Well, hello, Jonathan Kirschner here.
I'm the founder and CEO of Air Consulting, and this is a
podcast about leadership. And I'm here with Joy Nissan and
Ian Wilcox. And we can't wait to talk today
about a topic that is very dear to all of us, and that is, let's
take a guess. What's the common denominator
between Ian Joy and Jonathan? A little bit of psychology, a
little bit of business psychology, but but even deeper
at the core, psychology. Psychology, right.
I've been talking a lot with with clients, with leaders and
executives about this difference between where we are right now
and where we were when it comes to this topic of change.
And you know, I'd be very curious to get your perspective
on this given that you've been in this industry and field for
some time. But it feels like we've gone
from a place where change happened in an episodic way,
right? Where we're like, let's do a
change or something has changed in the external environment and
we have to adapt and then essentially find our footing and
then we achieve a new normalcy. And it seems that like the
frequency of which those changes were occurring and maybe the
magnitude have increased maybe over the past 20-30 years, maybe
as a function of innovation, industry, globalization, all
these dynamics, but something seems to have occurred.
It's not been this discontinuous moment.
There's certainly a continuum, but something does seem to be
qualitatively different between that phase of change and where
we are now, where it seems like change is just not just
constant, but fluid. And so given that context that
we're in, I want to really dig into how do we not just survive
and stay afloat, but how do we thrive as humans, as leaders in
this context? And so today we have Joy, of
course, my sidekick, Joy, who's our head of leadership solutions
at Air Consulting and a clinical and organizational psychologist,
a biofeedback expert. And and then Ian, who has an
incredible career in management consulting, trained at Columbia
in the depths of psychology from all the wonderful, you know,
science of psychology at Columbia, worked at the Hay
Group and does many things, including investing in private
equity. And we have the privilege of
having Ian on our Advisory Board there consulting.
So it's just so wonderful to have you both here and given
that context, you know, what are some of the first things that
come to mind for you? So maybe Ian, we'll, we'll just
start, start with you, since you know, you, you you've been
around for, you know, a a time when change was really
happening, you know, was very intentional.
Yeah. You know, in listening to I
remember this going back a ways now we used to talk about
programs that were entitled managing change.
So that gives you a sense of perspective.
Now, I don't think it's about managing change, as you said,
Jonathan, it's, it's part of our being right.
And I think about clients where there was a, a, this is back in
the days when there were binders and there was hard copyright.
And we would at Hey Group and other places that I worked, we
would, we would talk about change as a, something that was
almost a, an event and we needed to come in and train you or
prepare in some way prepare you for it.
And then status quo would arrive.
Well, just think, think about that.
Think about that from what that was to what it is now, right?
We we would come in and apply those good behavioral science
principles of mindset, mindset shift, the skills resistance,
all the various models that we know around change resistance to
change, right? I can remember years and years
ago, there was Gary Bridges and there were the curves and joy.
You probably know what I'm getting out the talk about where
we are and we talked about change curves and we talk about
kind of add in a model like a little Elizabeth Kubler Ross
model of grief in. And then we'd work through the
psychological and the kind of the cognitive steps.
And then we'd kind of put it in a box and we'd say, OK, done.
Now let's think about that for a second.
Think about the fact that one of my favorite words is
compartmentalization. We'd compartmentalize that and
we'd leave our clients with that sense of it's OK now, right?
Like that was that that's my reflection is we'd kind of pat
them on the back and say, yeah, you might do another M&A or
whatnot. But you know, this world as we
know it, I mean some people call it VUCA.
Whatever you whatever terminology or or acronym you
want to apply to it. We there was a period where I
think we thought that status quo, there was something about
returning to AI guess the, the word might be homeostatus to to
apply to you Joy and I I don't think that's clearly not true
anymore, right? What what?
What's your feelings? Yeah.
I mean, there's, there's so much good meat in what you just
shared, Ian. And I think what's coming up for
me is just this, the sense of control and stability is
something that humans have always craved.
And we yearn for that. And we don't feel good when we
feel like we're not in control. We don't know what's coming
next. We don't have a systematic way
of understanding our world, our environment, what's coming next.
And, you know, I think you're both touching on this, this
really important notion that in the past, change was an event.
And we, we, we are wired to respond appropriately to
activation. That's not, that's not
inherently bad. We, we can do that.
We know what to do. But we need the recovery, we
need that rest. We can't just stay in this
constant state of activation for prolonged periods of time.
So in this world we have now where it feels like change,
change, change, and we don't know what we're changing
towards. So it's change without a
destination. And I think that sort of
uncertainty and almost like dissonance that people are left
with is what a lot of leaders we talk to are experiencing, of
just how can I even plan for the future when the future feels
unknown And it feels like I make a plan and three months down the
road, the world is a completely different place and I have to
throw my plan out the window. So.
So yeah, I'd love to hear. The what resonates for me in
that is fatigue. Yep, fatigue.
Wait, it's exhausting. It's it's exactly Jonathan.
There's an exhaustion mentally and emotionally that I think
clients are going through leaders are clearly we we know
the statistics that are out there about the the 10 year
average, 10 year and ACEO or even AC sweep role these days,
right. And and that fatigue I, I
remember some a client saying to me, when does this end?
Wow, depending on what it doesn't end.
It's more about the mindset and the conditioning to think about
well. Ian in the traditional paradigm,
it would have an end. A change would have a beginning
at beginning an announcement. Exactly.
A communicating of why right. A managing of the resistance and
a reinforcement phase. And so it's there's a beginning,
there's a middle, there's an end.
And then a period of homeostasis.
We used to hand out to clients that Harvard Business Review
article by John Cotter, classic, right?
Managing a change. And I, I go back to that now and
then. I thought, this is this that
article, great article, but it exemplifies exactly that idea
that it was an event. And here's an article and here's
here's how we communicate it beginning, midpoint and end
Cotter's article. And really to your point,
Jonathan underscored that mindset.
Something's changed though. We're living continuous that
continuously in the Cotter articles.
That's what the that's that's what our clients are telling us
right now. So there's fluid change.
And then Joy, you mentioned something that was really
intriguing to me is that it's changed, but without a direction
per SE, right? So, so I think there's sort of
like 2 variables. It's, it's the fluidity in which
we're changing. So there's not like a beginning,
middle and end. And then there's just like a
degree of uncertainty when you don't know what you're changing
towards because it's happening so, so frequently.
And yet the brain is, it kind of defies how we're wired in in
some ways, right? The brain as as we were chatting
about earlier, is like kind of designed to achieve a locus of
control. Like we need to feel a sense of
control and predictability in our lives.
And that that allows us to, you know, kind of kind of stay above
it and and to to self manage, feel safe.
Yeah. Feel safe.
Exactly. Feel safe and and and to thrive.
So like, what do we do, given that the conditions for how
we're essentially designed are are are suboptimal, What are
some things we we need to be thinking about?
Let's start with just humans and then we'll move to leadership.
But just as as humans, what do we need to be thinking and
doing? What kind of mindsets do we need
to maybe shift towards? What kind of behaviors do we
need to be adopting? Because if we use these change
models or some of these older paradigms to try to live in the
now, I think we're going to be somewhat limited.
Yeah, and I would argue there's a false distinction between what
it means to be a human and what it means to be a leader.
Yeah, that's a good point. I would agree.
I would agree with you, Joey, absolutely.
Yeah. One in the same.
Yeah, yeah, I think to especially nowadays to be a, to
be a good leader, you have to really know what, what your
humanity requires of you and what's needed, what's needed to
succeed. And if you're not attuned to
yourself and your personal needs and you're not cultivating that
sense of resilience and attunement with your, your
mindset, your fatigue, like when are you as a leader or as a
person pushing yourself past the point of effectiveness to be
able to then harness what the organization needs.
If you don't have individual resilience, you're not going to
have organizational resilience. So I think like we have to go
back to our humanity and anchor to some of those core traits
that we all need for for survival in general to to then
be able to translate that to organizational survival.
Yeah, the words that come to my mind, equanimity, one of my
favorite words, calm, right. And what that invokes for me
here evokes rather is that the the both the biological sense,
like how are we listening to our bodies?
So that's a humanity and and an attribute that I think good
leaders have is they know back to compartmentalization.
Good leaders know and understand that this may this may be the
status quo and probably is. And therefore what is required
of me both as a human and as a leader to demonstrate that
sense, as you put it, of resilience.
And that resilience may well be how I show up, how I how I
compartmentalize. I remember my secretary giving
me a piece of feedback early, early on in my career.
And she said to me, I'm sitting in my office not far from here.
And I was literally kind of having that moment when I was
frustrated and pulling my hair out.
And she, she, and it's, it's really interesting that the
people who give you some of the most thoughtful feedback as
leaders are those that you wouldn't expect.
And Rose came into my office, it was about 3:30 in the afternoon.
I'll never forget. And she said, how do you think
it looks when people are walking by your office and seeing you
literally pull at your hair? And I, I took that as probably
one of the greatest coaching moments when I was stepping into
a, my first leadership role in a, in a large consultancy.
And it taught me something that I needed to hear about
compartmentalization and about the fact that what may be going
on for me, how does that translate out there?
Right, right. What does that look like?
And it said, I need to do some work, my own work in managing it
body wise, right? Literally not pulling my hair,
you know, not looking like I'm pulling my arrow, but I there,
there was something in that that that I pulled that I stepped
back and said biofeedback, right?
Which what was what is it that I need to do so that I as a leader
show up in a way that embodies that sense of equanimity, right?
So that's a whole other skill set there.
It was not an intellectual skill set that I was prepared for.
It was a different skill set that I needed to acquire to get
that team that I was leading and and the task in front of me to
orchestrate that sense of this is the new, the new, the new way
to operate. Right.
Yeah, that's so powerful too. And I think in biofeedback we
talk a lot about regulation and Co regulation.
So as a leader you are setting the tone in a lot of ways for
the people you lead, the environment at the office, the
people that you work with. If you're distressed, that makes
the system distressed. So if you're not able to bounce
back and recover and be attuned with your needs and
physiologically calm yourself, that's going to translate to the
people around you and lead to stress in the system.
So it all starts from the individual because that has that
multiplier effect, which is why I think we're all drawn to this
work is because of that cascade effect, that working with a
leader and helping them become more attuned with what they need
to succeed and what that does to the organizational system
around. Them.
It sounds a lot like this concept of emotional contagion,
yes? Right, right that.
We learned in the social psychology.
Exactly but. You know, it's a really amazing
point. You may made earlier joy about
that, that in some ways, like the organization is simply just
a reflection of the state of the individuals.
And so if everybody is like just burnt out and stressed out, you
know, then the collective whole the organization itself is, even
though it might have a pretty logo and great website, you
know, it, it, it, it's a burnt out right organization.
And that organization is probably at risk of of not
fulfilling its mission. And, and we know what that does
physiologically, to leave from a place of stress or threat
response, you will be shut down cognitively and emotionally from
your team. You're not going to be able to
access that creative critical thinking part of your brain as
easily. You're going to be thinking
short term instead of long term. All of these things are
antithetical to what we need to lead in uncertainty and thrive
in the future. Well.
It certainly compromises, you know, the all the things that
happen in this. Prefrontal right.
Cortex but yeah and you were talking we were talking earlier
about cortisol and and just prolonged.
Impact. Yeah, doses of cortisol and what
that can do to just your physical health, I mean it.
Right. I mean, being in we're basically
talking about the fight flight response, aren't we, right.
And and I think it continuous exposure to that cortisol
sitting in the top of the kidneys and into the body.
We know hypertension, type 2 diabetes and we're talking about
metabolic syndrome, right. And then we're talking about
over a prolonged period of time that what do we know about that?
That shows some degradation in our autoimmune systems and
autoimmune diseases are everything from all the way,
unfortunately all the way to cancer.
And I think I think we have to step back and and truly at this
juncture that we're in listen to our bodies as leaders and as
humans far more than we we may have done.
What do we put into our body. This gets back to how much
coffee do I drink, right? It's, it's all of those things
that are, I like the word that you said, Jonathan, that
contagion effect, right? And leaders, I think have to
understand in, in the language they're using, what their body
language, their verbal language, how they, how they show up, all
of that has that impact on the kind of culture they're
creating, right? And, and so what's different
about leading in this environment, as I see it, is
the, the task is far less intellectual, though it, it,
there's important work to do around strategy and choices and
whatnot. I could argue that it's going to
be interesting with the amount of, of work that AI can do for
us, right? If you can think about where I'm
going and from AI can construct my competitive strategy for, for
us and we can play with engineering prompts.
But what AI can't do is what we're talking about.
We can't do that human piece. Yeah, right.
Not yet at. Least not yet.
At least exactly. Yeah, I like to say to the
leaders I work with you, you want to be leading from a place
of intention, not tension. And, and I think when you're
operating from a place of stress or going so quickly that you're
not slowing down to speed up, as Jonathan likes to say, you run
the risk of just making decisions without thinking
through the consequences or really thinking through all
aspects of how you're showing up as a leader.
Well, this is a podcast about leadership.
It is That's just that's I'm a leader, right?
Let's let's take a leader, the average leader right now.
Travelling, burning the candle on both ends, not much sleep and
Slack messages, E-mail. E-mail.
WhatsApp SMS. Yeah, your your. Kid who's using your phone, his
TikTok notifications are coming, coming through and, and you've
got a whole team and, and, and they look concerned and, and
they're not getting the communication they need because
you're fragmented and fried. And what, what do we recommend
for this hypothetical leader? Like where's, where do we start?
How does this person get a grip 'cause I think that I mean, we
say that that's an accurate depiction of, say, your average
leader right now. And the, the place that I start
in any work I do with senior executives, I ask the question
draw for me urgent and important.
So the things that you talked about of those tools from
WhatsApp to Zoom to whatnot, they're tools, but are they
managing you or you managing them?
Right, right. And So what I said to an
executive and an executive said to me and gave a lot back to me
recently. He said, you know, Ian, just I,
what I've learned is to step back from all those, all those
toys and distractions and just focus like laser sharp.
Like he said, I don't use Slack anymore.
I don't use, I, I don't use any of these things.
I focus just on the things that are the most critical.
And this is coming from an executive who is right now
looking at trading fifty 6070% below in market cap, you know,
trading below cash, right? And it's just really focused on
the prize, the prize of, of what the organization and its purpose
is. I'm not distracted by that.
And but that skill set that I'm describing is one that is not I
think is pervasive in in in it's hard to really.
Develop in others because we do, we do get distracted.
We do get just focused on things that I think fundamentally take
us away from the task. So I asked three things, what's
urgent, what's important, and right now what is the task?
What is the task? And you'd be surprised when
people step back how they're able to see is, is this task
really about responding to what's happened to Zoom?
And I think, I think helping clients segment those things is
quite informative. That's been my.
Experience so like prioritization.
It's a prioritization exercise, yes.
And also kind of stepping back and saying, do you really
believe you need to touch all those things, right?
Sounds like you're really getting at the concept of like
mindfulness to like being intentional about where you're
spending your time. What's actually a priority.
I think we've been almost conditioned to be hyper
responsive. If somebody pings us or slacks
us or emails us, we feel compelled to respond right away,
and that pulls us from that deeper, focused work.
And if we don't have clear boundaries around?
Focus time. It's easy to get pulled by all
these other devices and mechanisms.
And part of the equanimity that I'm seeing in in folks that are
developing the skill set is they're OK with letting some
things fall by the wayside. They're OK with the feedback
that maybe from whomever you didn't respond in 24 hours and
then they they're able to address why, but they're
recognizing some things will fall through the cracks.
And I am comfortable with the anger or frustration response
that will accompany that. That's that's a mature response.
It's not it. Rather than getting angry about
the fact that I need to respond, there's that sense of let me
just step back and be purposeful and you don't like the word you
used intentional around that. So I've got prioritization.
We didn't call it something, but I think we're all in agreement
that we need to regulate, right? There's something about our
psychobiology that, you know, it just can't be 80% cortisol, 20%
like serotonin and other stuff. We need to bring balance and
regulation to our biology. And then Joey mentioned
mindfulness, which, you know, could also be thought of as as
a, as a heightened awareness of of oneself so that you can make
decisions like you just charity. And like I can say, you know
what, that is annoying, but I accept.
It right, right. And I'm at peace with it, right?
Exactly. Instead of instead of
immediately reacting and treating this mouse the same way
that you would treat a lion in front of you, which is which can
happen. That distortion effect happens
when you're living in your amygdala, at the center of our
brain. That is all responsible for
emotion activation. Fight.
Flight. Yeah.
And mindfulness, the way I describe it to clients is really
the commitment to being present. So it's what do I need to focus
on, back to your point, Ian, of what's the task at hand, What am
I trying to accomplish? What's urgent, what's important?
What am I being called to do? And how can I show up as the
best version of myself as a leader in this moment and not
get pulled into the side pings on a message or something else
that's maybe calling to you that isn't the task at hand.
So it's how can you actually stay present?
Because we have so many competing priorities and
competing distractions that will come our way if we're not
focused right. Exactly.
I love this. I mean, to me, a lot of this, if
not all of it falls under this bucket.
The irony that we, I'm seeing us do this in real time, like put
things in buckets. Us humans like we love our.
We need car. Stations.
Right, we need categories. Otherwise, it's chaos.
It's. How it works?
Exactly. We need to have cognitive, I
mean we need some way to reduce the cognitive load.
I mean, a lot of what we've been talking about and we, we've seen
the research on this, the cognitive load.
It's the, the cognitive load. So, so I'm putting all that
cognitive load in a bucket called self management, right,
right, right. And we know about leadership
that that that is a major part of leading because if if you
don't have the energy reservoirs in place for yourself, how are
you possibly going to lead others, both by actually leading
others and being an example, which is part of leadership as
we talked about initially. But there's two other buckets in
this, in this art and science of leadership.
The second being leading others and the third being leading the
organization. And I'm curious.
So we, we've talked about, you know, really being mindful and
present. We've talked about physiological
regulation and how we can use the gift of our brain to
prioritize as being essential areas for us to be focused on as
leaders right now when it comes to leading others.
How do we lead others right now effectively?
You know, when everybody is experiencing some of these
vulnerabilities that we've described, I.
Think a lot of it is naming naming what's going on for folks
like creating the language right?
Not. Pretending things happening.
Right. And creating the language for
people to process and understand what's happening.
I think, I think a lot of times that rumination or anxiety
comes, comes into play when we don't know how to articulate
what's going on and it's just this feeling of heaviness that
we're sitting with. So.
Yeah, I, I, I just want to add to that naming.
Naming allows us not only to put into category into it.
Implied in that is is empathy, I think, I think it, but by naming
it, it validates. And then I think effective
leaders do more do something in addition to naming, which is the
way in which they name somehow touches what the psychological
experience. Is it alienation?
Is it overwhelmed? What is that?
And by the virtue of the naming, I'm not naming what I am
experiencing as a leader, but I'm showing the otherness.
And then in that naming, I understand the shared experience
of my team Slash direct direct reports.
And that serves as a container using a right psychological
concept. Go with me.
It's a container, right, Right. You're laughing right 'cause
it's there. It's, it is kind of container
exactly. But you know where I'm going.
Self Psychologist. Right, right.
Politician, exactly. But it's it's a container that
allows the space to be created. But I'm doing that and by
naming. So, yeah, it is leader as there,
it is leader as therapist sort of, but that's an OK thing
because then that touches what what you're doing for me in that
moment as a leader is that you've got my attention.
I feel that I am heard heard in a in a in a very deep and
profound way. So leader needs to be able to
create the space, right? Or or or like the container, but
then has to be able to name things what you.
What comes up for me is like communication, right?
I mean, communication's always been important, is important,
always will be important. There's nothing new under the
sun. And yet, and yet, and we see
this in our own data at Air, we see that, you know, when
individuals are getting coached, they create a development plan
and we're able to see the aggregate data of those
development plans. And communication, out of the 45
skills we track, is, is, is always trending in the top
three. And right now it's, it's, I
think it's #1 or #2 right now. Yeah, here's the irony.
You just mentioned these various tools, Jonathan.
They are supposedly communication tools.
WhatsApp. Zoom Teams e-mail inundation
tools. Exactly.
Yeah. But then then I wonder what is
when, when we get that feedback about communication, I think it
comes back to what you said, Joy.
It's the kind in nature of communication that makes the
difference 'cause all this other noise that's out there from
Slack on down, I think what we're hearing in engagement
surveys and other is like, stop it.
It's. Just adding to.
Cognitive overload You're. Exactly.
You're adding to cognitive overload and it's not
ironically, if you, if you do a, have AI do a content analysis on
the value add of those channels. And I would argue marginal,
right? Because what, what is it that I
really want in terms of communication?
I want connected connectedness with you as my manager, right?
I want and clarity, right? Exactly.
Well, so I've got creating the space right, acknowledging, you
know, when times are hard, rather than just trying to guys
heads down, just chug forward, chug forward.
Come on trudge through this and and communication, the the the
empathic aspects of communication, the the
connectivity that communication can create and the clarity that
it can engender being really important areas, I would argue.
We'd all argue that. These have always been
important, but I think especially right now in a time
where we're in fluid change, this is this is particularly.
Important you add in the all of the evolution, the evolution in
front of us of AI coupled with everything else that's going on,
right? We think about where we started,
which is something that people long for, which is what it was
something something very certain concrete.
We as leaders need to acknowledge this is we're now on
a journey that of continuous evolution and change that even
that word change, I don't know, maybe there's a different,
there's a different word that we need to come on.
It's uncertainty, right? And we're, we're talking about
ways that we engage, not even I would say communicate, but
connect. I think, I think implied in what
we're talking about is a way of connecting because all those
other communication tools are essentially sharing of
information. Right, right.
And it's very ironic that in this age of ultra hyper
connectedness, we're not people. There's a loneliness epidemic,
people feel disconnected, There's a breakdown in
community, a breakdown in societal structure, and people
don't know where to turn and what to anchor to.
And I think that's where it leads.
Leadership really comes into play of how do we make people
feel like they're part of something bigger than
themselves, that they're part of something that matters, that
their life has purpose and is value driven.
And there's less spaces to find that and it becomes more and
more I guess on the leader to create.
That sense of purpose, yeah. Let me ask yourself guys, how
many quote UN quote friends do you have on Facebook?
Too many, and then how many do you actually know or talk?
To and are they friends? Yeah, are they are friends?
I think, I think people you're connected to, right?
And I think that speaks to what you've said in terms of what
we've got all these tools, we've got all this technology, we've
got these, we've got 3-4 thousand friends or people we
connect to. Are we really connected to them?
Well, to your point, I think we're feeling, but people are
coming into the workplace feeling more lonely than they've
been. We have to somehow basically
entice them to come into the office 3-4 days a week and use
food and whatever else. But I think this is true to get
people to come into the office to experience a sense of
community. I, I love this fostering
community and, and connection and that being, you know, a, a,
a leadership quality, if not responsibilities.
I think that's, that's essential right now.
And I also think, you know, there's an element that we're
talking about separating signal from noise, right?
I think we, we conflate information with communication.
Like communication is the essential signal information.
There's aspects of it that's really important, but it can
become easily conflated. And by the way, when I can
produce, I, I did this the other day.
I, I created, I did a deep, a deep search query using one of
the LLMS and I created like a research paper in, in like 4
minutes, right? Take that's longer than using,
you know, a regular search. This was a deep, deep, deep
search. But now all of a sudden, like
I've, I've got this 30 page document and I, it, it took me 4
minutes to create it. I, I got to eat dinner and do
other things like now I'm sitting on this.
And I think AI has this ability to just further proliferate the
amount of information that we're already sort of swimming in and
inundated by. That proliferation again, I come
back to the theory of cognitive overload.
That's, that's the, the interesting quandary we're in is
we've got all these tools and the cognitive overload like the
particularly the, the, how do we manage the desire to go in and
just dive at it, right? You know, it's, it's actually
not. Again, it's, it's the challenge
of the urgent versus the important, right?
Well, that third bucket is is leading the organization.
So we have leading self and that's all that that self
management aspects that we were talking about.
Then we have leading others and we talked about communication,
creating the space, creating community and connection when it
comes to leading others, right. When I, when I think about the
skills under that bucket, it's, it's, you know, establishing a
clear and compelling vision, a strategy to enact that vision,
managing that strategy, executing on that strategy,
building a culture that can support that strategy.
Where are are organizations and leaders specifically struggling
right now in that, in that domain?
I. Think it's just so
unpredictable. How are you?
How are you to like? Leaders historically have been
rewarded for their ability to almost see the future.
To bring out their crystal ball, right, and tell everybody and
tell analysts. Here's what we see in Q4.
And that's, that's impossible now.
So how are you supposed to create a strategic vision when
we don't know what AI disruption is going to look like in six
months? So I think it does come back to
some of these like core skills of being curious, being
resilient, being flexible, knowing how to adapt, and
creating a vision that allows for variance that isn't too
rigid and rooted in one clear path because that one clear path
isn't as clear as it historically has been.
Well, it it, what's really interesting to me and what you
just shared is when we think about the definition of
leadership, which according to Air leadership is actualizing a
clear and compelling vision through others, what happens
when that vision is a little hazy?
Right? I, I think about Google, like
imagine you're Google right now and the last, you know, decade
plus. You've made hand over fist money
while you sleep a money tree on search.
And now all of a sudden every LLM can do a search.
Can do it for. You right.
So maybe even better, right So. So how does that affect vision?
And I think there's something about adaptability and
experimentation mindset that organizational leaders need to
increasingly adopt as a function of uncertainty and all the
curveballs that that that can come at us.
But the sort of below that is purpose.
And purpose doesn't change like Google's purpose, you know,
which is I don't know what to make information accessible.
I don't know their purpose, but that is Evergreen, right?
And so to double down, triple down on articulating that and
reinforcing that and making sure that people are grounded.
In the, why in the? Why?
You know that that transcends the what the strategy is in in
this point in time? Because that can change very
fast. Yes.
And I think because the goal post keeps moving as as a
function of technology, for example, you just gave a really
good example of of Google. But now what is AI doing to
disintermediate what we knew search to be the task for the
leader or leaders in an organization is to be on top of
that and articulating. And I know that Google, I know
that AI or clod or perplexity is coming down the Pike and having
not an answer, but acknowledging it to what it is and coming back
to purpose. And, and I think part of
curating and taking care of the organization and it's and it's
culture is not to ignore, but to, to create an environment of
continuous improvement. And I, I use that intentionally
around saying, you're right, we're going to have to be up on
our game because Clod and Perplexity and Grok and Chachi
PT are at our coattails and be and and creating an
organizational system that is agile and adapting and able to
work with that, right. And you as the leader, stepping
in and saying, yeah, that's true.
Yeah, it speaks to a level of humility that leadership needs
to have as well, not assuming that what got you here won't.
Get you there. And so and So what?
What are the conditions we need to create in organizations to
make sure that innovation is at the center of the work?
You're grounded in the purpose, but you're not stagnating.
You're not arrogant enough to believe that you're at the top
of your game. You're an industry leader and
you're just going to sit pretty for the rest of time like you
have to be. You have to be constantly
pushing and challenging and being attuned with with the
environment and the changing realities.
Totally, totally. Well, I know we're we're coming
up on time with this segment and this has been a fantastic
conversation. We've covered leading self,
leading others, leading the organization, all within this
interesting, challenging context that we find ourselves in.
It was it was really wonderful to to be together.
And thank you, Ian for for joining us.
And this is a podcast about leadership.
So I hope you all have gotten some really good Nuggets, if not
profound insights that can help inform and guide your own
leadership. Thank you so much and we'll see
you next time. Thank you.