_03: We even didn't see this immigration due to the climate change or whatever.
5:28
SPEAKER_03: But the human movements in everywhere in the world, mixed marriages and everything, is a new reality.
5:33
SPEAKER_03: And the third thing is this artificial intelligence, you know, whether we will reach there or not, but even machine learning, what we have today, the LLM, the whole systems, they kind of learn from humanity and they create a word about what they learn.
5:49
SPEAKER_03: So any kind of system that learns, diversity lacks, this is better, it's a doom day scenario for humanity.
5:58
SPEAKER_03: So that's why we are here, and I mean for many corporates, for many politicians, diversity is a box sticking exercise.
6:05
SPEAKER_03: You create your criteria and you see whether you fulfill those criteria.
6:10
SPEAKER_03: But inclusion, without inclusion, all this diversity is a recipe for disaster.
6:15
SPEAKER_03: So the way I define the inclusion is a feeling, okay?
6:19
SPEAKER_03: Diversity is an action.
6:21
SPEAKER_03: Inclusion is a feeling of being seen, being heard, feeling safe, secure, and with a willingness to perform your best.
6:29
SPEAKER_03: This is kind of feeling that I think, by definition, is very much needed and that will really help any any organization, any community to prosper better in today's uh environment and not only perform better, but also to be more resilient.
6:49
SPEAKER_03: But I'm gonna come back to this.
6:51
SPEAKER_03: So I don't know whether this is a business case or not, but at the end of the day, this is my observations.
6:56
SPEAKER_03: Maybe humanity is going through a kind of different phase now to learn how to co-create, not only live together, but co-create with people who are totally different from each other.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: It's it's interesting.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: You said you said at the end there, I don't know whether it's a business case or not.
7:16
SPEAKER_02: And I I think it is.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: I think it's wrapped uh, but I think it's wrapped up in something that is very complicated.
7:24
SPEAKER_02: You pointed out the activities that happened in the in the pandemic and and the fact that different teams, different organizations, different groups of people, very different groups of people from all around the world had to had to collaborate.
7:39
SPEAKER_02: And the result of that collaboration was extremely fast innovation.
7:44
SPEAKER_02: What's also interesting is that if you look at the tech companies that are the big beer moths, if you like, of the in terms of their financial success, the makeup of those companies.
7:59
SPEAKER_02: I work for one of them, the makeup of those companies is is very diverse.
8:04
SPEAKER_02: You have people from all different countries in the world, and or not all of them, but many different countries in the world, inside an organization like Microsoft, inside an organiz an organization like Google.
8:16
SPEAKER_02: And in part that's because there is a a broad recognition inside those organizations that you you hire based on capabilities, not based on exactly how people look and feel and so on.
8:30
SPEAKER_02: And so I think wrapped up in it is that business case.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: But what I love about it is you're also highlighting the tension associated with this as well.
8:41
SPEAKER_02: And that tension is is very clear, right?
8:44
SPEAKER_02: The tension is the backlash, the tension is the various political movements that are that are rising in the world.
8:52
SPEAKER_02: And so there's this at its heart is this idea of what's helpful and what's useful, and then human reaction to what's uh uh to what's occurring as we descend into things like tribalism.
9:05
SPEAKER_02: I think we'll get back to some of the some of those themes later on.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: One of the themes in the book, which I find very interesting, is how you connect this idea of inclusion to collaboration, to effective collaboration.
9:23
SPEAKER_02: And simply put, you make you make the case that in order for people to collaborate well, they have to they have to feel included, right?
9:31
SPEAKER_02: They have to feel heard, right, if they're gonna collab uh if they're gonna collaborate well with others.
9:36
SPEAKER_02: You also, interestingly, talk a lot about the fact that individualism and collectivism uh to a certain extent have a cultural aspect to them.
9:48
SPEAKER_02: And if you look at certain parts of the world, there's much more emphasis on the collective, and if you look at other parts of the world, there's much more focus on the individual.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: And you even talk about how that's reflected in popular culture, how superheroes have shifted from from individu from individuals focused to collective focus, and that can increase their the global effect, the global appeal of those types of of that type of culture.
10:13
SPEAKER_02: We think about this a lot.
10:14
SPEAKER_02: We call this me versus we, and we explicitly put the verses in there because we we try to call out the idea that there is attention here, right?
10:24
SPEAKER_02: Any choice that an individual makes, they can choose to focus in solely on themselves, they can choose to index on working well with others, and they're making that choice.
10:36
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes several times a day, they're making they're making that choice.
10:40
SPEAKER_02: What I'd like to understand, based on your research and your experience, is what have you seen in terms of how collaboration is evolving and how are forward thinking leaders even thinking about the idea of effective collaboration?
11:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's a great question.
11:03
SPEAKER_03: The business model, the corporation, the organizational development models, that we tend to see quite often in today's world are mainly based either on uh industrial revolution, production chains and everything, or the 1990s, 1970s, of organizational development theories and everything.
11:28
SPEAKER_03: They're all kind of models, either based from the army, the military, or the production chains, production, the production.
11:36
SPEAKER_03: Maybe there's a big shift in today's world.
11:39
SPEAKER_03: So rather than money making, people are looking for more meaning making.
11:45
SPEAKER_03: So in my book, I'm talking about this saying, it says partnerships are not created by partners, but they are created by the common goals.
11:58
SPEAKER_03: Rather than being product focused or service focused or the output focused, now we tend to live in a society, in a business model, where most of the business job descriptions are emotionally loaded.
12:13
SPEAKER_03: So there's always a kind of emotional aspect of whatever we do in our lives.
12:18
SPEAKER_03: It wasn't the case almost 50 years ago, or maybe even 30 years ago, things gradually but very fast changed.
12:25
SPEAKER_03: So today, you cannot, I also mentioned this concept about fit in or belong.
12:31
SPEAKER_03: Nobody wants to fit in in a kind of small box today.
12:35
SPEAKER_03: You can find a place where you belong, you can belong, and you can be as you are, with all your capabilities and everything, and you are recognized and accepted as who you are.
12:46
SPEAKER_03: You don't have to leave your belief systems or backgrounds or your childhood dreams and everything out, but you can be really there as who you are.
12:56
SPEAKER_03: So, in for example, I had two master's degrees, one in the US in a pretty prestigious school, and another one in France in another one.
13:04
SPEAKER_03: In the US one, we started, we used to claim that we are so multinational, so international.
13:10
SPEAKER_03: I don't know how many passports were in the class, but then years later, I realized that despite we are telling from all over the world, we used to have a very similar way of thinking and working, because we kind of came through a system.
13:25
SPEAKER_03: In the first school, I was lucky because it was an MBA program, and they were doing things a bit different.
13:30
SPEAKER_03: There were only maybe 20 nationalities in the room.
13:34
SPEAKER_03: But perspectives were so different.
13:36
SPEAKER_03: One marine engineer, one Olympic gold medalist, one jockey, one photographer, but all people coming from the business world.
13:44
SPEAKER_03: So interactions were amazingly rich there.
13:48
SPEAKER_03: The key is how to ensure that people are willing to collaborate together.
13:52
SPEAKER_03: So feeling of inclusion.
13:54
SPEAKER_03: So in both cases, we were feeling very included, but the diversity was very different in both cases.
14:00
SPEAKER_03: So coming back to your question, there's this emotional aspect of everything we do.
14:05
SPEAKER_03: You get, and there's a saying that I like a lot.
14:08
SPEAKER_03: We say human is a kind of thinking being.
14:11
SPEAKER_03: Actually, we are a feeling being.
14:13
SPEAKER_03: We tend to think from time to time, you know?
14:16
SPEAKER_03: So we need to accept this.
14:17
SPEAKER_03: And that really brings us to being professional, with you kick your emotions out, you don't let them in, whatever.
14:24
SPEAKER_03: These are the old sayings.
14:26
SPEAKER_03: So put all together, I think we started to live in a kind of different era.
14:31
SPEAKER_03: And maybe the reason why we talk about inclusion is also the reasons there.
14:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:38
SPEAKER_02: You say something, it's something like, yeah, humans are emotional beings that think occasionally, or something like that.
14:45
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
14:46
SPEAKER_02: I love that as a mental model.
14:49
SPEAKER_02: It's absolutely so true.
14:50
SPEAKER_02: And of course, we know from our latest research in neuroscience, just to the extent to which we as human beings tend to, for example, make decisions at the subconscious level and then spend all of our cognitive powers justifying those decisions that we've already made.
15:06
SPEAKER_02: That's just a it's a great example of that.
15:08
SPEAKER_02: You're leading into something, though, that I want to delve into a little bit deeper.
15:13
SPEAKER_02: And I think it was probably one of the most fascinating areas of the of your work for me, which is really around culture.
15:20
SPEAKER_02: Um you and I know this is not your personal definition, but uh, but you use the definition in the book of culture as being is what you stop noticing after 90 days in an institution.
15:33
SPEAKER_02: We have something a little bit similar that we tend to use uh here on Humanity Working.
15:37
SPEAKER_02: We often say that it is how people behave when nobody is looking.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: I think those things are large, largely compatible.
15:45
SPEAKER_02: Um, but what I found really, really interesting is that of all the guests that we've had on here, I would say a good majority of them talk about the need for a strong culture and what the culture needs to include and how the values associated with the culture are so important.
16:03
SPEAKER_02: I got a real sense in reading the book that you are, let's say, somewhat ambivalent towards traditional culture work.
16:13
SPEAKER_02: I'd love you to go into that in a little bit more detail.
16:17
SPEAKER_02: What are your views on culture and how do you think leaders should think differently about culture today?
16:24
SPEAKER_03: I may be confused there, so that's why I want to confuse everyone.
16:28
SPEAKER_03: So my point is very straightforward.
16:30
SPEAKER_03: You always tend to believe that strong cultures, or especially the companies, having a very strong culture makes you more performing.
16:37
SPEAKER_03: And that's what true is, you know, you are already said all true humanity.
16:42
SPEAKER_03: But today, having a very strong culture is also kind of maybe a barrier for change because things do change.
16:50
SPEAKER_03: You know, for example, you mentioned some great IT companies, and today we should mark the day.
16:56
SPEAKER_03: First time a company has worth more than five trillion dollars, and we'd yet today reach that level.
17:03
SPEAKER_03: So we are living in a in a period of amazing change, so rapid change.
17:12
SPEAKER_03: So the technology, uh the geopolitics, the the new ways of life, drugs, everything, everything we use kind of changed so rapidly.
17:20
SPEAKER_03: In such a rapid changing environment, having a very strong organizational culture is maybe not necessarily a very good thing.
17:29
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's a good thing for performance, but for resilience, to in order to better read what's going on around, in order to cope with new threats um appearing.
17:44
SPEAKER_03: I think many startups are really kind of uh shaking the legacy of big companies in today's world.
17:50
SPEAKER_03: And if you are really stick to your company culture, a very monolithic culture where you believe that everybody acts in the same way, you may be very fragile when things do change in your environment.
18:03
SPEAKER_03: My suggestion, and I'm not an expert there, so that's why I prefer to use the word confusing.
18:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we should maybe really focus on the values.
18:12
SPEAKER_03: We should really focus on what brings us together, how we know how to work together, how to act together.
18:20
SPEAKER_03: And then whatever the culture comes up, we should be more flexible, more agile.
18:26
SPEAKER_03: Rather than sticking to the old way, how can we ensure that we can really be more agile to look for the new ways of doing things?
18:35
SPEAKER_03: I know the humanity and it's a kind of our brain is kind of wired to resist change.
18:42
SPEAKER_03: Change always brings unknown.
18:44
SPEAKER_03: And rather than going to the unknown, people tend to also even stick with what's not working, but still is known.
18:52
SPEAKER_03: I know all these difficulties, but on an organizational level, if we tend to really focus too much on creating a very strong corporate culture, we may tend, we may end up creating a keyless heel uh in the organizations when things do change rapidly.
19:11
SPEAKER_03: We have seen that in the pandemic.
19:13
SPEAKER_03: Some of the companies realize that even they they claim they know their employees, it turned out to be the information they had was useless because the whole environment changed and the important information they were never in the files of the employees.
19:28
SPEAKER_03: So, similarly thinking, so how can we make sure that we can have a diverse workforce, a diverse community where we can really we do really value the differences?
19:40
SPEAKER_03: So we collaborate not despite our differences, we collaborate with our differences.
19:48
SPEAKER_03: So these are subtle changes, but what's the real implication on the culture or the definition of culture?
19:56
SPEAKER_03: How companies can be more agile in functioning with um um yeah, functional country cultures or whatever.
20:05
SPEAKER_03: I'm kind of questioning all this.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: I think it's important to question.
20:11
SPEAKER_02: It is I I think you raised some really, really interesting, challenging points.
20:19
SPEAKER_02: I want to dive dive into a specific example and see if we can explore it.
20:23
SPEAKER_02: Let's think about a traditional culture.
20:27
SPEAKER_02: Let's think about a company that let's say it's a family-run business, it's been around for 60, 70 years, maybe even longer, strong founding values, proud legacy, no rush to grow, the crawl, walk, run kind of methodology, and a fundamental belief that those values are what has sustained that organization for that period of time and will sustain that organization going forward.
21:02
SPEAKER_02: Now, they would argue doesn't mean they're afraid of innovation.
21:06
SPEAKER_02: It means that they are not the ones that are rushing at the forefront of innovation.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: They'll let others make the mistakes first, they'll come in and they'll and they'll benefit from from those other mistakes.
21:16
SPEAKER_02: But also that that they, when they introduce somebody in, they hire very, very carefully and they and they really, really make sure that the people that they bring in live and and breathe the culture, even to the point of the language they use, the acronyms they use, all of this kind of stuff.
21:35
SPEAKER_02: Think about, talk to me about that type of organization.
21:39
SPEAKER_02: I know you've worked with leaders um extensively, and I know that you work, I'm sure you've worked with leaders inside those types of organizations.
21:47
SPEAKER_02: What are that company craves the idea of being sustainable?
21:52
SPEAKER_02: They want to be around in 100 years' time.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: Legacy is very important to them.
21:56
SPEAKER_02: What risks are they taking right now?
22:00
SPEAKER_03: Amazing, lovely case.
22:01
SPEAKER_03: And I'm actually working for a company now, a Belgian family-owned company, quite global, and very similar case.
22:08
SPEAKER_03: A couple of things.
22:09
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's the same in your example or not.
22:12
SPEAKER_03: The first thing is generations change.
22:15
SPEAKER_03: It's a family-owned business, but maybe a new generation is coming to power now.
22:21
SPEAKER_03: Maybe there's a transition, maybe there's a succession.
22:23
SPEAKER_03: Or there will be one day a succession.
22:25
SPEAKER_03: Whether the new generations totally share the same values and maybe the values, yes, but the culture of the previous generations.
22:34
SPEAKER_03: For example, in my book, I also mentioned about something like, for example, respect.
22:38
SPEAKER_03: So easy, isn't it?
22:39
SPEAKER_03: You all want to be respected.
22:41
SPEAKER_03: But what's the definition of respect?
22:43
SPEAKER_03: I give that example of a good friend of mine from Albuquerque, New Mexico, originally Mexican.
22:50
SPEAKER_03: Her parents still live in Mexico, very traditional Mexican family, and her children grew up in New Mexico, totally new genes, Z, X, whatever you name it, okay, alpha.
23:02
SPEAKER_03: The definition of the respect is totally different for both generations, as you may imagine.
23:08
SPEAKER_03: So in the family-owned business, when you move on from one generation to another, whether do they really define everything as it is, as it was, or maybe there will be new change, new ambitions, new traits, new opportunities with the new generations.
23:23
SPEAKER_03: So this is the big one one of the big, biggest point of concern.
23:27
SPEAKER_03: Very strong culture from dad to children.
23:31
SPEAKER_03: What about the children?
23:32
SPEAKER_03: Will they really survive with this culture going forward?
23:35
SPEAKER_03: They wanna or they don't wanna.
23:58
SPEAKER_03: And then comes the workforce.
24:00
SPEAKER_03: People they found in the past, or maybe clients, the profile, are they the same?
24:06
SPEAKER_03: The instant gratification culture wasn't there 20 years ago.
24:11
SPEAKER_03: But we are all living in this instant gratification culture now.
24:15
SPEAKER_03: It could be psychological, or it could be like delivery boy bringing everything to your door instantly, whatever.
24:21
SPEAKER_03: So it has a big impact on your psychological stability and everything.
24:25
SPEAKER_03: So um there are so many different changes going happening all around, and I'm not even talking about AI and the new models of drink business and everything.
24:34
SPEAKER_03: But put all together how careful, how how comfortable can be sticking to the old way.
24:44
SPEAKER_03: Um, in my speeches, I always use this example.
24:46
SPEAKER_03: For example, would you mind crossing your arms like this?
24:49
SPEAKER_03: Um I don't know.
24:49
SPEAKER_03: And most probably one of your arms, the hands up top, one down, whatever.
24:54
SPEAKER_03: Try to do it the other way around.
24:56
SPEAKER_03: Bring the one up, down to the other one down, whatever.
24:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that feels weird.
25:01
SPEAKER_03: Weird, isn't it?
25:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like you want to go back to your kind.
25:04
SPEAKER_03: You know, our our brains are kind of wired to resist change, any kind of change.
25:09
SPEAKER_03: So that's why our natural mood is for this family owned business the same.
25:14
SPEAKER_03: Why to change?
25:15
SPEAKER_03: Everything is great.
25:16
SPEAKER_03: But on the internet, we know that you know there will be a threat to form somewhere.
25:20
SPEAKER_03: And the last point about this, I love this word sustainability.
25:24
SPEAKER_03: What do we want to sustain?
25:27
SPEAKER_03: We should be really, really honest with ourselves when we use this word.
25:32
SPEAKER_03: Because my observation, uh, whenever people use this, they want to sustain whatever they enjoyed so far.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:41
SPEAKER_03: And if everyone wishes the same, and everyone is entitled to wish the same, is that gonna continue that way?
25:49
SPEAKER_03: We know it.
25:49
SPEAKER_03: Environmental issues, climate issues, whatever, or maybe economic-wise, the new technologies and everything, we know that not everything will be the same.
25:59
SPEAKER_03: So when we well, when we use this word sustainable business, sustainability in our business, whatever, we need to be really, really honest about what we want to sustain.
26:08
SPEAKER_03: And then kind of design the whole strategy around this.
26:12
SPEAKER_03: Um, so that's also a kind of thing that I touch upon in my book, I think.
26:16
SPEAKER_03: Um how do we really kind of what do we want to sustain value of this work?
26:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that is fascinating.
26:24
SPEAKER_02: It reminds me of um some of the work that that we've done with organizations around re-evaluating how they think about themselves and be in relation to the environment that they're in.
26:39
SPEAKER_02: You touch upon a couple of these themes in your uh in your book as well.
26:43
SPEAKER_02: But what what you often find, particularly when in those types of companies that I described, is that they tend to think of the world in a very, I would say, deterministic way.
26:53
SPEAKER_02: In other words, we are successful because we did X or Y or Z.
27:02
SPEAKER_02: And if we continue to do variants of X or Y or Z, we will continue to be successful.
27:08
SPEAKER_02: And that deterministic view of the world, in other words, the idea that sort of you sit in as long as you do your work in the right way, in the way that has been proven before, it's been successful before, and therefore it will be successful again.
27:24
SPEAKER_02: But if you tend to think of the world as is being a bit more uncertain than that and a bit more luck driven, and yes, and you did some things and those were successful in the past, but that is not an indicator that if you do those things again, you will be successful in the future, because A, you might have been lucky in the past, and B, the world is is will be different in the future.
27:46
SPEAKER_02: That whole business of doing what you did got you to where you are, but it doing it again won't necessarily get you to where you want to go, and variance of it.
27:56
SPEAKER_02: So when organizations tend to be uh sort of like very deterministic in in nature in that way, that can end up being a stranglehold because they don't see other paths, they don't end up seeing other ways that they can think about.
28:11
SPEAKER_02: We've been exploring something recently.
28:12
SPEAKER_02: I'd love to get your point of view on it.
28:14
SPEAKER_02: It's not something you call out in the book, but we suggest that teams, individuals, teams, organizations think about a metric that we call TTI or time to irrelevance.
28:29
SPEAKER_02: In other words, if you were, if you did X, how soon would you as an individual become irrelevant?
28:36
SPEAKER_02: How soon would your team become irrelevant?
28:38
SPEAKER_02: How soon would your organization become irrelevant?
28:41
SPEAKER_02: And then using that as a framework for potentially what you what you need to do differently.
28:47
SPEAKER_02: What do you think about that sort of generally as an as an approach for thinking about the work that we do?
28:55
SPEAKER_03: Actually, I liked it.
28:56
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to think more about it and most rather I'm going to use it.
28:59
SPEAKER_03: That's great.
29:00
SPEAKER_03: Before I make more comments about a couple of things.
29:04
SPEAKER_03: One of the issues is most of today's businesses are built on the engineering thinking.
29:09
SPEAKER_03: Because the the challenge of the last century was mechanical, engineering, production, and everything.
29:15
SPEAKER_03: The engineering way of thinking is exactly deterministic, you define something.
29:20
SPEAKER_03: And my professors from uh Stanford, they created this data and they have a great definition of wicked problems.
29:28
SPEAKER_03: Human problems are wicked problems because the moment you define them, they change.
29:32
SPEAKER_03: You can't really fix them with engineering thinking.
29:35
SPEAKER_03: So they they say this a bridge, one morning wake up and say, No, I don't want to carry this goal today.
29:41
SPEAKER_03: So there's no such thing.
29:43
SPEAKER_03: For humanity, for all of us, yeah, there is this emotional aspect.
29:47
SPEAKER_03: And the second thing is it is also something that really kind of I'm gonna maybe bring a little bit back to the book.
29:54
SPEAKER_03: One of the kind of things that really serves us well is the whole shortcuts, the prejudices, biases, unconscious biases.
30:04
SPEAKER_03: Some of them are culturally embedded from family and everything, some of them we develop over time, but they make life easier, isn't it?
30:11
SPEAKER_03: Like the whole shortcuts, and then your brain, amygdala works very quickly, threat or enemy or opportunity, friend, foe, whatever, and then you do you should fight or flight or freeze or whatever.
30:26
SPEAKER_03: These are all here, okay?
30:27
SPEAKER_03: And then all these shortcuts, all these walls we create around us, makes life easier, protect us, but also makes it very difficult to change.
30:37
SPEAKER_03: So as I think it was Marshall Goldsmith's book, What Brings You Here will not bring you there.
30:42
SPEAKER_03: So that's exactly what's going on at the individual level or company level and everything.
30:47
SPEAKER_03: Two things that could be relevant to your work, and I also mentioned in my book, two questions is one of them is empty chair.
30:56
SPEAKER_03: Maybe time to irrelevance, maybe kind of kind of touch with this.
31:00
SPEAKER_03: Whatever we think about it, whenever we decide on something, why don't you bring an empty chair to the table and think about whose voice we're not hearing now?
31:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, maybe this voice that we don't hear may be relevant in your discussions about time to irrelevance.
31:16
SPEAKER_03: Because some of the players that are not in the room will make you relevant one day.
31:20
SPEAKER_03: And if you hear them now, you may readjust your strategy.
31:25
SPEAKER_03: And the second thing about also sustainability, and maybe it's also relevant to your question, is what the words of tomorrow expect from your leadership today.
31:36
SPEAKER_03: So being a being a good ancestor, what would really work for tomorrow, not only for today?
31:43
SPEAKER_03: So that's also kind of how maybe you're thinking about time to irrelevance, because time to irrelevance also being extinct, or like the word, because I always ask the same question, what the word is unique, what the word would uniquely miss if you cease to exist.
32:04
SPEAKER_03: So I think your work is amazing, and I think it's really kind of touch on different layers on the work I elaborate in my book.
32:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is really interesting because it almost ties back to as we were kind of exploring that company, the sort of family-owned business.
32:22
SPEAKER_02: I mentioned that a lot of those family and owned businesses, they think a lot about legacy.
32:26
SPEAKER_02: Well, the the irony is that we often think about legacy in a very backward-looking way.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: Like, how do I continue the legacy of all of the work that I've done?
32:36
SPEAKER_02: But in reality, if you're kind of happy former, legacy needs to be forward-looking.
32:40
SPEAKER_02: It needs to be thinking about what are go what are going to be the needs of the next generation and the generation after that, and anticipating those things now and involving that in your leadership.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: That ties me into another part of the book that I really wanted to get into, which is you've touched on sustainability already, but this sort of relationship between sustainability and resilience.
33:10
SPEAKER_02: So we talk all the time about resilience and adaptability and things like that.
33:15
SPEAKER_02: So give me give me your thoughts about the similarities and different uh and differences between those two things and how we should be thinking about those things as we're designing companies that are going to be future-proof.
33:25
SPEAKER_03: I know these are all very big, loaded questions and important topics that can't be really answered in such a short time.
33:32
SPEAKER_03: But it I think we need to decide, we need to start with defining those concepts.
33:37
SPEAKER_03: And it could be it could be a bit different for every one of us.
33:40
SPEAKER_03: For companies, it could be different.
33:42
SPEAKER_03: For shareholders, there's this agency issue.
33:45
SPEAKER_03: Maybe in for mean stakeholders, the definition of those topics could be different.
33:51
SPEAKER_03: So having a kind of open and honest conversation about how you define sustainability, how you define resilience may be useful.
34:01
SPEAKER_03: It may be a very, very good exercise to embark on the journey.
34:06
SPEAKER_03: Because at the end of the day, one of the definitions that I like about resilience is being being simple functional.
34:13
SPEAKER_03: Keeping your your goal for existence still relevant.
34:18
SPEAKER_03: Stay alive, sustain, whatever you name it, okay?
34:22
SPEAKER_03: But at the expense of what?
34:25
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes for organizations for people, instead of playing another game, they prefer to quit the game.
34:33
SPEAKER_03: So what are your values?
34:36
SPEAKER_03: What are your kind of red flags?
34:38
SPEAKER_03: What are you prepared to do in order to stay in the game?
34:42
SPEAKER_03: Or maybe which other games you want to play?
34:45
SPEAKER_03: So these are all very deep questions, and at the end of the day, if you don't answer those questions, you end up with very simple definitions.
34:53
SPEAKER_03: You want to have a kind of up and running company, create value for all stakeholders, great cliche.
35:00
SPEAKER_03: But with all the changing world, technology, demographics, all the challenges we face, I think the first step is to have a kind of open, having a kind of conversation where we all define what we really mean, we all mean with sustainability, resilience.
35:20
SPEAKER_03: These are great topics, yeah.
35:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:23
SPEAKER_02: The inter I I love in the book is you you point this out very, very well, actually, because when you jump into the the different meanings of resilience in different fields, right?
35:33
SPEAKER_02: So for example, an engineer thinks about resilience in a very uh in a very specific way, and a psychologist has a uh has a a different way resilience.
35:43
SPEAKER_02: And they're all kind of like broadly compatible, but they do have they do have differences once you get into the the uh into each of the individual meanings associated with it.
35:53
SPEAKER_02: The definition we use around resilience, by the way, is and we did think that it was important to define it for the exact reasons that you talk about.
36:00
SPEAKER_02: So we use uh we we think of it as the ability to cope intellectually and emotionally with change.
36:09
SPEAKER_02: And that for us is differentiated from adapt from adaptability, which we think of as the ability to adjust according to changing circumstances.
36:20
SPEAKER_02: So they kind of go together, right?
36:22
SPEAKER_02: You're not going to be able to repeatedly adapt if you don't have resilience in order to be able to do it.
36:29
SPEAKER_02: But what I do think is intriguing, and the things you hint at in the books, at least, are that because we live in a rapidly changing work landscape, defining what those things mean to the organization and then acting upon that and making it almost like the primary factor for an organization is the thing that ultimately allows the the organization to persist.
36:57
SPEAKER_02: Because we know, we do not know what the future looks like, but one thing we can guarantee is that the future will be different to today.
37:06
SPEAKER_02: And so given that we know, given that we know those things, we know that the human side of this, the engine, the engine that kind of powers this, is itself gonna look different tomorrow than it's gonna look today.
37:19
SPEAKER_02: And that either means a bunch of different people or it means a bunch of people behaving in different ways.
37:23
SPEAKER_02: And either way, that is something that is adapted in some way and needs to be resilient in order to be able to deal with the change.
37:29
SPEAKER_02: Would you agree with that?
37:31
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
37:31
SPEAKER_03: And the the the biggest that's that was the case maybe all through history.
37:36
SPEAKER_03: But the big difference is what is future?
37:40
SPEAKER_03: Future used to be maybe a century, maybe a decade.
37:43
SPEAKER_03: Now we're talking about not yet days, but only as we are there.
37:48
SPEAKER_03: So the speed is amazing, and again, we have seen so many important shifts, uh, jumps, disruptive moments.
37:58
SPEAKER_03: But I think what we see today is really kind of maybe first time at such a big, big level.
38:05
SPEAKER_03: So my point is also organizations should think all stakeholders, people sitting around the table, but also maybe empty chairs.
38:15
SPEAKER_03: But also as an individual, we need to also think about how to cope.
38:20
SPEAKER_03: I like I like your word, how to cope with change.
38:24
SPEAKER_03: Because at the end of the day, uh we need um clarity, we need to define our purpose in life.
38:30
SPEAKER_03: Da Vinci, the artist, the engineer, the genius.
38:34
SPEAKER_03: He said, in peacetime, I'm gonna I can paint your pictures or whatever, or chapels and everything, or in the wartime I can build your bridges so that your armies can.
38:45
SPEAKER_03: It's a long CV.
38:46
SPEAKER_03: But what I like about it, there's a purpose there, okay?
38:49
SPEAKER_03: Whatever the environment changes, peace or war, in his case, he is he mentions the things he's capable of doing, but also willing to do.
38:59
SPEAKER_03: So that's very important.
39:01
SPEAKER_03: What I'm capable of, and then what I'm willing to do.
39:04
SPEAKER_03: So if I can define this, I'm a lucky man.
39:08
SPEAKER_03: But at the same time, I know with all these changes and everything, maybe we may be a part of this redundant society.
39:15
SPEAKER_03: Maybe there's no job left or whatever for people like us, like me, or whatever, because I can reskill, upskill, reskill, but I can't get tired at the end.
39:25
SPEAKER_03: But even in that journey, what's important is to really find my balance, my center, because whatever happens in the world, there will be a role to play, there will be a place to in that.
39:37
SPEAKER_03: I think we need to also find our harmony with nature, harmony with myself, harmony with the people around me.
39:44
SPEAKER_03: So that's why all these big topics really goes in my definition of inclusion, where I can have this feeling, in which community I can have this feeling, so that I can be, I can feel a part of it.
39:58
SPEAKER_03: And I can still be at my best.
40:01
SPEAKER_03: I can have this feeling of being secure and safe.
40:04
SPEAKER_03: And I think we can create this if you all kind of focus on that.
40:09
SPEAKER_03: I know in today's world that also comes with being young, the opposite, the polarization.
40:14
SPEAKER_03: Today in the Netherlands, we have elections.
40:16
SPEAKER_03: So after this podcast, I'm gonna go and cast my vote.
40:20
SPEAKER_03: Um they said it's this it's a very polarized debate.
40:23
SPEAKER_03: And it's the same thing, I think, everywhere.
40:25
SPEAKER_03: But I think the whole change comes with the opposition, opposites and everything.
40:30
SPEAKER_03: So that's why I'm so excited to live in this in this times of really important change to witness what will be the future.
40:39
SPEAKER_03: And that's why the book really kind of motivates me.
40:42
SPEAKER_03: I'm happy that you read it, thank you.
40:44
SPEAKER_03: And I'm really grateful for this opportunity to express better myself.
40:48
SPEAKER_03: Because at the end of the day, despite all these big things going on around us, we have only one life, and we are kind of at the center of our own universe.
40:57
SPEAKER_03: I know me versus us, you mentioned about all these things, but I think there's a good balance, and I call it harmony.
41:04
SPEAKER_03: Uh the harmony within me, harmony with the people around me, and with the nature, with the earth.
41:11
SPEAKER_03: I think there are things that we can all do a bit more in that respect in order to kind of find our place in this rapidly changing world.
41:20
SPEAKER_02: That's a perfect spot to leave things.
41:23
SPEAKER_02: Risa, thank you so much for thinking so deeply about these things and for putting your thoughts down on paper so that other people can get the benefit from it.
41:32
SPEAKER_02: Once again, the book is called The Contemporary Leader: The Value of Inclusion in Successful Leadership.
41:39
SPEAKER_02: And uh really appreciate you joining us today.
41:41
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
41:42
SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced by Matt Neal.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: If you liked this episode, please take a moment to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform.
41:56
SPEAKER_00: It makes a huge difference in helping others find us.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: And don't forget, you can find all episodes and get our weekly newsletter at humanityworking dot net.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: See you next time.