leadership

‘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 four key questions every business leader needs to answer about AI

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Karl Marx famously said, ‘A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism’. Nowadays we can say ‘A specter is haunting the business world – the specter of AI’.

Everyone seems to be riding on the AI bandwagon nowadays, and, as a result, many business leaders are suffering from corporate FOMO.

One thing is clear though, all business leaders need to reflect on the impact AI will have on their organizations. Too many organizations have disappeared because of technological disruptions, including the likes of Kodak, DEC, Blackberry, and Blockbuster, to name a few.

Of course, it is tempting to have an intellectual debate about which technologies are disruptive and which ones are not.  This is especially the case if technologies are built on other technologies (which is almost often the case). Without the transistor, the modern computer would not have existed, does that mean that microchips are not disruptive?

For this reason, I like this definition in Investopedia:

Disruptive technology is an innovation that significantly alters the way that consumers, industries, or businesses operate. A disruptive technology sweeps away the systems or habits it replaces because it has attributes that are recognizably superior.’

Based on this definition, I think AI definitely qualifies as a disruptive technology.

When it comes to dealing with disruptive technologies, business leaders need to ask themselves four questions:

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‘From Crisis to Innovation: A Mental Health Entrepreneur’s journey’ – Vlad Gheorghiu

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The World Health Organization estimates that 12 billion working days are lost every year due to depression and anxiety. This costs $1 trillion in lost productivity.

McKinsey research showed that ‘60 % of employees have experienced at least one mental-health challenge at some point in their lives’. According to the same study ‘Failing to address the effects of mental health and well-being challenges is a missed opportunity for employers’.

Employees dealing with mental health issues are 4x more likely to say they intend to leave, 3x more likely to report low job satisfaction, 3x more likely to experience toxic workplace behavior, and 2x more likely to report low engagement.

At the same time, classic Employee Assistance Programs do not seem to work…

Vlad Gheorghiu experienced mental health issues firsthand, whilst working for McKinsey. 

This experience inspired him to design solutions. First for McKinsey, and later by co-finding a start-up company called Kyan Health.

In my conversation with Vlad, we covered the following topics:

1️⃣ Vlad’s background

2️⃣ Vlad’s engagement with mental health

3️⃣ The gap in the workplace between the mental health support employees need and receive

4️⃣ The concept of Kyan Health

5️⃣ Measuring impact

6️⃣ Creating a start-up company: Three Dos

7️⃣ Creating a start-up company: Three Dont’s

8️⃣ Vlad’s role models as an entrepreneur

If you are interested, you can watch our conversation on YouTube.


You can also listen to it Apple Podcasts or Spotify

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How to make a flying start in 2024 with your regional leadership team!

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The vast majority of global companies have regional leadership teams. These teams are often uncomfortably situated between the corporate executive team, and their own national (sales) organizations(s).

They usually have a tough job.

Typical challenges for regional leadership teams

Regional leadership teams often find themselves being caught in a sandwich.

On the one hand, they are being kept responsible for realizing the revenue and profit targets for their geographic area (’their’ business), whilst also ensuring ‘compliance’ in all relevant areas.

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A Scientific Perspective on Leadership Development – Ayse Yemiscigil

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Everyone is an expert in Leadership Development, or at least has an opinion about it.

However, if that is the case, why do global organizations spend more than $60 billion every year on leadership development programs, but is it so hard to ensure the ROI of these programs?

To find the answer to this question, I decided to interview Ayse Yemiscigil for my Podcast Leadership 2.0.

Ayse Yemiscigil is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business and a Research Affiliate with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University.

In February 2023, she, Dana Born, and Horace Ling, published an article for HBR.org of the Harvard Business Review titled: ‘What Makes Leadership Development Programs Succeed?’

During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:

1️⃣ Why most investments in Leadership Development programs fail

2️⃣ The format of Leadership Development programs

3️⃣ The content of Leadership Development programs

4️⃣ The ‘whole person’ approach

5️⃣ Whether knowledge building on business topics should be included in Leadership Development programs

6️⃣ The long-term impact (or not) of Leadership Development Programs

7️⃣ How to measure the impact of Leadership Development programs

8️⃣ Stimulating the self-reflection of (potential) leaders

If you are interested, you can watch our conversation of YouTube.


You can also listen to it Apple Podcasts or Spotify

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The Five-Factor Personality Model and the Numinous – Interview with Ralph Piedmont

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Current thinking in Psychology is that there are five dimensions we can use to describe the most important personality dimensions. Dr. Ralph Piedmont discovered the 6th one: ‘the Numinous’.

The five-factor model of personality (FFM) is a set of five broad trait dimensions or domains, often referred to as the “Big Five”: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism (sometimes named by its polar opposite, Emotional Stability), and Openness to Experience (sometimes named Intellect). The Big Five/FFM was developed to represent as much of the variability in individuals’ personalities as possible, using only a small set of trait dimensions. Many personality psychologists agree that its five domains capture the most important, basic individual differences in personality traits and that many alternative trait models can be conceptualized in terms of the Big Five/FFM structure (www.oxfordbibliographies.com).

Dr. Ralph Piedmont discovered the 6th factor: the Numinous.

According to Ralph Piedmont ‘the numinous deals with our ultimate existential engagements with life. The Numinous has three central concerns: issues about mortality; meaning in life, and personal worthiness.’

If you are interested in this topic, you can watch our conversation on
YouTube.


You can also listen to it Apple Podcasts or Spotify

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

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Unleash the power of neurodiversity in the workplace! – An interview with Saskia Schepers

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Recently I had a conversation with Saskia Schepers about her book on Neurodiversity in the workplace with the title ‘Als alle breinen werken – Waarom ruimte voor neurodiversiteit op het werk goed is voor iedereen’ (‘When all brains are switched on – Why space for neurodiversity in the workplace benefits everyone’).

Around 80% of mankind is neurotypical, and 20% is neurodivergent. We tend to ‘equip’ people in the latter category with labels like ADD, DHD, bipolar, autistic, etc.

Most leaders find it hard to integrate neurodivergent people in their teams.

The reason is that most of us have preconceived ideas about the way people in the workplace should behave. For instance, we expect people to like attending and participating in meetings, do their work in teams, be productive in open-plan offices, and socialize with their colleagues after work.

People who do not fit this mold are seen as bad ‘team players’, and are often criticized for this behavior, e.g. during annual performance review meetings.

In her book, Saskia Schepers describes what neurodiversity is, what the strong points of different types of neurodivergent people are, and how, as an organization, you can integrate neurodivergent people and capitalize on their strengths.

The book almost immediately reached the number 1 position in the Dutch bestseller list of management books, was quickly sold out, and is now in its third printed edition.

An English translation is in the making and will be published in 2024.

During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:

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Why you are a micro-manager and what you can do about it (Stop adding value)

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One of the big temptations we as leaders face is our urge to add value to the work of our staff. Typically, we add this value in the form of change or additional requests.

There are three reasons why adding value is tempting for us:

  • Accountability – We are accountable for the work of our staff. If something goes wrong, we as leaders suffer the consequences (‘It happened on your watch’)
  • Know-how – We know it better than our staff. Seriously. That is most often the reason why we were appointed
  • We like it – As leaders it is often tempting to take a break from the daily grind of budgets and office politics, to dive back into the content we love(d) so much (‘Let me show you how it is done’)

As with every temptation in life, we need to fight this one as well. There are fivereasons for this:

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Organization structures matter: how much ambiguity costs can your business afford?

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Everyone who ever worked in a large organization, can probably relate to at least one of the following examples of conflicts that regularly occur in organizations:

  • A sales leader wants to close a deal with a low margin to meet her targets and to safeguard the relationship with the customer. The product manager does not want to sign off on the deal, because she wants to protect the margin of the product in the longer term
  • A business leader wants to hire a star performer working for another company, and is prepared to pay her more than the maximum of the corporate salary band for these types of roles. The HR Business Partner tries to prevent this because he does not want to create a precedent that can create upward pressure on the salary costs of the company
  • The head of a shared service department wants to hire an independent contractor for a project for USD 1.200 a day. The Purchasing department forces him to work with a consultant from a well-established firm on the preferred supplier list, for a fee rate that is 3 times as high as the one of the independent contractor

These, and other types of conflicts, seem to be an inevitable part of life in large organizations. The question is: why we have those types of conflicts, and if and how we can prevent them?

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Your wellbeing: why a personal mission is more important than a position

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What do the notorious former marketing director of American Apparel, Ryan Holiday, and renowned Dutch reformed theologian Bram van de Beek have in common? They both have written a book about the danger of egocentricity. 

Social media…are not to blame

Social media offers endless possibilities to promote ourselves and serve as outlets for our vanity. It enables us to humble brag about our professional achievements on LinkedIn, share evidence of our successful ‘friends & family’ life on Facebook, and demonstrate our cutting-edge lifestyle on Instagram. 

However, looking at our current society and world history, it seems we as human beings always have been prone to self-centeredness and self-promotion. Social media therefore merely enables us to express something that is already deeply rooted in us.

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Are your deeply held convictions your backbone or Achilles heel?

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In all walks of life, there are people who have deeply held convictions about how the world works, and act accordingly. The business world is no exception. 

Examples I encountered during my career were business leaders that held and acted according to the following convictions:

  • The only way you gain respect by ‘the business’ as a staff department, is by reducing your headcount to the absolute minimum
  • Partnering with other vendors to deliver an integrated solution for clients is unnecessarily complex and has a negative impact on the margin
  • Teams perform at their best if the annual bonus of individual members is linked to individual financial targets 
  • Customizing services for individual clients equals to sub-optimization

Strong convictions usually stem from the successes they brought us in the past. They also tend to become stronger over time: every time we successfully act in accordance with one of our convictions, our inclination to use it in similar situations increases.

Strong convictions offer several advantages

Strong convictions help us to make sense of the world around us and to simplify our decision-making processes. They save us time and effort. When we are confronted with an issue on which we have a strong conviction, our mental muscle memory immediately kicks in to prescribe the decision we need to take.

Another advantage of strong convictions is the potential it offers to persuade others. Because we feel strongly about a topic and have an active ‘personal repository’ of evidence (previous cases in which a particular course of action worked for us), we can speak convincingly to others about it.

Disadvantages

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Improve your decision-making skills: time to get back to the gym!

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Something I struggled with for a long time is chronic neck and shoulder pain when working with my computer. For the largest part of my life, I sat behind my computer like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

Well meant ergonomic advice, a standing desk, and using the mouse with my left hand only gave temporary relief.

The only thing that solves the problem structurally is going to the gym.

The problem is that I experienced being in the gym as exciting as watching grass grow. Besides, I always took the words of the apostle Paul “For bodily exercise profiteth little” (1 Tim 4:8) perhaps a little too close to heart. 

If getting back in shape is part of your past summer holiday intentions – here are three things that got me back in the gym earlier this year!

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Leaders should decide if they want to be players or coaches 

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Add value to your team, instead of destroying it!

When I had just been appointed in my first proper line management role, I decided to organize an offsite with my team. The purpose of this offsite was to finalize the development of a number of HR policies and processes. 

Around 11 o’clock in the first morning, in a characterless conference room in the basement of the conference center, we completed our first round of brainstorming. When the time came to write up the output of our first session in a flow chart format, I said I wanted to use a specific methodology I had used as a management consultant, and would be happy to do the write-up. 

One of my direct reports looked disappointed, because she wanted to create the flowcharts herself, but a colleague of hers consoled her, and said: ‘Sure, if Dirk knows how to do it and has a strong passion for it, why do we not let him do so?’ The others agreed, and they left the room to leave me to it. 

I spend the next 1.5 hours working on my own in the aforementioned characterless conference room in the basement. When I was ready I went upstairs to look for my team. I found them on the terrace, enjoying the sun, cappuccinos, orange juice, and each other’s company.

Fortunately enough they thought my work was ok… 

Do it yourself?

A lot of leaders frequently want to do the work of their direct reports. They have a variety of reasons for this, including

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Why leadership has become more difficult and why this matters

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I spent a significant part of my working life developing leaders in organizations. What strikes me is that during COVID-19 the demand for this type of work has not decreased; if anything, the demand for leadership development has increased. That is remarkable. During the financial crisis in 2007-2008, for instance, most companies tried to save money, and one of the first things they considered was decreasing the out-of-pocket costs associated with these, and other kind of developmental activities.

Recently I was asked why companies continue to invest in the quality of their leadership at all levels of the organizations, despite the economic uncertainty they are facing.

In my opinion, the reason is that companies have come to realize the growing importance of the quality of leadership at all levels of the organization. I believe that this is a good thing, especially because leadership roles have become more demanding in the last couple of decades, not only for senior leaders, but also for first, and second-level leaders in organizations. 

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The Negative Feedback Paradox

Dirk Verburg2 Comments

Let me start with a confession:I never liked receiving negative feedback, and have spent the largest part of my professional life ignoring it.

I found ignoring negative (or perhaps I should euphemistically say ‘corrective’) feedback to be quite easy. Depending on the situation, I either did not take the person who gave me feedback seriously (‘that is rich – from him?’), comforted myself that the feedback concerned only a minor issue in the grand scheme of my behavior (and that other aspects of my behavior would compensate this), or convinced myself that the person giving me feedback did not understand the context in which I acted the way I did or said the things I said.

It was not until I hit a serious roadblock in my career, that I started to see the fact that systematically ignoring feedback was not necessarily a great idea. 

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Adopting a growth mindset requires critical self-reflection from leaders

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HC Gage Skidmore

Critical self-reflection is difficult to acquire, but extremely important for leaders

By Dirk Verburg

For several reasons I love reading autobiographies of leaders in business and politics. The first reason is plain curiosity: the possibility to take a look behind the stage of well-known events. The second reason is because these autobiographies provide a unique opportunity to understand decision making processes from the perspective of the decision makers. Why did they take certain decisions in specific situations? Were they aware of certain developments? From whom did they obtain advice? What was the role of important stakeholders? etc. Continue reading →

Less is more: The hidden costs of change in organizations

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A number of change initiatives in organizations do not add, but rather destroy value. In this post, the reasons for this are explained and recommendations are given on how to prevent the launch of such initiatives. Concrete examples are provided to illustrate the issues.

Change has become a necessary and constant factor

In 1965 Bob Dylan wrote the iconic song ‘It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ with the prophetic line: ‘He who is not being born is busy dying’.

The ability to ‘Being born’ is not only important for individuals, the capability to effectively change (or transform) the organization based on changes in its environment, is also vital for organizations.

Organizations that do not adapt themselves in the right way and at the right time to changes in their environment often cease to exist, with all the associated broader economic and social consequences.

Fortunately, most organizations are equipped with leaders who realize this and are able to initiate and implement changes in their organizations in an effective manner. If they are under the impression that they are not capable of handling this effectively themselves, can elect help out of the armies of external consultants on the market who are more than capable and eager to assist.

Change for the sake of change

So if changes are necessary and most organizations are able to handle them effectively, what is the problem? 

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