This year’s Drucker Forum abstract, Proclaiming the Century of Leadership, shares one of Drucker’s most famous quotes – “management is doing things right, but leadership is doing the right things”

It’s profound that the theme of this year’s Forum, Leadership Everywhere, was selected at last year’s Forum when no one could have predicted how significant this topic would be at this time. It’s also a year where we saw the passing of one of the greatest management thinkers of our generation, Clayton Christensen.

Drucker Forum 2020

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the fully digital 12th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “Leadership Everywhere” on October 28, 29 & 30, 2020.
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Further on from disruptive innovation

While most of us may remember Clayton for his work on Disruptive Innovation, what he was really teaching us all along is how to be better managers of our work. Perhaps the most impactful theory has been Jobs To Be Done (JTBD), which was developed as a means to take disruptive innovation further in order to help organizations get to the core of what customers needed and what jobs were there most important to get done. If you’ve spent time studying JBTD then you know that Clayton emphasized how knowing more and more about customers takes organizations in the wrong direction, and that the real need is to know the progress that the customer is trying to make in any given situation. In other words, it’s more about the outcome of the journey than the point in time solution.

JBTD and leadership

As a management theory, JBTD has helped organizations understand the behaviors they need to employ and has increased their ability to make better informed predictions. I find it interesting that JBTD, as a management theory, is also something we can apply to leadership.

Leadership is perhaps the greatest and most needed Job To Be Done. If we consider Drucker’s quote on management doing things right then we would classify those as mechanics, or rather the proper use of tools, practices, processes and frameworks that help us manage the work. If we consider that leadership is doing the right things then that’s about mindset; thinking that drives behaviors and influences people towards a set of principles and outcomes.

Purpose and why it matters

This is exactly the Job To Be Done of leadership; taking people on the journey. As Clayton also described, Jobs are complex and multifaceted. They’re not simple and require a well defined path. For leaders that means that we need to be able to explain the purpose of the journey to our teams and why it matters both to them, the organization and impact on those we touch.

The mindset we possess related to the circumstances we find ourselves in now and in the future will be more important than the mechanics we use to manage our way through them.

About the author:
Alex Adamopoulos is Chief Executive Officer, Emergn Ltd.

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the fully digital 12th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “Leadership Everywhere” on October 28, 29 & 30, 2020.
#DruckerForum

One of my favorite presentations at this past November’s Global Peter Drucker Forum was from Marshall Goldsmith, a leadership coach and the author of, among other books, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.” As the title suggests, the qualities that make leaders successful as individuals can later become obstacles to their success as leaders.

Ascending to a leadership position requires prioritizing your individual success. Along your journey to a leadership role, you’ll likely face tests – both literal and figurative – that require you to prove how smart and capable you are as an individual. But great leaders need to work in the best interest of the people they manage, and not themselves.

Here are a few examples of the obstacles that stop leaders from being the best they can be.

Competitive instincts

Leaders are winners. In fact, they love winning – no matter the context, and, sometimes, to their own detriment.

Marshall provided a funny example that he shares with his own clients: imagine making dinner plans. You want to go to Restaurant X, but your partner likes Restaurant Y. You decide to go to their choice, and you hate it. The food is bad, the service is bad, it’s a major disappointment. How do you react?

You could say “I told you so.” Critique the meal, complain about the service, and insist that dinner would have been way better at Restaurant X.

Or, you could just keep quiet. Eat the food, try to enjoy it, and make the best out of the evening.

Which option do you think is better? And which do you think many people actually do? The obvious answer is to just keep quiet and try to have a good time, but leaders are competitive. Your instinct may be to prove that you’re right, but what would you even gain from having that argument? You’d end up with a bad night and a pretty annoyed partner.

Winners want to win at all costs, even if the “battle” is over something trivial. It’s an instinct that leaders should resist not just in their personal lives, but at work, too. If you’re in a position of authority, you don’t need to prove yourself. And in fact, if you keep trying to sound like the smartest person in the room, you’re more likely to alienate the people who depend on you, rather than provide any sort of valuable support.

The desire to add value

We all want to be seen as a valuable member of our teams. That instinct doesn’t really go away as a leader, but it can become more of a problem the higher you climb up the ladder, and that’s because of the influence your contributions can have on others around you.

Marshall provided another example: imagine a member of your team tells you their great idea. You like it, and you tell them so. But, you also throw in a suggestion. “Nice idea, but why don’t you add this, too.” There, you’ve added value. Job well done, right?

Not quite. Because, as Marshall explained, a suggestion from one’s boss is not merely a suggestion – it’s an order. Whether you intend to or not, the minute you make a suggestion to a member of your team, you’ve given them an order that they feel obligated to follow. So, when you decide to add on to their idea, you’ve actually made it your own. You may have added 5 percent of value to the idea, but you’ve removed 50 percent of their motivation to execute the idea, because it’s now something their boss has ordered them to do.

Instead of trying to add value, bless their idea as is, effectively taking yourself out of the way so they can get it done.

Telling, not asking

Quoting Peter Drucker, Marshall said that “The leader of the past knew how to tell, the leader of the future knows how to ask.”

The workforce of the future will be primarily knowledge workers. These people are the experts in their fields and will know more about what they’re doing than their leaders. But, leaders are traditionally taught to give orders – to tell their teams what to do and how to do it.

That simply won’t work in the era of the knowledge worker. How could you possibly dictate orders to someone who knows more about their own job than you do? It makes much more sense, Marshall said, for leaders to ask their teams how they think something should be done, and then empower the team to get it done themselves. Leaders need to ask, listen and learn.

Stop and breathe

This all sounds simple and intuitive, but it’s hard to do in practice. Marshall had a piece of advice: the next time you’re presented with a “test” of your leadership, just try to stop and breathe. Acknowledge any instincts to prove your smarts, add value, or give an order.

After that, I would suggest you think about what you could say or do that would actually help your team. In some cases, it might be to clear an obstacle for them, or to provide some resources that can help. Other times, it may be better to do nothing at all. If already you’ve done a good job hiring and empowering your team, then it could be best just to pass along some encouragement and let them get to work.

We see this type of thinking align well with the whole idea around servant leadership, a phrase that popped up in the last decade around the whole agile thing but something that has been out there for sometime as a mindset around being a better leader. We recently talked about The Servant Leader in our podcast series on The Emerging World of Work.

About the author:

Alex Adamopoulis is the Chief Executive Officer at Emergn Limited

This article is one in a series related to the 10th Global Peter Drucker Forum, with the theme management. the human dimension, that took place on November 29 & 30, 2018 in Vienna, Austria #GPDF18 – you can also check out my other articles related to the Forum; 5 Lessons the Managers of Tomorrow – and – The Power of Pull vs Push in Innovation

This article was first published on LinkedIn Pulse

This year’s Global Peter Drucker Forum in Vienna tackled the theme of the human dimension in management. In a rapidly changing world, where the business landscape is increasingly dominated by automation and AI, managers need to apply a human touch to the world of work more than ever. Particularly in regards to AI, business leaders are going to be playing an absolutely pivotal role in managing the impact artificial intelligence has on the workplace and the workforce.

I wanted to make the following points the central plank of my opening keynote at this year’s Drucker Forum because it’s crucial that the kinds of leaders that make the trip to Drucker are all on the same page about this. It really all boils down to this:

Leadership is about creating a vision.

Management is the harder part of putting it into practice.

This is also a core part of the work we do at Emergn and something I’ve touched on before in this Forbes article and our Emerging World of Work podcast.

As leaders, we have to chart a way forward on how AI and other technologies are going to shape what kinds of skills, tools and opportunities workers will be armed with, in order to keep absorbing new ideas and new ways of working, and stay ahead of the curve in their changing industries. And as managers, we have to be providing the day-to-day practical guidance that allows workers to keep doing just that.

There were a lot of outstanding and insightful sessions at this year’s Drucker Forum, exploring just what applying this human touch to management means – and also needs to mean going forward. Here are a few of my favorite takeaways from Drucker Forum 2018:

1. Driving innovation and inspiration requires trust.

Vineet Nayar, the CEO and Founder of Sampark Foundation, gave a really moving presentation about his and his wife’s work in helping to transform the quality of schools and public education for children in India. During that talk, he hit the nail on the head about what it takes to get the best out of people: inspiration. Workers want to be inspired to feel like they can take on seemingly impossible tasks and drive forward important missions. They don’t want to be seen as drones; or as Vineet put it, they want to be recognized as butterflies, not ants. Everyone is looking for inspiration, but inspiration starts from trust. Trust your employees and, in Vineet’s words, they will create magic.

2. Good management means celebrating empathy.

Jim Keane, CEO of Steelcase, opened his talk with an anecdote about his first job, as an elevator operator in the 70s. As Jim pointed out, while some like to romanticize the nostalgia of old-school elevator operators, the fact is it was backbreaking, tedious and dehumanizing work – stand there, crank the elevator up and down, don’t talk to the people riding with you. Technology like automation has done a great service in eliminating menial work like this, opening up opportunities for more engaging and innovative work for humans to do. That gets to the core point of Jim’s presentation: management has to celebrate empathy. As managers, we can’t forget to connect with workers on a human level in order to ensure we’re not throwing them into menial work. We need to be allowing humans to be humans, and do the kind of work only they can do. It’s not enough to just let technology do what technology is good at; we need to reinvest in people on a personal level, and make empathy a part of our work.

3. Skills are not the same as capabilities.

The difference between the two: skills are very context specific while capabilities are more fundamental and independent of context. Curiosity, creativity, imagination, emotional and social intelligence – these are all capabilities. As John Hagel, co-chairman at the Deloitte Center for the Edge, so precisely diagnosed, years of school have basically stamped out these capabilities in us and instead conditioned us to memorize and imitate whatever our teachers did, rather than think for ourselves. But capabilities are like muscles. They may be atrophied, but they’re also waiting to be exercised. As workers face a future where they shift from menial jobs eliminated by technology to the kinds of jobs that human beings really should be doing, it’s important we emphasize the importance of flexing these muscles and investing in human capabilities as instrumental to work.

4.  Innovation is a team effort, not the work of just one genius.

Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill gave one of my favorite talks of the event, and really drilled down into how leading innovation is not the same thing as leading change. Leading change means inspiring people to move in one direction, while leading innovation is about shaping context. That means getting leaders to foster environments that encourage a “collective genius” built from a diversity of views and experiences. Linda correctly points out that most innovations are not the result of just one genius having a lightbulb moment. Instead that genius more often than not comes out of a collection of people that span a diversity of perspectives and knowledge domains. Building that sense of community, with a shared purpose and a shared set of values but driven by all voices in the organization and not just the majority consensus, is what leads to true innovation.

5. Not pushing solutions allows better ideas to come forward.

One of the most compelling sessions of this year’s forum was a talk by Efosa Ojomo, who shared the story of the impact of instant noodles in Nigeria. Yes, you read that right. Efosa talked about how a Western bias for solutions aimed at improving life in Nigera typically focused on building schools, roads, hospitals, water-wells – all well-intentioned but ultimately dead-end projects. But what actually made a difference was an Indonesian company’s introduction of instant noodles, as a cheap, easy and nutritious meal that completely turned around the country and built a whole new economy around it: thousands of new jobs, millions of dollars in tax revenues and investments, new infrastructure like seaports, electricity, water treatment and agriculture. It’s an incredible story of not just how this company saw an opportunity to more easily feed people – and the ripple effects that came from that – but how abandoning old biases around solutions and focusing instead on simple needs in a new space can allow better ideas to come to the fore, creating new markets, new opportunities and new innovations.

I’m really just scratching the surface here; there is plenty more to share than just these five lessons, but I think these takeaways also represent a good cross-section of the kind of thinking and leadership that was on display at this year’s Drucker Forum.

It’s an exciting time to be a business leader. The world is changing at a rapid clip right before our eyes, and it’s in our power to ride the wave of these changes and leave behind a lasting impact for workers, their environments and the world around us – but only if we heed the importance of not just leading but also managing, and putting in the work on a ground-level, day-to-day basis to drive new ways of working and true innovation.

This article is one in a series related to the 10th Global Peter Drucker Forum, with the theme management. the human dimension, that has taken place on November 29 & 30, 2018 in Vienna, Austria #GPDF18

This article was first published on LinkedIn Pulse.

Alex Adamopoulos is the founder and CEO of the international digital business consultancy Emergn Limited, based in Boston Mass. He tells Peter Day why he’s a champion of products over corporate projects..and how (in Peter Drucker’s words) “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

Variations of this quote have appeared for over a century. The quote comes from a book written in 1822 and it was used in a slightly different variation on July 8, 1896 in a speech given by William Jennings Bryan.

Bryan was a leader of the Democratic party and served as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. Bryan’s speech, the Cross of Gold, is known as perhaps the most famous and the most effective speech ever delivered at a national party convention on the topic of a monetary plank – in other words, how all things related to money are best managed for the good of all so that there is more equality when it comes to prosperity.

The widening gap

This topic will never go away. In fact, the prolific expansion of technology in nearly all industries has begun widening the gap between those that want to change and those that have the power to change. the underlying message that this quote offers is about the dangers of increasing prosperity at a rate that leaves many behind. Many are concerned with the advancement of robotics, for example. Is it really a question of technology taking over or one of waning talent?

We’re facing the largest talent gap we’ve seen in decades and the concern that many jobs will potentially be lost to machines. Some of these fears are misunderstood. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a shift in how work gets done. The automotive industry introduced robotic prototypes in 1961 that eventually helped the segment soar. The industry worked with it’s workforce to build a higher quality product, which increased the requirement for learning and new skills. We’ve seen this same trend as every major technology advancement has arrived.

Prosperity challenge

The challenge with growing prosperity is that it typically involves the few, not the many. With that comes the burden to close the widening talent gap. In 2016 Gartner published a research note titled “Survey Analysis: What Leading Enterprises Do Differently With Talent and Organization” – where 77% of those leading enterprises stated that within 10 years the skills and knowledge in their organization will have little resemblance to the skills and knowledge in their organization of today.

This same report showed that acquisitions were the most favored and likely answer by a large margin to closing the gap. It’s clear that most major enterprises are trying to catch up to respond to the talent and technology gaps they face. It makes sense that acquisitions are leading the way simply because companies can’t change fast enough and re-train people quickly to adapt to the modern skills and practices that are needed now. Therefore, this consolidation effort is exactly why growing prosperity typically involves the few, not the many. Growing through acquisition doesn’t decrease the risk of failure nor will it stop the growth of startups. For many startups, their exit strategy might be largely based on the differentiated skills they offer a larger competitor.

Job losses and gains

Robotics was mentioned earlier as one example where there is growing concern about the loss of jobs, automating the more basic tasks that organizations undertake today. But before we assume all such jobs are going away, research shows that over the next decade areas such as business strategy, product enhancement/development, the Internet of Things, innovation and even marketing are expected to grow at larger percentages than digital anthropology. What this means is that while AI and robotic process automation are areas that are beginning to thrive, the need for skills and talent in those other areas is growing faster still.

Develop new skills

We need greater emphasis to help people rework their mindset and rapidly develop new skills that will help them and their companies compete.

“Poverty has slain its thousands but prosperity its tens of thousands”

It’s relevant because while we appreciate the impact of poverty, we often neglect to understand the second half. Prosperity always runs the risk of leaving a greater percentage behind. What we must aim for, even in our smallest of circles, is to help balance this by increasing learning and purpose for those we serve.

“Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.”

― Aristotle

About the author:

Alex is the Chief Executive Officer for Emergn, which helps enterprise companies execute digital transformations. Emergn is the developer of Value, Flow, Quality (VFQ), the only accelerated work-based education product for modern ways of working, used by many of the world’s leading companies.

That said, I have yet to speak to the CEO of a large organization who has not told me that they’re not doing similar things. They’re taking financial risks in the hope of profit and most are implementing more agile ways of working to compete effectively and embed an entrepreneurial mindset in the business. In fact, look in any common dictionary and you’ll see that they define being entrepreneurial as taking financial risks in the hope of profit. Isn’t that what all businesses actually do? Are large companies different than small ones in this regard.

Is the question we’re trying to answer one of large vs. small or traditional vs. modern? The issue around an entrepreneurial society or culture is less about the size of the company and the taking of financial risk and more about changing how we work in order to accelerate our chances of success and quickly identify our risks of failure. It’s about solving the massive talent gap that exists in our societies that crept up on us so quickly. The shift to a digital strategy demands that knowledge workers abound and that modern skills are being utilized in place of the legacy thinking that many organizations still suffer from. It is, in fact, a focus on the cultural mindset and behavior of the organization itself that will drive the level of entrepreneurial spirit.

The smaller, more agile companies that have saturated the market in the past 3-5 years coupled with the growing number of freelancers and contractors is all a result of the need to do more things faster, with better quality and improved financial results. Interestingly, many of the people fall into the category of freelancer/contractor are ones that have left large companies in recent years for various reasons and have re-trained themselves to re-enter the market with a focused skill set that those same large companies are now looking for. In some cases, they have hired previous staff back but now as a freelancer in order to access those specialized skills.

The people that make up these segments bring with them skills and capabilities that offer immediate value to the larger, more complex companies that struggle with solving the problems that will get them into a more competitive state. Yet there is room for all players now since the emphasis is more around subject matter expertise and gaining access to skills that are current. One great example is the UK Government. In an effort to level the playing field they introduced G-Cloud, a services framework that was exclusively designed for small, boutique firms to sell their services to UK Government Departments without necessarily competing with the larger firms that have a firm grip in the public sector. This entrepreneurial approach on the part of UK Government has created a dynamic and thriving sector amongst the many talented early stage companies in Britain.

To make this more practical, let’s get specific and consider an area in all businesses where innovation and entrepreneurialism are supposed to happen but often fall short – product management (development). No single role in the company has the impact to drive an entrepreneurial culture as much as this one. For years, the dilemma of solving the alignment of business and IT has existed in this one area and has gone almost unnoticed.

As Harvard Professor and author of the Innovators Dilemma, Clayton Christensen reports: “Over 60% of all new-product development efforts are scuttled before they ever reach the market. Of the 40% that do see the light of day, 40% fail to become pro table and are withdrawn from the market. By the time you add it all up, three-quarters of the money spent in product development investments results in products that do not succeed commercially.”

Why does this happen? Simply because large, traditional organizations remain stagnant and aren’t as deliberate around introducing the learning and skills that will modernize the way they manage and develop products. Areas like exploring and sizing the market, understanding feedback, prioritizing value, designing experiments and validating a hypothesis using modern principles – are all neglected or under utilized.

It’s important to note that organizational strategies are not going to solve the problem. The entrepreneurial mindset that many seek, especially in large businesses, isn’t going to be resolved by changing an org chart, decentralizing or centralizing people or services or even by introducing a new methodology. It’s all about the need to drive change in how people think about their work, not only how they behave or do the work. This is the elusive culture topic many of us talk about in our companies. The three legged stool here is mindset, mechanics and measures. It’s how we think that leads to what we do that leads to how we measure its value.

I suppose in this context it is best to quote Drucker himself…

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.  – Peter Drucker

About the author:

Alex Adamopoulos

Chief Executive Officer, Emergn Ltd.