by the world-shaking events I’ve been able to experience. As I shared in the introduction to this book, it seemed that every time I landed in a country on a business trip, a big leadership story was unfolding in real time. It’s become clear to me that leaders will need to be much more aware of the geopolitical dynamics in the world. Fifty-two percent of CEOs surveyed by KPMG believe the geopolitical landscape is having a more significant impact on their companies.20 McKinsey’s research21 found that geopolitical and macroeconomic instability will create what they call geostrategic risk, which will have a negative impact on companies.
What’s particularly concerning to me is that the vast majority of executives surveyed by McKinsey admitted to not taking active steps to address geopolitical issues. What do you believe are the risks when leaders do not actively think about geopolitical issues happening around the world? In my client work, I have seen the world of leaders turned upside down because of geopolitics. Many leaders tell me how they have had to deal with the impact of trade disputes, tariffs, and tensions between countries where they operate. These result in hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. For many, it seemed to all happen in an instant. As leaders, we need to learn to be more sensitive to the world around us and try to anticipate and mitigate the risks that may emerge due to global events.
3. Revolutionizing Work
Work is a topic that has always been near and dear to my heart. Early in my working life, as a career counselor, I saw the way that meaningful work changed the lives of marginalized people. Now the future of work has taken center stage as a bona fide global obsession. Every week, I get a flood of surveys, studies, commentaries, and editorials, all talking about the future of work and jobs, many with dire and even apocalyptic headlines. I’m sure you do as well. But as I read these reports, studies, and predictions, I can’t help but feel that we have been here before. This was the case for me in 1990 when I was a budding entrepreneur and starting my first consulting business. To be effective, I had to be on top of all the research on careers and the future of work. Back then, the uncertainty about the future of work, reskilling, and retraining was just as intense as it is today. We were awash in predictions about job loss, the role of technology in reshaping the workplace, and the dream of a future of leisure. What was different then was that we were only a decade away from the year 2000. If you were around then, you know that the year 2000 represented the future. That year did come, and some predictions about the future of work materialized. However, many did not.
Just like then, today there’s a vast range of predictions and forecasts about the future of work. The Guardian recently went so far as to ask if jobs would even exist in the future.22 The article quoted business journalist Richard Newton offering a very pessimistic view of the future: “This is either going to be very good or very bad—and either way there’s not going to be much in the way of work.” Oxford University recently reported that nearly half of all jobs that exist today would not be around tomorrow.23 What do you believe?
I believe it is essential to not get caught up in the hype regarding the future of work. There are more balanced perspectives to consider. For example, a recent Harvard Business Review article estimated that only 5 percent of all occupations would be fully automated.24 However, all jobs will evolve as intelligent machines take over many physical, repetitive, or basic cognitive tasks. The critical work that remains will require more technical and digital skills. It will also require more human interaction, creativity, and judgment. I completely agree. I’m all for freeing people up from mundane and repetitive work and unleashing human ingenuity and passion. Leaders must be able to unleash these capabilities in the people they lead, both today and in the future.
Work is already revolutionizing in front of our eyes. I believe leaders have a profound obligation to the people they lead to help them through the next decade. Unfortunately, some predictions about the nature of work in the future paint a grim picture of work devoid of meaning. As a result, I believe that creating an inspiring work environment in which to work will be even more critical in the future than it is today. Culture will continue to matter, and we’ll need leaders who get that. I believe the debate going on is not only about jobs. It’s also about the quality of the employment experience and whether leaders focus on employee well-being and creating a sense of connectedness in workplaces.
What does all this fervor about the future of work mean to you as a leader? The people you lead will be looking to you for your perspective. They are coming to work worried about whether a robot will replace them. Heck, you and I might be replaced by one as well. You need to be able to have these discussions. Your company will need to demonstrate it is taking action to support retraining and reskilling. The companies seen as leading the charge in reshaping the future of work will win in the future. Those that invest in developing their people will attract and retain the best talent. Leaders also need to focus on employee well-being, and on creating a sense of belonging, inclusiveness, and connectedness in our workplaces.
4. Delivering on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
One hundred seventy years. That’s how long the World Economic Forum estimates it will take to realize true diversity in the workplace.25 What?! That’s not good enough. Every leader I speak to and work with agrees that diversity and gender parity are critical business issues. So why are we moving at a snail’s pace? I got part of the answer to this question a while back when I had the opportunity to spend some time with Laura Liswood. She’s the founder and secretary-general of the Council of Women World Leaders, a group of 72 women presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state. It’s the only organization of its kind in the world. Liswood has been a strong voice for diversity for decades and even wrote a book on the topic: The Loudest Duck: Moving Beyond Diversity While Embracing Differences to Achieve Success at Work.26
In our discussion, I asked her to give me her sense of whether things were getting better when it comes to diversity. She said they are, but ever so slowly. Liswood believes how we think about diversity slows down the progress toward it. Some of us compare it to, as she calls it, Noah’s Ark: “Let’s just get two of everything on board, and things will be okay.” This approach, however, is just too simplistic.
Liswood believes that diversity is a path to innovation for organizations and society. However, it doesn’t happen by accident. First, you need to make it a priority. You need to go beyond superficialities and create a culture in which everyone’s voice is heard—really heard. All people must feel included, involved, and valued—only then will they be engaged. Liswood says this is a challenge she has repeatedly seen in the corporate world. Everybody wants diversity, but they don’t know what to do with it once they have it, which slows down progress. We need to take inclusion seriously. We need to go beyond all the hype and understand the mission-critical importance of this issue. We need to deliver diversity, equity, and inclusion in our organizations and in our world.
5. Repurposing Corporations
When I was doing my graduate work, I was influenced a lot by the research and thinking of Dr. Willis Harman. He headed up an organization called the World Business Academy. I was fortunate enough to spend time with him and hear his lectures. At the time, he believed that corporations were becoming the dominant institution in our society. As a result, they needed to broaden their purpose from a self-serving focus on profit and shareholder returns to making the world a better place. His ideas influenced my thinking about repurposing the role of business in society.
I’ve been watching this trend continue to unfold ever so slowly since those days. Recently, it seems to be gaining some momentum once again. For instance, in 2018, Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, wrote his annual letter to CEOs and challenged his peers not to be so single-mindedly focused on quarterly results and profits.27 He wrote that society is looking to the private
