Leadership in the Life Pendulum of Tension and Release - World Business Forum NYC 2024

One of the most grandiose and inspiring leadership conferences in the world stopped on its world tour in New York City this past October - the World Business Forum New York City (WOBI NYC). I had last attended it five years ago as an employee at the time when I had recently begun my journey of studying organizational change and leadership both formally and in my spare time. It had left bright and distinct memories not only because of the kinds of lessons and experiences shared by global business management leaders such as Simon Sinek and Gary Hamel among others but also because of the unique formats and styles in which they were presented.

The theme of this year's WOBI NYC conference was Purpose+ which had selected this word for the second year in a row and added a plus sign to emphasize just how critical purpose continues to be for business leaders that attend such events.

What makes this conference unique is that it is something other than networking or making deals that unites senior leaders of various levels of experience across the globe and industries to attend - it is their pure thirst for inspiration and continued learning.

1. MASTERING OUR CREATIVITY THROUGH TENSION AND RELEASE

In the 2024 edition, one unique format with which the audience experienced learning and development was a live musical performance juxtaposed with humor, real-world lessons, and audience collaboration by a devout pianist, management consultant and motivational speaker Felipe Gomez . He brought the piano to the stage as his sidekick, and ultimately defined the word inspiration through his candor, humor, diligence, passion, all on display to close out Day 1 of the conference.

The audience rose to their feet, sang to each other one on one in unison, danced, and even cried from laughter at times. Equipped simply with music, stories, famous quotes and images, Gomez created an unforgettable experience everyone shared and moments that drove many of the most accomplished businesspeople in the world to escape their tension.

Everything in life is about tension and release. Felipe Gomez

Becoming a "virtuoso" in business and in leadership requires integrating the mind, body, and soul, he stated. Reaching such high level of performance requires the following.

1) Aiming high, finding one's own "magnanimity"

2) Staying disciplined to practice in order to achieve mastery,

3) Remaining courageous to take risks, while

4) Being prudent about decisions, and

5) Selfless at the same time to be a person of service to others.

A true artist and global business consultant with a vision of life continuity, Gomez provided a behavioral spectrum in which the mind, body, and soul all participate to drive our actions, where the key is to stay within the right range of this spectrum.

If the method with which we run a creative, brainstorming meeting requires the mind (blue spectrum in the image below), our attitude is displayed through our body (green), and our passion and innovation comes through our heart (red).

Maybe this is why some of the most productive, creative, and memorable meetings we remember are those in which we lose ourselves in a state of flow with others where time has no more relevance, but it is the actual product of that meeting and the process that take center stage.

To play the wrong note is insignificant, to play without passion is unforgivable. Ludwig van Beethoven

2. HUMANS ARE GENIUS, DARING, and RESILIENT. NOT ORGANIZATIONS.

Most of the globally celebrated speakers such as the Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, General David H. Petraeus, US Army (Ret.) or business management leaders Gary Hamel , Amy Edmondson , Stephen M. R. Covey Modupe Akinola , psychologists Ethan Kross and executives such as former AT&T CEO Anne Chow (She/Her) former President of Global Sales and Service at Tesla and COO of Lyft and current CEO & Co-Founder of DVx Ventures Jon McNeill , former SVP Apple Retail and CEO of Burberry Angela Ahrendts recurrent theme of the need to discover the natural, unparalleled genius, innovation, and resilience that humans possess that are ever so critical today in the information age.

Ethan Kross explored the science of controlling the conscious mind. He explained how inner dialogue influences performance and shared methods to transform self-critical thoughts into constructive coaching. He highlighted the incredible story of Erik Weihenmayer, a first blind person to successfully climb Mount Everest in 2001. Weihenmayer’s achievement exemplified the power of inner resilience and self-belief, which allowed him to overcome immense challenges. Members of his team would take turns guiding Weihenmayer through the gaps and crevasses, shouting out instructions, “Slot coming up, two steps!” or “Clear traveling for the next ten steps.” But Erik had 16 years of training and unbound resolve that guided him as well. Thus, by mastering their inner voice, leaders can make miracles come true through focus, motivation, and decision-making.

Sadly, it is difficult to express the human genius and creativity in most organizations which succumb to and propel the wrong rules in business. Gary Hamel , London Business School professor for decades, best-selling author, considered the #1 management consulting thinker in the world by Thinkers50 , co-founder of the Management Lab (MLab) organization dedicated to reinventing management practices for the 21st century, illustrated how bureaucracy continues to persist and slow down productivity as well as innovation in most companies. In fact, he amused the audience by illustrating that while culture is often cited to eat strategy for breakfast, bureaucracy eats culture for lunch or dinner.

Bureaucracy is recognized, dreaded but mostly accepted by organizations in which power and authority is vested in positions, compensation correlates with rank, and senior leaders appoint junior leaders and assess performance, among others.

As 2030 approaches, 70% of the workforce will be GenZ and millennials, and they certainly have their own opinions about bureaucracy, which may reflect in latest statistics showing that only 23% of the global workforce is engaged, a bit higher in the U.S. - 33%, but as low as 13% in Western Europe.

Businesses are referred to as organizations for a reason - they must be organized and coordinated to grow. However, organizing operations should not assume ideas are excluded or reserved for the executives. Unfortunately, the well-accepted practice of bureaucracy leads to stagnation of ideation of humans who no longer express what makes them so irreplaceable. Hamel coined the ultimate result of this phenomenon as "bureausclerosis" - due to "bureaucratic plaque that stops the free flow of ideas", which immediately became my favorite analogy Gary used as a healthcare industry professional myself (worked at AstraZeneca to support the first cholesterol treatment that received the indication from the FDA of slowing the progression of atherosclerosis in its class).

LATEST DECLINE IN G7 LABOR PRODUCTIVITY DESPITE GROWTH IN IT SPENDING

On a leadership level, executives often turn to implementing new technologies to improve their operations and productivity, however the mechanism of the utilization, onboarding can determine the ultimate fate and value of such technology.

In fact, Gary Hamel shared intriguing recent analysis from The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of G7 countries (Italy, Japan, Germany, France, United States, United Kingdom, Canada) that has shown long-term decline in labor productivity over the last few decades despite significant increase in worldwide IT investments.

Thus, technology, per se, is not innovation - it needs the right implementation and coordination. Innovation may be giving old things new uses, but it is certainly not giving old things new names alone, that continues to propagate bureaucracy.

RECENT ORGANIZATIONAL CHAMPIONS IN INNOVATION

Gary Hamel regularly consults global giant organizations to drive innovation. He cited several case studies that have revolutionized their own approaches to management with some striking success for all leaders to consider.

罗氏公司 - global pharma and diagnostics giant

• Underwent a Leadership Reboot with new principles embedded in their operations: 1) I think and act like an owner, 2) I am relentlessly patient focused, 3) I partner well with colleagues, 4) I am empowered and act decisively.
• Formed iSquad product teams that regularly shared their progress/operations with each other,
• Shifted towards Outcome-based planning, among others.
• RESULTS: In 2017-2023, company revenue grew by 28% despite the patent cliff Roche experienced during this period, with 1/3 less people without any layoffs, enhanced productivity allowed $3B to be reinvested into R & D, decreased the management layers by half.

Buurtzorg Nederland - widely recognized Dutch healthcare organization known for its innovative and decentralized approach to community-based nursing care.

• Self-managed, autonomous 12-person teams
• 1:8,000 span of control
• Shared management
• On-demand Coaches
• Transparent metrics

RESULTS: 30% higher client satisfaction, 18% higher staff utilization, 50% decrease in days in care per client, 33% decrease in hospital admissions, 67% reduction in central overhead

Smaller, autonomous teams with more responsibility and accountability through transparent metrics assumes a culture of psychological safety and innovation. So just "how serious are you and your boss clearly accountable for innovation?", asks Gary Hamel.

3. INTELLIGENT FAILURES IN A COMPLEX WORLD

Netflix executives required their executive directors to make a $1 million dollar mistake and subjected them to an intense Socratic method of debate to defend or reject new initiatives (listen to my interview on the Alloutcoach podcast with Michael Rubin, a Netflix executive titled "Create, Edit, Move, and Shake"). My unforgettable interview with Michael Rubin at Netflix on the Alloutcoach podcast led me to study how a legend performer such as Michael Jordan viewed failure in his Hall of Fame enshrinement speech as well as my own journey across failures (watch video) to define a 3F cycle in which we focus on why we failed, forgive ourselves and others for failures, fail at something new, and then enter the cycle again).

At WOBI NYC 2024, Amy Edmondson discussed why today's complex business world calls for more complex failures than ever. She defined different types of failures such as basic, or complex failures, and explained why leaders must encourage intelligent failures which she defined as follows:

• They take place in a new territory
• They represent a credible opportunity to advance toward a desired goal
• They are informed by available knowledge
• They consist of many small bets

Fail often to succeed sooner. Amy Edmondson

Google's Project Aristotle analyzed 180 teams and determined psychological safety as one of the key factors that drove team effectiveness. Amy noted that while the average team performance of homogeneous teams may be higher, diverse teams outperform them by delivering far greater overall performance of the organization through varied perspectives and problem solving.

ELI LILLY CASE STUDY - TURNING AROUND A CLINICAL TRIAL FAILURE

She cited one such intelligent failure of a large pharmaceutical company 礼来 which launched a major oncology product Alimta. Eli Lilly's development of Alimta (pemetrexed), a chemotherapy drug, encountered significant challenges during clinical trials due to severe toxicities observed in patients such as myelosuppression (a decrease in bone marrow activity leading to reduced blood cell production), mucositis (inflammation of the mucous membranes), and other serious side effects. The severity of these toxicities threatened the discontinuation of Alimta's development, however, further research showed a correlation of the toxicity with deficiency in folate levels, so the company adapted its development by adding B vitamin and folic acid to the product, which decreased the toxicity without affecting the efficacy of the product.

4. INNOVATION BY SUBTRACTION

Jon McNeill introduced a Radical Simplification concept of Innovation by Subtraction to illustrate how elaborate analysis, questioning, deconstruction of all operations, real-world line of sight of the customer journey, and elimination of steps have resulted in meaningful innovation throughout his career. He listed three key ingredients needed to carry out the instructions of his recipe.

1. Expand your line of sight to view entire customer journey or process
2. Inject urgency + accountability
3. "Eat your own dog food" (use your own products or services, practice what you preach)

He shared an important anecdote of his personal friend, a professional NFL coach, who had taught him a key lesson - to increase the chance of winning it is critical to decrease the probability of a mistake. Watching video recordings of past games to analyze in detail which steps or mistakes needed to be subtracted or improved helped his coach drive his teams to win over the years.

5. WHY CULTURE WITH COLLEAGUES DRIVES CUSTOMERS & PROFITS

Anne Chow brought to life the foundational role of trust, transparency, and culture in driving exceptional results throughout the stories she shared in her keynote. She mentioned her preference and observation throughout her career:

A team with an average strategy but an exceptional team is always favored and likely to perform better than an exceptional strategy with an average team.

Placing how people collaborate on par with how they perform, Anne reminded the audience that the employee experience directly impacts the customer experience. Trust and transparency is required in how we assess both culture and performance however because according to her, the most important thing about performance is who is measuring it.

6. CELEBRATE HUMAN EMOTIONS AND ETHICS IN INNOVATION

Francis Ford Coppola closed out the show on the second day with a deep, introspective and amusing take on human genius and our potential. He drew on his legendary experience and challenged the audience to exercise their critical thinking, embrace their ability to feel and express their emotions in addition to unique talent. Coppola addressed the role of ethical implications of modern technologies like CRISPR, and emphasized the responsible use of genetic engineering tools in the future. However, similarly to a global panel of cellular biologists who are keeping CRISPR in "a box" at the moment to control how it is used, he urged the technology industry against allowing artificial intelligence (AI) to wander and write code for anything it desires autonomously, but to implement stricter controls to prevent its misuse. He acknowledged the power of the advances in technology such as quantum computing which can complete tasks faster than AI supercomputers by orders of magnitude. However, "unless AI begins to feel genuine emotions, [it may not be considered] our next non-physical generation", thus Coppola he advised our modern society to be responsible to each other and to the next human generation.

As someone who considers himself a new age humanist inspired by the wisdom, truth, and beauty from the Renaissance and Humanist era which is in many regards still unparalleled to this day, and who has spent years cultivating collaborative relationships with leading scientists and healthcare professionals, inspired by innovation as well as competition in its different formats, I challenge the readers of this newsletter to innovate with purpose and responsibility in 2025 and beyond.

Connect with the speakers and leaders from WOBI NYC 2024 as well as the organizers of this event, which takes place all over the world. Subscribe to the InWeekend Newsletter.

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