One Question
One Question
Dan Smith, Headland Consultancy & Dr Ben Shenoy, Pyschologist and Professor : How do we lead today in business?
Dan Smith, managing director of communication and reputation consultancy, Headland, and Dr Ben Shenoy, psychologist, author, and professor at the London School of Economics, join Sarah in answering this series question, "How do we lead today?"
Ben and Dan are authors of the Collaborative Report, research unveiling how a business that partners with peers and third parties can unlock financial, social and environmental value and how by tackling systemic challenges like the climate crisis, the rise of AI and social polarisation in partnership with others can lead to improved relationships, reputations and, ultimately, revenue. (You can download a copy of the report here)
Sarah invites Ben and Dan to discuss what it really means to lead today, especially at times of uncertainty, the tension of new models of leadership, the push and pull of short-term and long-term decisions, and finding meaning in our businesses and in our leadership.
An insightful and hopeful conversation for every kind of leader.
Series five of the One Question podcast is in partnership with Headland Consultancy.
To find out more about Dan Smith
To find out more about Ben Shenoy
To find out more about how Headland Consultancy can support your business
Host: Sarah Parsonage, founder of One Question
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SPEAKER_04:A modern leader needs to sort of go, okay, well, I do need that kind of boldness and humility to say I don't have all the answers. But then government, business, society needs to create the kind of architecture and the place to have those conversations where there's a safe enough space to have what is a very difficult conversation. And business hasn't been great at that traditionally, nor has government actually, funnily enough, let alone business and government working in part We don't really have the environment where we can turn up, have what would basically be a conversation with a party which is an uncomfortable conversation to talk about the fact that we've only got part of the answer.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to the One Question podcast. This series we're asking, how do we lead today? And today I'm delighted to be joined by Dan Smith, MD of Headland Consulting, and Ben Chenoy, author and professor. Gents, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you
SPEAKER_03:for having us.
SPEAKER_00:It's nice. We've been talking about this for such a long time. It feels great to be here and getting into this, this notion of leadership and the sort of different definition. So let's kick off with your definition. How, Dan, do you define leadership today? And how has that perhaps evolved in times of uncertainty or post-pandemic? Or has there been a shift in your definition of leadership?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's a massive question, isn't it? It is. It's a huge one. And I think leading a business or certainly a government these days is probably more complex than ever before. And it's very easy to say that and not give due thought to it. So Ben and I spend our time thinking about how has it actually changed to be a leader over the last say you say post pandemic i'd say in the last 20 years it's been huge kind of moments of evolution on that front um and where we like to think about it is actually the difference between what we call ego system thinking which is you know very much as it sounds starting with a business as an entity a leader who's very single-mindedly trying to deliver a strategy to saying to their employees in their workforce this is where we're going follow me all those things that you'd recognize as kind of traditional leadership now that's really important you know doing that well it's incredibly difficult if you're a modern ceo you get huge remuneration for being able to do that well because it's a very unique skill um but ego system is not enough you know obviously the world has huge demands if you think about the grand challenges as we call them of AI of climate change of food security of energy insecurity all of those things that face us today in the modern world it's just not enough and there is this kind of what we think is a kind of a dual way of leading these days so you have alongside your ecosystemic way of thinking your ecosystemic way of thinking now that is exactly as it sounds how do you as a leader imagine your business or your organization as just one small part of a much wider system which needs to be taken care of and where's the opportunity in there and this is not a kind of a thought which is anything other than actually very profit-minded as well how do you do the genuine unison of profit and purpose as it's been called over the years but do that in a way which recognizes the urgency and the severity of the challenge but actually actually allows you to rewire your organization to deliver on it that's really hard that's really really difficult and um we do think that is the kind of model can you go after competitive advantage, which is tied to your ego system, and also go after collaborative advantage, which is working with all the people and all the organizations and all the stakeholders in your wider world to not only rewire your organization for success, but actually make sure the entire ecosystem in which you operate and which you need to have impact is also going in that direction as well. And that for me is a fascinating challenge in modern leadership. Can you be these two things? Can you be egocentric and can you be ecocentric? And those that can do that, I think, are not only incredible people, but are probably the organisations which will prosper for the decades to come.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love that. The idea, I mean, it's so prevalent right now. The idea of leadership and service to ourselves. I mean, we're seeing this playing out in politics as a fantastic example. And then the notion of leadership and service to other people. And something that I talk a lot about is asking the sort of... the leaders of today if you will to hold two positions at the same time what's in it for me and my business and how do i ensure the mechanics of a business sustainability profitability can also sit within this wider space of together collaborative across all business and all industry understanding the impact we have on society which is a core sort of mission of one question we will be stronger um there is some significant tension there ben
SPEAKER_01:absolutely as dan Dan said, this is not easy. This is really tough. Let's connect it back to the grand challenges that Dan was talking about. AI, energy security, climate crisis, all of those things, right? Fundamental principle here is your response, your flexibility, your sophistication of leadership has to be at least match the complexity of the challenge you face. If you come up with a simple response, we're after profit, we're after just looking after ourselves in the face of these complex challenges. Over time, our chances are you'll fail. So we're saying, don't throw away that ego system. Don't throw away profit, right? If you throw away the profit, I'll give you an example. Unilever, you know, held up as an icon, Paul Polman, the living organization, the sustainable living plan. Look what's happened over the last month with new CEO Hein Schumacher, who is rowing back. So to earn the permission, to earn the permission to do all this lovely ecosystemic thing, you've got to make money. Conversely, if you just make money, At threat, eventually, is your license to operate. Look at the water companies in this country. Look at the oil and gas companies. Look at tobacco companies in the longer term about the business model for smoking versus vaping. All of those companies, they need to also have permission, this license to operate. If they just focus on money... to the extent of ignoring the wider society, at some point there's a threat. Look at, again, Telegram and X, right?
SPEAKER_00:What's happening with the social media platforms. Nike is another great example quite recently as well, isn't it? Leading from this sort of space of autonomy and maybe a sort of more top-down approach of leadership as opposed to top-down, bottom-up, which I think is the sort of ask today, isn't
SPEAKER_04:it? I think one really interesting question trend as well those organizations that have got their heads into the into the kind of that duality that the two ways of operating tend to be the ones where there's even be a moment where they've had to because you know publicly they've been held to account on something which has gone wrong or because there's been an external crisis which has been imposed on the organization certainly in the kind of privileged position that I sit when I see a CEO having to face into something that faces the organization which is really hurting the bottom line that's actually when the best response is the more ecocentric one that's when they tend to actually look beyond the borders of the organisation and the most successful responses to a corporate crisis are the ones where actually that kind of duality comes in. I'll give you an example. So we were lucky enough to work with Pret and Manger for the last five years or so. But unfortunately, when we first bumped into them, it's because the organisation was in crisis. They'd hit a situation, I'm sure people remember, it was all over the tabloids at the time, of a couple of customers having died from severe allergic reactions to their products. For an organisation which had built a brand on doing the right thing, that's an incredibly tough thing to absorb. But their response was amazing. Clive Slee, the CEO at the time, said, no, actually, I recognise that not only do we need to think about our organisation and how we start at home, but actually the wider system as well. How are we going to change things for the better so that the whole food-to-go market actually is a better place afterwards? And that was his starting place, a really broad response. And over the period of time after that crisis, he not only rewired his business to make sure that the labelling of all his products was done in a way which actually could be seen as best practice for other people in the sector but he also painted a picture for how his competitors could follow him and do the same thing. He got government involved in the response and there was a way of just looking at that problem which was incredibly humble which accepted the severity of the situation but actually what came out the other side was a sector which was actually better placed to deal with it in the future and for such instances to hopefully not not happen on a regular basis or ever again so you know it doesn't need to be something massive like climate change it can be something that is a bit more confined to kind of your organization where you see these changes but that that ability to think in a ecosystemic way when the pressure is really on is i think an an incredible example of modern leadership.
SPEAKER_01:If I can extend, just build on Dan's example of Pret a Manger. So you've got this crisis. Notice the response. Notice some of the characteristics of the response. We're going to sort out our own supply chain. That's job number one, right? You've got to sort out your own supply chain, be really transparent about ingredients, really clear on the communication, all of that stuff. Look what else they did. They hired the former head of the Food Regulation Authority to come in and vet how they did this. So an external party. They convened, and Dan will talk more, we'll both talk more about the convening power of the brand. They convened the sector, not just Pret, but their competitors to say, we We need to sort this out and notice that the companies drove the regulation, not the other way around. Right. So we can talk about the fact that sometimes the motivation doesn't come from government and regulators. It comes from the companies. Right. Companies can enact change. We don't always have to start with government. Right. Often the bedrock for innovation is these capitalist agents. Right. So they convene that. They pushed it through powers of parliament. They enacted a law, right? So really interesting around collaborating with the enemy. This idea of, we use this word collaboration, right? Collaborative advantage. Collaboration has been around for a long time, right? So we want to distinguish between conventional collaboration, which is great. We have a common goal. Let's collaborate. We're talking about stretch collaboration where we do not have a common goal. We're actually, our interests at odds. How do we work together? That's difficult. but potentially really productive and, dare I say it, profitable.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's sort of demanding to think differently. It's asking leaders to think differently, but it's also asking leaders to change their behaviour quite often. Yes. And it's asking you to do it within your organisation first. And I think that's actually, I mean, the point that you make, Ben, around policy I think is so important and we're going to come on to that. But I think to take that step back, this idea of in order to educate or have any influence or collaborate outside of your organization your organization has to have this sort of aligned understanding of what it means to lead and what those values look like now that actually a lot of people and there's so many conversations that one questions had and we've talked about this at length sort of together and individually I think The difficulty when it comes to internal is that actually quite often, to your point, it's moments of crisis, whether it's within your own organisation or it's this zeitgeist moment that happens within society where organisations sort of say, right, we've got to have a response to this. Quite often, rightly or wrongly, it's led through a marketing lens, the external certainly sort of articulation of it perhaps. And I think what this sort of leadership demands is actually that time to take a step back and say, we know this happened this is a moment of crisis but rushing to a knee-jerk
SPEAKER_01:solution
SPEAKER_00:doesn't obviously tend to sort of fare too well externally but more importantly it doesn't actually align internally because in order to really believe that set of values we have to go top down bottom up and we have to make sure that everybody within the organisation is aligned and that is for some organisations like turning a tanker
SPEAKER_04:yeah it's such a good point and one Something that we often reflect on is just, if you think about the visual language around an organisation, even there, there's a barrier to that happening. If you ask someone to draw an organisation, they go straight to the kind of block, line down, line management kind of hierarchy. The org chart just comes straight to your mind, right? And we actually are conditioned to think that way. We literally put on the page silos in the way of collaborative thinking within an organisation. You can't align unless, you know, Marketing has a great relationship with legal. It has a great relationship with the comms team. And all of these things come together to think about the risks and the opportunities. But that is so much easier said than done. And when you're trying to actually change strategy, change direction, to make that all come together and get people aligned is an incredible skill as a leader. It takes clarity of thought. It takes clarity of strategy. It takes clarity of communication. But it also takes the structures that are in there to actually not be structures in many ways, to be really loose. And again, easy to say really hard to do it's a bit like the visual language around growth we assume an upward curve and you're just going to keep going and you know many people have pulled that apart i think you know we need to get beyond the way that we think about the organization again coming back to the the ecosystem that's part of the challenge that we are saying to leaders is actually can you imagine your organization just as a small thing in a much wider thing not as the center of a universe where it's your job to impose on the world in which you want to go and have an impact and that's a very different mindset to be in
SPEAKER_00:i love that i love the i sort of love the idea that actually in order for us to be able to lead to a point of profitability which you know irrespective of everything else my argument is has always been for quite some time purpose doesn't sit as a different it doesn't sit outside your business and whether or not you like that word whether or not you subscribe to the ESG framework however you define it it is intrinsic to the business and I think what is so refreshing about that Dan is such a brilliant point is actually you have to almost have the system change And for a 300-year, 100-year, 50-year, 10-year-old business, that's incredibly difficult. And actually, sometimes just getting shareholder alignment is a huge challenge, let alone board alignment, let alone then manifesting Dan to the team.
SPEAKER_01:Let me say a couple of points just to build on what Dan said and what you're sort of talking about, Sarah. One, the old model of leadership, there's an evolutionary point here. There's a reason why it evolved. I mean, You go back to how we taught MBAs 10, 20 years ago. The job to be done for the last at least 100 years was to scale, right? And look at how marketing evolved, how communications evolved. It was very much push. And it was quite a simple world. It's like, here's the product. How do I get you to buy it, right? And if you look at most management techniques we teach, including leadership, it was about scaling. Guess what? It's increasingly about, oh, I don't even know what I'm aiming for. I don't know what the world's going to be like. Everything's changed. So the new model leaderships, responding to a different environment, right? And so all this stuff we're talking about is because scaling on its own is not enough. So that's the first point. The second
SPEAKER_00:point. Is it, sorry to interrupt you, just quickly, is it that it's not enough or is it that you actually can't scale unless you change how you lead?
SPEAKER_01:The biggest problem with these grand challenges, I would argue, is you are so convinced that you understand the problem that you solve the wrong problem. That is the biggest problem. Mark Twain, right? It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so, right? It's our assumptions that typically kill us, right? And I can give you lots of stories about that, right? So one is this... I don't want to knock traditional leadership in a sense. We're saying you still need to make money. Otherwise, you know, it gives you permission to do this other stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but those two things don't have to be at odds, do they?
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_00:It's not about knocking one side or investing in another. It's actually about how do they align to serve the organisation, everybody within it and essentially the bottom line. So let's
SPEAKER_01:just examine some... It's worth understanding the sources of this inertia, why we... keep making the same mistakes, right? Some of them are structural. So Dan talked about org charts. If you look at actually most big organizations, there's a completely way of drawing the map, which is who talks to whom. It's actually not departments. It's loosely connected tribes. So it's a much more behavioral way of interpreting an organization. We never draw the organization like that, but that's actually how we are. We're tribal, right? So we'll talk about identity later, right? But I'm in marketing, Dan's in sales, and we hate each other, right? For example, right? So So that's one thing. And there's more of these structural barriers. But I want to talk about the individual. So just a couple of things about individuals as a psychologist. One, we're collections of habits, actually. So we have evolved great ways of learning and then we have a dominant response. So when you're under stress, you do more of what you're good at, which may be exactly the wrong response. Right. So this whole take a beat, slow down because the world's going crazy. It's really hard to do, actually. Right. Though it's actually the right thing to do. And then the final thing I want to say, we've been dancing around the edges of this idea of inconsistency, of doing two opposite things at the same time. And that shows up in a lot of ways. Our brains love consistency. inconsistency is really uncomfortable. And yet here we are sitting, Dan and I are sitting here saying, you've got to be inconsistent.
SPEAKER_04:The way you see these tensions play out, as you say, in the workplace day in, day out, we've just taken on seven graduates and their expectations of the workplace is wildly different from when I started. And I mean that in a very positive way. I have no problem with a higher level of demand on leadership at all. And that's just in a very modest organisation, about 200 people. But The way I like to see it is actually just through a simple way of viewing the world. Leadership is still about rolling the pitch. You know, you've still got to get out there, make it play to your advantage. That is incredibly difficult and commercial success lies there. But it's also about improving the pitch. You know, how do you make it more accessible to people? How do you make it a pitch? They want to come and play for a long time on to horribly extend the energy. But there doesn't need to be a a tension between improving the pitch and rolling the pitch they just need to come together and you need as a leader to see where those opportunities lie and that's how you can really lead these days I think is to be like well we're going over here we acknowledge what the wider system needs and bringing those things together with what you're trying to do that's where the magic really lies and I think the organisations that can do that will be very appealing to Gen Z and you know the next generation when they come through as well there is a demand that you know when they show up they look at what we've done and we have to take responsibility for that we have not dealt with climate change you know in many of the climate crisis is a crisis we are you know every year that goes by the only the only figure that really matters is you know the parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere and it's getting worse and it's accelerating and we do have to acknowledge some of these harder truths before we're going to go and solve them and if you can't have that conversation in the workplace and be honest with graduates who are trying to come in and have impact then you're probably not going to have a meeting of minds you're probably going to lose that talent So leading in that environment means acknowledging that, you know, absolutely, we've all got a small share of that responsibility. Even if you're running a small startup, you know, you want to attract the right talent. And that means going with your eyes open. That's the kind of conversations you've got to be willing to have.
SPEAKER_00:It's really interesting. And I want to come on to the individual lens of that. But just before I do, I think the point there. So for me, it's always quite, it's quite interesting because what with us, one question begets the next. So we ask one question, we explore the answers, we distill them and quite often, And that's how those sort of our next question will come. And that sort of sits at the top of the tree for the year. And so when we decided to ask, how do we lead today, which is very specific about where we are today, I didn't expect it to be this sort of global zeitgeist moment that we were leading into politically, economically, culturally. But I think what you say there, Dan, talks about actually, leadership as a word has evolved to the fact that it's no longer about one single powerful person those graduates that you've just taken on are leaders in their own right and their values of how they lead and probably how they define it are fundamentally different and last our last podcast series explored that notion of leadership through surfing as a community through street art as a form of leadership and influence and I think what you're saying there that actually when you bring those sorts of definitions which actually are incredibly positive and exciting and create massive opportunity into a a system like business, which is perhaps rooted in strategies and systems and ecosystems, that's where the tension actually sits for quite a lot of organisations. Which comes to your point, Ben, which is, and actually what, you know, just sort of riffing, I suppose, off what you just said, Dan, that actually, in order to have those difficult conversations, we have to look at the individual. And it's asking us to be a very different kind of leader today. It's asking us to perhaps step away from this notion of I have all the answers and say, I don't have all the answers, but maybe there's seven graduates in my business that have a answer. Is that sort of the cusp of the biggest challenge from your lens, Ben, from the sort of psychologist lens that actually we're asking very different things of people to think, not only behave, going back to my point?
SPEAKER_01:Both. And actually, it's really interesting. So a couple of things I'd say. So I'm a professor at a university, right? The assumption is I'm the expert. I know what's going to happen. I'm going to input. You have all the answers. I have all the answers. And these poor kids turn up expecting me to give them the tablets of stone. Honestly, I haven't got a clue, right? Because I'll tell you, there is a bunch of research, lots of research to show that we're no better than chance of predicting the future, right? Now, if I take that to heart, Who am I to say that's going to be the future? I have no idea. Right. So just stick in my little world and we can let's extrapolate this to leaders in general situations. Right. What should I be doing? Rather than imparting my tablets of stone, I'll say here's a hit. Let me change the metaphor. Right. Here's here's a watercolor. Right. I've done the sketch. Help me color it in because, you know, stuff that I don't. Right. Tell me about how you use generative AI, because frankly, you can teach me. Right. So that's a very different stance from I'm the professor. And you can go back to leaders in a business context. Right. Can you see how, you know, take down seven graduates? Right. This idea of, you know, and different companies doing stuff like reverse mentoring, getting the kids to teach us oldsters how to do stuff. Right. And it's a much more co-creative model. But notice, I have to let go. I have to be vulnerable. I have to show my weakness, right? And, you know, this is about saying, hey, I'm going to... The metaphor for vulnerability is, let me... Here's a knife. Don't stab me. I trust you not to stab me.
SPEAKER_04:I think there's a really important part where you do it. Let's take it well beyond to the bigger picture of actually bringing together... stakeholders beyond the confines of an organisation as well. So how do you lead when, as you say, everyone acknowledges that there are these grand challenges, but all you have in common is the idea that we do need to do something about them. I think a modern leader needs to sort of go, okay, well, I do need that kind of boldness of humility to say I don't have all the answers, but then government business society needs to create the kind of architecture and the place to have those conversations where there's a safe enough space to to have what is a very difficult conversation and Business hasn't been great at that traditionally, nor has government actually, funnily enough, let alone business and government working in partnership. We don't really have the environments where we can turn up, have what would basically be a conversation with a party, which is an uncomfortable conversation to talk about the fact that we've only got part of the answer. And that is something I think actually, if you bring it right up today, the Labour government is actually grappling with, and actually I think is being quite progressive with, it is saying to business, okay, look, these are our missions. You know, we've got our five missions. We're going to create the environment where we can have a more grown up conversation, acknowledging our strengths, our weaknesses. We need your investment, it is saying to business. We need you to show up with the skills, the workforce and literally the money to help us do this. But we're not going to try and impose it on you. We're going to have to actually have a conversation at the outset about what is give and what is take. And I think that's a real art of modern leadership as well. And not well beyond just government and business. What other stakeholders can help frame an environment where we can have these tougher conversations, talk about the grand challenge. Actually, regulators play a massive role. There's a really interesting trend at the moment, particularly in the UK, where regulators are basically saying to businesses, actually be what would be traditionally termed as anti-competitive. So on climate change, the CMA has said to supermarkets, the most cutthroat of competitive environment, of sectors where like 1% year on year sale change is the difference between success and failure for a leader through a traditional lens, actually, sit down with the competition, Audi, sit down with Lidl, Tescos, Sainsbury's, figure out how you can build supply chains, which actually allow us to lean into climate change and put the right behaviours into the system. Now, doing that while you're also trying to take market share from those people is a whole new world to operate on. But the regulators prompting that, that's progressive regulation. And I think that's the world that we're now entering is how as a business do you work with the regulator in that progressive way? How do you bring in government? How does the government set the framework for business to be brave enough to have those conversations? And no one's got all all the answers at the moment, but you are starting to see a shift in the way the world is operating, which is basically putting the emphasis on the leader of the organization to be, I haven't got all the answers. I'm going to create a business where we're willing to lean in a bit more and actually be part of the solution. And again, that sounds like kind of CSR cliche from 20 years ago, but the framework for that to happen now, you're starting to see in a much more meaningful way. And that's the reasons to be hopeful. You started talking about hope, Sarah, rightly, and that is the reason to be hopeful. architecture that we need you're starting to see evolve so
SPEAKER_00:yeah i think that is absolutely fundamental and there is somewhat kind of irony of this meta that actually this meta position that we're in in the systems in which we exist have such an outdated notion of leadership that when we're trying to evolve leadership within businesses or within society we're sort of sat in this kind of rock and a hard place in some respects. And I love the idea that actually business doesn't have to adopt policy. Business can inform shape policy. And actually quite often we had a conversation with Jess Phillips in 2020. So it was right in the height of the pandemic. And one of the points that she made was we actually want business to help us shape the policy under a Labour government. We actually want to invite business because we quite often business has far greater resource, is far quicker at being able to adopt things like this and has the real sort of, you know, frontline experience for want of a different word. So actually this sort of notion of being able to bring regulation alongside government, alongside business and look at actually what's in the best interest for business, the economy, policy and society is so exciting. If
SPEAKER_04:I may... No, Ben, please. Ben said something much more compelling than I would. I
SPEAKER_01:doubt that. I doubt that. So just to build a couple of points on what Dan said, notice the role, and Sarah, you said, touching on the same point, the role of a leader, in this case government, right, focus on the what, we're going in that direction, align around this, and now stop, shut up, let them get on with it. The distinction between what and how, between alignment and autonomy, right, we're back to contradictory goals. This theme keeps popping up. Another thing that Dan talked about, he's just talking now about Aldi and Lidl competing. Notice, I'm going to steal phrases from the negotiation literature. Notice the difference between we're going to create a bigger pie around saving the planet and now we're going to fight over the pie. Right. We've got to do both. We've got to collaborate and then fight, compete. Right. And psychologically, you have to be a little bit flexible to... It gets a little bit confusing to go, when am I fighting with Dan? When am I competing, you know, collaborating with him?
SPEAKER_04:And the role of government in that is really fascinating at the moment. One thing we've been thinking a lot about is conditionality. And you see that, again, in Labour's kind of mission-led government thinking, where, you know, you don't need hardwired regulation to provoke change. You can actually incentivise change, right? And change is obviously very difficult at a large scale. But if you can get the incentives right... So conditionality, to give you a good example, For example, you talked about the pandemic. Actually business in that instant was incentivized by government to do the right thing. You know, when it came to kind of small business loans, There was some conditionality around those loans. We will keep you afloat. If you do the following things, we will give you the money. And that led to a bit bigger outcome. And, you know, you look at the way that in the US, the CHIPS Act, for example, they've basically gone, we're going to throw a lot of money at you. That's fine. You can access these loans, these grants, these support, the workforce employee kind of incentive schemes. We will make that available to you on the condition that you do the following. And the following is obviously, you know, advance the manufacturing sector in the US with a mind on solving climate change. change of the mind on making the US a leader in AI. That's all well and good, obviously, when you've got lots of money to throw. We don't, in the UK, have a big public purse at the moment. So how can you do conditionality in the UK? If you're the government at the moment, how can you say to business, right, business leader, I need you to do the following. I'm going to create a tax incentive. I'm going to give you the right kind of loan if you deliver on X, Y, and Z in the future. Now, that, I think, is a really kind of sophisticated way of looking at the relationship between business and government to collaborate meaningfully so that you can start to solve some of society's bigger problems. Being profitable, giving business what it needs to succeed, and bringing it all together. And, you know, I guess that the difficult bit of conditionality is actually understanding what the conditions are that you need to create. And that again is, you know, a real modern facet of leadership is can I imagine a future where I know the conditions that we're going to need? Not necessarily the answer, but the conditions that we're going to need to succeed. And if you can get to that place as the leader of a business or a leader of a government, I think we'll be looking at people who genuinely come on to change things for the better but again easier said than done.
SPEAKER_00:Well it is but also again it comes back to we are not programmed to not feel like we have all the answers and I think that's such an important point because what you're asking is In order to be able to identify the conditions and not get caught in this sort of, as we've talked about before, this kind of knee-jerk reaction to a crisis or a zeitgeist moment, geopolitically, economically, whether it's through the climate crisis, actually being able to take a step back, which is what we talk about a lot, and look at what are the challenges and conditions? What are the societal forces that are going to impact my business? And how can I lean into that conversation, not necessarily having any answer or maybe having a answer and exploring that in a far more collaborative to your point and collective environment that for me is so exciting but to your point it's really really difficult and I like the sort of tangibility of a policy shift that you've talked about and I want to come on to I mean there's just so much that we could talk about we could be here until tomorrow but I do want to come on to a couple of things and we'll talk about hope because that is sort of of the moment I think so important but just before we do Let's talk about the sort of tangibility of some of this, because obviously, how do we lead is a very pointed question. And actually, what can we do today, tomorrow, next month, next year? And the big challenge I'm seeing at the moment is this sort of short term, long term thinking. And I don't think we're going to have all the answers today as sort of like practice what we preach, shall we say. But I do think it is a real challenge for business, because I think on one hand, and for business leaders, we're under pressure to be able to adapt and innovate at a moment's notice, whether it's a cold shift, whether it's a political shift, whether it's innovation in AI. And there's sort of this overwhelming first to the finish line, this kind of we've got to be out saying something, we've got to have a response to a geopolitical issue, we've got to have a response to this, let's move fast. And actually, that is a great tension with what we now know, and probably have known for quite a long time that actually going back to our previous point, the sort of long term strategy, maybe the approach that Preta Monge took in that instance that you've talked about is actually, well, let's explore why this happened. Let's explore how the business feels about this? Was this siloed thinking, which is part of the reason it fell down? What's the economic impact to the business and to the industry? And that takes time. That is a long-term strategy. Now, that is a tension in itself. And then you add on the layer that also we exist in a world now where actually the tenure of any leader is becoming increasingly shorter and shorter.
SPEAKER_03:So
SPEAKER_00:when you take on a role, you're very realistic about actually what changed can I feasibly make? What are the headline changes that I can make? What's the quiet internals change that's going to have massive impact, but no one's going to know I did it? And so I think, again, you know, we're sort of facing a lot of tension at the
SPEAKER_04:moment. Timeframes blow my mind. I mean, I'm not going to have much of a solution here, but just to add to kind of how I think we need to view these things, you know, I think leaders are expected to have judgment literally on the day of something breaking because of social media. I think investors demand that they show profitability and success within a two to three year time frame based on the average tenure of a CEO in this country. And I think governments obviously are based on a democratic cycle of five years, but they're not often given even that period of time. People talk about the first year being so important. And then you compare that to 2050 and net zero and the way that the world frames itself around those targets is obviously incredibly important. There is a breakdown in just time frames and how you square all of those things. How do you meet the demands of a public or a customer base that wants to hear from you today with investors who want to see a result in two or three years time with actually societies need to solve something over a 30-year period. And we have not squared those things. You know, we have not squared those things. So as I said, problem, not solution. But again, that's a question of modern leadership that I think CEOs really, really grapple with when I talk to them. They are minded to those different things, but it's so hard to get beyond the immediate. And that's where I think, you know, a real tension plays out.
SPEAKER_00:But that's also opportunity. I think that's what I find so interesting because I think we're used to marketing sits in this And supply chain sits in this lane and then CFO and actually what one answer maybe is moving to your point, I suppose, earlier on the conversation is moving away from the siloed thinking, Ben, you touched on this, to actually moving. in order to move quickly and slow down at the same time. Perhaps we just need more people in the conversation.
SPEAKER_04:I'll let Ben come in, but just to add to that, I mean, one way of looking at that is the ecosystem versus ecosystem breakdown. In ecosystem mode, you are minded to short-term results. You are trying to, you know, absolutely deliver on that kind of commercial strategy. In ecosystem mode, you have to take a long-term view. Systems don't change quickly, you know, but when they do change and there's a tipping point, the effect is dramatic, but you have to get and earn the right for that long-term change to kick in. So if you are a leader with that duality of, I know how I'm trying to take care of helping my ecosystem change to the benefit of myself and others, but I'm also really minded to the ecosystem and the demands of making sure that I'm delivering on my strategy, that my employees are happy, the more immediate things that we have to worry about, then I think you can start to build an overall approach which starts to square those timeframes. But again, are you afforded that time? How many leaders are really minded to 2050 at the moment? You have to ask yourself that question if you're getting pressure, if your share price is starting to get hit, how much time are you actually afforded? And again, the immediacy takes over. So it's, again, I keep saying it, easy to say, really hard to do. But you do see glimmers of hope, definitely, to come back to your point of hope. There's many of those out there.
SPEAKER_01:So let me add a couple of points. Let me first come with some hope. There is actually a way through this. And then let's talk about the hockey stick, the nature of how transformations happen. happen historically, have happened historically. So the first one, this horizon thing, psychologically, we're very good at focusing on one horizon at a time. And I'm going to add in a third one, short term, medium term, long term. And I work with organizations and I typically ask them, so which one's the hardest? The commonest answer is the medium term. They're really good at the short term because otherwise they'd be out of business. If we go on a nice off-site and we manage to switch off the phones and all that, we can dream about the future. Typically, no better than chance, but we're very good at thinking about, thinking we know the answer. The problem is the medium term because typically what happens is it syncs with their planning cycle. And the planning cycle is often... not that smart. It's 5% over last year or 10% over last year. It's not very intelligent about going, hang on, what's actually happening in our sector? What's changing? The assumption is it's just extrapolate from last year. So the way to square this, when I've seen organizations do it well, they take a bit of time. And it's really a small amount of time. It's an hour a week. It's a couple of hours a month. You don't spend your whole life dreaming, right? You've got to run the business. But you tune your brain to the medium term and the long term so you are prepared for it when it happens. Actually, if you look at the mental weight of where attention goes, it should be 90% on the today because otherwise you'll go out of business. Maybe 95% of today. And that number goes slightly down as you go up the hierarchy. That's the first thing. So there is hope and there are ways of doing this which cater to the psychology of our poor brains. The second thing about the hockey stick is quite interesting. If you look at how transformations have happened in society in the past. Go back to gas lights to electric lights, go to railways, TVs, internet, right? Typically, and I'm going to paraphrase or misparaphrase Bill Gates, right? We overestimate change in the short run and we underestimate in the long run. What's actually happening is the change starts quite slowly and then it flips. And a couple of things happen when it flips. One, and this hasn't happened yet with some of these challenges yet, right? The biggest one is probably when self-interest aligns with collective interest, right? Ah, there's a way to make money from this climate stuff, right? Then suddenly, boof, right? That's one of the big changes, I would say. So those are the two characteristics. So the hope is, actually, you look at IPCC, one half degrees, the news isn't looking good, right? The hope is actually someone... or a group of people figure out a way to profit from this. so right so they make money while saving all of us yeah and you see
SPEAKER_04:that in obviously investment in solar it's heading in the right direction yeah there are many reasons to be hopeful on that front um it's the backward steps though that i think you know that you psychologically absorb you go on social media every day it feels like a backward step because you will see somebody sort of saying it's not working or we're not doing enough and you know of course there's an element of truth that there's never enough change when you're talking about facing into something as severe as the climate crisis but if you want to to your point, think hopefully, then there are some very rational data points that don't get presented enough to the world. And you have to retain hope, right? You know, as Ben says, 1.5 degrees is looking incredibly tough. We're not even having that conversation really as a society at the moment. And, you know, that's interesting in itself. But the polarisation of public debate makes hope quite difficult. And we have to be honest about that.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's the perfect kind of point to explore, because I do think talking of zeitgeist moments I don't know if hope can be a zeitgeist moment realistically but mixing metaphors perhaps but I do think it is really interesting and I've written about this a lot recently that we have spent so long so long looking at changes looking at how do we create change through a lens of fear climate crisis geopolitical issues politics you know over here we've seen the Brexit vote and the polarisation of that what's happening in America her and the fallout of that and almost this kind of advantage for some media or some social media and some groups of society and some policies and sort of political characters to sort of double down in this notion of actually if we breed more fear and scare more people we'll change things whether it's for the good or the bad is obviously very sort of dependent on how you feel and actually I think what we're seeing now is And again, it's playing out in politics, certainly in the US, is this shift to actually what we need more than anything is to feel like we belong, is to feel like we have a shared common goal that we're all fighting towards. And actually, I think I wonder, and I asked it this week, and we're asking it again, if actually we've undervalued or undermined the power of hope. for so long being British, this notion that hope is not a strategy. And I'm actually starting to wonder whether hope is a strategy.
SPEAKER_04:It's fascinating, right? And, you know, if you think about it through that political lens and political campaigning lens, hope... tends to be the change candidate. You know, you have to paint a very different picture of the future. And you say, come with me, be hopeful about things. And the incumbent is the one sort of saying, fear change. Ben's a psychologist, not me. But as I understand it, the human brain is wired to actually, obviously, stick with the status quo two out of three times. You only get one third of people actually wanting to take that change at any given moment. So that's possibly the reason why a more conservative mindset wins out in more elections than the change candidate does I'm sure electrostics might back that up but A hopeful strategy when it works, I think, really embeds. I think they're the things that you talk about systemic change and the need for transformation. If you can land a hopeful strategy and a hopeful message, I think it fundamentally begs a long-term answer as well. You think about the big moments of change in British politics. The ones that I always go to, Blair felt transformation or it felt like a year. And that was a big change ticket. I'm sure in the US, people would say the same about the Obama campaign. That's not to sort of say that the conservative campaigns have been getting it wrong at all. It's a very effective campaign. the most effective campaigning machine in the history of the world, the Conservative Party in this country. Mourning in America, Ronald Reagan. But I think if you try and translate that thinking into the business world... How many leaders go out there with long-term hope as a strategy? That's interesting. I think in an environment of, say, the investor room, you're not going in as a CEO to sell some big theory of hope. You've actually got to be modest, right? You've got to say, look, these are our expectations of growth. These are our expectations of profit. You don't want to come outside of those expectations the minute that you either get ahead or behind. You've got a very different set of dynamics to deal with. Obviously, it gets very difficult if you get behind those expectations. So, look, I would love to think that the world's going to be full of CEOs who have a huge hopeful change in gender I think it's more modest than that I think it's just a collective view of where we can go and businesses being able to latch onto that and say look here's a future that's worth having this is our contribution to it within our lanes is what we're going to do and here's a successful strategy that backs that up if we can get to that place then I think you know quality of debate in the public sphere could be more modest could be less less polarised but look big big hopeful change tickets are really hard to land and but when they do they're fantastic and tend to be the things that genuinely do change the world. I
SPEAKER_00:wonder when we're talking about hope, because I agree completely, and it's a wonderful romantic notion, isn't it, to lean into, but I do wonder whether the lens from a business perspective, which I've been thinking about a lot, is actually just hope at home, which sounds so clichéd that I'm going to kick myself for saying that later. It alliterates, it
SPEAKER_04:must be
SPEAKER_00:good. But I wonder if actually it's just a sort of leadership model within your own organisation that isn't necessarily about grand statements or big moves or big change but it's actually just if we're all here because we believe in the same set of values and we believe that in in making money we can make a difference they're not it's not and but it's alongside and it's aligned What could the impact be of that, maybe? So that's a sort of hypothetical rhetorical question.
SPEAKER_01:Let me introduce a little bit of psychology on this, something from research, and then let's pivot to what does that mean, what do you do as a leader, right? So the psychology of this is interesting. Dan, you're right. The human brain pays more attention to negative information than positive information. You see that? As a journalist, you'll know this. And there's good reason for it. Negative information affects your survival more than positive ones. Let's flip it around. Let me point you to two studies which are interesting. One, there's a whole bunch of research. I'll point out one study where... People who have an explanation of what's going on in the world are systematically happier, right? Event happens. It's good event or bad event. If you have an explanation for the event, right, good event or bad event, you are systematically happier, right? So one... the most stunning data. This is across 30 countries, right? Religious people are happier than agnostics or atheists. And the explanation is whether you have an earthquake or something, something good or something bad happens, you have an explanation
SPEAKER_00:for it. Because you have a reason.
SPEAKER_01:Right? So that's one thing, right? Second study, Wendy Mendez at UC San Diego, University of California, San Diego, has been doing studies on how do we respond to threats versus challenges? So what she does is she gets participants in a room. Half of them, she gives them a threat. She primes them for threat. Half of them, she primes them for opportunity. She gives them the same really difficult problem. What she finds reliably is that if you're threatened, you give up easier, faster, and you're basically less happy. So both you feel worse and you perform worse. If you're framed for opportunity, the same problem, you will persist, you're more likely to solve it, and you feel better. Now, let's pivot to what does that mean for you as a leader? One, there are two aspects. There are lots of dual aspects here. One, your job as a leader is to manage work. That's sort of like table stakes. Your job is to manage the work of the people around you. Fine. The other aspect, which is a lot less obvious, is your job is to manage meaning. What are we doing here? what event happens chat gpt's launched climate says right what does it mean for us right simplify it simplify it and interpret it and you don't have to impose a meaning you can say let's talk about this what the hell does this mean we co-create it right so you can be democratic about it as well but this idea of managing meaning is really important and take some mental space, right? Very cheap as well, though. Now, so notice here, I need you as a leader to be really humble because you don't know what the future brings. And you need to be really confident at the same time because your people looking to you going, boss, tell me what's going on. Because I'm confused and worried and scared.
SPEAKER_00:Holding two positions at the same time. Holding two positions.
SPEAKER_01:Lots of variety here, right? Yeah. And then to your point about strategy, I love the hope at home. I would say there should be, your strategy has at least two strands. There's a cognitive strand, which is this is what we do. Here's the space in the market. This is how we make profit. There's an affective or emotional strand, which is we might call it purpose, but I don't have to, but it's strategy to me, right? This is how our people feel and this is how it gives us competitive advantage because of how they feel, right? So that is an under... appreciated aspect of strategy to me that is as strategic as this is how we make money
SPEAKER_00:i love the notion in a such a polarized space which i know is something that you you both are exploring a lot in the next few months in such an uncertain space right now politically economically this idea of finding meaning and not only is that as a business and the opportunity that that creates but also as as an individual actually how if we are in existing in a polarized space you know in our workforces let alone anywhere else right um being able to sort of attach meaning to all these different things and these different challenges that are happening um the micro and the macro yeah actually i find really reassuring um okay so I can't believe how quickly time flies in these conversations. There's never enough time. But I suppose to kind of sum up a little bit in a sort of tangible takeaway, again, this alliteration, I'm on fire today. The tangible takeaway for leaders, the sort of how do we lead today, the sort of things that someone who's listening to their CEO, say, a graduate can kind of walk away tomorrow and go into work and think, actually, that's something I can implement today is that something like for example finding meaning how does that manifest itself is it about collaborating and actually walking over to a different part of the business and saying we we never actually talk about some of the projects that we're working on maybe we could because that would give us that meaning i don't know what i'd love to hear from both of you about maybe some of those more tangible
SPEAKER_04:yeah i think that last point is really fascinating that i kind of a review of an organization being having very honest review of do we actually allow collaboration to happen. Ben and I spend far too long together thinking about this idea of collaboration and how it can drive genuine change and be a very progressive idea. But it's really hard to give oxygen to that. And organisations, they do fight it quite often. And I think one thing I would really sort of really love people to take away is that your organization probably has a value like collaboration within its values. It's a very common one to reach for, but really ask yourself the question, particularly if you're a leader of that business, is my workforce genuinely collaborative? Are we genuinely collaborative? Do we sit in the outside world as well? Do we collaborate with third parties meaningfully? Because so much collaboration is really light touch. It's kind of, you know, I acknowledge your point of view. I've kind of heard you, but I haven't really taken it on board and I'm not actually willing to cede ground. That's not actually collaboration. That's a conversation that's engaging in the kind of terrible kind of PR language. And we would say, yeah, you know, actually think about the difference between engaging and convening. Brands, businesses, leaders all have the ability to convene people. And that's where you find meaning. When you are in a room, possibly with people who don't have the same views as you, probably is, you know, in a room with people who don't have the same views as you, actually getting to an outcome which you're all happy with is some of the most rewarding work you would do. And that might be to solve a really simple day-to-day task, but it might actually be to solve one of the grand challenges that we're talking about in a really meaningful way. That's where you'll find great things in your job. That's where you'll get a really good corporate strategy. That's where as a leader, you'll start to see people really engaging. You know, when you stand up, it will resonate with them. So the one takeaway for me is be bold enough to do what I think the kind of terminology is called stretch collaboration, which is showing up with humility, not having the answers, but knowing the direction of travel you want to go in and working with people to, you know, come up with the solution. And, you know, that's bite size over time. It's macro when you do a big planning strategy, you know, and everything in between. So, yeah, think about are you actually being true to some of these values that we talk about are they just you know words on a mirror somewhere that people are meant to read or are they actually embedded in the way that you show up at work I always find when I'm struggling at work to find that meaning I will just get together with a group of people that I love having a conversation with and also a group of people who I know I'm going to disagree with and kick around an idea something that's important to the future of our organization or one of our clients and that always adds up to some of the best work as well so this
SPEAKER_00:is why we're going so well Dan because we have this shared agreement that the more that you converse the more that you communicate the more that you are willing to have the conversation the more opportunity you create I mean it's the sort of ethos of one question and arguably what we're doing today as part of this podcast you know every episode tells a story and if you're willing not to necessarily just listen to the one about marketing or the one about politics but actually broaden your thinking and it is hard because I think for a lot of people this notion of actually sort of pausing and actually looking at how can I better understand my challenge along with people that I might not necessarily agree with in order to find a new set of answers. So, Ben, what's your...?
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Sarah, and thank you for this lovely discussion. It's been so stimulating, certainly for me. If we start with these grand and less grand challenges, let's call them messes, right? Because they are messy problems. They are. They have a number of characteristics which have implications for leadership. One, we don't know what's next, right? So what's the implication for leadership? Be humble at the same time as being confident and saying, This is what I think this means. So J. Abrams said, people are suddenly begging to be led. Fill the vacuum, right? Help them interpret what's going on. It doesn't have to be right. It just has to be meaningful, right? We want meaning, right? The second one, increasingly you'll see with all of these messes, we've got contradictory goals, right? Profit and purpose, short-term, long-term, whatever it is, right? Don't just jump to the, ah, I'm going to go just down this. This whole idea of a repertoire of being able to balance opposing goals and flip between the two. Once you start thinking about it, you'll see them all over the place.
SPEAKER_00:Can I also ask, Ben, sorry to interrupt, but just quickly, can you also see them as the same goal? Is it actually sometimes helpful to find that, I mean, I sort of, you know, wear a T-shirt that says profit and purpose are the same thing. I
SPEAKER_01:would say it slightly differently. I see them as two different goals, but the way to transcend them, to embrace them, is actually to look for the interconnections between them. I mean, that's far more articulate than what I said. So go back to your chemistry... GCSE, or if you're as old as me, O-level. You know the idea of dynamic equilibrium? Yeah. The reactions are running in the same direction, in two opposite directions at the same time. So profit drives purpose and purpose drives profit. What does that mean? There are more and more examples that are coming out. Third one, increasingly with these messes, you and I, or Dan and me, will have different opinions or different interpretations of the same thing. The humility, the balance between when should I advocate and say, this is what I believe versus when should I inquire? Because again, we're not talking about polarization today, but let me just throw in one other nugget. Polarization, actually, it's driven more by your identity than by the issue. If you look at the research, it's driven much more by the group you belong to than any particular issue.
SPEAKER_00:It comes back to that sense of belonging.
SPEAKER_01:And if, therefore, I'm going to have a conversation with you about, and we're polarized, I should actually not start with the issue. I should start with a way of finding out some common identity between us, however different we are.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And that's going to be, we're going to call that the B to this conversation. That's going to be a follow up, everybody. And you're going to come back and we're going to do part two. Gents, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having us. I mean, it's suffice to say that we could be sat here for another hour or so and still not be finished. But I've so appreciated this. Absolutely insightful. So thank you very much. Thank you. And now a word from our sponsor. Headland is a UK leading reputation and communications consultancy trusted to build the reputations of FTSE 100 businesses, global disruptors and household name brands, trade bodies and leading NGOs. Visit headlandconsultancy.com and find out how they can help your organisation thrive. Thank you for listening to the One Question podcast. If you're enjoying exploring One Question with us, please rate, review and subscribe today. We explore big challenges through the lens of a single question to find a new set of answers.