LEADERSHIP
A strategy for success Some companies have successfully inserted unlearning into their ways of doing things. They have become extremely good at systematically challenging the traditional ways to invent, produce, market and distribute goods and services. At Apple, for example, unlearning opened the way for managers, designers and engineers to rethink and explore different beliefs related to the cell phone market, which enabled the development of its cult product, the iPhone. It all started with the team thinking that “cell phones sucked, they were terrible, just pieces of junk”; unlearning this perception made Apple a huge success story. “Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future”, noted legendary co-founder Steve Jobs. Over at Uber, unlearning helped to re-think the aggressive corporate culture that was damaging the brand’s image. The reformulated cultural values also led to placing unlearning at the heart of the company’s mission statement: “To help people go anywhere and get anything. Movement is what we do… it pushes us to constantly reimagine how we can move better”. Meanwhile at Netflix, unlearning is imprinted in the company’s culture DNA, allowing it to reconceptualise issues, challenge approaches and adjust the context for thoughtful decision-making. “We do not seek to preserve our culture – we seek to improve it” is its mantra. Netflix is spending 90 per cent of its investment budget exploring because it “has to keep building new content and creating new technology”. It is such openness to exploration and unlearning that has made it one of the most successful global video-streaming services available. Since nobody knows what the new world will look like, we believe that the best way to be a leader is to avoid pure speculation and decide on what we want to see around us and fight for it. All the questions raised by this new world in the making are pushing us (whether we like it or not) to re-invent leadership. The first step towards doing that is learning how to unlearn. Organisations that can manage to achieve the learning/ unlearning balance – and help their leaders to develop an ability to maintain it – have a good chance of being ready for the leadership of tomorrow.
constantly maintain the learning/unlearning balance, otherwise we can trap ourselves in making obsolete or ill-considered decisions. Next steps The process of unlearning starts with three major steps. First is awareness and understanding: become aware of the assumptions that you hold and the values that you use to give a sense of meaning to everything we think and practice as leaders. Many leaders do not have a clue about what lies behind their regular management style. We believe that it is time for leaders to acquire some basic knowledge and skills in philosophy, sociology and even biology. This will be needed as the starting point of the leadership re‑invention process and will be based on the ability to review and critique our assumptions about – well, just about everything and anything. Reviewing your basic assumptions and values will be the foundation of a new leadership impetus to try and acquire a deeper understanding of the world around us. Step two involves effectiveness and impact: check the relevance of your current and past ways of thinking and acting. Do they still work? Are there other ways that could be more in line with the requirements of the current situation we are facing? The third and final step is creativity: imagination, invention and innovation. Create novel ways to approach the situation by re‑inventing your leadership style. Become attentive to discoveries, challenge new paradigms and don’t shy away from embarrassing questions; instead, reflect on what they can bring to you, your team and organisation. Find a way to involve yourself in the creation of new ways to experience things. Ask yourself: Is it possible to invent new ways of leading that respond to the pressures of our time and enable opportunities to move forward? Managing the process of unlearning will quite obviously require some important modifications in the way leadership development has been defined and implemented over the past few years. Unlearning should be embedded in the DNA of the corporate culture and become a lifestyle and a mindset of leaders and their teams. Only in this way can unlearning help organisations to transform when the world challenges us to approach new ways of thinking, doing and behaving.
BIOGRAPHIES Professor Pierre Casse is the leadership chair at IEDC-Bled School of Management in Slovenia and the author of Leadership without concessions and Leadership for a new world , as well as the co-author with Paul George Claudel of Leading with wisdom . Elnura Irmatova is a researcher and DBA candidate at the school
Ambition | MARCH 2023 | 27
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