Three Inspiring Stories on New Leadership

The X?Conference on “Cor-po-rate Dig-i-tal Respon-si-bil-i-ty and Dig-i-tal Ethics” took place on Octo-ber 30, 2020. My keynote, which is now also avail-able as video, revolved — as expect-ed — around the Man-i-festo for human(e) lead-er-ship and specif-i-cal-ly around the ques-tion what (cor-po-rate) dig-i-tal respon-si-bil-i-ty has to do with mod-ern lead-er-ship. My core the-sis: Con-cepts like dig-i-tal ethics, com-pli-ance or self-orga-ni-za-tion in agile orga-ni-za-tions require all dis-ci-pline beyond obe-di-ence. They can-not sim-ply be imposed, but are based on the per-son-al respon-si-bil-i-ty of the employ-ees. In this talk, I will approach the ques-tion of how this per-son-al respon-si-bil-i-ty can be acti-vat-ed in a sus-tain-able way with these three inspi-ra-tional sto-ries about role mod-els, respon-si-bil-i-ty and trust.

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

Mahat-ma Gandhi

Gandhi and the Sugar

Lead-er-ship always begins with one’s own exam-ple and hinges on authen-tic-i-ty. An inspir-ing sto-ry is told about Mahat-ma Gand-hi. A woman came from far away with her son to see Gand-hi. She was wor-ried because her son ate too much sug-ar and, although it made him ill, he could-n’t stop. So she asked Gand-hi to tell her son to stop eat-ing sug-ar. Gand-hi did not respond to this request until two weeks lat-er, because he him-self had to give up sug-ar in order to be able to give this advice authentically.

Netflix and the Nuclear Submarine

What does Net-flix have in com-mon with a nuclear sub-ma-rine? Although at first glance they couldn’t be more dif-fer-ent, their excep-tion-al lead-er-ship cul-ture is very sim-i-lar. Reed Hast-ings, CEO of Net-flix, prides him-self on mak-ing as few deci-sions as pos-si-ble and prefer-ably none at all for an entire quar-ter. And Cap-tain David Mar-quet decid-ed to stop giv-ing orders on the nuclear sub-ma-rine USS San-ta Fe. Both rely on con-text instead of con-trol and are very suc-cess-ful with it.

Google and the Super Chickens

William Muir from Pur-due Uni-ver-si-ty inves-ti-gat-ed the pro-duc-tiv-i-ty of chick-ens. For one group, he select-ed only the “high per-form-ers” and only the best of these Super Chick-ens were allowed to breed. On the oth-er hand, there was a group of aver-age chick-ens that were not fur-ther select-ed or influ-enced. After six gen-er-a-tions the chick-ens in this aver-age group were well fed, ful-ly feath-ered and their pro-duc-tiv-i-ty had increased sig-nif-i-cant-ly. Con-trary to naive expec-ta-tions, this was slight-ly dif-fer-ent in the Super Chick-en group: all but three were dead — picked to death by the others.

Google also found out that super-stars don’t auto-mat-i-cal-ly become a team. As part of Project Aris-to-tle, Google inves-ti-gat-ed what turns a group of peo-ple into an effec-tive team. By far the most impor-tant ele-ment was psy-cho-log-i-cal safe-ty. In tru-ly effec-tive teams, there is a high lev-el of safe-ty, so mem-bers dare to express their opin-ions open-ly and take risks. This is the key ingre-di-ent that makes the whole more than the sum of its parts.

All this and a bit more can be found in the fol-low-ing (Ger-man lan-guage) video of my keynote as an inspi-ra-tion to lis-ten, think and imitate.

Originally published at https://fuehrung-erfahren.de on November 9, 2020.