Crisis

‘Scenario Thinking and Leadership’ – Jeremy Bentham

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For decades, Shell’s scenarios have supported the decision-making of Shell leaders, academics, governments, and businesses.

Scenario thinking enables organizations to establish possible visions of the future in the form of scenarios.
These scenarios enable decision-makers to think through the different ways in which the environment of their institutions could evolve in the future, based on different sets of assumptions.

One of the companies that is best known for its scenario-thinking activity is Shell.

Jeremy Bentham led this activity in Shell between 2006 and his retirement in 2022 as Shell Scenarios & strategy Leader and VP Global Business Environment.
In this episode of the Leadership 2.0 podcast, I am interviewing Jeremy Bentham about scenario thinking and leadership.

During our conversation, Jeremy and I discussed the following topics:

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The why and how of corporate ethics – An interview with John Hollwitz

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Our society is more complex than ever. For the first time since WWII two nations find themselves at war on the European continent. At the same time our economy is slowing down, inflation is on the rise, whilst technological developments in the AI space are more unpredictable than ever, and we are still trying to find out if these will be our friend or foe… 

In times like these ethics, and a sense of purpose are more important than ever. Therefore I was glad to have the opportunity to have a conversation on these topics with John Hollwitz.

John Hollwitz is a University Professor of psychology and rhetoric. Before coming to Fordham, he was the A.F. Jacobson Professor of Communications at Creighton University and dean of arts and sciences at Loyola College in Maryland. He also has been the vice president of academic affairs at Fordham.

Our interview was focused on the why and how of corporate ethics. During our conversation, we discussed, amongst others, the following topics:

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Developing compassionate leaders – An interview with Sophia Town

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Our expectations of leaders and ideas about leadership have changed dramatically in the last couple of years.

Recently I was introduced to Sophia Town, Ph.D. , an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Gabelli School of Business of Fordham University, who is at the forefront of academic research in this area.

In the classroom, Professor Town’s curriculum is guided by the question: “How can we develop compassionate leaders in service of a flourishing world?”

SophiaTown leads Fordham’s Human Flourishing Project (FHFP), a mixed-methods, interdisciplinary research lab that explores behavioral, psychological, communicative, and spiritual development in business education. Related to this project, Dr. Town serves as a Research Affiliate and Advisory Board Member for the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University.

During our conversation, we discussed, amongst others, the following topics:

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Jungian analytical psychology in the Workplace – An Interview with Murray Stein

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I am a big fan of the work of Carl Jung, and in my opinion the business world could really benefit from his insights. Therefore, I was pleased to have the opportunity to have a conversation with Murray Stein about applying Jungian Analytical Psychology in the workplace.

Murray Stein is a graduate of Yale University (B.A. and M.Div.), the University of Chicago (Ph.D.), and the C.G. Jung Institut-Zurich (Diploma). He is a founding member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts. He has been the president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (2001-4), and President of The International School of Analytical Psychology (ISAP)in Zurich (2008-2012).

He published tens of books about Carl Jung and analytical psychology, including for instance ‘Jung’s Treatment of Christianity’ and ‘Jung’s Map of the Soul’.

The focus of our conversation was a book Murray edited with John Hollwitz called ‘The Psyche at work – Workplace Applications of Jungian Analytical Psychology’.

We discussed a number of topics, including:

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What I learned about business ethics by reading ‘An Ugly Truth’  

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I am very interested in decision-making in organizations as well as in social media. This means a book like ‘An Ugly Truth – Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination’, by Frenkel and Kang is a double whammy for me.

The book describes the different scandals Facebook has been involved in in the past couple of years (e.g the Russian interference in US presidential elections, Cambridge Analytica, and the mass murder of Rohingya people in Myanmar). These scandals are well known and well documented in other books. The added value of this book is that it describes the decision-making process of the top leadership of Facebook with regard to these scandals.

What is even more interesting is the link the book makes between the motivation and ethics of the key decision-makers on the one hand and their decisions on the other.

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What the workplace in 2021 will look like and what this means for you

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2021 will be a very interesting year! If all prognoses are correct, sometime in the next six months we should have developed a grip on COVID19. 

For 2021, I foresee three trends in the workplace. Although none of these trends is initiated by COVID19, the pandemic will definitely act as a catalyst.

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Book Review: Pariahs, Hubris, Reputation and Organizational crises

Dirk Verburg1 Comment

Tw Cover PariahsA ‘must read’ for the C-suite.

By Dirk Verburg

Ever since the industrial revolution, large corporations have played an important role in our society. Due to the globalization in the past decades, their influence is continuously increasing.

At the same time it seems that the number of scandals caused by these large organizations is growing as well. Established names, such as Barclays, Siemens, Wells Fargo, Ahold, VW, BP, Shell, Worldcomm, Tyco, Enron, Olympus, Arthur Anderson, E&Y, the BBC and many others, have all experienced scandals, and some no longer exist as a result.

What complicates this situation even is that governments and other institutions (e.g. regulators and ‘independent’ accounting firms) do not seem to be able to control, or at least monitor, the way companies in the private sector are operating. Continue reading →