Monday 21 September 2015

The Leadership Illusion

Closing keynote of is from today from Magnus Lindkvist, a trend spotter and futurologist according to our programme. He's talking about The Leadership Illusion.

He's from Sweden, and started with an interesting fact that they have the most heavy metal bands per head than anywhere else

 

The rest of the talk was great, all about whether we should embrace change, or just do the same thing. Very difficult to make any notes on, but extremely enjoyable. The following is just a set of random notes, which probably won't mean anything much to anyone else, but will serve as a reminder to me about what he said :-)

We don't notice small, slow changes. In 2015 there a lot of people who think they are well informed, but it's the wrong information. He calls it Infobesity. Some wonderful examples.

There's also not a lot new in the world. Stories get recycled.

When we think of change, easy to think only about gadgets and technology. But the soft issues are as important as the gadgets. We have a tendency to refer to it as the future, a place that is waiting for us. But we should think of it as an activity. What does it mean to future? Can we get better at futuring? We all have choice about what we do. Changing or saming? Most of us same.

In business we use R and D to change and to innovate. RIP off and Duplicate. We start off with diversity, then everything converges to the same. I love this slide.

 

What do people say when we say we want to change something? That will never work. Or that should be illegal. Like launching an app based cab system in Belgium.

Or telling doctors to wash their hands 150 years ago. Saming or changing? Nancy Sinatra had it right in Those Boots are Made for Walking....

In the 1800s an ordinary person had to work 6 hours to earn 1 hour of reading light. Now it is half a second.

The future is not a straight line that we extrapolate from. The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones. It's a series of mountains that we climb up and then down, then up a different one. Have to be open to the fact that we are climbing up the wrong mountain

Leaders vs managers. Richard Branson modelled himself on a lion?A leader?

Most of us work for people who look like this. The reason the office was funny is there's David Brent in all of us.

 

What do we need to change?

Once it's a trend it's too late. Look for secrets. There's nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. Be open minded to all individuals. Look at all sides.

Experiement. If you can explain what you do for a living, your job is set to be automated. There has to be experimentation in all jobs. The reason most of us fail is we do the same thing for too long. The danger lies when we are saming and the world is changing.

Think slowly and be patient. See things over time. Patience is a necessity. The most idiotic thing you can ever say is we've tried that before. Can recycle old ideas.

 

Leadership illusion - we yearn for Richard Branson when we're all David Brent

 

If you can't think of who the idiot is in your company, it's probably you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 comment:

Magnus Lindkvist said...

Thank you for kind words and great coverage!