The Future Will Be Temporary; Leadership Too
by Bill Fischer

They call him “the Boss,” and, not so long ago, rock and roll legend Bruce Springsteen contemplated his career and reminisced that:
“We have the only job in the world where the people you went to high school [with] … you’re still with those people…..You live your life with them. You see them grow up. ….. You see them get older. You see their hair go gray. And you’re in the room when they die, you know?”[1][…]

Continue reading

Evolving Ecosystem Guidance
by Bill Fischer

“Water! Build your organizations so that they move like water.”
This advice from Haier’s Chairman Emeritus, Zhang Ruimin, began a search for useful guidance for treating ecosystem engagement as a strategic asset for the future. Ecosystems are an ageless phenomenon, newly rediscovered for commercial purposes, by James F. Moore, in 1993. Once multi-geographic trade began, the ancient world was held together by interwoven threads of economic activity. As these linkages became more reliable, ecosystems bloomed.[…]

Continue reading

Led by data, algorithms and AI? by Bill Fischer

Imagine a world where it is acknowledged that unknown unknowns are the primary triggers of economic and social change; where literally everything is recognized to be an “accident” (in the statistical sense of having a finite probability of occurring); where humans and machines coexist on teams where work has a high-knowledge content, immersed in unprecedented volumes of data; and where organizational and contextual complexity can only become more complex[…]

Continue reading

Leadership in a Post-Covid World: Where Learning Beats Knowing
by Bill Fischer

After a hundred years, we are once again fighting a global viral war that is seemingly everywhere and ever voracious. As with the Spanish Flu pandemic, once again we’ve been found wanting in our response, and deficient in our leadership. What’s worked, social distancing and hand-washing, were relatively simple techniques born decades ago.[…]

Continue reading