Insights in Times of Turmoil

At its inception in Nov 2005, the Creative Leadership Forum presented a philosophy for creative leadership based on these principles.

• Numbers are considered the measure for business success.

• It is not the financial and performance targets that produce the outcomes or value.

• It is the relationships and actions among people, clients, suppliers and their patterns of working and thinking together that produce the outcomes and the value.

• A successful creative leader understands that to nurture the relationships between all stakeholders in order to satisfy customer needs is what produces immediate value and long term viability.

When we presented these principles we generally received grudging acknowledgement spiced with a degree of cynicism around the numbers proposition. Still, the numbers have to work was often the parting comment!!

When measured against the current backdrop in the world financial markets, this philosophy with its four principles not only holds up strongly, it proposes a way forward.

Right now all the major financial media commentators agree on one thing - nobody knows where the world economy is going. It is in the area of paradox, ambiguity and uncertainty and there is no way out!!

The most insightful commentary I have read on the current situation is George Soros' new book with the aptly named title "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets - The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means".

George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. His is famously known for "breaking the Bank of England" on Black Wednesday in 1992.The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become 'open societies,' open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but - more important - tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.

Soros proposition in this new book is succinct and powerful.

He argues peoples understanding is inherently imperfect because they are part of reality and cannot understand the whole. The human brain cannot grasp reality directly but only through the information it derives from it. The mind is then obliged to use various techniques - generalizations, similes, metaphors, habits, rituals and other routines - to make sense of the information. However these techniques distort the underlying information further complicating the reality and the task of understanding it.

Soros posits we have developed two forms of thinking to assist us in this dilemma - cognitive and manipulative thinking.

Cognitive thinking is primarily involved in producing knowledge and manipulative thinking is used to make sense of the knowledge we have produced. In this context manipulative thinking is what we use to justify what we think we know.

If the knowledge we produce is useful, then we are liable to over exploit it and extend it to areas where it no longer applies at which point it becomes a fallacy.

Looking at the post World War 2 economics of Milton Friedman advocating the minimization of the role of government in a free market as a means of creating political and social freedom posited as a science, one starts to comprehend Soros's argument. The more you read of Friedman's theory, the more it appears grossly speculative and over a period of almost 50 years has been built on nothing more than - generalizations, similes, metaphors, habits, rituals and other routines supported by a language, mathematics, that is as mysterious as it is unreliable and unreal in this comparison and context.

So if the so-called science of economics that underpins our whole understanding of the financial markets is false and our knowledge built on imperfection, how and what way can we move forward in this moment of crisis?

Soros's answer is that it is too early to make any recommendations or assumptions. He personally has a lot at stake financially so he is concentrating on trying to find the core of reality in this vortex of uncertainty.

He does however exhort us to continue to search for the misconceptions in our imperfect reality, to develop our ability to converse creatively without manipulation, and to search for ways of governing ourselves better in the hope this will serve to continually improve the human condition.

The Creative Leadership Forum Developing Your Creative Leadership Capabilities programme takes Soros's challenge to heart and explores dynamically how through the development of our creative leadership capacities we can have a better understanding of how to operate within this imperfect world!!

CLICK HERE TO BOOK FOR THIS PROGRAMME

MELBOURNE OCTOBER 15 and SYDNEY OCTOBER 23.

What the delegates say...

….I found the Creative Leadership program challenging, insightful and provocative. The program draws on international leading edge approaches coupled with Ralph Kerle's own skills in working with highly creative leaders across many industries. Ralph has a great ability to develop leadership skills that are often neglected - they include managing team and self creativity, reflecting on issues from many perspectives and building empowered and high performance teams. I think the Creative Leadership Forum will extend many traditional leadership programs.

Head of Strategy and Growth, AMP….

Great course for exploring and challenging traditional ways of thinking and how to better embrace creativity to drive better outcomes...

Vice President Marketing, Australia and New Zealand, Computer Associates