PANEL 8 - Creativity Amid the Chaos
https://youtu.be/D8gjQi0FqI4Show description
What kinds of companies have bounced back better from the pandemic years? New evidence shows it’s the ones who had already invested time and energy in building their capacities for innovation.
Bill Fischer Senior Lecturer at the Sloan School of Management, at MIT, and Emeritus Professor of Innovation Management, IMD Tim Brown Chair of IDEO, Vice Chair of the kyu Collective Gilma Teodora Gylytė Architect; Co-founder, DO ARCHITECTS John Hagel III Faculty member, Singularity University & Member Board of Trustees, Santa Fe Institute; Founder of Beyond On Edge, LLC Radoslaw Kedzia Senior Vice President of Huawei European Region
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welcome back feels like the breaks are
getting shorter and shorter we've got a
longer one coming up after this as well
let's see if the energy level is getting
higher and higher so always a bit
difficult on the next on the second day
but let's just check out how we're doing
with your energy level right here we did
this yesterday already so let's see if
anyone remembers give me a bit of
indication with your hand oh I love it
first people are like yes yes I'm up
here my energy is high okay is there
anyone who's like my energy is low and
it's Friday morning and I need my fifth
coffee I already had people showing me
they had four today okay so where's your
energy level on the scale of I'm down
here and I'm up here show
me yeah it's cute because the ones who
are like up here I can see them the ones
down here they're just hiding I can't
see them okay but I got a few good
energy levels that's nice but maybe you
do need a bit of a reminder I know we
did that yesterday in the morning you
know the whole body thing you know maybe
just start rolling your shoulders I'm
not sure if there's anyone who done any
morning sports today in that case oh I'm
impressed cuz like after yesterday's
Gala dinner I was happy about every
minute I could spend in bed but maybe
just roll your shoulders now and maybe
just stretch your head a bit it's not
weird because people are not looking at
you they're looking at me either and
maybe just stretch your arms a bit just
to activate your body and remind
yourselves that you're still seated in
this beautiful location Bill are you
stretching with me here as well great I
love that thank you well with this I
would say let's start into this next
session on creativity amidst chaos and
just a a quick show of hands here as
well who knows organizations that during
Co you think were specifically
Innovative all right do you want to give
me any shout outs of what those
organizations were any
names I
AMD shout
louder all right any
more
efmd what was
there BBC all right I hope you also
understood a bit amongst yourselves
we're probably going to hear a bit more
from the panel that is coming up so
please please give it up for the senior
lecture at the Sloan School of
Management at MIT and emerit professor
of innovation management IMD Bill Fisher
the chair of the session with his
panelists bill the floor is yours okay
thank
you so so thank you very much for
joining us it's a a pleasure to be here
and um it's always nice to be in Vienna
in the snow so um when when you see it
from the airplane as you're leaving um
it but it but I I think the drer form
once again has proven to be a place you
want to be if you're interested in
change and transformation and yesterday
when Julia Kirby spoke about how some
panels were inevitable right right from
the start you knew that there was going
to be a panel yesterday on failure in
her case um this this topic uh
creativity and chaos and that
relationship was also right from the
start something that I think we we had
no question about the only thing that I
would corrected Julia's comments
yesterday was she said that she had the
best panel I think she meant to qualify
that I think it was yet best panel on
the first day and uh and we have the
best panel for the um so I I think the
interesting thing about creativity and
chaos is there's this mysterious complex
relationship that exists at least in the
popular mind and it it it sort of says
that out of out of chaos Like a Phoenix
arising from the Flames creativity can
take us to new heights but you know
chaos is something that for most of us
we never want to we never want to get
close to we don't teach chaos in
Business Schools we we master normaly
and chaos is so far from normaly that
it's the type of thing we stay away from
yet there's good reason to believe that
chaos is becoming more frequent and
chaos is different and so that's what
our panel is about our panel is about
the relationship between this this this
this this
unimaginable situation of chaos and what
it takes to to to rise out of that or or
not you know as as as as an alternative
and so what I'd like to do is I'd like
to introduce the panel who I think
brings an incredibly diverse and
interesting valuable perspective to
talking about something that's that many
cases is unimaginable to my immediate
left is John Hegel
um I think most of you probably are
aware of John John's writings he's he's
somebody who really doesn't need an
introduction um I'm forever in his debt
for his thoughts on scalable learning
replacing scalable efficiency in
organizations of the future or the power
of pull to um to to drive uh
Innovation and and the adoption of of
ideas John has also spent a lot of his
life talking and thinking about the edge
um you know if you're in an industry and
well-established industry with with
successful Market incumbents the one
thing you know almost for sure is that
they're not going to be the Agents of
change that change is going to come from
somewhere else usually on the edge of
the industry often where we're not
almost always where we're not looking
and and John has been a um a really
prolific author around those topics um
he also has written a new book called um
Journey Beyond fear which I recommend I
think it's a really very personal
account of of dealing with change and
the issues of change um that go along
with being a member of an organization
or a or a profession that's going
through some change um he um he teaches
at Singularity and he he he has an
organization called beyond our Edge um
so so it's a pleasure to have you here
John thank you very much to John's left
Tim Brown another person who needs um is
a familiar face at The drer Forum um and
within the Innovation Community Tim is
has been with Ideo not now but for 30
some odd years and that's you know you
know so so was at the Forefront of the
design the design um thinking movement
which you know literally changed the way
we think about Innovation from something
that was mysterious and and done by
Wizards to to something that was
intelligible at the in the sea suite and
that was not easy to do and what design
thinking did I think was to um I hope
you agree with this I I think what
design thinking did was to was to make
innovation
more reliable more dependable as a as a
as a strategic asset of the firm rather
than the random outcome of of of Good
Fortune
um after so Tim spent 20 years at was
CEO of of Ideo he's now the executive
chair um he has um he's the chief
evangelist of an organization called
neol which is a platform for Creative
leaders and Enterprises and and Tim has
been at the Forefront of thinking about
how space and and pace and and and
design um contributes to human
well-being and I think that's Central to
the issues that we're talking about with
creative resiliency Tim it's good to
have you here to
Tim's right is
Gilmer Gilly close right I'm getting
there I've been practicing all morning
and um
um but this young woman is amazing she's
an award-winning architect uh the
founder of a um of a Lithuanian based
architectural firm called do Architects
she has um she talks about human Centric
architecture much the same way that Tom
um that that Tim and John have talked
about the role of human as Central focus
of of organizational change um Gilma is
talking about about that as the role for
Architects and she works in places like
Ukraine where she's working trying to
revitalize a dispirited community and um
who are victims of post-soviet
architecture and and and City Planning
she's trying to restore life and
brightness and creativity to to that to
that Community um I think as I've as
I've gotten to know Gilma the thing that
strikes me is how similar the things
she's doing both why and what with what
the rest of us probably in this room are
doing with complex organizations trying
to put life back into them and and Spark
creativity and so Gilman it's a pleasure
to have you here and and last but not
least is R kadia who is the ex um senior
vice president for an organization that
has experienced more chaos than anyone
in this room might imagine and that's
wuwei and and what R is is is his role
at um at WWE for um for Europe has given
him an opportunity to think about how
external surprise can affect an
organization and and how that
organization's creative resilience can
restore it to a to a a position of both
Technical and Market leadership and so I
think he brings a unique
perspective um to to the U to the panel
R it's good to have you here um so we're
g to the way this is going to work is
I'm going to ask the panelists to give
us a one bullet point right from the
start uh one bullet point each for you
to think about as you then listen to the
rest of what they have to say we'll
we'll we'll we'll do that we'll go
through each of the four panelists we'll
then ask each of them to have a very
short presentation to give you some
sense of what how they see chaos and
creativity and the examples that things
they've been working on and then we're
going to try to have a real conversation
rather than um me try to orchestrate a
conversation we'll see how that works
we're going to flirt with chaos Right In
This Very Room okay so John you want to
start and give us one bullet point
before I start can I ask if we get the
timer to actually turn on 60 minutes so
I think we've got a long time ahead of
us right I um there we go now it's
coming down good it's down to 40
already that was a very quick5
minutes so okay yeah I my my short
comment is that if we're serious about
fostering creativity in times of chaos
we need to focus on
emotions and I was went to business
school I've worked with some of the
major consulting firms I was taught that
emotions are a distraction focus on the
numbers and the analytics and you'll get
everything right and I've come to
believe over time that until and unless
we focus on emotions we're never going
to be able to achieve what we want to
achieve and um the key questions in my
mind are what emotions are motivating
creativity and what emotions are
barriers and obstacles to creativity
and focusing on how do we cultivate the
emotions that are going to motivate
creativity so that would be my key
message good thanks
Tim uh so I think what I want to talk
about uh I think it connects quite well
to what John's going to speak about and
that is that a creative mindset is a
valuable asset uh in the context of of
CHA chaos and a valuable way of creating
uh resiliency by but uh that organiz an
organizational creative mindset can only
happen if you've got individual creative
mindsets and organizational resiliency
can only happen if you've got individual
resiliency and the two are not the same
one builds from the other okay okay fair
enough good Gilma um I will be very
physical about it so about John's and
Tim's ideas as an architect uh I also
will try to also inspire you to think in
what environment you are and how it
shapes us because I will share with you
some radical environments for example
from Soviet propaganda and Soviet
buildings and how it radically separates
people and uh how good humanistic
architecture could actually connect
people so this is will be my topic thank
you okay R right I believe we live in
the chaos all the time we the universe
is chaos chaos as by the theory of
entropy so everything tends to chaos
except organizations organizations tend
to
order so navigating in in in a chaos is
based on three uh foundations first one
is the technological
innovation the we live in the world that
everything is becoming digital and
everything is intelligent use the tools
that you have in your hands to
innovate uh one example is our AI pangu
model for
example second one is the evolution of
the
management uh people like Peter drer uh
were the fathers and and they created
the foundations but we always need to
adapt as as uh we heard uh we cannot
only focus on numbers we need to focus
on the emotion to get the best out of
out of us and the third one
is I adopted a saying from Africa that
says if you want to go fast you
go uh alone if you want to go far you go
together so we need to build
Partnerships and we need to get people
around us our partners to to help us to
go through difficult times great so so
people right mindset organizational
mindset being different than individual
mindset um space as a uniter or divider
of people uh and connectivity over and
over and and over again
and emotions are good right or at least
they're worth talking about part of our
toolkit so let's start with each of the
each of the panelists uh they're going
to take a short um you don't have 45
minutes right but you can interpolate
that but about six or seven minutes to
give you some sense of where they're
from and where they're coming from and
what their ideas are regarding the topic
and then we'll get into the conversation
John well now appreciate the opportunity
it's um I I'd start just by saying that
our panel description uh asks the
question of what kind of companies have
bounced back and I want to challenge the
notion of resilience as bouncing back
the last thing we want to do is go back
to where we were but when I talk to
senior leaders and ask them what they
mean by resilience they mean bouncing
back I want to go back to where we were
the key I think for all of us is to use
chaos and other catalysts to bounce
forward to find ways to evolve and I
give it just one quick example um in in
the pandemic uh one of the things we
found was that Supply chains are
actually extremely
Fragile the last thing we want to do is
bounce back to supply chains that we had
we need to move forward and evolve into
much more flexible Supply Networks
so that's a key I think theme in terms
of this notion of resilience and why I
like combining creative resilience
because creativity implies move evolving
and moving forward so I think um the
question is how do we evolve and move
forward in times of chaos and I'd say
that to address this need we need to
expand our Focus from building skills to
cultivating
capabilities and here again this is all
about definition and language I when
when I talk about skills what I'm
focusing on are things that are really
valuable in a particular context a skill
is how to operate this kind of machine a
skill is how to do this kind of
calculation in a process those are
important things but they're valuable in
a specific context if you're out of that
context that skill is
irrelevant in contrast I believe
capabilities are valuable in every
context not a specific context and over
time based on the work I've done I've
come to focus on a set of capabilities
that I think we need to cultivate starts
with curiosity goes to
collaboration
imagination creativity and
reflection and the reason I focus on
those capabilities and the need to
cultivate those is because they together
facilitate a form of learning and here
again I have to clarify in my experience
when I talk to Executives about learning
they say oh yeah we do learning we have
training programs you go and you learn
and
you acquire a specific skill and now
we're talking about lifelong skill
building okay the learning I'm talking
about is a different form of learning
that is transferring existing knowledge
knowledge not to dismiss it but in a
world of chaos and Rapid change we need
to focus on learning in the form of
creating entirely new knowledge and that
does not occur in a training room that
occurs in the workplace by coming
together with others and acting together
and that is a much more uh necessary and
Powerful form of learning and the
capabilities that I just talked about
are essential if we're really going to
draw out that kind of learning in all
the people that we're involved with so
um cultivating
capabilities uh is it becomes much more
necessary and I believe if we're going
to serious about cultivating
capabilities we have to find a way to
draw out a very specific form of passion
it's What I Call The Passion of the
Explorer and this is based on Research
that I've done but let me Define what I
mean by passion the Explorer it has
three ke key elements one is people who
have this passion have a commitment to
having increasing impact in a specific
domain they're excited about having more
and more
impact second is their reaction when
confronted with an unexpected challenge
or chaos is excitement this is an
opportunity to learn and have more
impact this is great and then the third
element of the passion of the Explorer
is the their first reaction when
confronted with an unexpected challenge
is who else can I connect with who can
help me learn faster how to have even
more impact in this area they're
constantly reaching out and asking for
help very powerful if we're really going
to cultivate these capabilities and
accelerate the learning that I'm talking
about
um the challenge is that in uh my
research I I actually looked in in the
United States at all large companies and
found that at
best and large organizations in general
I mean it wasn't just companies but in
in general there are only 14% of workers
who have this kind of passion The
Passion of the Explorer
14% And I'm actually surprised it's as
much as 14%
because I believe we have cultivated
large organizations that are
extremely suspicious of
passion passionate people ask too many
questions they take too many risks they
deviate from the script why would you
want a passionate
worker you want an Engaged worker you
want a worker who likes what they do
likes the people they work with and like
respect the company that they work for
and I don't want to dismiss engagement
that's fine but there's nothing in that
definition of Engagement which focuses
on this excitement about having more and
more impact and welcoming and seeking
change That's The Passion of the
Explorer and so I think that
um it
uh the question is okay how do we
unleash that Passion of the Explorer and
I won't go into the deta but it's in my
book as was mentioned the journey Beyond
fear I've come to believe that the
emotion of fear has become a very
growing obstacle to creativity and
success in a rapidly changing world and
until unless we acknowledge the fear and
find ways to move Beyond it and draw out
this Passion of the Explorer and by the
way I believe we all have the potential
for this passion but it needs to be
encouraged and drawn out and supported
um until we do that we're not going to
be creative in a significant way in
times of chaos and I'll just finish with
one quick example of a company that did
some interest an interesting thing here
was a clinical Lab company in the time
of the pandemic um this clinical Lab
company found that customers uh were
becoming increasingly unhappy with their
customer call center
operations and uh the workers in the
customer call centers were becoming
increasingly unhappy uh they were
leaving at a rap accelerating rate the
leader of the of this the call center
operations called all the all the staff
together and said one thing first of all
none of you are going to be
fired second you need to work with the
Technology Group to figure out how to
automate as much of the calls that
you're getting responses to those calls
that are routine
calls but that's going to free you up so
that you can focus on the calls that
we're never expected that there's no
script for and we're going to organize
you into pods small groups of people
five or six people to problem solve
around how to address those unexpected
problems and
challenges guess what over time passion
levels went way up in the customer call
center operations cuz now they weren't
just following scripts that anybody
could follow they were addressing
problems and needs that had never been
addressed before they were making a
difference that
matters and the customer satisfaction
went way up because now the call center
operators were actually focused on the
really challenging problems that needed
to be addressed so anyway I think that
um it's just an example of how we can
draw out that passion and uh and
excitement about addressing ing problems
I think
overall my belief is and I've done again
a lot of research in this that we are in
a world of exponentially expanding
opportunity we can create far more value
with far less resource far more quickly
but if we're driven by fear we can't
even see those opportunities much less
be motivated to pursue them we get
consumed by the pressures that we're on
in the moment so I believe we need to
find ways to
acknowledge that and move Beyond it good
thanks thanks Sean
Tim uh well I I think in many ways I'm
going to look at this issue that John's
also looking at maybe through a a sort
of a slightly parallel lens but uh uh a
lot of what John was talking about is u
i i really support and uh in fact all of
it I support um you know it's fairly
obvious that these last uh few years
have marked uh a kind of a radical
transition not in the sense that
necessarily that change uh is increasing
it's just that the pandemic marked a
moment when we realized how much change
was going on around us um and uh and
that our sort of standard approaches to
dealing with change just weren't working
very well uh anymore and that in
individual and organizational resilience
and absolutely it's the bouncing forward
version of resilience not the bouncing
back version of resilience um uh is
going to be even more essential as we as
we as we look uh look
forward and there there's research
that's been done uh globally across uh
workforces in America Europe Middle East
Asia uh that that that shows that uh
having a creative mindset is ADV
advantageous when it comes to dealing
with chaos and uh and being resilient in
times of U of of chaos and it's
advantageous in in two different ways uh
firstly uh and this is work that was
done with the US surgeon general's
office uh in America um uh which shows
that a creative mindset is an antidote
to loneliness and loneliness in at work
is a pandemic of it of its own certainly
uh certainly in uh in in in the US uh
and leads to a higher turnover uh it's
been estimated that for sort of firms of
approximately 5 or 600 100 people the
kind of turnover that comes from a
decreased motivation and increased and
turnover can cost as much as $30 million
per firm that's not a small number um uh
so on the one hand uh uh a creative
mindset is an antidote to loneliness
because it increases connection and I'm
talking about collaborative creativity
I'm talking about people working
together on Creative problem solving um
and and uh that this increased uh
connectivity uh also leads to uh
increased
optimism uh it leads to more future
oriented thinking uh more open mind
mindedness higher levels of perseverance
and being better at Opportunity spotting
at some level just as you were talking
about John with regard to fear gets in
the way of these things a creative
mindset helps you overcome fear and and
what I mean by a creative mindset one
you can think about it in terms of um
cre creative confidence which is a term
uh coined by my colleague David Kelly
which is the ability to have new ideas
and the courage to act on them another
way of thinking about it is exactly that
set of capabilities that John just
talked about curiosity uh creativity
reflection these are all essentially the
characteristics of um of a c of a
creative mindset um and uh you know it
it so it it's it seems to me anyway way
that uh by focusing on developing a
creative mindset at the individual level
we will also see that um uh uh uh at at
the organizational level and there are
things that there are things that
organization can do uh to support this
idea of an increased creative mindset um
uh such as encouraging collaboration
encouraging risk-taking uh and I think
there are different forms of leadership
that can help do that uh the the the the
the uh the leadership of that comes with
the Explorer um that that ability to uh
ask questions that are bigger than the
questions that have been asked before to
bring passion into the organization I
think is absolutely the case but also
leadership that comes from being a
player coach leaders who know how to sit
with teams and act with teams and help
them move forward rather than just
review what teams May um may have um
have done in the in in their work uh I
think it's important for leaders to
think about team composition to build
teams that are um uh where where we're
in encouraging diversity uh to foster a
sense of belonging to create the sort of
um kind of psychological safety which I
think we're going to hear about a little
bit in a moment from a physical
standpoint but also from a kind of an
emotional standpoint it it it has to be
safe to take risks not in the sense that
you're trying to eradicate the risk but
in the sense that risk taking is a part
of the process of innovation um and and
that risk-taking uh as we heard a little
bit yesterday um on the um panel on on
failure is about learning as much as as
as much as anything else so um there
have been organizations that I think
have done this quite successfully uh uh
during and before uh the the the
pandemic um one that I uh uh one that I
would mention is a Peruvian company
actually uh company called uh called
intercot that I've worked with for many
for many years and they have a whole
series of of of of kind mechanisms that
they put in place to encourage a a
creative mindset across the their
organization they have the they have
this H literally a house that's 200
meters from their headquarters in Lima
called lav Victoria lab and this house
is a place where teams come together to
innovate but it's also the house that
represents the customers because it is
that is a house that's just like the
where their middle- class customers live
and it's where they come to innovate on
behalf of those customers they carry out
series of Beacon projects projects which
help them show that they can behave in
in New in new ways and one of the things
that they obsessed about is that uh that
they that as their their leaders uh go
on learning Journeys around the world
not to the normal places yes they've
been to Silicon Valley but actually they
go spend a week in Jakarta or um or a
week in Taipei um and learn about how
different cultures different societies
different businesses are operating
they're voracious uh voracious uh uh
Learners and what this level of kind of
kind of creative preparedness has done
for them is that they've been been able
to react which uh to uh to extremely
chaotic envir an environment for their
business I mean as you as you might have
followed in the news I mean Peru went
from being a relatively stable growing
econ economy to a to one that was led by
populist governments where that that
their permission to do business was was
radically U was radically shifting and
so they shifted their strategy almost
overnight from being one focused on Peru
to one that's being focused on the rest
of Latin America and that was not a
difficult thing for them to do because
they were prepared they were prepared
for it and there are other organizations
that I think um who have shown a similar
agility so this idea of building a
creative mindset starting at the
individual reaching the organization as
a as as a as a way of preparing to deal
with chaos and indeed in some ways you
could think of it as turning chaos into
a into an asset rather than a
problem great thank you thank you Gilmer
thank you thank you Bill Tim and John so
um you are talking about the cre ity and
uh actually that it comes from
interactions and uh usually it comes
from accidental interactions we don't
actually imagine where we meet uh where
we get this uh kind of spark you know
when when we be become creative and I
will maybe want to share with you some
examples I will ask to show a slide
here uh of our work uh so
oh you see
it uh so um this is um on the left you
see the
cook um in the cooking room in Soviet
kindergarten in vus in Lithuania and
this kindergarten is not uh only in
Lithuania in vus it is also in all
Center in Eastern Europe so you will
find it in
Poland you will find it in Romania you
will find it in Ukraine it is the same
and um they were built with Soviet
propaganda with sovet values and built
in
walls how to separate people so this
cook was working you know in the kitchen
for 20 years in this particular case and
never saw kids because the kitchen was
designed in the basement without any
Windows any of like
kind of connections where they cannot
meet so the kids just you know get their
meals like
appearing and they didn't know how it
appear like that the ladies are cooking
them and when we tried when we uh
started working with this kindergarten
transformation and it is the First
Transformation it is State kindergarden
and it is the First Transformation after
our independence so it is like in 33
years we didn't imagine and didn't
understand yet that we are renovating
and repeting Soviet buildings which does
and creates such a connections such
separations such isolations so what we
did we created you know like a
window that children could see the
cooking ladies and this is the same uh
cooking lady and I thought it will be a
major effect on kids but what I didn't
really expect it that the major effect
was on the cooking ladies on the cooks
and they became the cooking Stars you
know of not only for the children not
only for the teachers but the whole for
whole community and they started
actually baking much more of like uh
like delicious stuff and cookies and
stuff like this they started you know to
do it because they have conditions to
share the
best because they have you know
possibility to be visible and I mean
like with these physical connections we
can create such a lifechanging things
that cooks now you know connects and
meets with the kids and Cooks now
actually are working you know like and
baking for like the all Community for
like birthday parties and stuff like
this because they are now visible and uh
this is of course very very radical
example but I think it also maybe and
could wake us up how we appreciate and
how we actually um deal with the space
and this is the same you know uh with
the
street it is a second example so it is
also uh very very typical Soviet street
it's not not the worst because it is
with trees and not so white I
think it is vill but it could be in v it
could be like in I don't know Budapest
it could be you know whatever in all the
center in Eastern Europe
because another values was put it on us
not Western European values and not
human values not free Democratic Values
but radical anti-human values and this
is materialized for example in the
street and this is not the worst case
for sure this is with trees but it is
you see it's not life uh it's not it's
empty it's not encouraging you to go to
the street to meet your neighbors and
stuff like this no there is no sense uh
how actually Tim is talking sense of
belonging sense of belonging for the
neighborhood sense of belonging you know
for the city because it was designed
that way that you wouldn't want to
become community to become you know
United uh some kind of group because it
was programed this is I believe and we
are doing a research about that uh how
actually um space are programmed with
all what with what values we can program
the space and what we did here we did
this experiment in villus and we made
the street this is a same street so it's
a transformation of the same street we
made it you know for you maybe for vien
and for all the you know like I don't
know for Western Europe it's so maybe
common to see like a street market and
very nice benches and very nice like
bushes in the street and this is simple
simple simple things but when they put
it together space
says I invite you space invites people
to come and to meet and this is
programmed that way that space is
waiting for people together and when we
are speaking about the companies we also
design companies and we also talked a
little bit with r about it so uh for
example we also had two companies like
one unicorn company in villus the first
one vet maybe you know it and we had
Scandinavian bank and uh after pmic IC
they let one said that you have the rule
and on Wednesdays you have to be in the
office and uh then you can work from
home and Vint said that you can work
from home orwh from office but the
office is very very very nice and just
guess how much percentage of people are
coming to office of course it is more
than 80% but it is freedom but the
motivation it is this Gathering space
spaces these meeting spaces these
inspiring interactions which make these
connections so uh I invite you of course
uh maybe you know all this but just uh
to
observe and to observe
how space could actually change our
interactions change our um atmospheric
you know feeling about the space uh not
only from ourself but also from like
this you know possibility and conditions
to be better to be more
united so I think uh this this is the
idea I I wanted to share with you good
thank you so than you thank you R yeah
thank you uh very
inspirational uh points by everyone
actually I thought I will be giving you
our point of view but I also to learn a
lot as well so thank you for that um I
very much liked you know we as Bill said
we are a company that is quite
experienced in navigating in a
chaos and uh even pre pandemic so
uh
we how to do it uh I believe we operate
in the chaos or our life to some extent
we are trying to make sense of it we are
trying to order find order in it and we
are trying to see patterns in the chaos
if you can see the patterns in the chaos
you can uh get yourself more organized
and focused how to navigate in it the
complexity of world is so big it's not
possible for human brain to comprehend
it we need to find some rules and some
processes and some uh you know
directions how to move into it but in
our company we and I'll be deadly honest
with you we focus on our core values why
do we exist on the market what is our
streng strong point how we move on and
uh you know bouncing back is a good term
but I think every
organization uh has a aim to grow so
it's always bouncing forward it's always
going bigger better
faster um so we ask ourself why we are
here what is our purpose and we came
back to our roots and realized we are
here to bring digital to every person
home and organization in the world this
is our mission secondly our core values
is to be stay customer Centric we've
always been with our customers and
partially
I personally believe some of our
problems came from this that we were
focusing on serving our customers not
taking care about how people see
us and uh the second core value that we
have is
perseverance we persevere in difficult
situations and this is uh done in so
many dimensions so many angles we don't
give up easily on the daily basis but
also we we don't shy away from difficult
situations everyone can do easy and I
have tens
and tens of our employees coming and
saying oh it's very difficult or saying
oh it's very complicated and I always
tell them if it was easy it would be
boring how can you achieve anything in
your life if you don't go through
difficulties you have to feel a little
bit of Challenge and pain to feel the
satisfaction that you can
overcome and I believe that every
organization that goes through
difficulties and has to operate in the
chaos and bounce back will have much
better internal reward and much better
internal satisfaction from the work
they're doing than the organizations
that have it easy and U another
aspect is
uh many organizations the life cycle
organizations as per the statistics is
30 years in the 30 years they uh have
startup phase growth glory and
Decay I believe the situation of
navigating in the
chaos can help the organizations find
their real
meaning go back on track find the proper
separate diamond from dust a little bit
you know clear clear the mind where we
going what are our values and then they
it will allow them to stay longer come
up stronger and be able to to uh operate
for much longer time and it's very easy
for me to talk about my company but if
you look at other companies the one that
we cooperate with for many years like
IBM that help us to
actually uh um put process proc into our
organization most of the processes that
are created in Huawei were consulted by
IBM they've realized that suddenly they
are in the chaos and they cannot
continue you know always creating
computers and they evolve to become
rather consultancy company they found
their Niche they for every we evolve or
our life if we don't evolve we just uh
deteriorate so I hope I'm not saying too
many big words uh here and and you can
understand me but uh what I really
like uh from from what you said
is from building skills to cultivating
capabilities this is something that we
as an organization struggle I've seen so
many times that people try to reinvent
the same will over and over again
because with the time people lose the
capability they used to do it in the
past but suddenly something happened
whether there is a new team or new
environment or new geography and people
try to invent the same thing and we are
living in such a complex world that it's
very easy to lose the competences or
capabilities that the organizations have
this is uh one of the key points my take
away from from this sis and uh second
one is U Passion of the Explorer instead
of Discoverer everyone can
discover by accident because you were
going to India or because you were
looking for it but to explore
is uh much deeper and I believe we are
the explorers in our
organization because we are not only
focus on uh easy oh let's make a product
that is competitive but actually
majority of our effort and investment
goes into research and development
starting with scientific research
cooperation with the universities doing
our material research mathematical
algorithms and so on and so forth so at
the end of the day the products that we
are
creating are not only functional stable
and uh customers are happy to buy them
but they also consume less energy they
are more lightweight they are more
durable so they they they can be used
better so I think it's not only
um discover but explore how to do it uh
in the in the best way am I too you're
good this is a good time to go into the
so thank you y good thank you thanks so
so we talked about just before we came
into this room we had a wonderful
conversation um when we came in the room
we have sort of like presentations I
hope they were stimulating I hope they
were provocative but they didn't capture
the give and take of this group of Minds
working together so let's try to do that
now would you John do you want to start
you want to respond to what R talked
about or you want to in terms of and
then I'm going to step out of this and
let you guys jump
in respond and well H to the the
capabilities thing you know to expand on
that because that seems to be part of
the whole the whole story yeah no well I
I'm appreciative that it resonated with
you on the the importance of
capabilities again I think that in most
large organizations I'm generalizing
it's all about skills and it's very
little about capabilities and I think
one of the key questions is okay if
these capabilities are so important how
can we develop them cultivate them and I
think one of the ways I would suggest is
for leader we need a a fundamental shift
in leadership models I believe and I'm
going to generalize again but in most
large organizations we have a Leadership
Model of
expertise the the strong leader is the
one who has an answer to all the
questions no matter what the question
you can count on the leader to have an
answer and by the way if they don't have
an answer maybe it's time to get rid of
them and find somebody who does I
believe in this rapidly changing world
that we're in now the mark of a strong
leader is the one who has the most
powerful
questions and inspirational questions
and will ask for help which communicates
I think very powerfully to the
organization number one the questions
are not just okay they're absolutely
essential and asking for help is
essential and it starts to build that
that culture where these capabilities
begin to flourish and where the passion
of the Explorer really um comes out I
think I think there might be one
obstacle just one just well many
obstacles a particular obstacle to
building the cap to not so much building
the capabilities but actually using the
capabilities in in in in business that
you talk about and that's actually our
attitude towards
time um uh I believe that uh We've we've
developed an attitude towards
time got started off in the industrial
revolution you know the the Greeks
talked about two forms of time they
talked about Kronos and chyos right
Kronos is mechanical time it's time that
happens to
you chyos is experiential time it's time
it's the the metaphor that they use is
Kronos is like a
river and chyos is like a lake you know
so it's the form of time you can swim in
it and you can bathe in it and you can
use it and uh our business processes of
today are built on Kronos they're built
on mechanical time we s and we've we've
learned to slice it up into every ever
tie to pieces and uh my own experience
as a trying to be a creative person is
one thing you can't be creative is in 10
minute slices or half hour slices you
need to you you need to actually immerse
yourself you need to reach moments of
flow you need
uh you need chyos not Kronos um and so I
think we need to question the way we
think of time and the way we use time in
our organizations it's actually one of
the things that makes me hopeful about
AI because I think on the one hand we
can think of AI as a tool for
Automation and automating out of our
jobs um but I think you're talking you
referencing this a little bit earlier
but um we can also think of it as a way
of freeing ourselves from Kronos freeing
ourselves from all those things that can
be automated in order to give us time to
immerse ourselves in the kinds of
capabilities that John's talking about
so I think we have to ask questions
about time I think we have to ask
questions about how we use technology to
free ourselves from a mechanical view of
time if we're going to really exploit
the capabilities of curiosity and
creativity and reflection Okay g you
nodding enthusiastically you want to say
do you want to add to that um I have a
little joke um about so this is maybe
but I was reading is Peter drer uh
autobiography it's called um The
Adventures of a
bystander yes and uh it is uh when I was
listening now especially for John and
Tim um about this uh you know what it is
to be cre creativity and how to how to
emerge in yourself it I remember one
story about his
grandmother uh who was
like um making order in her
kitchen and I think it was like it is a
good lesson also about the house uh so
she was making order in the kitchen and
she made made this two shelves and put
like two labels uh so one label is like
U cups without
handles and the other shelf is like a
handles without
cups this is so farun but I think this
this really shows how human mind
actually works when we are thinking
about the house what the first things
like a first steps what we have to do is
to actually making such a simple you
know distinction what it is what what is
what so uh this is a fun example but I
think uh when we start from this kind of
point and make very human firstly then
we can you know like from all this um
concrete very very super concrete little
things I think then we found our
creativity so this is a little point I
love to disagree sometimes during the
panels because otherwise they're boring
so I want to disagree a little bit with
you uh leaders in my organization don't
have all the
answers they only show the direction and
build the teams to address it we have
experts to give all the answers and this
is also this is not something that
happened from the beginning this is one
of the quite recent changes where we
separate uh expertise from leadership
and Leadership should have skills to
engage people and find the proper groups
and get people together to work on the
problems and experts should find the
solutions and then
imped uh so this is my
disagreement uh actually this is also
part of navigation through K chaos as I
said on the beginning in my in my note
we need to evolve our management styles
to adapt ourselves because businesses
are not only legal organizations
registered in every country but
businesses are people it's not money
it's not technology businesses are
people and if we don't care to follow
what you said
uh how people feel about their work how
they are motivated to be creative then
we are going into the stamping in the
post office doing it every day measuring
only how many postcards you can stamp a
day and this is this can be automated by
Ai and a lot of people are uh you know
we hear the voices Oh AI will take our
jobs true but so did the
Railway they took the J jobs from the
the guys who used to have a horse card
and to transport the like a male coaches
it was taken but it will create another
jobs the jobs that will rely more on the
personalities and skills and creativity
of the employees rather than doing
repetitive tasks over and over again or
dangerous tasks like mine or climbing
Towers or you know things that can be
automated and uh
yeah I think you got what I wanted to
say Timmy you want to respond to that uh
no well actually I I had a question I'd
like be interested in uh to see what
everybody thinks about we we talked
about it a little bit uh before we came
in which is we keep we keep using the
word chaos but is there only one form of
chaos is there good Chaos versus bad
chaos is there productive chaos and
unproductive chaos can we somehow
constrain or contain chaos in such ways
to make it useful what do we do I mean
do we have a point of view about
chaos well I would say my point of view
is not about the different types of
chaos but the different reactions to
chaos because I believe Chaos on the one
side can be an incredible Catalyst for
creativity you're confronting
unexpected chaos and it motivates you to
want to find ways to address it on the
other side the reaction to chaos
can be fear and it can become an
obstacle to creativity no I'm just going
to hold on and try to bounce back to
where I was you know just squeeze
Tighter and hold on and everything will
go back to where it was and so I think
that that's an interesting dichotomy is
what's our reaction to chaos is it
excitement or is it fear so I think
chaos is in the mind of the beholder
which is I think is what John's saying I
I I'm fascinated by organization that
have a great deal of
autonomy um in in order to be able to
free up the talent within small groups
but other other observers think of this
as chaotic because it lacks the sort of
organizational coherence that they look
for well- aligned cultures um and I
think both can work but you have to it
can't be done on the fly it has to be
carefully carefully thought out so I
think you know you have chaos but you
have chaos Within situation that is well
thought out in terms of what's going to
happen and why we're doing this on the
other hand introducing a chaos at the
controllable scale inside the
organization can be also a very
beneficial very useful tool for the
managers yeah because then you actually
Force the creativity among the teams and
Chaos doesn't sell well in the in in the
market right when customers touch a
chaotic environment they back off we're
we're just about B out of time we have
two minutes I I'd just like to sum up um
quickly what we've talked about first of
all I want to thank you all it's been a
delight working with you from I don't
know September to now and this has been
this has been all I hoped for um I I I
want you to as you leave and think about
this one of the th a couple of things I
want you to think about that we just
heard was bouncing forward um not not
just resilience to the mean but bouncing
forward and and and what that and what
that might mean I was captivated by a
world
of exponentially expanding opportunities
and I think you're right I mean I think
we're in a golden we we we could be on
the era of a golden age of of of
innovation um and the the the the social
implications of that but only if we if
we only if we want to only if we control
fear and and and improve inclusiveness
and and connectivity
um asking questions bigger than we ever
asked before I mean that's something we
could do today right you know that in
terms of trying to encourage people to
think bigger that's something that we
could leave and and what does it take to
become a voracious learner I said I love
the title right but what is it what how
could I how how could I do that the the
the power of The Accidental interactions
the creating space so that people can
can you know make chance connections and
and and broaden the novelty of the new
idea and the richness of it and I think
I was struck F first of all I thought I
thought Gilmer's visual of the cooks was
wonderful but the title of that project
is rebuilding the wonderful and and that
and that I think captures some of the
magic and then I think um mve move away
from leaders who have expertise and and
um need leaders who have the best
questions I I think that's that that's
part of it and change the role of of of
of time in in in our jobs those are
really things to think about we we don't
we don't have sufficient time we're out
of time to to to talk about those but I
hope that they remain meor you know
memories for at least the trip home and
think about how you can apply them um
thank you for joining us I'm I'm sorry
our time is up but thank you very very
much there you
are I I have one more thing I have to
drop I don't know what it is but I
haven't dropped everything we'll catch
it thank you so much for this wonderful
discussion it also reminded me of this
beautiful quote by n that you still have
to have chaos in you in order to be able
to give birth to a dancing star so thank
you for the reminder of how we can
actually turn chaos into
creativity what's about to come next is
here we're going to talk in this room
about ESG strategies and if they're
actually making our organizations and
our society more sustainable in the
smaller room on the left hand side we're
going to have artists performing artists
and we'll see what we can learn from
them about resilience and in this very
small room here on that side we're going
to talk about cyber attacks and cyber
resilience and with this you have half
an hour break and before you go into
this please give it up once more for
Bill John Tim Gilma and radislav thank
you so much thank
you