The future is female - Decentralized & Crowdsourced

This post is not Fintech, or Fin, or Tech. It is about culture which directly affects how business is done. Today is the International Women's Day 2017 and the official campaign theme is Be Bold For Change. 

We undoubtedly live in a culture that remains male dominated not only as evidenced by the metrics (Number of men in leading positions, Pay gap, Opportunity gap etc) but most importantly culturally. I myself, learnt to behave in assertive ways because confidence is delivered on Wall Street by banging one’s fist on the table and by demanding a bonus figure at year end with some tangible business threat with it. A combative attitude in intrapreneurial corporate positions remains the norm, leadership continues to be mostly synonymous with authority, and “soft skills”, emotional intelligence, and creating alignment are valued only as talking points but not in reality (promotions, opportunities, pay).

Creating Alignment, specifically, which is at the core of Leadership and innovation, is so difficult and is missing simply because the Centralized corporate structure that male business practices have instigated in the market DNA, is impeding it. Read and listen to David Bruno, for more clues about this impediment in large organizations with real innovation labs. In addition, all the incentive and compensation structure in the corporate world, is flawed and there is no incentive to change from within.

The world is becoming more complex and risky, which is fine if there were mechanisms that could deal with the new levels of accelerating complexity. But the centralized male governance structures and culture, are failing to deal with this acceleration. We need innovative processes and a natural way that is much closer to the way nature operates, seamlessly, in a decentralized and crowdsourced fashion. I see the future heading towards such mechanisms not only in financial markets, in corporations but also in societies. At the end of the day, the 3rd industrial revolution in the 20th century did not only affect the production processes of goods and services, but also education and culture. Therefore, the 4th industrial revolution in the 21st century, will also have such an effect. I believe that this tech driven revolution, as has been already said, will change our values and the way we operate in everyday life and of course, in business.

I feel that the world is listening more to the necessity of such an impending change. I feel that this movement will be led heavily by women who are naturally better in level playing for community results, in crowdsourcing and collaborating, and in disrupting by whispering and chanting this vision. 

We are heading towards crowdsourced, decentralized, harmonious and secure processes.

Female qualities are X-factors for such kind of disruptive movements.

The present: Femtech in Fintech

Back to current reality but never lose site of the vision

Bernard Lunn started the week on DailyFintech (1 man and 3 women) with insights on the topic “The woman in the Global Finance arena”.

Sam Maule and Ghela Boskovich, have been committed to showcasing female tech leaders from the start of the Fintech bull run. 

From the West, Sallie Krawcheck, founder of Ellevest and the Ellevate Network, has been leading the women empowerment network and has launched a robo-advisor designed from scratch by women for women.

From the East, Chandrima Das, co-founder of Bento, the bionic advisor out of Singapore, merits to be proud of the fact that she naturally built a team of women; with Rae Ho her Chief Product Officer, Mary Hu investment and product specialist, and herself as an engineer, having helped build the asset allocation optimiser which is core to Bento.

Quantopian study finds that companies with women CEOs outperformed the S&P by 3x (Source )

Call to action for Boys and Girls

·     Promote or join Women Who Tech

·     Read the Forbes article The men women love to educate yourself

·     Invest in women-led tech startups either through angel networks or ICOs.

·    Hire women, “Give them an A”** and Walk away;

Oh, the riches that will come to you!

The future is female, naturally.

** "Giving an A" is a chapter in “The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life” by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander (Rosamund is a psychotherapist and painter; Benjamin is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic).If you are lazy to read the book, at least listen to Benjamin Zander Work How to give an A

We are teachers, we are all leaders. Join this female movement. I don’t care that the number of CEOs named ‘John’ is higher than the number of female CEOs overall (Innotribe reference). I care that all “Johns” become even better because they naturally, choose to be surrounded by women!