Leadership in Chaos: 16th edition.
Leaders Digest

Leadership in Chaos: 16th edition.

By 16th July 2024 November 19th, 2024 No Comments

Leadership in Chaos: 16th edition.

exploit vs explore, meetings, vampire problems.

“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.”

George Bernard Shaw

Nikola Gocic

Team: exploit vs explore.

Most jobs are new jobs. 60% of today’s jobs didn’t exist in 1940, and the World Economic Forum estimates that 65% of children entering school will work in jobs that don’t exist today. We’re always preparing for an uncertain future that doesn’t yet exist. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report last year predicted that 44% of workers’ core skills will be disrupted, and 60% will require training before 2027, with analytical and creative thinking and AI and big data most in-demand. AI is supercharging this change. The challenge is keeping up and balancing the exploitation of existing skills and resources with the exploration of new ones.

A thought for leaders: Are you prepared for the agile era? Are you balancing exploitation with the right amount of exploration? Are you embracing new roles, new titles and new jobs? As organisational psychologist Adam Grant wrote “In a stable world, success depended on building expertise. In a changing world, it hinges on evolving expertise. Potential is no longer defined by ability. It’s a function of agility”.

Nikola Gocic

Communication: meetings.

Meetings, meetings, everywhere, and not a drop to think. According to research in Bruce Daisley’s recent Presence Deck, hybrid workers spend, on average, 50% of their time in meetings. According to Microsoft meeting time has doubled since 2019. Separately, research from Microsoft and LinkedIn found that nearly 50% of people are thinking of leaving their jobs this year. While HBR found that 50% of managers feel burned out. You don’t need to be a scientist to join the dots. More meetings means less attention. Less attention means less meaningful meetings. Which means more meetings. Which creates frustration and an untenable burnout loop.

A thought for leaders: Are you addressing the meetings crisis? Are you designing a culture where meetings are consistently effective? Amazon’s famous crisp memo, messy meeting approach is one approach. They believe in intention, preparation and, within a meeting, exploration. A fact based memo, prepared in advance, read at the start of the meeting, is preferred to powerpoint. Effective meetings, designed with intention, are great. Does your culture have them?

Nikola Gocic

Change: vampire problems.

Imagine you can become a vampire. You’d have incredible vampire powers. But there’s a catch. It’s an irreversible decision. You’ll give up being human. Plus, you won’t know what it’s like to be a vampire until you become one. Asking vampires is just their experience, not yours. Their preferences are now vampire. So there’s no way to compare your life now to that of a vampire. It’s a leap into the unknown. That can’t be undone. This is the vampire problem, a philosophical concept that reflects lots of life’s major decisions. With no clear-cut solutions, they require courage, introspection, and a willingness to embrace the unknown.

A thought for leaders: Marcus Aurelius said, “Everything is borne from change”. These big decisions that challenge us to leap into the unknown define us. They define how we learn and how we grow. But they require trust. We have to recognise that we don’t know how things will be. We have to trust ourselves and back ourselves. Do you? And are you brave enough to seek out and embrace vampire problems?

Nikola Gocic

Podcast: EP 37: How Now From Here – Part 3

This month, we share EP 37: How Now From Here – Part 3, which includes a formula for hosting efficient meetings.

You can listen to the full episode here, enjoy!

You can follow Flow Group on Linkedin here.

P.S. This month’s featured artist is collage artist Nikola Gocic. An architect by profession and a film reviewer, collage artist and film festival curator by passion. He has frequently and successfully collaborated on film-related articles with Rouzbeh Rashidi – the Iranian-Irish filmmaker and founder of the Dublin-based company Experimental Film Society. In his words he is “striving for the purity of the ineffable or rather, for the transcendent, I am guided by irrational forces and intuition, myths, dreams and mystery, in order to build an endless labyrinth in which even I may get lost.”