Can you share some actionable strategies that help harness the upside of disruption? I think one of the most interesting ones is to harness a reductionist mindset. We’re hardwired, especially in business, to add complexity and bureaucracy to everything we do. Right now, four billion pieces of paper are handled every day and one in three meetings are considered a complete waste of time, costing organizations billions in lost productivity, lost talent and lost engagement. Embracing a reductionist mindset means we let go of old ways of working and old ways of thinking and detox, declutter and delete. It allows us to harness the upside of disruption and refuse to add complexity for the sake of it. It allows us to do more meaningful work, to feel more empowered and to solve challenges that make a difference to humanity. You say good leaders learn, but great leaders unlearn. Can you explain what you mean by this? As the late futurist Alvin Toffler said, over 50 years ago, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” Unlearning and relearning are blind spots in most organizations, but unless we’ve got an unlearning strategy to let go of some of these old ways of thinking or working, we end up spending most of our week on bureaucratic work rather than intelligent, value-creating work. The bottom line is, if we don’t unlearn, we’re not agile. It means that we’re spending more time ticking boxes and less time learning at the speed of the market or learning at the speed of the customer.
Tell us about what you describe as the ‘future readiness’ muscle. How can leaders benefit from strengthening this? To me, this is about never underestimating the huge power of thinking like a kid. Kids are born future-ready. They are agile, they embrace failure. They play, they have fun and they never stop learning. They’re curious and they’re always experimenting and iterating. So how can we bottle mindset as adults? I don’t mean act like a kid. But I think we can all benefit from taking wisdom from our children – the way that they bounce back from a failure and keep going, the way that they show resilience in the face of adversity, and the way that they are passionately curious. These are all future-ready skills. What role do emerging technologies play in driving disruption? AI is a cross-sector disruptor. It’s disrupting every vertical and every industry. It is supercharging blockchain, energy storage, automation, robotics, DNA sequencing and fusion power, to name but a few. We are also seeing steep declines in the cost of AI. It is halving every four months which is up to six times faster than the semiconductor market. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, says technology has now achieved a positive feedback loop where AI is designing new AI and is advancing at the pace of Moore’s Law squared. There’s no question that these technologies will play an important role in driving disruption. That said, one of the interesting dilemmas I’ve recently discovered is that, because of the electricity and cooling requirements, a hundred-word search using a generative AI platform uses half a liter of water – that’s about 16 times more than Google search. It’s
projected that AI data centers will be using up to 25% of global electricity in the not-too-distant future. This is a real blind spot. We can see a whole range of new challenges and risks emerging because of the pace of change and the pace of transformation. With remote work, AI and automation transforming industries, what skills or mindsets do you think will be most crucial for future professionals? I take inspiration from the late psychotherapist Oliver Sacks, who spoke about the human need for bonding, belonging and believing. For me, this means we need a purpose. A purpose at work, but also a life purpose. That’s like a light force in itself. It gives us focus, direction, energy and resilience. It’s more important than ever in this age of AI and hybrid working where we suffer from dislocation and decentralization. What’s one piece of advice you’ve personally adopted that has helped you navigate disruption in your own life or career? I would say it is to be aware of the rubber band effect. The rubber band effect is this kind of bias. For example, when we read a new book or it’s New Year’s Eve, or we’re trying to make some new plans and aspirations, our rubber band stretches and we have all these ideas, commitments and dreams. Then day-to-day life takes over again: E-mails, meetings, friends, family commitments and so forth. Then the rubber band snaps back into place, and nothing actually changes. As a result, the gap between aspiration and action is often bigger than we’d like it to be. To overcome the rubber band effect, it’s important to start small. Focus on a one percent improvement every day and you can get a 37x gain within nine to 12 months.
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