Tag: disruptive world

Where does Leadership reside in today’s disruptive world?


We were engaged in a MENA region Business expansion consultancy project for a client organisation (name withheld) in Dubai. Being time bound, our team was depending on the client for getting certain ground assessments and data to do a competitive audit and recommendation set.

Interestingly, the common refrain by the client personnel was that the competitive situation was shifting fast in terms of relative importance and data points. It was thus difficult to provide accurate ground assessments.

One day over coffee, I got to discuss about the Business implementation with Darius, the Business Development Manager responsible for the project.

“In your view, what is the kind of Leadership needed for successful implementation in our kind of fast changing environment?”  Darius asked.

“And where would you like to see Leadership being exercised in your kind of situation?” My response was a return question.

“Well, I suppose leadership needs to ‘lead’ us from where we currently are to where we are proposing to be”, replied Darius.

I could not agree more. Leadership indeed needs to reside in the gap between one’s current state and the state one aspires for.  But then how does Leadership set the organisation on the right pathway? In today’s increasingly disruptive and discontinuous world, the luxury of a fixated, ‘past experience driven’ journey with a visible future at the other end, is no longer available. If at all, present times require the ability and mindset to get off that beaten path and into the unknown forest area, so to say.

I said as much to Darius.

As if reading my thoughts, Darius asked, “So what might be the leadership mindset needed to eke out a new path through the  forest trees you spoke of?”

“That is a great question”, I acknowledged. “I can think of one. Which I would term as ‘your comfort with ignorance’. You need to be comfortable with the knowledge that you ‘do not know’. Only then will you able to unearth and visualize new possibilities. Without this there can be no growth in a disruptive world.”

Somewhat later, when I sat thinking about our conversation, two other aspects came to mind.

First, a mindset to accept failures. We need to accept failure as an intrinsic part of who we are.  In an uncertain world with no past experience to guide us through the discontinuity of the ‘forest trees’, it is only mistakes and failures which become the building blocks of eventual success.

Secondly, a more controversial but nonetheless critical ability to wear a ‘mask of yet to be internalised behaviours’. We need to fake the needed leadership behaviours, if necessary, before they become an intrinsic part of us.

I would like to term the above as the CAM mindset shift, to use an acronym.

  1. Comfort with ignorance
  2. Acceptance of failure
  3. Mask yet-to-be internalised behaviours
  • So how might you grow your leadership in today’s disruptive worl
  • How might you foster such growth in your team

In Learning……. Shakti Ghosal

Are you winning in today’s disruptive world?


  • Do you remain dissatisfied and uncertain about how to face emerging situations and challenges in today’s fast-changing world?
  • Do you frequently get the sense that however hard you or your team are trying, there seems to be always someone ahead of you and winning?
  • As you resolve a problem or a challenge, do you get confronted by fresh ones?
  • Are you frequently unable to prioritize which problem to tackle first?
  • However much you strive, are you unable to see the big picture and align yourself and your team with that?

….. And on a more personal level:

  • Do you want to get that job or assignment that you have been trying?
  • Do you want to get that promotion and recognition you have been aspiring for?

If you have been plagued by one or more of the above questions, the Winning in a Disruptive World program might just be what you need to improve your winnability quotient in today’s world.

 The fact is that our present world is constantly getting disrupted. By new technologies, new competitors, or other factors that can disrupt traditional business models. The disruptive world with its VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) characteristics allows us to reside in a significantly narrow band in the present with a hazy and uncertain future in front and the inability to take recourse of our past experience.

Conceived and developed based on workshops and programs conducted for leading organisations and Business Schools, the course showcases the major types of disruptions that are shaping the world. You, as the participant, would gain an insight into what leads to us getting disrupted. You would review the process followed by a probability-based mindset and the need to shift to a possibility-based mindset to be able to better handle disruptions. You would practice and gain proficiency in the five action steps for the needed shift by conducting in-depth Inquiry through a structured process.

  • Creation of a context by using hard trends in three areas.
  • Creation of the three lists.
  • ‘Plug into the future’.
  • Relational assimilation through a triad of competencies.
  • Creation of a Resilience Plan.

Get a sense of what it is all about.

I look forward to seeing you in the program!

Shakti Ghosal

Winning in a Disruptive World


Sometime back, at a ‘Learning & Development’ elective course I was running at Indian Institute of Management Kashipur, one of the participants came to me for a discussion.

“ Sir, you have been emphasizing again and again about the need to have a lifelong Learning mindset. You have also been mentioning about the criticality of the L & D template to remain relevant during unpredictable and disruptive situations in terms of one’s problem solving ability and initiatives. Don’t you think these two aspects are contradictory to each other? “, he said.

This intrigued me. I asked, “How so? Could you clarify some more?”

The participant explained, “In my MBA program, we are learning concepts and tools which allow us to make sense of a business situation and solve problems. They have stood the test of time. But what you have been advocating is to seek completely new way of looking at things to solve problems in uncertain, fast changing environments. So whatever we are learning in our MBA Course would no longer work. To me, that is both scary and disheartening”.

“Well, It is YES and NO”, I replied. “ Your domain knowledge would always continue to play a role. It would be something like a searchlight which will show up a situation in a particular manner, highlighting certain aspects but hiding others.  However, the L & D funnel which you would master in our course should allow you to do a Learning Needs  analysis in terms of desired outcomes within a shifting environment and spot the needed L&D strategy. In other words, the superstructure that you would need to build on top of your domain expertise would be your new learning need tactics”.

***

We remain dis-satisfied and uncertain about how to face emerging situations and challenges. Be it on the professional front or may be in our personal life.

“Winning in a disruptive world” would mean succeeding in a business environment that is constantly changing and being disrupted. By new technologies, new competitors, or other factors that can disrupt traditional business models. So, what does one do to win?

The human mind loves continuity and certainty. These allow us to make sense of what we see as stuff we are familiar with. This is why we, our sense making brains, detest change and disruption. For the latter take us into uncertain and unfamiliar territory. We thus like to lull ourselves into believing we are living in a stable world, a world which we understand. We handle new and unfamiliar aspects by distorting and force fitting them into the mental model we hold of the world.

If you have seen the movie, Matrix. It is like living in a never changing, make believe world as the protagonist Neo was doing even though the real world was totally different with its own equations and challenges.

Neo’s Make Believe World…..

Neo’s real world….

So if we are to draw some lessons from the story of Neo in the matrix, ‘Winning in a disruptive world’ would require a mindset to embrace change and adapt quickly to new circumstances, as well as a focus on innovation, creativity, and agility.

I invite you to dwell on the following questions.

  • What are the questions we need to answer in the exploration ‘making sense’ stage of our Learning & Development cycle?
  • How do we align the outputs of the ‘making sense’ stage with our critical analysis of the emerging situation?
  • How do we carry out a decentering exercise between our domain expertise and the gaps thrown up by our critical analysis?

In Learning……..                                                                                           Shakti Ghosal

The Millennial Leadership Series : Core of Leadership transformation


“The only way to change someone’s mind is to connect with them from the heart.”

– Rasheed Ogunlaru, Life Coach & Speaker

 

How-Well-Do-You-Use-the-Leadership-Skill-of-Empathy

Recently I had the opportunity to be a Master Mentor to a set of alumni mentors of a premier business school as part of its ambitious initiative to offer a Career Support Program for its graduating students.  As the master mentor, my role was really about ensuring the effectiveness of the mentoring process.

The alumni mentors had graduated from the same school few years back and were shaping up as young business leaders in the industry.

In one of my interactions, an alumni mentor mentioned that inspite of his efforts, he sensed a lack of openness and desire to engage from some of the students. I could sense his frustration of seeing his mentoring efforts becoming unproductive.

I asked, “What shows up when you think of your own leading ability?”

“Well, when I am able to influence and get things done”, he answered.

“… and when you see that happening, what behaviours do you display?” I continued.

Reflecting a bit, the mentor replied, “Well I believe I encourage people to take on new initiatives.”

I could sense the disparity between what the mentor believed he was committed to and the outcome that he was achieving. I avoided saying so.

Changing the track somewhat, I then asked, “What do you think gets in the way when you try to support others to take on new challenges?”

The alumni mentor responded almost immediately, “Well I think I need to be more empathetic and less of a stickler to holding people accountable.”

I thanked him for this great insight.

***********

As a Leader, Manager or Supervisor dealing with teams tasked to produce outcomes, we get conditioned to link results to all that is happening outside us. So tracking people, their performance and holding them accountable comes naturally to us. Very seldom do we look inside our own selves to determine whether the way we speak, listen and act could have a bearing on our team member’s performance. This is where the power of empathy steps in.

In the disruptive world that we live in, where past performance has less and less traction for the future, Leaders need to anchor more within, with empathy at the core of growth and transformation.

  • What might you do today to focus on building trust through empathy?
  • How could you be a ‘success enabler’ of people by proactively removing barriers out of their way?
  • How could you be a sounding board for people to come to, so that you could put them in a position to succeed?

In Learning

Shakti Ghosal