Ralph Schonenbach is a serial entrepreneur whose work centers around developing and nurturing relationships. www.trymeerkat.ai is his latest start-up, and in this episode of the Leadership 2.0 podcast, I talk with Ralph about this venture, as well as his book ‘Relationships matter’, which was recently published.
In our conversation, we touched on the following topics:
It is tempting for CEOs to try to appease their shareholders by reducing corporate overhead costs. It seems to be the corporate equivalent of a ‘Get Out of Jail Free card’ in Monopoly: it is free and can get a CEO out of a tricky situation.
The reason is that everyone loves the notion of lowering corporate overhead costs, and especially reducing the number of people in corporate roles.
Whereas the supervisory board occasionally might call for caution, you will never hear shareholders or analysts complain and Business Unit leaders usually love the perspective of lower corporate charges and more independence. Most often, corporate functions cannot count on a lot of sympathy from the rest of the workforce either. They are seen as overpaid ‘bureaucrats’, ‘paper pushers’, and ‘PowerPoint wizards’ in ‘back-office’ roles.
Reducing overhead is also not very difficult. Usually, there are plenty of young runners-up in large organizations dying to prove themselves to corporate leaders. If not, consulting firms are happy to line up for beauty parades to show off their capabilities in this area.
It is also not that hard – at least, I have never seen a corporate cost savings initiative not achieving its short-term financial objectives.
So eliminating or reducing these corporate functions is a great idea, right?
Unfortunately, it depends…
Eliminating or reducing corporate functions poses risks for CEOs in three areas:
I coach several people who are looking for another role, and it seems that the user satisfaction with the average recruitment process is even worse than in 2018, when I wrote a blog post with the title: ‘Recruiters should stop spraying and praying’.
In this post I wrote ‘We should therefore not be surprised if, in the near future, recruitment will become an AI-fuelled war between recruiting bots used by corporate recruiters, and application bots used by candidates.’
Today it looks like my predictions have become reality.
What are the frustrations on the supply side of the market i.e. from the candidates? Here are the things I hear from my coachees:
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We are always informed by our intuition when it comes to making decisions. More often than not our intuition is ‘right’, but there are also situations when we should definitely not rely on our intuition.
Being able to determine when to use our intuition and when not, often means the difference between our success and failure.
In my second interview with Professor Eugene Sadler-Smith for the Leadership 2.0 Podcast, we discussed the role of intuition in decision-making processes.
During our conversation, we touched on the following topics:
0️⃣1️⃣ What intuition is and what it is not
0️⃣2️⃣ The two types of intuition
0️⃣3️⃣ Adopting an Ambidextrous Mindset
0️⃣4️⃣ How to take important decisions in business
0️⃣5️⃣ Carl Jung and Intuition
0️⃣6️⃣ Why the intuitive mind is a slow learner
0️⃣7️⃣ Values and ethics in decision-making processes
0️⃣8️⃣ Final Thoughts – AI and intuition
You can watch or listen to this podcast episode on:
▶ YouTube https://youtu.be/yaSpG5UtAis
▶ Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/ch/podcast/the-advantages-and-limitations-of-intuition/id1511327057?i=1000654506560
▶ Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6mCsVQCSuQ7XzYtQjvdem1?si=UiEy1VZlR0q1GB6XLyJPlA
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Dirk Verburg 