E135 | Transformative Trends Shaping Tomorrow's Leaders | Angeles Garcia

In this episode, we explore the evolving landscape of leadership with Angeles Gracia, Chair of the Board at Legrand. She shares her experiences navigating uncertainty, the importance of diverse perspectives in decision-making, and the essential traits future leaders should cultivate.

• Angeles emphasizes the need for collaborative decision-making amid uncertainty
• The value of diverse perspectives in leadership discussions
• Key attributes for future leaders: curiosity, courage, and nuance
• The role of compassion and empathy in leadership decisions
• Understanding technology's impact on leadership while maintaining the human touch
• The significance of continuous learning and adaptability in changing environments
• Encouragement to have a positive impact on those around you

The call to action from Angeles Gracia: "Have a positive impact on three people around you."

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Transcript

Navigating Uncertainty Through Diverse Perspectives

Angeles 0:00

When you are navigating those times, I think the best thing you can do is surround yourself well, is make sure that you have around the table enough minds and hearts to be able to form together an opinion on elements that are unclear. Unclear and you cannot, I think, rely anymore only on your experience, because most of the things that we have been in a position to live in the last five years were things that we had never lived and therefore you cannot find your answer in your past. You cannot find your answer in your own experience. You need to find the answers in putting together different perspectives.

Sri 0:52

Welcome to Inspire Someone Today podcast, a show where we dive into the stories and insights that has the power to create ripples of inspiration in your life. I'm your host, shrikant, and I'm thrilled to be with you on this journey of inspiration. Welcome back, my dear listeners, and wishing each one of you a wonderful, fantastic 2025. And for the first time on this show, we have somebody at the helm of an organization, a very historical organization in the annals of the world, somebody at the helm of an organization, a very historical organization in the annals of the world. We have the chair of the board of legrand joining us in this first episode of 2025, and the newest guest on the show is angelis gracia. Angelis, welcome to the show and wishing you and your loved ones and your organization a wonderful 2025 thank you, sri.

Angeles 1:46

Very happy to be with all of you and happy new year.

Sri 1:49

May it bring us peace and joy and great projects to all, in all fields of life so, angelis, this project of having this conversation with you, getting you on this podcast, was in the making for quite some time. It was very difficult to kind of reach out to you given your super busy schedule. So thank you so much for taking time and when I kind of looked at your profile I said I must get you onto the show and get my listeners an opportunity to hear out your story. Your journey 15 years at BCG, close to 15 years at BCG, close to 15 years at Spencer Stewart, now at Legrand what a journey it has been. Walk us through how this journey has been. Where was the seed of taking something, what you're doing today? Chair of Legrand. By no means a small role, small title. Where did all of this journey start for Angelis?

Angeles 2:42

Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I'm very honored to be here and I was surprised of your invitation and honored about it. India is a very important country for Legrand. It's actually our number four country in the world and, as you know, my board member colleagues and myself will be traveling to India next June for our strategic seminar. So this is a first way to connect.

Angeles 3:07

It's been quite a journey, you're right. I have to say that I didn't really plan for it. I would say there's been three professional lives and counting so far, as you said. First one, the founding years with BCG, where I basically learned and acquired a very useful toolbox that has been traveling with me since Then. Spencer Stewart, where I discovered not only an amazing profession but also how to become a manager and a business leader. I actually was there where I got my first P&L and then led me to being head of Europe and joining the global board. And then the last part of my career has been as a board member and ultimately chair of Legrand, with also a portfolio of other mandates, and each one of them, sort of without knowing, prepared me to the next.

Angeles 4:00

And when I look back I can see moments where I can identify a few pivotal moments that actually shaped who I became over time. The first one was probably moving from being a team member to being a manager and a business leader, so being in charge of others and having the responsibility to lead others and to show the way, making decisions that impacted others. I think that was the first one. The second one was moving from managing team members to managing managers, so quite different kind of dynamics, and I had to adapt because I'm pretty hands-on I like to get my hands dirty, so that required a little evolution from my side. And then the last one was from top exec to non-exec, so from doing to really influencing, aligning interests, negotiating and I think part of my past consultant experience was useful for that because it helps you understand, learn, align and sort of basically be a catalyzer to movement as opposed to doing it all yourself right. So it's been interesting, very varied and a lot of fun.

Sri 5:16

What keeps you up in the night?

Angeles 5:18

Oh, lots of things. First of all, I've been blessed with choosing the companies that compose my portfolio today, and I have to say I am lucky to have a portfolio of mandates that are with companies that have very clear purposes, very high level teams, generally speaking, growing and healthy businesses. So there is not one thing that keeps me up at night when it comes to operational issues at the moment. What keeps me up at night is the state of the world, is the fact that I grew up in a moment where Europe was becoming a region, was becoming a union. Globalization was a wonderful union. Globalization was a wonderful promise.

Angeles 6:07

We were all envisaging a much brighter future and when I look 30 years after, what happened it's not necessarily the promise that we had dreamed. We have inequalities, unrest, wars, inequalities, unrest, wars, big social and environmental issues across the world, and therefore, how to incorporate all these sort of permanent crises that we have been living in the last 10 to 15 years in our day-to-day businesses is a question and is in the agenda of every business leader. So it is less about micro issues and more about macro issues. I think that's the areas that sometimes keep me awake, but I tend to have a really healthy sleep.

Sri 7:02

That's nice. That's nice to know, and you touched upon some pretty large issues that definitely warrant some attention. We'll definitely touch upon some elements of it during our conversation. You also touched upon an element that you have been carrying this toolbox all through your professional career. What are those one or two tools that you can kind of recommend to our listeners? That has come in very handy during your professional growing up years.

Angeles 7:27

It's a great question. I actually had not realized how much I got from those years. I guess the first thing that I got out of that 15-year stint was the ability to learn. I learned how to learn and that has been something that has followed me and that sort of a way to adapt, grasp new scopes, new businesses, with curiosity, with an open mind, the use of analogies to generate new ideas. And then, of course, more basic hard skills like rigor, analysis, relying on data to make decisions, working in teams, multicultural environments.

Fostering Innovation and Corporate Responsibility

Angeles 8:15

All those elements that I wasn't able to formalize then have proven to be very useful in my now right. So I'm very, very grateful for those years. But I guess when you change companies and when you change sectors, there is always something you bring with you. When you leave, your backpack becomes full of different experiences, and I completed that experience with my years as Spencer Stewart in very good ways as well. I think until then I had not fully embraced the power of intuition, the power of soft skills, the power of understanding other people's motivation, which is something that is really important as you grow in an organization, and even more so when you're when you're chairing a board of directors and you touched upon being the board of directors.

Sri 9:13

It's a huge responsibility and any board of directors is a very responsible role and when you associate that with the marke name called as Legrand, the responsibility multiples. So, as Jay Rumenov at Legrand, what do you see as the most pressing challenges that you and your team are kind of addressing? You did mention about some of the global trends. That apart, what do you see as your single most responsibility that terrifies you saying, okay, this is something I owe to the organization that I owe to the world.

Angeles 9:47

Well, I'm lucky because Legrand operates in a space. I don't know, actually, how much you know about Legrand I guess you read a little bit about us, sri but for those who are listening to us, legrand is one of the global leaders in electrical and digital infrastructures for buildings. So our job is to equip buildings of all kinds with products that make them more connected, greener, more energy efficient and better equipped to serve human needs. So our purpose is to improve people's lives by transforming the spaces where they live, they work, they get educated, they get health care you name it as such. We are lucky to be at the heart of some of our society challenges because, of course, when we think about electrifying the world, what we are really saying is we are going to decrease the carbon footprint of the world, and therefore the purpose and the mission and the business where Legrand operates is modestly part of the solution. And so we're lucky not to ask ourselves the question every day why are we doing what we are doing and why does it make sense to cultivate our profitable and sustainable growth business model, which is the one that, basically, is the architecture for the Le Grand House, right? So I would say, my very personal challenge, or my very personal worry when I took the chair role was I inherited an organization which was already doing very well, so it was not too much on transforming and on building something new. It was more on how do we build a board that is capable to offer to the management team enough tools to navigate this very uncertain environment, and I took actually my chair role in July 2020.

Angeles 11:56

As you remember, it was COVID time.

Angeles 11:58

After that, we had an energy crisis, inflationary crisis, economic crisis, wars, and it has been going on and on since, with no, basically, a moment of rest or stability.

Angeles 12:16

And when you are navigating those times, I think the best thing you can do is surround yourself well, is make sure that you have around the table enough minds and hearts to be able to form together an opinion on elements that are unclear.

Angeles 12:46

I think rely anymore only on your experience, because most of the things that we have been in a position to live in the last five years were things that we had never lived and therefore you cannot find your answer in your past. You cannot find your answer in your own experience. You need to find the answers in putting together different perspectives, and this is where diversity, diversity of thought come into game, and this is one thing that I really pay attention to and that we have been addressing at the board table. So we have a blend of nationalities, of course, gender, but also different sectors, different perspectives, different sort of majors for people around the table, and it's the blend of all that that helps us, I think, make good decisions role to cherish that, protect that, cultivate that and leave enough space for healthy contradiction in the room so we make sure that we don't miss any blind spots so wonderfully put.

Sri 13:56

I loved the statement that you made. You cannot find answers in your past. So very true. At the base at which the world is changing, growing, you need to find answers everywhere around you. Having said that, angelis, when you are operating at such a scale, so huge responsibility, does it ever scare you saying it, I am responsible for such a just, not an organ, the brand of the organization, the people working, the stakeholders, ecosystem. Does that scare you, give you that fear, and how do you kind of deal with it?

Angeles 14:29

I don't think too much about that, rosary. I have to be honest. I try. I'm a simple person in the sense that I don't. I don't really plan or try to look much in the mirror to see you know what's the scope of influence or anything else. I really try to just do my best with what I have between my hands and I think we you know Le Grand is big, but it's so small compared to other large companies and market caps.

Angeles 14:59

I think our mission, our role as a board, is to leave behind something that is at least as good than what we inherited from. We are all travelers, we are not here to stay. We will hand over to somebody else, and I want to be able to pass the baton in a few years from now. I'm not saying I want to go, I'm very, very happy where I am, but in a few years from now my time will come to go and I would love to be able to leave a mark that, you know, allows the people after us, as a board, to pursue the path and to be able, at their own turn, to increase and improve what we have given them. I think, if we look at the jobs we have, at the positions we have as something we borrow rather than something we own.

Angeles 15:53

I think it helps look at life in a slight different way.

Sri 15:58

That's a wonderful perspective and somebody who's at the helm of the board you mentioned about what organizations are basically looked up to. Is, in the current market, that they are, what is the profitability like? What is the innovation like? Plus, what is organization's commitment towards sustainable practices? Now, you being part of the board, if you were to pass on message or advice to other board members saying how do you foster a culture of innovation at ensuring strong governance and accountability?

Angeles 16:30

So innovation is, you know, is a big word, because of course it's all about daring, it's all about the future, it's all about inventing, and as a board, you also need to ensure accountability and governance and proper capital allocation. Accountability and governance and proper capital allocation, I mean. So I would say this To me, innovation requires a few ingredients to flourish. One, and the most important one, is talent, because ideas come from people and it's really, you know, having the people in the organization able to think differently and to imagine the future is really important, because we humans tend to be better at reproducing the past than at imagining what needs to be different, and it's a different mindset. So talent is one important piece. The second ingredient is capital, because you do need to devote part of your resources to invest and sometimes it's not that easy to get a return in the very short term. But making sure that you protect that innovation engine by giving enough funds and enough importance to that is really key. And then I would say the third ingredient is freedom. You need to leave space to try new things and to think long term and sometimes to make mistakes and sometimes to initiate that project that then you interrupt because you didn't get where you wanted to get right. So I think for those three things to flourish, what you need is probably a good support, but also a good challenge, so a proper balance between the two. And it's very linked to the culture of the company.

Angeles 18:26

I think there's two things that define a company's culture that are very telling. One is people and the relationship to people and to others and to people matters. And the second one is the relationship to innovation, because it's all about what is your attitude vis-a-vis change, attitude vis-a-vis change. So when you combine those two the relationship to others and the relationship to change you do actually get a very good proxy of a company's culture. And what we would love to cultivate at Legrand is this idea that we can shape modestly, in our own scope, a little bit the future.

Angeles 19:08

So it's a really important part of it, and there's discussions that we have around these topics that are quite robust, for example, around capital allocation, just to make sure that we have enough capital allocated to R&D and that we, you know, even when things get tough, we don't completely close that tab just to put the money somewhere else. We look at new products and we love to share new products within the boardroom and make sure that everybody's familiar with them. We like to look at what advances we can make to deliver the promise to clients that we can make their their equipments greener and more connected. So it's um. It takes space in conversations and I think that's the first thing you can do. To give importance to a topic in a board is is to basically make space in the agenda and make sure that the conversations invite those topics in the room.

Sri 20:09

Wonderful, and latching on to that, if you were to talk about your own leadership journey, leadership traits from your own leadership journey. Are there incidents of decisions that you have made or the setbacks that you have had that had a profound impact on the leader that?

Lessons in Leadership and Resilience

Angeles 20:28

you are Every day shapes us. You ever had that had a profound impact on the leader that you are. Every day shapes us, and the people with whom we spend time shape us a great deal. I've always had three criteria to pick the projects or the missions where I wanted to devote time. One was the why, the what, what and the with whom right and over time, with whom became the most important of the three because I realized that a few things first of all, if you are with the right people, nothing bad can happen. I mean, even even the worst crisis can become an opportunity for growth and for problem solving and for living on a positive mark. And then, very selfishly, I'm an extrovert, so I take my energy from others and therefore the quality of the environment where I am is hugely important for me, because this is where I find inspiration, recharging ideas, warmth, friendship, and I really can make. I think I can be my better me when I am well surrounded, and this is what I try to do every day. So I don't envision leadership as a lonely job. Leadership to me is more about connecting dots and creating an environment where people can become their best self, and for that you know with whom you share the space is really, really important.

Angeles 22:02

Then, of course, there's personal life, and you know I'm a mother of three. I have two boys and a girl. My daughter, ines, is disabled. She's 23 now and that was a very, very important personal journey of learning, of fighting, of progressing, of accepting and embracing difference, of making lemonade with lemons and trying to. You know, use the challenges that life offers you as opportunities to maybe try to become a better person. So I don't believe we are two different people between the personal and the professional. I think we are one human being and therefore all our experiences in all things of life are shaping us in many ways. So I would probably be a very different chair without my family life, without being bicultural because I'm Spanish and French, without having lived abroad for 30 years. I mean, all those things make us who. You are right.

Sri 23:06

I think you touch upon two great stuff in that. One is the whole adage that you become the person with whom you spend time, with the five. Person you spend time with is the person that you become, and so that is true. You're proving that adage is to be true, that what you become is the company that you get to keep. And secondly, if you're comfortable talking about Angelis, you did mention about your daughter's situation. How has that particular moment incident has made you the person you are? You have had all the success from a professional world standpoint and this is something that none of us would want our kids to go through and you had this particular situation. So how have you handled this situation, had the courage and vulnerability to speak about it, and how has it helped you as a person?

Angeles 23:57

It's a very, very difficult question to answer, sri, but I think it has been capital in my life, central.

Angeles 24:06

I have to say that the courage, the fighting spirit, the joy, the purity that I observe in her oblige me to be dependable and to be, you know, at least, if not as good, at least decent in those terms. So that's one answer. Another one is it did open my eyes to what it means to try to promote an inclusive world, what it means to live day to day with difference, sitting next to you, what it means to what is the definition of success, what is a successful life, what is a happy life? And I, you know, for somebody who has been always, you know, with this sort of track of overachieving, and I just think it was incredibly precious to be all of a sudden in a position where you don't control things and you need to adapt to something you didn't choose. I just think I wouldn't be the same person and I'm, you know, I'm very far from being perfect in any way, but I think it did probably help me develop resilience and empathy in ways that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

Sri 25:30

If not anything that's just made you a stronger person than what you thought you could be.

Angeles 25:34

Yes, I'm probably also more compassionate and more open to others. I just think it's a treasure. And one thing you need to keep in mind is when you have somebody with that challenge in your home. Somebody like Ines doesn't know jealousy, doesn't know bad feelings, doesn't know interest, doesn't know ego, she doesn't know what that is, she doesn't live through it, she doesn't express it. Can you imagine what it means to be confronted to somebody who has that kind of perspective on life and pureness and purity? It's quite unique, I have to say. So.

Angeles 26:15

You know, I'm not saying it's easy every day and of course I would have chosen something else and of course I would have loved my 23-year-old to be going out and dancing in discos and having friends. But she does lots of things. She rides horses, she swims, she loves arts and crafts, she loves her pets. Our dog finds joy in every single activity that she shares with her family. She's an everyday joy. So I just think she taught me a very, very big lesson is that a very tough reality can hide lots of treasures and opportunities.

Sri 26:56

Wonderful Wishing Ines the best of everything. Thank you so much for sharing that vulnerable piece of your life and career. Moving on, you have seen the world, the business world particularly, in very close quarters. And if you were to kind of take a very futuristic look and share your words of wisdom, what are some of those elements or traits that the future leaders should have as the world is shaping up by the day? What are some of the traits that listeners listening to this podcast should be aware of and prepare themselves towards?

Angeles 27:33

Well, I would say probably not the ones we've learned in school. I think the first trait that I would highlight is curiosity and ability to learn, or, let me take it back, I would say ability to learn, and for me, ability to learn is the mix of two things curiosity and humility, because your ability to learn depends on, first of all, the fact that you accept that you don't know, which is the humility part, and then also the fact that you learn faster and better when you love to learn. So that's where the curiosity comes in play. So this ability to learn is key because of what we you know the conversation we were having earlier the chances that we have to solve a problem that we have already solved are epsilon. Most of the things that we will need to address we haven't done yet. So the ability to learn is key.

Angeles 28:34

Then, the second one I would say is courage, because courage is something you need when you're walking in the dark.

Angeles 28:41

You need courage and trust right. So either you can put your hand in somebody's shoulder, and that's the trust piece, or you need to dare to make that step, even if you don't see exactly where you are going, and that piece will be very important moving forward in a world where we will have to, you know, address the unknown. And then I would say, probably nuance, because I feel we are in an extremely polarized world. I do worry a lot about the role of social media. I do worry a lot about the political and social unrest that we observe in many places in the earth, about how hatred can travel fast through digital media. And I think cultivating a critical spirit, an ability to make your own opinion after having listened and observed different points of view, using nuance with a very sort of assertive, organized, definite way, will make a difference between the very good leaders and the others. And then, probably the last one would be sense of humor, because it saves you from many moments of despair and it also is an incredibly effective conflict solver.

Sri 30:04

I love each of the traits that you listed on and how well it kind of adds on to it. If you have the curiosity, and learning nuance will become part and parcel of it, because you are curious and you have a varied point of view. And, yeah, the stress diffuser is that smile, that sense of joy, great, great.

Angeles 30:36

The first of the Power of Three round question coming to you, angelis, is three books every aspiring leader should read the Heart of Business from Hubert Joly, the former CEO of Best Buy. Leading through human. The Engineers of Chaos from Giuliano D'Ampoli, which describes how digital tools and social media build populism and hate around the world. And probably it's tough to pick the third one, but I would say Thinking Fast and Slow from Daniel Kahneman, which really helps you understand how our two thinking systems, the intuitive and the rational, live together and are in constant fight how quickly you write the three titles speaks volume of your emphasis on learning, wanting to conduct your study in yourself.

Sri 31:20

Good start, good going, three things you do to be a role model that you are, oh.

Angeles 31:28

Oh my God, that's a terrible question, sri. I don't think I don't know about that.

Sri 31:32

I don't see myself as a role model. We should take you around in Legrand campus and ask people about that.

Angeles 31:38

I guess really I would say one thing that I do is I try to do my best, I don't pretend to be somebody else. Maybe that's two.

Sri 31:50

That's a great one. Don't pretend to be somebody else. Maybe that's two. That's a great one. Don't pretend to be somebody else. That's a wonderful life actually.

Angeles 31:54

Three things you wish you knew 10 years back so I will give you an answer that has nothing to do with business. Is that all right? Absolutely. I wish I had known that children leave home too fast. I wish I had known we accumulate too many things. So we should really do a checkpoint and clean up an order at least once a year. And I wish I had known that yoga is very good for me, because I only discovered it two years ago and that's that's it. It was a wasted opportunity. I should have embraced it much, much earlier good news is you started.

Sri 32:33

Wonderful angel is if you were to give three advice to your future self. Angel is five years now from now my advice to my future.

Angeles 32:43

I would say um, be in the moment, because it's it's really tough to be in the moment, given how bombarded we are with information 24-7. So I'm trying to consciously work on that. I would say exercise more, so take care of your body, because of course you know, the older we grow, the more important. And then I Don't use all the time the same paths to go places. Don't eat all the time the same food. Don't read all the time the same authors. Continue traveling, continue opening your mind. I think one of the worst things we can do for ourselves is to build fences around us. I think that doesn't keep you young and doesn't keep you healthy and doesn't keep you happy. So that's what I would advise to my future selves is continue changing.

Sri 33:45

Continue to change Wonderful advice to your future self. I know in your role, you get to meet with so many people, so this might be a counterintuitive question. Nevertheless, I would want to ask you this particular question Is three people past or present you would love to have lunch or dinner with?

Angeles 34:04

Goodness, I do have a list of people I wouldn't like to have dinner with, but I won't give any names. There's a lot of politicians in there. You know, if you ask me today, I think I would probably have, and I would have two people at the same time. It would be my two grandmothers Both passed away, but they were incredibly inspiring women in very, very different ways, and I wish the 54-year-old woman I am could ask them questions that I didn't ask back in the time when we were together. So that's a tick.

Angeles 34:40

I would probably say Albert Camus, who is, to me, one of the best humanist writers and philosophers of our contemporary era, but he's no longer alive either, I guess. Contemporary era, but he's no longer alive either, I guess. And then the third one. Let me pick somebody who's alive. I absolutely love cooking, so, and one of the cooks that I admire most is a woman named Anne-Sophie Pick. She's a three-star Michelin chef, and I would love to have dinner with her, but actually I would love to cook dinner with her so I can learn from her Nice.

Sri 35:17

Nice, okay, the last of the power of three round question for you is what are those three micro habits or micro experiments that you can recommend to our listeners?

Angeles 35:27

I guess one of the things I do in the morning is I do try to have a few minutes to sort of realign myself. You can call it praying, you can call it meditating, but it's something just to reconnect with myself, with my body. I think the power of breathing is amazing. It's the only, I would say, body gesture that is vital to our, that is vital and that we can control. You cannot control your heart or your liver or your kidneys, but you can control your breath and therefore I do. I try to do, not only in the morning but several times a day, a little bit of breath control just to get my senses together and to recover energy.

Sri 36:23

What are some of those practices that you follow, angelis, that helps you to keep yourself ahead in the game, in the role that you're playing, in the professional that you're in? What do you do to keep yourself, stay ahead?

Angeles 36:38

Well, as I said, I did discover yoga a few years ago, and I do think it's an amazing way to improve your mental and physical condition because it brings you strength, balance, and both strength and balance can be read as mental and physical, so that's what I like about it.

Angeles 37:04

I do try actually also to nourish my spirit through other things that are not work Learning, reading, music, art. I just think that beauty, heals and art is something that really distinguishes as humans from other species, and it is also something that helps get people together, and it's the right moment to cultivate those, even how much division is in the world. The other thing is I do try not to procrastinate. Division is in the world. The other thing is I do try not to procrastinate. I like getting things done and I try to start my lists from the things that I like the least and that will cost me the biggest effort, because I discovered that these kind of issues usually have the bad habit of not getting any better or any more simple, so I prefer to get that off the plate rather sooner than later.

Sri 38:04

So, Angelis, with so much of change happening in the world technology, geopolitical shifts, all of that happening what insights can you share that will have significant shifts, that will defend the future of leadership, governance and policies?

Angeles 38:23

If you ask me what are the big trends that will shape the way we look at whether it's business issues or government policies To me there's obviously the climate change. I mean, that to me is one. It's probably the one thing that our generation needs to address. Fortunately, I don't think we are anymore in the if era. I think most leaders I know are conscious of the issue, and now we are more in the how than in the if. But I would say climate change.

Angeles 39:00

The second one to me is the demographic challenge. We have a world that is aging. This is particularly true in Europe and in the US, but to an extent that I think we had not anticipated, and it will shape the way our societies are built, the ways our infrastructure need to be addressed, the ways our social systems need to be shaped, so it will have tremendous impact in our businesses, also from a resources perspective. And then I would also say we are assisting complete different balance in terms of where the power lies in the world and moving from what we thought would be a completely globalized world to a multipolar, with, again, areas of conflict and tension that are very exacerbated and very patent, not only from the political perspective but also from the economic perspective. So politics and economy are more than ever entrenched. So those three topics to me should be like an open app in any risk map in the world, in any risk map in the world.

Angeles 40:19

I haven't named AI, and I did that voluntarily because to me, AI is of a different nature. It really depends on where you sit. It can range anything from a tool that will help you improve productivity to a technology that will augment your competences and skills, to a disruption that will actually completely question your business model and your competitive landscape, depending on where you sit in terms of sector. So it's like a little bit what happened with the digital revolution, only exponentially strong, right.

Angeles 40:59

So I do think that piece needs to be in every boardroom's agenda and it is our duty, first of all, to be, I would say, decently trained, so to understand what's going on, but also to understand also where we sit in that continuum. Are we part of the people that will, you know, use it to accelerate? Are we part of the people that are completely questioned by it? Are we going only to use it marginally as an augmenting tool? To which extent is for us an opportunity or a threat? And I think the situation? The answer to that is very different depending on the sectors and the the place you hold in the value chains that's so very true.

Sri 41:43

While there are a lot of trends that is out there, that is developing, that is coming together, one core strength that will continue to remain at the center of all of it is humanness. That will not revolve.

Angeles 41:58

Of course and I you know that's irreplaceable. That's the piece where we can really make a difference, and I think it does inform and should shape, for example, the way we look at training, at education, higher education. I'm a deep believer in the fact that humanities should have a much bigger pace in the way we train future leaders. Philosophy, history, literature, anything that can help you decode cultures, connect with others, understand people's engines, levers and agendas, and, of course, ethics.

Sri 42:40

Absolutely Big time.

Angeles 42:41

It's time to go back to almost. Like you know, I think we could do with a couple of Greek big philosophers. Come back and help us shape the way we educate our young people. We could do with their advice, and there's actually very interesting books as well on how to connect philosophy and business Like. I'm happy to share a couple of them with you, but it's you find a lot of answers actually in what has already been written. So there is one actually.

Angeles 43:15

The thing is I am not I don't know if it's translator it's called I was talking about nuance earlier, it's called the Power of Nuance and it's an essay from a French philosopher. What he does it's like a promenade through history and he takes examples of around a dozen philosophers, starting in ancient Greece until the 20th century, and explains how their perspective on critical judgment and actually looking at a problem with a multi-dimensional eye rather than taking a very sort of black and white position, and how a sophisticated thinking is a nuanced thinking. That's basically the underlying message and I just thought it was so well, so spot on and so helpful. When you look at the way we make our own opinions today, we are constantly in need to fight the danger of a unique perspective. Everything is built to reinforce the ideas we already have.

Angeles 44:31

When you look at local media, it always strikes me when you have a flow of news and I was discussing this with my old children you had basically two choices. You can either suppress the post, in which case the algorithm will understand that you didn't like it and will stop sending you that kind of content, or you can click on a button that says show me more like this, in which the algorithm will understand that you loved it and therefore they will send more of the same. Usually that's in agreement with with what you already think, because that's the way humans interact. There is not today an option where you can click and say can you please show me another perspective on this very same topic? I miss that button.

Sri 45:18

So very true. That is where you have informed decisions, varied decisions, varied point of views that you can make.

Angeles 45:25

Yeah, my father used to tell me when I was a child that I should read every day three newspapers of different political colors. Now I understand why. At the time I thought it was super boring but now I understand why.

Sri 45:41

That's a sage advice, isn't it?

Angeles 45:43

Yeah, absolutely.

Sri 45:45

Wonderful Angelis. We started off this new year couldn't have asked for a better gift, better words of wisdom than what you shared through your lived experiences. Thank you so much for that. This show is all about creating ripples of inspiration. Before we sign off, what's your Inspire Someone Today? Message to all of our listeners.

Creating Positive Impact in 2025

Angeles 46:05

I wish you a very happy, inspiring new year. 2025 needs to be a year in which you have a positive impact on three people around you.

Sri 46:22

Wonderful. What a way to start the year. Have a positive impact on not the entire world, but just three people around you.

Angeles 46:29

I just say three because those three will have impact in another three and very, very soon you will have a butterfly effect another three and very, very soon you will have a you know, butterfly effect.

Sri 46:41

Absolutely on that note, angelus, thank you so much for taking time and sharing your pulse of wisdom with me and my listeners. Thank you thank you thank you for joining us on this episode of inspire someone today. This is Srikant, your host. Until next time, continue to carry the ripples of inspiration, stay inspired, keep spreading the light.