2024 - Page 3 of 7 - Hunter Hastings

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #44 – Understanding Customer Capitalism: A Conversation With Hunter Hastings (Innovation Meets Leadership Podcast Repost)

July 26, 2024/0 Comments/in The Value Creators Podcast /by Hunter Hastings

In this episode of the Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings, an economist and corporate marketing professional, is interviewed by Natalie Born, host of the Innovation Meets Leadership Podcast.

Imagine a future where your organization works backward from a detailed vision of how customers will interact with your products and services. This is a concept Hunter Hastings passionately discussed on the podcast. He advocates for a mental shift in organizations to focus on the flow of information from the customer, leading to effective marketplace tests and implementations.

Hastings reflects on the historical shift from customer-centric entrepreneurship to bureaucracy and financialization, emphasizing the need for organizational innovation to remove barriers. The conversation explores the importance of empathy, understanding customer needs, and the potential for flatter organizational structures to accelerate innovation.

Resources:

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Connect with Natalie Born on LinkedIn

Valuecreators.com

Hunter Hasting’s blog

Innovation Meets Leadership Podcast

Show Notes:

Knowledge Capsule

Hunter Hastings’ Professional Journey:

Hunter’s had a diverse career in corporate marketing, including roles like Chief Marketing Officer and CEO.
Progressed through consulting and client companies, always emphasizing the customer’s role.
CEO role in Silicon Valley, where he observed the need for technology companies to maintain customer focus.

Customer-Centric Innovation:

Procter & Gamble’s unique approach to putting the customer at the center.
Hunter’s shift from an entrepreneurial focus on customers to management-driven bureaucracy and financialization.

Removing Barriers to Innovation:

Identifying Barriers:
- The flow model: customer information should flow freely within the organization.
- Common barriers include reporting processes, resource allocation, and hierarchical management structures.
Team Dynamics:
- Cross-functional and dynamic teams are crucial for innovation.
- Teams should focus on collaboration and equal participation without

Self-Management Model:

The concept of self-management as the future of organizational structures.
Examples like Morning Star, a successful self-managed company.
The importance of mutual commitments and dynamic, goal-oriented teams.

Implementing Ideas and Innovation

Reverse Engineering the Future: Visualizing the future state of customer interaction and working backward to achieve it and understanding the need for detailed planning and assembling components systematically.
Vision and Empathy: Developing a clear vision for future customer engagement. Engineers and innovators should empathize with customers to foresee potential challenges and frustrations.

Speed of Learning and Knowledge:

Speed is crucial for innovation, not just for its own sake but for faster learning and adaptation.
The importance of dynamic, collaborative teams in achieving rapid innovation.

Customer Interaction and Feedback:

Continuous interaction with customers to refine and improve ideas.
The need for open communication and collaboration within and outside the organization.

Understanding Customer Needs:

Customers often know what they want to improve but may not be aware of the possibilities that technology can offer.
They might not realize they could desire innovations like touch screens or keyless phones until they see them.

Role of Entrepreneurship:

Entrepreneurship involves turning a customer’s desire for something better into tangible solutions. It’s about envisioning and creating products that customers didn’t even know they could want.

Theory of Systems:

Interaction is critical, both among individuals and between individuals and their environment (technology space). Understanding these interactions helps in gaining insights and recognizing patterns that guide innovation.

Empathy in Design:

Empathy involves understanding the frustrations and needs of customers.
Observing customer workarounds with current products can inspire future innovations. This deep level of empathy is crucial for effective design.

The Entrepreneurial Skill of Imagination:

Entrepreneurs possess the unique ability to imagine a future that doesn’t yet exist. This imaginative skill is fundamental to creating groundbreaking products and services.

Revival of Customer Capitalism:

In the past, the customer’s importance was overshadowed by managerial priorities, but now, putting the customer at the center is driving exciting new developments.

The New Economics: Harnessing Complex Adaptive Systems for Business Growth

July 16, 2024/0 Comments/in Articles, migrate /by Hunter Hastings

The new science of complex adaptive systems in economics has transformative potential for business. This new science reveals how competitive entrepreneurial exploration of new technologies, products, and services can drive continuous economic growth. Think of it as a new law of economics, centered on the roles of value and selection in evolving entrepreneurial systems.

Traditional economics has struggled to identify unifying laws. However, the science of complex evolving systems provides a fresh perspective. An evolving system comprises many interacting components that increase in diversity, distribution, and patterned behavior over time. This seems to contradict the second law of thermodynamics, which states that natural phenomena become increasingly disordered over time.

A New General Law of Economics

By applying the principles of complex evolving systems, we can identify a new general law of economics: the emergence of new economic value over time, driven by competitive entrepreneurial discovery.

Characteristics of Evolving Systems in Economics

Analyzing the economy as a complex evolving system reveals three key attributes:

Resource Configurations: There are countless ways to combine resources and inputs into new configurations.
Discovery Processes: These processes generate new configurations.
Selection: Certain configurations persist due to their value.

Increased order in such a system results from selection: some configurations have advantages that make them more likely to endure. Similarly, the economic system evolves through the selection of advantageous configurations.

The Economic System as an Evolving System

In economics, new configurations emerge from the diverse resources and capital structures. Entrepreneurship drives the discovery process by experimenting with new combinations. The end-user market then selects for value, ensuring that only the best configurations survive.

Therefore, the three characteristics of evolving systems—component diversity, configurational exploration, and selection—are fully demonstrated in the economic system and underpin the law of increasing value. This law can be generalized: economic systems with many interacting agents display an increase in diversity, distribution, and patterned behavior when numerous entrepreneurially generated configurations are subjected to value selection pressure. Value is the universal basis for selection in economic systems.

Three Orders of Value Selection

Foundational Value: Configurations evolve to a point where they can self-maintain, with no need for reorganization or recombination. This value is associated with reliability, repeatability, trust, reputation, and ethics.
Adaptive Value: Entrepreneurship drives knowledge building and information processing, supporting the creation of new configurations. Economic entities adapt dynamically to market changes, leading to growth, innovation, and competitiveness.
Evolutionary Value: In complex systems, entirely new functions can be imagined and created, opening up new possibility spaces. This value is associated with the ability to invent new functions continuously.

Selection as the Key to Evolution

Selection is the primary enabling constraint in this model. A system will evolve, or increase value creation, if many different configurations are subjected to selection for value. For this to occur, markets must be free to select, entrepreneurs must be free to innovate, and selection pressures must be allowed to intensify.

Underlying Principles

Information Richness: Greater and faster flows of knowledge and data can open new possibility spaces for value creation.
Selection Pressure: The competitiveness of the market system is crucial for driving value creation.
Potential to Evolve: Systems vary in their potential to evolve. Increasing current value can enhance future value potential.
Rate of Change: The evolution rate can be influenced by increasing the number and diversity of interacting agents, the number of different system configurations, and the selective pressure on the system.
Interdependence: Evolving systems are overlapping and interdependent. Information transfers within these systems create an “information field.”
Value Selection: Systems that select based on Foundational, Adaptive, and Evolutionary Value will see increased value creation.

Understanding and applying these principles can help young professionals navigate the complexities of modern business economics and drive continuous growth and innovation.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode # 43 Understanding the Decline of Customer Capitalism: The Impact of Financialization and the Importance of Empathy in Business (The Learn-It-All Podcast Repost)

July 10, 2024/0 Comments/in The Value Creators Podcast /by Hunter Hastings

This episode is a repost from The Learn-It-All Podcast (Spotify | Apple Podcasts)

The decline of customer capitalism and the shift in support for capitalism among young people highlights the need for a cultural transformation in business and economics. By prioritizing customer value, fostering empathy, and empowering employees, businesses can build stronger relationships with customers and drive long-term sustainable growth. The future of customer capitalism lies in understanding and meeting customer needs, leveraging technology to enhance the customer experience, and reforming business education to prioritize customer value creation.

In this episode of the Learn It All podcast, guest Hunter Hastings, an economist, venture capitalist, and author of “Aberrant Capitalism: The Decline of Customer Capitalism,” discusses the decline of customer capitalism and the shift in support for capitalism among young people. Hastings emphasizes the importance of customer-centric business practices, the impact of financialization, and the need for empathy in business. He advocates for a reform in business education to prioritize customer value creation and introduces an online course aimed at teaching these principles. The conversation also touches on the potential of AI in enhancing customer experiences and the importance of capitalism in improving well-being.

Hunter Hastings’ insights provide a valuable roadmap for businesses and entrepreneurs looking to navigate the evolving landscape of capitalism and create meaningful value for customers. By embracing the principles of customer capitalism, businesses can not only thrive but also contribute to a more empathetic and customer-centric society.

Resources:

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

To download the book: Aberrant Capitalism: The Decline of Customer Capitalism

The Online Value Creators Course: Valuecreators.com

Connect with Damon Lembi on LinkedIn

Connect with Darren Bridgett on LinkedIn

Knowledge Capsule:

Hunter’s Motivation for Writing “Aberrant Capitalism”:

Young people’s declining trust in capitalism, favoring socialism over capitalism.
Issues with corporations losing empathy and trust, while small businesses still maintain high trust.
Historical context of corporations beginning in the 19th century and the shift from entrepreneurial goals to managerial control.

Concept of Customer Capitalism:

Customer capitalism prioritizes creating value based on customer well-being and experience, reversing the traditional producer-outward approach.
The model emphasizes working backward from customer needs to develop products and services, as exemplified by Jeff Bezos’ approach at Amazon.
Financialization has shifted corporate focus from customer value to shareholder value, leading to a disconnect between corporations and their customers.

Self-Management and Team Empowerment:

Traditional top-down management stifles innovation and responsiveness, while self-management empowers employees closest to the customer.
Teams should be equipped with customer data to drive innovation and improve services, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
Empowering employees enhances customer satisfaction and value creation by aligning company operations with customer needs.

Critique of Traditional Management:

Traditional management focuses on control, efficiency, and cost reduction, often at the expense of customer value.
Entrepreneurial approach required for adaptability and responsiveness to customer needs.
Problems with reducing people to mere cost factors and the historical impact of Taylorism.

Empathy and Value Creation in Business:

Empathy with the customer is crucial for effective value creation.
Economic value should be subjective, based on customer perception and experience.
Importance of maintaining an entrepreneurial ethic within large corporations.

Explanation of Financialization:

Financialization diverts value from the customer to the financial sector, causing the productive economy to decline.
Corporations focus on maximizing shareholder value, often at the expense of customer value.
Practices like stock buybacks divert funds from R&D and innovation to shareholder payouts.

Empathy in Business:

Current business practices prioritize financial markets over customer needs.
A cultural transformation in economics and business operations is needed, focusing on qualitative and subjective measures of value.
Business education should emphasize customer value creation, empathy, and design-driven innovation.

Reforming Business Education:

Traditional business education focuses on financial management, efficiency, and administration, neglecting customer value creation.
Hunter advocates for a shift to teaching principles of value creation, empathy, and innovation.
His online Value Creators course aims to integrate these principles into corporate training and management practices.

Impact of AI and Technology on Business:

AI and large language models offer opportunities for entrepreneurship and human-centric value creation.
Technology platforms can democratize business opportunities, allowing smaller organizations to compete.
Hunter shares his optimism regarding AI enhancing human contribution and individualization in business.

Show Notes:

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #42 – Yasmin Davidds on How Becoming A Better Human Makes You A Better Leader

June 28, 2024/0 Comments/in The Value Creators Podcast /by Hunter Hastings

Yasmin Davidds, president & CEO of Dr. Yasmin Davidds Leadership Institute and Multicultural Women’s Executive Leadership Institute advocates for a leadership approach called “graciously assertive,” which blends self-advocacy with empathy for others.

Dr. Yasmin outlines eight pillars crucial for effective leadership, emphasizing practical methods like gratitude lists and self-awareness exercises to foster personal growth. Central to her philosophy is “graciously assertive” communication, combining assertiveness with grace to achieve collaborative outcomes. Yasmin discusses how this approach can transform workplace dynamics, emphasizing empathy and mutual understanding in both professional and personal relationships. She also addresses challenges faced by women, particularly women of color, advocating for gratitude and empathy to navigate biases effectively. Yasmin promotes moral leadership aligned with personal values, stressing genuine inclusion and the importance of mindsets like gratitude and growth for continuous personal and professional development.

Resources:

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Connect Yasmin Davidds on LinkedIn

Yasmin Davidds Website: dryasmininstitute.com

To download the book: Graciously Assertive

Show Notes:

Knowledge Capsule

Leadership Approach Critique:

Traditional Models: Criticized for their hierarchical nature, where leadership is often top-down and authoritative.
Narcissistic Tendencies: Emphasis on assertiveness and self-promotion can sometimes lead to narcissistic behaviors, where leaders prioritize their own needs over others.

Yasmin Davidds’ Approach to Leadership:

Better Human Approach: Focuses on personal development and self-improvement as foundational to effective leadership.
Compassion and Understanding: Advocates for leaders to be compassionate, understanding that everyone has a unique story and perspective.

Key Pillars of Leadership:

Self-awareness:
- Understanding Strengths and Weaknesses: Knowing one’s strengths helps leverage them, while awareness of weaknesses allows for improvement.
- Emotional Impact: Recognizing how one’s emotions influence decisions and interactions with others, fosters better self-management.
Social awareness:
- Energy and Behavior Impact: Acknowledging how one’s mood and actions affect those around them, crucial in maintaining a positive team dynamic.
- Empathy and Adaptation: Empathizing with team members’ emotions and adjusting leadership style accordingly to foster a supportive environment.
Gracious assertiveness:
- Kind Assertiveness: Balancing assertiveness with kindness and respect for others’ perspectives, ensuring clear communication without dominating.
- Mutual Respect: Promoting an environment where everyone feels heard and valued, is essential for effective team collaboration.
Self-regulation:
- Emotional Management: Controlling one’s emotions to prevent negative impacts on team morale or relationships.
- Professional Conduct: Maintaining composure and professionalism, especially during stressful situations, to lead by example.
Self-compassion:
- Kindness to Oneself: Understanding and accepting one’s flaws and mistakes without harsh self-criticism.
- Enhanced Empathy: Having self-compassion enables leaders to be more understanding and supportive of others’ challenges and shortcomings.
Zero tolerance for judgment:
- Non-judgmental Attitude: Avoiding snap judgments and prejudices towards oneself and others, fostering an inclusive and open-minded environment.
- Promoting Diversity: Encouraging diverse perspectives and opinions within the team, valuing differences as strengths rather than weaknesses.
Gratitude:
- Positive Mindset: Cultivating a mindset of gratitude promotes positivity and resilience in the face of challenges.
- Enhanced Leadership Impact: Leaders who express gratitude inspire loyalty and motivation among team members, creating a supportive and productive work environment.

Healthy Boundaries

Without healthy boundaries, individuals are prone to burnout, impacting both personal well-being and organizational productivity.

Healthy boundaries prevent burnout by ensuring individuals allocate time for rest and personal activities.

Leaders who model healthy boundaries demonstrate the importance of work-life balance, enhancing team morale and productivity.

Graciously Assertive Communication

It involves assertiveness tempered with empathy and respect, aiming to foster constructive dialogue and achieve mutual understanding.
Begin conversations with active listening and genuine appreciation to create a receptive atmosphere.
Use “I” statements instead of accusatory “you” statements to express feelings or needs, reducing defensiveness and promoting openness.

Leadership Challenges for Women and Minorities

Challenges: Women, especially women of color, face biases and structural barriers in professional settings.
Biases such as sexism and unconscious bias hinder career progression and authenticity in the workplace.
Overcoming these challenges involves advocating for oneself assertively while fostering inclusivity and understanding among colleagues.

Moral Leadership

Leading with integrity and aligning actions with personal and organizational values.
Moral leaders set clear boundaries and principles, guiding decision-making and interactions within teams.
Upholding ethical standards builds trust and credibility, essential for sustainable business growth and positive impact.

Mindset for Success

Components: Includes gratitude, abundance, and growth mentalities to foster resilience and innovation.
A gratitude mindset encourages appreciation for opportunities and relationships, enhancing overall well-being.
Abundance mentality shifts focus from scarcity to possibilities, enabling risk-taking and entrepreneurial success.
A growth mindset views challenges as opportunities for learning and personal development, crucial for continuous improvement.

Inclusion and Diversity

Approach: Focuses on creating inclusive environments by understanding and addressing individual needs and perspectives.
Inclusion requires active participation and empathy, inviting diverse voices and perspectives into decision-making processes.
Combatting biases and promoting inclusivity involves continuous education and self-reflection to overcome personal and systemic barriers.

Components Of The New Management Paradigm.

June 21, 2024/0 Comments/in Articles, migrate /by Hunter Hastings

The traditional methods and ways of thinking of strategic management are no longer viable.

They assume that exogenous causes and causal interrelationships can be shaped and utilized to produce objective factors of business performance. Superior management can result in superior performance through identifiable combinations of observable causal factors.

The modern science of complex evolving systems, represented by Austrian economics in social sciences, compels recognition that business outcomes are emergent rather than resulting from identifiable causal factors. Human action, by both customers and employees, occurs in complex interactions of dynamic interpersonal coordination, the results of which are unforseeable. It is the beliefs, perceptions, expectations, imagination and intentions of individuals that combine and interact unpredictably in business reality. Strategic business success is highly uncertain in this context and impossible to sustain.

A new strategic management paradigm is called for. The components are:

The philosophy of subjective value. Human beings seek value, defined as an improvement in self-perceived well-being. They constantly seek a desired state to replace a current state that is deemed less than perfectly satisfactory. Businesses thrive when they are able to facilitate customers’ feelings and experiences of value. The performance of a firm, and any structure or methods it adopts, are 100% determined by the perceptions of its target customers. Any change in these perceptions will result in changes in firm performance. Dynamic business energy emanates from customers, not from strategy.

Converting knowledge into value. It follows that customer knowledge and understanding are the vital, scarce resource of the business firm. There are no structural competitive advantages, but it can be the case that the combination of people in one firm share knowledge and understanding that is more functional for the task of conversion into value via innovation, service and relationship. The law of increasing functional information guides the market systems selection of the best value-facilitating firms.

Entrepreneurship (rather than management) is the business function for conversion of knowledge into new value. It is a non-linear, non-processual act of co-ordinated and creative imagination. It can be advanced and accelerated by identifying and continuously renewing insights into customers’ motivations, purposes and values, and composing and recomposing new value propositions for them to choose from. Entrepreneurial capacity consists of skill in designing business propositions and in stimulating customers’ choice of those propositions. During the act of designing the value proposition, the customer’s choice lies in the future, and so is unknown and unknowable. Entrepreneurial imagination is the cognitive connection of the present offerings and future choices. It does not result from traditional strategic management or planning.

Innovation is a necessary condition for business persistence. In the dynamic swirl of rapid change and inscrutable complexity, continuous innovation is required to stay relevant to customers and to stay coherent with the environment. This is continuous improvement in a value proposition to match continuously increasing knowledge on the customer’s part of what they can want and demand. There are opportunities beyond persistence – adaptive innovators can respond to the changing environment with new value propositions that exceed the expectations of customers, i.e. incorporate new knowledge before it’s widespread. And the truly evolutionary businesses can make leaps of innovation that introduce true novelty to the market. The market may select the novelty or reject it; successful new businesses and new products are those that qualify for selection. The market is always evaluating and always selecting.

Nothing in this process can be predicted or projected. Strategic planning is powerless. Discovery, not planning, is the dynamic of innovation in business. Discovery requires the humility of relinquishing certainty and control, and the creativity of generating new ideas and combinations for testing and experimentation. There is joy in discovery, and we must learn to love feedback loops, the conduits from the customer and the marketplace that tell us how our experiments perform in evaluation. Humility and empathy are not the central focus of traditional strategic management. We hear much more about heroic business leadership and the intellectual superiority of planners and strategists. But discovery is not driven by intellectualism but by action – run lots of experiments, gather fast feedback, determine what works, and incorporate it into the next epxeriment, until a new value prososition emerges that is robust enough to commercialize.

Complexity is the overarching organizational metaphor. Complexity can’t be tamed or managed. Simple imagery fails to convey any meaning. For example, when there is discusion of market share, or growth rates, or 5-year total stock market returns, or even quarterly revenue, it’s meaningless in the context of complexity. Complexity is a swirl of ongoing interactions between people and their contexts, constrained by rules, norms, institutions, events and things, with emergent and unpreditable outcomes triggering new emergent responses which further accelerate change and make it even more chaotic. Businesses can’t snapshot the swirl of complexity, or choose just a few developments to respond to. They must act intuitively to find islands of order in the raging sea of chaos.

The new form of organization for complexity is autonomy. In the new paradigm, firms gradually learn how to auto-organize, eschewing structure and hierarchy and management authority in favor of self-management by employees and team members. Teams self-assemble around functions like marketing and branding or operations and delivery or finance, and role map the collaboration that will optimize the combination of specialist talents in pursuit of a shared purpose. Purpose is the binding force, rather than position in a hierarchy or on an org chart or the authoritarian directives of management.

Subjective value, knowledge conversion, entrepreneurship, innovation, discovery, complexity and orgnizational autonomy – these are the components of the new management paradigm.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #41 – Projjal Ghatak On Harmonization Via Collaborative Team Development

June 20, 2024/0 Comments/in The Value Creators Podcast /by Hunter Hastings

Teams are the new focal point of organizational design and organizational function. Motivation – quantified as “energy” by Projjal Ghatak and Onloop – is the key to team performance. Technology is advancing to the point where motivation can be monitored using AI, and self-reported feedback and other nuanced approaches to understanding and improving motivation levels are delivering real progress. Purpose portfolios can align individual motivations with organizational goals, capturing the role of purpose in driving productivity and engagement.

Projjal mentioned companies experimenting with holocracy and distributed flat organizations, although scaling such structures was noted as challenging due to inherent human tendencies to seek direction and guidance. The conversation also explored frameworks like RAPID (Bain’s Responsible, Accountable, Perform, Informed, Decide model) and spans of control, highlighting strategies for optimizing organizational effectiveness and managerial efficiency.

Projjal emphasized the importance of respect and trust in leadership dynamics, noting that effective leaders inspire motivation and engagement through their actions and guidance. The role of AI in augmenting managerial capabilities and increasing spans of control was also discussed, highlighting the potential for technology to enhance organizational structures and improve managerial effectiveness.

Resources:

The Post-Managerial Era (Blog Post)

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Connect with Projjal Ghatak on LinkedIn

onloop.com

Knowledge Capsule:

Changing Business Organization

Evolution of Management Concepts:

Traditional management concepts from the industrial age are thoroughly outdated.
The ideas of “managing” and “being managed” have no place in the 21st century business world.
Modern businesses use software for global coordination and collaboration.

Role of Managers:

Businesses face challenges in maximizing the potential of human resources
There are significant changes in managerial roles due to technological advancements.
We can reject the traditional definitions of management.
Think instead about a collaboration and coordination role.
And make the distinction between managers, leaders, and coaches, each with specific roles.

Managerial Challenges:

One of the problems of the management concept is bad management – the wrong people with the wrong relationships with others.
Many businesses lack effective managers, especially among first-time managers.
This issue is consistent across different regions, industries, and business sizes.

Collaborative Team Development Software:

Using technology to simplify complex problems in leadership and management.
Inspiration from the fitness industry: breaking down tasks into manageable parts.

Focus on motivation (energy), clarity on goals, and feedback.
Technology structures management tasks, making them less dependent on individual skills.

Origins of Onloop:

Personal experiences with inadequate tools led to the creation of Onloop.
Differentiation between talent-focused technology and HR-focused technology.

Performance Management:

Traditional performance management processes are inefficient.
Introduction of microfeedback to replace traditional feedback methods.

Automation and AI:

Use of AI to automate performance reviews (which, in their original form, are the worst management tools!) and synthesize feedback.
Focus on reducing friction around regular feedback and enhancing productivity.

Engagement Focus:

Employee engagement levels are dangerously low according to Gallup and other surveys.
Engagement can be enhanced through CDT product usage, increasing both motivation and effectiveness.
Regular usage reviews to understand product performance and areas for improvement.

People Management vs. HR Management:

People management focuses on productivity and team performance.
HR management is more about compliance and administrative functions.

Hybrid and Distributed Teams

Hybrid teams traditionally mean a mix of remote and in-office workers.
Modern context includes geographically and functionally distributed teams.
Diverse teams require intentional management practices.
Structured cadences and rhythms are necessary for effective collaboration.

Challenges in Hybrid Teams

Informal feedback loops are disrupted in remote settings.
Leaders need to adapt to structured communication tools like Zoom and Slack.
Leaders accustomed to in-person interactions struggle with remote management.
There’s a need for intentional rituals to maintain clarity and motivation.

Rituals and Cadences:

Regular all-hands meetings to build relationships and rapport.
Structured one-on-one conversations using frameworks like CDD (energy, goals, feedback, skills).

Calendaring Everything:

Scheduling all important activities to ensure they happen.
Emphasis on intentionality in scheduling to maintain productivity and team cohesion.

Collaborative Team Development:

Shift from traditional performance management to continuous feedback and goal setting.
Using technology to automate and simplify performance reviews.

Reducing Bias:

Replacing manual reviews with automated summaries to minimize bias.
Focus on observations and work outcomes rather than subjective ratings.

Bias in Traditional Systems:

Eloquence bias and gender disparity in leadership roles.
Extroverted, assertive individuals are often rewarded over more reserved team members.

Equal Outcomes through Technology:

Using machine learning to ensure fair assessments and reduce bias.
Focusing on objective performance metrics to support diversity and inclusion.

Self-Reported Metrics:

Currently, motivation is self-reported as a “battery level” (full, empty, or in between).
This data is visible only to the manager to maintain psychological safety.

Potential for AI:

AI is not yet capable of accurately detecting motivation through behavior or dialogue.
Future potential for AI to infer motivation from observations and interactions.

Integration of Well-being and Performance

Well-being (referred to as energy levels or motivation) is crucial for productivity.
Addressing anxiety and mental health as part of performance management.
Reframing “wellness” as “energy levels” to increase engagement and acceptance among leaders.
Regular energy checks are popular and help gauge team motivation.

Defining Purpose Portfolios:

Employees should have clear purpose portfolios that align personal and professional goals.
Activities should support these purpose pillars, enhancing motivation and fulfillment.

Future of Work with AI:

AI will push humans to focus on uniquely human attributes, such as purpose and service orientation.
Emphasizing service to others as a core component of motivation and leadership.

Impact of AI and VR:

AI and immersive virtual reality will significantly change the nature of work.
Countries like the Philippines could see economic growth by leveraging these technologies.

Rethinking Workforce Strategy:

Developed countries need to adapt to a future where AI and VR redefine competitive and cost-effective labor.

Challenges in Current Structures:

There is a desire to eliminate traditional hierarchies and silos within organizations.
Future discussions to explore how firms can adapt and restructure to be more efficient and inclusive in a technologically advanced landscape.

Hierarchical Structures and Human Nature:

Humans are wired to follow direction, as seen in parental guidance during childhood.
This inclination often translates into a preference for hierarchical organizational structures.

Challenges with Holacracies:

While holacratic structures like Hire exist, they face scalability issues.
Humans’ inherent need for direction makes fully flat, networked structures difficult to implement effectively.

Frameworks for Organizational Management:

Bain & Company’s RAPID framework (Responsible, Accountable, Perform, Informed, Decision-maker) offers a structured approach to organizational management.
Optimal spans of control (4-8 direct reports per manager) can enhance managerial efficiency.

AI’s Role in Management:

Advancements in AI enable managers to handle larger spans of control by delegating routine tasks to AI systems.
This allows managers to focus more on strategic decision-making and less on routine operational tasks.