Gladwell on Judgment

William Gladwell, author of the Tipping Point and Blink commenced the keynote sessions with a presentation that was entitled "What goes into judgment?"

He opened with a long anecdote drawn from the introduction of his book, Blink, about the Getty Museums purchase for $10 million of a fake 6th Century Greek antiquity – a kourus, a marble sculpture of a nude male youth. The Getty hired experts from diverse fields such as archeology, geology as well as museum antiquity curators who authenticated the work and then made the purchase. Proud of their new acquisition, the Getty executive director invited a series of antiquity experts to private viewings before the piece went on display. To his horror, the first visitor expressed doubt about its authenticity. How could this be after 14 months of rigorous academic research and verification by world authorities in a wide diversity of fields?

Gladwell's theme is that in a world where the importance of decision making is built on the rational and analytical, there is a profound difference between a rational academic judgment and an intuitive one.

Gladwell believes we have ignored the importance of the intuitive judgment in the contemporary world that is driven by the need for certainty and quantifiable outcomes Gladwell argues that there can be no certainty for the most important decisions we make regardless of how well we research and analyze them. In the end with all the empirical evidence one has, judgment is still driven by intuition and emotion.

What Gladwell didn’t cover was how intuition and emotion might be incorporated into every day organizational thinking and decision making. How might this concept for example be taught as part of executive education programmes?

For those interested Gladwell runs an excellent blog

Abundance, Automation and Asia

Daniel Pink’s highly entertaining presentation around abundance, automation and Asia bought to life the themes in his book A Whole New Mind – Why Right Brainers Will Rule The Future.

In a world liberated by prosperity, we now live in what Pink calls a significance economy. A significance economy in the Western world is one that offers through this abundance, “the democratizing of self realization” - best summed up by the 70’s pop lyrics “be what you want to be and do what you want to do”. Creativity is the highest prized asset of this economy and every creation to be successful needs to have a combination of utility and significance. He cited the great Sid Caesar, New York Jewish comedian who said “The guy who invented the wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three! He was a genius!”

The market in this economy of significance is “you” and the way for any organization to reach “you” is through identifying with “your aesthetic self”.

Pink has extensively researched and written in part two of his book on what he describes as the six aesthetic senses that skilled workers in the significance economy will need to develop to be come leaders - design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning. Unfortunately time did not allow Pink to elaborate on these vitally important skill sets and how they could be acquired. If you want to learn more, his book contains an excellent bibliography after each chapter.

Comments made to me by delegates indicated a high level of acceptance of Pink’s world view. Their concerns were how to make these senses meaningful and purposeful in an organizational context.

The Creative Leadership Forum is currently designing a series of executive master classes around the six senses processes and their application in the work place and will be announcing times and venues for these events shortly.

Watch this space!!!

The Five Literacies of Leadership

Australian–born globe trotter, Richard Hames who described himself as futurist, corporate philosopher, company director and author was the big surprise for me.

A bespectacled gentleman of middle-age with graying complexion, Richard began his oration on leadership by announcing he had recently moved to Thailand for love. There were scattered mumbles of mirth and sighs of disbelief as he instantly grabbed his audiences’ attention for better or worse – generally worse, I suspect for those other than middle-aged bespectacled gentleman!!!

He very quickly recovered to present an outstanding presentation on the need for a new epistemology for leadership for the 21^st Century. A leadership that facilitates wisdom in others; that is collaborative; leadership that is peopled by personality and character traits that are collaborative whilst being individualistic; that recognizes the value of networked intelligence – adherents to the philosophy of the wisdom of crowds - Hames sees no future for individual genii.

In Hames new epistemology, leadership means divorcing oneself from what has been to being able to get into the future 5, 10, 15 years out; through whatever tools and mechanisms we can find to do that. He asks us to think about how our imagination works in this context? Hames believes leaders of the future will need to be able to continuously navigate by asking the right questions, changing plans in an instant, acting on instinct whilst analyzing, synthesizing data and information and through this process turn leadership into a learning metabolism. In this new epistemology, leadership requires a transformational narrative in which dialogues are connected effectively as leaders begin to understand the consequences of how the systems they and we design emerge and evolve.

Read more about Hames and his fascinating and ground-breaking work on leadership.

A Final Word of Praise

Congratulations must go to Andrew Greatrex and the Global Leaders Network team who entrepreneured and produced this inaugural NPOD event.

In its first iteration, NPOD showcased the future of executive education in practice by providing an environment and a dialogue, devoid of the constraints of the mediocrity of academia that is becoming increasingly irrelevant in a rapidly changing world, with corporate practitioners and philosophers who stood unprotected in front of their peers and community communicating thought provoking, insightful and stimulating ideas and theories about the future of people and organizations.

The measure of the success and influence of a great event or cultural festival is often not fully appreciated and understood by its community or audience until months or even years after the event. This event will have a profound effect on management and leadership in Australia.

Andrew, bring on the next NPOD - quickly!!!