The rats gave the first clue: they staggered onto the streets, emitted a drop of blood from their noses and died in droves. As their bodies piled up, newspapers agitated, and citizens complained – why was the sanitation department not removing them? The rodents were collected and cremated and the citizens returned to their preoccupation with working hard and getting rich.[…]
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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.[…]
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Crisis always shifts people’s attention abruptly to the quality of their leaders. We are seeing this now, as the appalling spread of the COVID-19 virus and the alarming collapse of economicactivity worldwide have people in all quarters looking to leaders for guidance—and often being left far from reassured by what they see.
Why do people give so much more attention to their anointed leaders in such moments?[…]
“People need leadership. Things need management.It is dangerous to get it the other way round.”– Charles HandyPeter Drucker, whose life spanned the twentieth century, labeled that time as the era of organizations and institutions. Ob-serving the dramatic rise of complex large-scale enterprises, he saw them as the new backbone of society and economy. As a consequence, he recognized the growing role of managers as fundamental to making these new legal, economic, social, and ultimately human constructs work[…]
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Leadership as an area of study is still in its early beginnings. Leaders are grappling with the change from the siloed, hierarchical management styles best suited in an industrial era. We now face the challenge of a new shift towards a model where no single individual has formal control. This shift will require business to break down boundaries between organisations. It will force competitors to become collaborators, and create an environment where team members can become more transient and distributed. All whilst seeking a higher purpose. How do you demonstrate leadership in an ecosystem, when it is harder than ever already? This was the subject of the panel at GDPF2020, titled: Ecosystems Leadership. New Scope, […]
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Parallel plenary #4, 21 November 2019: Capitalizing on new technology and connectivity ‘How can we capitalize on new technology and connectivity?’. When the writer read the announcement of the panel chaired by Mehran Gul, he expected the discussions to center on technology and the buzzwords of the day – ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI)’, the ‘internet of everything’ or at the very least ‘Collaboration Platforms’ … Fortunately this was not the case. The paradox of ‘capitalizing on new technology’ is that technology shows every sign of being the wrong focus. The miracle occurs beyond technology, with a clear focus on innovation and people. Panelists Adam Cheyer, Karenann Terrell, Carsten Linz, Claudia Crummenerl and Amit Bajaj provided a broad range of […]
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The cities of the future we imagined in the 1970ies were about flying cars and beautiful skyscrapers. Where are we now? At micromobility with e-scooters? Where did it all begin? If the Renaissance began in Florence, Smart City began in Silicon Valley. While we know San Francisco as an ideal place to test the latest Smart City tech gadgets their City Government took an interesting decision recently: you now have to demonstrate which public value your technology will bring to the city. What value does your tech bring to the city Cecile Maisonneuve, President of the think tank Fabrique de la Cité, kicked off the Session on “Cities as Social Ecologies” at the 11th Global […]
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Friday Nov 22nd 2pm-3pm Zeremoniensaal, Hofburg, Vienna The corporation may be one ecosystem operating within a broader ecosystem. But at its heart remain the people who have to carry out the work that has to be done. This session of the Forum took time to consider the role of people and how they contribute to the wider ecosystem of business. In the chair was Andrew Hill of the Financial Times, and he was joined by Michele Zanini, managing director of Gary Hamel’s Management Lab; Gianpiero Petriglieri, associate professor of organisational behaviour at Insead; Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, author and CEO of the 20-first consultancy; and Bart Weetjens, a social entrepreneur and a Zen priest. Hill opened by recalling the words […]
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