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Big Business Insights: Using tech and talent to build adaptable organisations with Valter Adão & Dr Dieter Veldsman
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Adaptability, fluency and flexibility. These are the essential skills of business leaders as they face the coming decade, in which 59% of workers will need to completely re-skill. This isn't just a challenge – it's a matter of survival, defined by rapid technological shifts and unique local complexities.
In this episode of Big Business Insights, brought to you by Old Mutual Corporate, host Blessing Utete, the Commercial Executive Head at Old Mutual Corporate, asks how big businesses can thrive in the future, instead of scrambling to keep up.
He is joined by Valter Adão, a TEDx Speaker and expert in the fields of disruptive innovation and business re-imagination, and CEO of Cadena Growth Partners. Our second guest is scientist-practitioner, HR executive, keynote speaker, and global advisor Dr Dieter Veldsman. Dieter is Chief HR Scientist at the Academy to Innovate HR, and professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg.
The conversation covers what keeps executives up at night, why HR demands a strategic role, and some habits leaders can adopt to prepare for the unknown. Tune in to discover why company cultures that encourage experimentation and informed risk-taking are the foundation for technology adoption that truly moves innovation forward and delivers on your goals.
Follow the Old Mutual Employee Benefits page on LinkedIn and visit the Old Mutual Corporate Resource Hub for more insights, research and analysis to help you make the best decisions for your business, your employees and yourself.
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Big Business Insights brought to you by Old Mutual Corporate
Using tech and talent to build adaptable organisations with Valter Adão & Dr Dieter Veldsman
Valter Adão: [00:00:00] We've got a general-purpose technology like AI that's been introduced into our economies and general purpose technologies fundamentally transform economies. They change productivity, they change societies, et cetera.
Blessing Utete: According to the data released by the World Economic Forum, 59% of workers need to completely re-skill by 2030. Adaptability and flexibility are going to be the name of the game for the South African business leaders. This isn't just a challenge, it's an existential mandate defined by the rapid technology shift and unique local complexities. We don't want to merely survive the future, we want to lead it.
Welcome to the Big Business Insights Podcast brought to you by Old Mutual Corporate, I'm your host, Blessing Utete. The Commercial Executive Head at Old Mutual Corporate. Thought leaders and visionaries across the sectors join me in a quest to understand how we got here and where we are going. In this episode, we ask, how can business leaders plan for the future? [00:01:00] How can they help their employees to grow in resilience and lead them with vision and courage?
Joining me today is Valter Adão, CEO and Digital Leader of Cadena Growth Partners. Valter is an expert in the fields of disruptive innovation and business re-imagination. He is a TEDx Speaker and was recently named the Big 4 ‘professional of the year’ by The South African Professional Services Academy. Welcome Valter.
Valter Adão: Good afternoon, Blessing it's great to be here with you again, talking about, uh, important matters.
Blessing Utete: I'm also joined by scientist practitioner, HR executive, keynote speaker, and global advisor, Dr Dieter Veldsman. Dieter is a Chief HR Scientist at the Academy to innovate HR, Professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg. He is no stranger to podcasts as host of The HR Dialogues, which prepares HR practitioners for the future of work. Great to have you with us, Dieter.
Dr Dieter Veldsman: Lovely to join you as well, Blessing and yes, look forward to the conversation.
Blessing Utete: Indeed. Let's dive straight in, to kick [00:02:00] us off, I, I'll make a statement, and you can answer true false, or it depends, and then you can give your reasons why please. Let's start with you, Valter.
Here's the statement: Employees should bear responsibility for upskilling themselves.
Valter Adão: Extremely true, but with a caveat. Look, I, I think it's absolutely true that employees need to take responsibility for their own development, not just because careers are no longer linear and predictable, but because our knowledge is decaying at a rate of about 30 to 50% a year, depending on the industry that you're in and the job that you're in. I think it's also important that organizations play an important role in facilitating that development, so organizations need to create the right environments where continuous learning is possible, accessible and encouraged.
And if, if you view this relationship as a joint venture where employees provide curiosity, willingness, and personal energy, and the employer provides structure, opportunity, and that psychological safety to learn, I think then you start experiencing those [00:03:00] palpable returns that we so look forward to.
Blessing Utete: Yeah, absolutely. I think I would agree with that, it's both ways really. Dieter to you, your statement is: Leaders of the future should prioritize technical training over soft skills.
Dr Dieter Veldsman: I need to give you the, the typical psychologist answer, Blessing around that, that will depend. I must say ,though, I'm leaning a lot more towards false for a couple of reasons. I think as Valter has mentioned, we see today that the shelf life of skills are much shorter than what they used to be, depending on which skills you're talking about in what particular industry. I personally believe, and that's also some of the research that we do that talks a lot about the importance of durable skills for the future.
So the ability to transfer certain skill sets between different contexts and I think that's going to become really, really important in how we think about development holistically. I think in the past we've fallen into the trap a bit of starting out teaching you the technical things. So I teach you how to do your job, and then I realize somewhere along the line, oh my goodness, you work with people, then I teach you interpersonal skills.
And then at some point I say, now you need to [00:04:00] lead people, and then I teach you leadership skills.
Whereas I think for the future, it's much more about those durable skills that I can actually adapt that allows me to transfer into other types of contexts. Because I think the technical side of things, it's not that it's less important, it's just going to change so much that we need to find ways to keep people learning continuously and throughout to remain relevant.
Blessing Utete: Staying with you, Dieter, you've been quoted recently as saying “the human resources is the single most powerful lever to shape better organizations”. Tell us more about how you got to this assessment.
Dr Dieter Veldsman: I'm obviously biased, right, coming out of the Human Resources domain and era as well, so I would like to start off by just admitting and acknowledging that from the get go. That statement, however, does come from a couple of different sources that we viewed. So, on the one side I think human resource functions, I've got a unique perspective across the entire organization around what the levers of value are going to look like. I think in the past we've spoken a lot about, you know, how human capital is strategic in the organization and how we leverage that for the future.
So I think that argument has [00:05:00] definitely been made. I want to make it a little bit more practical as well around the fact that we do a lot of interviews with business leaders, and usually when I ask them, what keeps you awake at night? It's usually something to do with the people's side of the business, whether that's culture, whether that's engagement, whether that's whether I have the right skillset. So I do think HR organizations need to play a very different role in enabling business success in future.
It does come with a caveat, however, when I refer to human resources, I'm not referring to, I think what we've at times in the past associated with the function. I'm rather referring to human resources with a mandate that can act on and has the capabilities to be a strategic lever within the organization.
Blessing Utete: Valter, uh, we are seeing unprecedented rates of change, uh, and I think in, in our forum that you chaired, you spoke a lot about how quickly things are changing. What is the single most critical practice leaders must embed into their strategy to prepare for the unknown?
Valter Adão: It's a human practice I think, it it's the practice of [00:06:00] adaptability enabled by fluency. So, you'll often hear me use the word fluency and what I mean by fluency, it's understanding. It's understanding the language, it is understanding how things progress, the interpretation of the economics of the environment in which we operating. So I think adaptability enabled by fluency is super important. And then that adaptability brings that insight into the organization, that we've got to protect our core, we've gotta enhance our core, but we've got to remain curious about new opportunities that, or, or, or future opportunities that may add new value and relevant to our organization beyond the course.
So that, that adaptability, I think matters and it matters because we can't really predict the future, but we can, you know, uh, we can prepare for it by having fluency. And if we've got fluency, then from my experience, organizations typically have higher curiosity, higher understanding. When [00:07:00] leaders bring that adaptability and that fluency into their strategy, they create these learning loops that constantly informs the strategy and the learning loops helps them break away from rigid multi-year plans.
It doesn't mean that you don't operate in a structured strategy, it just means that the strategy is always open to learn.
Blessing Utete: Mm mm, Dieter I see you nodding there, you want to comment on this one as well?
Dr Dieter Veldsman: I, I love, um, Walter comment around knowing curiosity because I think curiosity is one of the key things that we need to make sure that we almost protect for the future. I think we do find that people are getting a lot more overwhelmed with the speed of change and things that's happening around them. And I think curiosity for me links very strongly to your ability to adapt because if you're not curious about the world outside, you won't necessarily know what to adapt to. And then love the comment around fluency you know, I always think about fluency pertaining to the fact that it is like learning a new language but you need to learn the vocabulary first, you need to know the grammar, you need to know what context to utilize [00:08:00] that.
And for me, that's very much, I think a, a core thing for leaders to be able to lead in the context of the changing world of work, because it'll only get faster, it's as slow as it's ever going to be now and I think we need to rather breed leaders that are able to deal with that complexity as Vanter rightfully said.
Blessing Utete: Let's now go into this, this aspect of AI transformation and, and we know a new analysis shows that AI transformation is being driven from the bottom up and not the top down. Dieter, how can organizations create environments that allow for this to happen safely?
Dr Dieter Veldsman: I think it's an, it's an interesting question and maybe if we take a step back, some previous technological transformations we've typically always spoken about the fact that, you know, we set the goal, we set the direction where it needs to be from an executive point of view, and that cascades down through the organization and we get everybody on board regardless of which, you know, change methodology you utilise.
I think what makes AI different is two things. The one, I think it's moving way too fast and I think if we go back 12 to 18 months ago, there was this massive [00:09:00] pressure on organizations to say, you should just be doing something with AI. We don't really care what, but just jump into experimentation has really led to the, a lot of questions around its strategic value, a lot of questions around how does it play out in the organization.
Something that we've learned from some of the companies that we work with is that you do need a bit of a two-pronged approach, if I can call it that. You need guardrails to come from the top around what is the business value that you're trying to unlock through AI, because AI, for AI's sake, doesn't do anybody any good.
But you do need to set an environment where people are AI fluent into our previous conversation and actually has the ability to experiment and they're equipped and have access to a lot of these tools and technologies in a safe way and in a safe manner to build both competence and confidence.
Valter Adão: I think Dieter touches on an important thing, and I get concerned when I hear an organization saying, we've got to figure out a way to bring AI into our business. So they're starting with the technology and they [00:10:00] finding something to use the technology for. I think it's, it's a great description of the hammer looking for the nail, right? So the business as a strategy, it's trying to achieve something AI should get us there quicker or take us beyond those ambitions. If we start at that point and reverse engineer to do any technology to solve it for which technology, which vendor, et cetera, then I think the chances of success are far greater.
And it's not just about deploying the right technology against the right strategic ambition, it's also making sure that what we invest into is material enough.
I think we we're celebrating interesting things that the technology does, but the question is, does it do something the organization needs and as part of the strategic ambition of the organization, and if yes, is it material enough to give the organization the confidence to invest further into it.
Blessing Utete: Maybe with that line of thought, Valter, I, I mean this topic around bottom up versus, you know, being top down, it also brings into it a generational lens. [00:11:00] You know, generally the, the younger are at still coming through, the ranks coming up, and the top is more older generations. Is there some friction there that, that, that needs to be addressed?
Valter Adão: Look, I, I do think it's an interesting one and, and, and it's not a new thing. I think as we moved into the era of digital 10 years ago, this was a big topic of discussion, which is someone coming in into the organization as a junior that's had exposure to all these technologies that is comfortable and native to these technologies, may understand its utility and its deployment far better than someone that has been senior in the organization.
I think the goal is to try to bring those worlds together. How do you lead uh, a, a team or an organization where you create an opportunity for, uh, less experienced or more junior individuals from a seniority perspective to have a voice to contribute towards solutions.
However, the direction set by the organization has to be set by the senior [00:12:00] cohort of the business, which defines the strategic direction of the organisation and I think if, if we can nurture an environment that says, um, working for us, for our organization is good because we are taking modernization serious, so, development of your career capital will be positive.
So you, you attract that skill set into the business and then you overlay it with the experience and hopefully the fluency of leadership that can direct the business towards the right horizon. There's a beautiful synergy, you want to attract the, the new technical skill into the business, but leadership certainly needs to provide that positive tension, that momentum towards the modernization front.
Dr Dieter Veldsman: If I can jump in on, on that one, uh, Blessing because I, I think for me there's a couple of things that. The question that you also asked, there's actually a lot of evidence that showcases that age is not a predictor of digital agility or proficiency. What's a much better predictor is your openness to learning the curiosity that you have in your willingness to experiment.
So I think even [00:13:00] though age is an influencing factor, 'cause it's always, and I mean I think always have to see things in context, it's actually not, I think the inhibiting factor that keeps people from becoming a lot more digitally proficient.
And I think that's an important thing to foster in your organization, especially with technologies like AI, that it is technologies for all. I've been in organizations where, you know, the senior leaders don't really participate in what some of the internal technologies because, you know, that's kind of for the rest and for the other people, which I think doesn't help anyone in terms of the, the process that we need to get to.
I think definitely to Valter’s point, but I also agree with that, it becomes a question of culture. It becomes a question in the organization pertaining to what type of culture and how is leadership setting the tone for that pertaining to modernization, what gets celebrated what hets tolerated within the organization and how we drive that forward a lot more.
And I think that plays then out in various different ways around how open your people are to experiment with these types of things, et cetera. And then the last one I, I definitely want to make, which I, I think deserves a call out, is that, and you know, anecdotally, I get asked this quite a lot to say [00:14:00] come help with an AI strategy. And I'm like, why do you have an AI strategy? So to Valter’s point, you have a business strategy, and then AI is a key component thereof to enable that. And I think people have neglected that due to this fear of being left behind or fear of not doing enough and I think it's okay to take a step back and say, you know, but what is the business value that this is gonna add to us?
And what do we actually need to enable it? And that's where I think other factors like culture. Things come in, uh, in a very strong way, yeah.
Blessing Utete: Thanks Dieter. Valter, uh, I mean, this is really talking and both of you started going into this issue of the culture you need, which, you know, breeds curiosity and, and experimentation. How does a leader build this kind of culture that, that you guys are describing?
Valter Adão: The question that I get asked is, uh, how do I build a culture to innovate? And is, you know, what's the starting point? I think there's no shortcut, in my opinion, to building the right culture. So in other words, if you want to drive a modernization program inside the business, if you want to [00:15:00] drive, uh, innovation program inside the business, sending a communique out to the organization that says: We going to be innovative, or we've decided that we're going to be innovative or we going to modernize or we gonna become AI first company, doesn't change the culture.
I, I think it becomes theater. In order to, to drive that culture change, we've got to implement systems of thinking inside our business. And so along the themes of modernization and innovation, systems of thinking allow ultimate view, innovation and modernization as a system that, uh, that helps the organization define what it's trying to achieve. If it's thinking about innovation, what type of innovation, what is the end state that it's trying to get to? What are the constraints? How do we make decisions? How do we progress and invest further into opportunities, et cetera? How do we take the learnings that we get from these initiatives and embed them back into the organization?
So those systems, they [00:16:00] start defining a certain behavior inside the business, and if we embed the learnings back into the business, I think we start influencing culture. So I think it's so important to recognize that things like modernization and innovation is, without a doubt, it's led by human behavior, guided by systems of thinking. It's, it's that before it is about technology or about ideas.
Dr Dieter Veldsman: Maybe to add to that, I mean, I love that last point you've made because you know, I think there's various definitions of culture. For me, it always boils down to what do you celebrate and what do you tolerate in the organisation? And I think culture is an outcome of a living system and all these systemic things that have to work together.
I think people sometimes also think that culture is the sexy work that happens, right? So the t-shirts, the beanbags, like you've referred to, it's actually not, it's the hard craft things around.
What are the rituals in the organization? What are the routines we have? What are the behaviors that we drive? What do we reward? You know, where do we spend our time? What do we prioritize? [00:17:00] What's the narrative, what we talk about? And I think people need to move away from this idea that culture has this one silver bullet type of solution. So I think it has to be a lot more focused on how do I view the whole organization as a system and how do I make sure I pull the right levers, because ultimately it's about getting the behavior in the right way and making sure that it gets reinforced over time, and that you create the conditions for the culture that you want to actually start to flourish. And I think that's the important thing and again, for me, that's where I think leadership plays a key role around creating those conditions.
I'm a firm believer that they set the tone for culture, but I think culture gets reinforced everywhere else where leaders are not present right in the day to day and in the living within the organization. And I think that's such an important thing to bear in mind.
Valter Adão: So I, I want to build on to what Dieter has just shared with us, which is the overall behaviors that need to be demonstrated inside the business that then augments a behavior that's been seeded and sort of infects the entire organization. So, you know, very much, uh, resonated with what Dieter[00:18:00] said.
You know, rewarding curiosity and not just certainty and implementation, celebrating good questions, uh, as much as good answers, giving permission, people permission and the scope to test ideas. Obviously, at a low cost and a low risk. At the end of the day, we're running businesses, but I think then, starting to feel those behaviours, I think then it starts becoming embedded in the new way that the organization operates.
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Blessing Utete: Valter, you shared a post on LinkedIn that said something like ‘strategy isn't about choosing between a good path and a bad one, it's about choosing between two or more good paths and having the discipline to say no to others.
Valter Adão: All right, so look, I I, I feel quite strongly about that statement, uh, Blessing a couple of things. One is the strategy is about being precise I think to some extent, in terms of setting ambitions, and in order to be precise, one has to make some clear choices. So for example, I'm always curious when an organization states that they want to be the gold standard or the best, or number one. That could be the outcome of the strategic goal, but the input needs to be a very clear metric. This is the percentage of the market that we want or the amount of customers that we want.
And that might get you to the number one position, but it shouldn't be the other way around. Now to [00:20:00] get there, I think strategy has to ensure that we are not just choosing between good options because they're good, but we are choosing a way that allows the organisation to win in a specific area, so we have to take the conversation further.
It's not just about if this is the bad choice, this is the right choice, and therefore go to the right choice, it's about if we have two or more good choices. It's not about which choice is most popular or seems more intuitive, it's about which is the choice that allows the organization to win. So it's a directed search for the path that best positions the organization to create value for a certain set of customers.
And that might mean choosing between imperfect and incomplete options and not just always between the obvious good ones. So it does require discipline, and that discipline must be anchored in a clear cascade of choices, so the winning aspiration integrated into the choice around what is the defined playing field, integrated into the choice [00:21:00] around what is a clear understanding of how are we going to make ourselves distinctive enough to win integrated into the choice of how do we configure the organization to win?
And you know, we started talking about human resources and that's, for example, a good contributor to where human resources plays a very important role into supporting the strategy. It's about having that discipline to also saying no to those good choices, and then committing to the current set of choices that reinforce the choice that the organization has selected, even if other paths do look tempting.
Blessing Utete: You know, what I resonate with significantly on this point is, is your description of the discipline needed to say no to certain things. So often, you know, when you've got good choices, very difficult to as, as a, as a business to, to then say no to certain things and pursue a certain focused strategy. So, so really. I think you, you couched that very, very aptly Dieter I mean, from a behavioural science perspective, what's the most common cognitive trap or organizational barrier you see in South African leaders falling into when trying [00:22:00] to lead through the massive change?
Dr Dieter Veldsman: I think there's a couple of things Blessing, and I think the first one is that, you know, context matters. So what I mean by that is I think very often leaders fall into the type of not necessarily taking everything into account that is contributing towards change that they're trying to drive. So to make that practical, I think we see that a lot in Valter referenced that earlier as well, in like the innovation slash technology space where we think that, you know, implementing new technology is going to lead towards a big transformation as opposed to taking a much more systemic holistic view.
The other component is, I think, the misconception that you can manage change. I'm a firm believer that you can enable change, you can shape it, you can guide it, but ultimately it's much more of a chess game where you need to understand the context and the environment within which you're trying to do things and then be able to really kind of cut through the noise and see what are the things that really moves the dial when you want to get people towards a new area. We've spoken a lot about the fact that a lot of that happens below the surface, so it's much more about the culture and the mindset and bringing people along, but that has to be enabled by the environment that you then [00:23:00] provide, which is then result of like the skills, the focus, et cetera, that we do need to put in place as part of the broader strategy.
So I think if you ask about what's some of the traps that I see leaders fall into, one is I think they oversimplify change. They don't try to understand the broader context of what's actually starting to happen, two, they don't know what the levers are that's really going to move things forward. So they take much more of a linear planned type of approach to say, but you know, let's just stick to the plan, we'll get there, as opposed to not being adaptable enough, which we mentioned earlier. You know, let’s kind of roll with the punches a little bit more.
And then the last one is to take a holistic approach and actually consider the people, process, technology and environmental factors, uh, that will lead towards sustainable change because I think that's the important thing to think about.
Blessing Utete: And, and following on from that thought Dieter, what is then this, the single measurable action that our listeners can take this week to either start or continue on the right path?
Dr Dieter Veldsman: So I think for me, you know, and maybe to link it back a little bit towards the, the topic of leadership and the topic of change, for me, it's always to, [00:24:00] you know, I think to self-reflect and drive self-awareness as a leader and ask that question around, am I really making things better? And if so, making things better for who? Because I think we often very much get tunnel vision during these types of processes as part of sense making where we then sit in a situation where we just try to make sense of what is happening around us.
We need to actually step back, take a moment out and you know, for those listening today, I would really recommend take five minutes out and reflect on that question around am I making things better for which of my stakeholders? And then try to reflect a bit on whether that's actually moving things forward or not.
Blessing Utete: Valter, you do a lot of keynote speeches at leadership and innovation conferences. What is the most common question asked of you by these audiences and what is it that leaders most want to know?
Valter Adão: The theme of questions that I get asked about is that intersect of leadership and innovation program.
So it's how does the leader guide an innovation program in and through the organization. And in that theme, there are questions along the lines of where do we start? [00:25:00] So, and, and what drives that is that I think leaders are overwhelmed with this rapid technological change that's happening at the moment. It's the headlines of AI, digital transformation, future work strategies, et cetera.
So without a doubt, that starting point is an important question. Linked to that question inevitably becomes the second one, which says, well how do I innovate without jeopardizing my core business? This thing that makes us currently successful, and I think that's also important you know, innovation should not be at the cost of the core business, it should be driving the core business and ensuring we create value and evolve the core business while at the same time starting up that new engine of growth through an innovation type initiative.
The third question is, related to that again, and it's, so once I get this innovation initiative going, or modernization initiative going, how do we innovate effectively and repeatedly? The answers to some of those questions have [00:26:00] been answered in our discussion, so where do we start? It's, you know, clarity of purpose. Why are we innovating? What is our end state ambition? Why are we modernizing?
So that, that gives us a good sense as to why we are initiating these programs and then around that repeatability and, and effectiveness of programs, uh, again, it's, it's a misplaced view I believe. That innovation programs are high risk, uncoordinated, it's about ideas and we'll hopefully get to a solution. They're not, I think what we do see is successful innovation programs are very well structured, they're very well governed, and they're certainly repeatable, and there's an element of predictability.
Perhaps the product that you take to market or the service you take to markets might not, you know, it's difficult to predict how the market's going to react to it but most innovation programs fail even before the product is ready to go to market. It fails because the internal processes and systems of thinking inside an organization don't allow opportunities to evolve and progress [00:27:00] towards a point of creating value.
Blessing Utete: Some great insights there in terms of how to tackle those. Valter. Um, so lastly, Valter, another quote from you is that “real strategy is uncomfortable”. Do we all need to get more comfortable with discomfort? Um, and how can we make this, uh, sustainable?
Valter Adão: We are going through a period of peak technology progression, peak innovation, peak business, creativity, et cetera. But what that does mean is that things are changing around us far quicker than what we are comfortable with. So that would suggest we have to get comfortable with discomfort because of the, the constant change, you know, we've been given the gift of leadership to guide organizations into a, a new era of doing business and what's driving that new era is the fact that we've got a general purpose technology, like AI that's been introduced into our economies and general purpose technologies fundamentally transform economies.
They change productivity, they change societies, et cetera. And it's complex leading through that because there's, well, there's really no [00:28:00] step-by-step guide on what needs to be done so that the mindset of navigating through what needs to be done is important. That would suggest that we've gotta clearly have a strategy to navigate through that but at the same time, our strategies need to be adaptable so that if we realize we need to maybe update a component of our strategy, or we need to think differently about our markets, or we need to bring about some kind of a change that we're not so rigidly caught in our strategy that we're unable to change it.
So without a doubt, this notion of discomfort is something we've got to learn to lead through and I do think that the leaders that build comfort into uncertainty and we train their teams to navigate these gray areas, will outperform those that wait for clarity.
Blessing Utete: Mm Yeah. We have a cornerstone question that we ask each guest, Dieter, what do you think we haven't said about this, this topic today?
Dr Dieter Veldsman: Blessing for me, I think for me, I think the acknowledgement that leadership is tough. It's definitely a privilege and I think. It is, however, become a lot tougher in recent times [00:29:00] due to all the factors that we've spoken about. So I think the thing that we don't often call out is for leaders also to have a little bit of grace with themselves around the adjustments that they're also going through.
We see increasing expectations of what leadership is and how leadership needs to guide organizations in this disruptive complexity that we find. So I think what we don't often talk enough about and what we also did not mention is, how do we make sure that we look after leaders' wellbeing during the course of all these changes that we also find?
So I'm a firm believer that, you know, the root cause of all good and all evil and organization starts and ends with leadership but how do we make sure that we look after the leaders so that they can actually guide the organisation and that for me is something that we need to call out a lot more.
Blessing Utete: Very key Dieter. Valter your, your thoughts? What haven't we said in this topic today?
Valter Adão: Perhaps a theme that's worthwhile mentioning is I think leaders recognize that over and above, ensuring that they understand, they've got access to information and things that are changing around us, and they get a, [00:30:00] they, they've got good fluency regarding that.
They need to develop mental models that helps them to think about these changes.
So it's not just about having access to information, it's knowing how to think about all this information in a very complex and multidimensional way in order to help guide the organization. So mental models is a, is a critical thing, a theme that that matters for me with leaders inside organizations.
Blessing Utete: Thank you so much, Dieter and Valter I think this has really been an insightful conversation. I think there's so many angles to this conversation and I've thoroughly enjoyed, uh, having you with us today, sharing your insights. And our conversation has really shown that adaptability should not be viewed as a defensive reaction, but rather powerful offensive strategy. It means we should look beyond technology into the heart of our organizational culture, get more curious and keep agile. So thank you very much for joining us, really appreciate it.
Dr Dieter Veldsman: It was lovely to be with you. Thanks so much Blessing, and thanks Valter.
Valter Adão: Likewise [00:31:00] Dieter, Thank you very much.
Blessing Utete: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like and subscribe for more. You can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay updated, thanks for listening. We look forward to the next time.