Making Sense of the Week That Was — “Living Our Leadership” Edition #33
Grey Swan Guild — News Wrap Edition: Sept 3, 2021 #33 of Vol. 1
Theme: Living Our Leadership Editor: Doyle Buehler
Leadership is a massive part of what we do, everyday. Sometimes we forget about it as it seems so far off and not relevant, and as my Hockey Coach used to say — “keep your head up”; or you’ll get checked to the ice — HARD. He was right. It affects every one of us, whether we acknowledge it or not. We have a sense of “bad” leadership… or do we really just think we do? Is it ‘natural’? Do we just accept what the norm is? How do we truly transcend? These are questions we ponder this week.
“Adapt or die” —We’ve heard this enough times to know what it means. Covid brings more than just a virus, in the toughest leadership challenge ever, for all of us, in every way imaginable.
It’s our response that matters.
There is more certainty in what we do do, than in what we could do.
Leading through the chaos is not going to be any easier now than it was 18 months ago. In fact, we need to be smarter, sharper, and even more agile than before. The businesses that have failed in the last year were not because of the lack of creativity and innovation, they were failures of leadership and awareness. A lack of awareness of what can be done, and what needs to be done. A pivot, a change, a reboot; these are more than buzzwords, they are words that can and will continue to be part of our business vernacular, tomorrow.
Those who are making the changes now are the ones that will be seeing the benefits later. COVID19 is like an out of control freight train, the only chance we have is through leadership — getting us off the track in time, and building a new track in the process.
Editor’s Note:
Let’s talk Living the Leadership Challenge 2021 and it’s many variants:
- Leadership at home
- Leadership at work
- Leadership at play
- Leadership in the community; as culture; as using tech as well! (if it can move us forward, or shouldn’t be contemplated!)
- Leadership for diversity & the issues that we face today, yesterday, and tomorrow
- Good leadership vs bad leadership vs ugly leadership
- Covid leadership around the world
- How do we make leadership better; what’s making it worse
- Leadership of small changes that rise to bigger impacts
- …and yes, let’s talk political leadership as well! (however egregious at times)
What are your ideas about “Leadership” and the direction it is going or not going?
Please join us and share your thoughts on Sunday, Sept 5th, 2021 at 8:00am (PST) | 11am (EST) | 4pm (BST) on Clubhouse led by Howard A Fields and Agustín Borrazás to engage with your favourite Grey Swan Guild Wrap Editors, including Sean Moffitt, Doyle Buehler, Rob Tyrie, Ben Thurman, Louise Mowbray, and Antonia Nicols.
It’s time to wrap.
The Great 😇
1Is Company Leadership Improving as a result of the Pandemic? What does CEO stand for now? • “C” for clarity of direction and communication. • “E” for engagement and empathy. • “O” for orchestration of optimal outcomes. Here’s a full rundown on the new rules of leadership. Now your turn, what is a leadership acronym for DEAN, CHAIR, PREZ and CHAIR?
2 If Willy Wonka had microchips, his factory would have been the MIT Media Lab and Viruka Salt would be programmer. The 500-person facility actually houses 25 different research groups, which are known for creating some of the most wondrous marvels of our era — from computers you control with levitating orbs to architecture woven by silk worms. The head of the world’s coolest innovation lab wants to focus on . . . public policy. Dava Newman, the new head of MIT’s Media Lab, wants the lab to take on bigger problems and reach out into the community. (Ed. MIT has also given us Scratch, a simple procedurals program language called Scratch that lets one learn logic by creating blocks of code much like Lego. It is of no surprise that Lego an innovation powerhouse, uses Scratch as part of its Robot Kits to program the plastics beasts or the virtual one too now. Think of it as meatspace Roblox.
3 Breaking good. Seven great leadership lessons from breakout Apple TV hit Ted Lasso. There are two types of people in the world, those people that love Apple TV breakout hit Ted Lasso, and those people who haven’t seen it yet. As much as the rom-com series, has a unique UK Premier League Football backdrop, great acting led by SNL alum Jason Sudeikis and marvellous character development (Roy Kent is our fave), it is a testament to sports and life psychology. Here are some lessons it imparts about leadership and the power of a positive attitude.
The Good 🤩
1 We’ve got a good feeling about this and we like the odds. Gold star for this leadership in customer service (and unearned media) or shall we say, The Force is strong in this one. Lego obviously trains it people in brand, partnership and fun. Jedi Knights of marketing?
2 Ollyoxenfree. ABBA leads the world in Technology AND Music? Friday nights and the lights are low, knowing we have a News Wrap and publish date to go. Oh sorry … broke into our News Wrap anthem. Still leading pop music spanning generations and the future of concert entertainment potentially. Welcome the Metaverse and hologram arena to all the cosmopolitan cities of the world of this London project pays. We think this is a better financialization and multigenerational wealth than David Bowie pulled off before he passed into the great recording studio in the sky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYGz19dvH3U
3 Using shared experiences to overcome great sadness and loss and to help heal from the past? For the Ojibwe, the Big Drum is a ceremony that exists to heal people from physical, psychological and social pain and grief.
The Bad 😬
1Leadership, like technology is neutral. Power, innovation and organization does not always end in good things for the body public. The clear example is in the waste and terror of planned obsolescence. The light bulb, the automobile, the iPod and others are all active strategies to maximize profit at the expense of the consumer. Resulting in over consumption and wasted resources and overproduction of carbon. Maybe priced carbon will give us all the right to repair and to have high quality, long lasting products. Here’s a short doc outlining how it took 100 year to get back to lightbulbs that last forever. Ugh… https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE
2 America needs a Department of the future — Longer-term thinking has precedent in America if we look back 300 years to the Iroquois — they required their leaders to take into account how their actions would affect “the unborn of the future Nation”
3 Back to Afghanistan. Leadership from Hong Kong is leading this narrative, before the press in America could fathom it . There are lots of “least bad” options in the world of neo-real-polotik. Are the Americans strong enough for the “enemy of my enemy” is my temporary friend? It’s Rook’s play to China’s Bishop. This is 3D chess, and the Russian are holding their knight at the ready. Enemies after 9/11, US and Taliban inch towards an uneasy alliance against Isis-K.
The Ugly 🤢
1“COVID Ate My Face”. The tragic meme. Why are some missing the point on vaccinations? A sad look at the bleak choices and what happens by not leading ourselves; yes, people die.
2 After Afghanistan, Europe wonders if France was right about America: Emmanuel Macron argued the US could not be relied upon. He may have had a point. The article exposing on a geo political and military scale, the absence of foresight and misspent trust & reliability we too often invest in the wrong leaders, even in our regular day-to-day lives.
3 Don’t forget to turn out the lights when you leave. More than half of leaders saying they’ll make the job switch in the coming months, compared to only 37% of individual contributors who say the same. It seem like the middle is getting more difficult. The top three reasons managers and directors are making the switch:
- 29% want more growth opportunities vs. 19% of individual contributors,
- 17% say their job is too stressful vs. 9% of individual contributors,
- 15% say they’re burnt out from the pandemic and need a break vs. 8% of individual contributors
4 Why do we keep going down the ‘wrong’ path? Leadership is about creating a path forward, not reliving the past again and again like a nightmare. The ReAwaken America Tour is just that. It does make us ask the question whether modern Western World societies can be stewarded based on reasoning and fact with the increasingly flagrant promotion of anti- science ignorance and bizarre political extremism on both sides of the divide.
The Grey Zone of Uncertainty 🦢
Last week our focus was on Women’s “Work”, and how instrumental, far reaching, progressive, and balanced we have become, and where we still need to work.
By contrast, sadly this week we saw the US leadership in this area slip back fifty years with the Rights of Women and their choices in their own country. And, to add insult to injury, parts of the Law enacted allow fellow citizens to get a ‘reward’ for reporting ‘breaches’ of this law. Suing an Uber driver for dropping off a woman at a clinic?
We will leave it up the White House Press secretary Jen Psaki when giving a pointed response to a pressing male reporter on abortion:
“The President believes it’s up to a woman to make those decisions, and up to a woman to make those decisions with her doctor… I know you’ve never faced those choices nor have you ever been pregnant, but for women out there who have faced those choices, this is an incredibly difficult thing. The President believes that right should be respected."
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We continue to mine uncertainty and would love your help in our Weathervane survey #4 — Here to Stay or Going Away.
Click here and combine our experiences here: https://bit.ly/gsgweathervane4
The Tapestry 🎨 Weaving the News
Special Grey Swan Guild ‘Numerology’ for Edition #33
Who wore it best? The Athletes that shone with #33.
Who Lived the Best? — 33rd Ranking ‘Most Innovative City In The World’? Hooray Melbourne, Australia!
Who burned the most CO2? Congrats?!? … to Malaysia at Spot #33 in the Global ranking of CO2 Emissions.
Who has the most Covid jabs? …. #33 is Ecuador with 19.51 Million doses (being bested by Australia @ #32 with 20.03 Million).
The Unluckiest of #33 — Chile Rescues 33 Minors Trapped for 69 days, in 2010.
Quote of the Week:
Lexicon of The Week: “The Long Game”
It’s no secret that we’re pushed to the limit. Today’s professionals feel rushed, overwhelmed, and perennially behind. So we keep our heads down, focused on the next thing, and the next, without a moment to breathe.
How can we break out of this endless cycle and create the kind of interesting, meaningful lives we all seek?
Just as CEOs who optimize for quarterly profits often fail to make the strategic investments necessary for long-term growth, the same is true in our own personal and professional lives. We need to reorient ourselves to see the big picture so we can tap into the power of small changes that, made today, will have an enormous and disproportionate impact on our future success. We need to start playing The Long Game. Courtesy: Dorie Clark.
Chart of the Week
How are vaccinations going? Some countries are far ahead, while others not so much. Is it a race or a stroll?
Graph of the Week:
Who do leaders serve? Increasingly the verdict is … themselves.
Data of the Week:
I was actually afraid when I Googled “Leadership Rankings”… I was expecting a list of corporate, male, caucasian, 40–60, Suit & Tie — not that this segment doesn’t have good leaders and haven’t done amazing things, just that is often how we seemed to have been forced to define ‘leadership’ in this narrow band.
I know this is changing and was gladly disappointed when I ran across the Fortune World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. They broke the mold so to speak, on how they rank leadership, which was exciting to say the least.
Picture of the Week:
So after all of this discussion on Leadership, how do we become better at it? While we still often look at ‘traditional leadership’, we are expanding our understanding and ‘implementation’ of leadership, as more of how our brain functions, and what we need at a deeper level. And the biggest way of becoming better, just keep asking ‘why’.
Feature City of The Month:
Chicago, the Windy City, was our feature city last month and vaulted from our #9 ranked city all the way to #3. So who will it be this month….drum roll.
Announced for the first time here, our September Feature Guild city of the Month is… Seattle, The Emerald City, Rain City, Jet City, Coffee Capital of the World, the beacon of the Pacific North West, and now the home of the Kraken.
We’ll be recruiting builders, change agents, experts, futurists leaders, and sensemakers all month from the north-west corner of America with a cresecendo happening the 4th Wednesday of the month September 22nd where we’ll invite these sparkling Seattleites in for a Guild Town Hall.
The call to actions now?:
Join our LI page. https://www.linkedin.com/company/grey-swan-guild/
Sample our mission. https://www.greyswanguild.org
Read our latest: https://greyswanguild.medium.com/
Become a member. https://bit.ly/greyswanmemberprofile
Become a global sensemaker. https://bit.ly/lofsenseform
Come to our next Atelier. https://bit.ly/gsgatelier6
About Us:
This week is #33 of a compendium of stories and headlines we’re tracking in the Grey Swan Guild’s Global League of Sensemakers’ Newsroom. Imagine a newsroom that went deeper, had little bias (and none unconscious), and didn’t have to get their points across as 40-second soundbytes or link bait headlines, That’s us.
Beyond our week that was, we host sense-making events every month. Check the Grey Swan Calendar ← here — for upcoming futurist topics and ways to engage with our 300+ members.
We are on summer hours but the next Atelier is coming soon — Sept 16 — ” On Earth and Beyond to Space. Our quest to understand, discover, and get ahead of our fragile and far frontiers both near are far, the mysteries that abound.” Join by clicking the link.
That’s the Wrap! Your thoughts?
Why not join us on Sunday, Sept 5th, 2021 at 8:00am (PST) | 11am (EST) | 4pm (BST) on Clubhouse led by Howard A Fields and Agustín Borrazás to engage with your favorite Grey Swan Guild Wrap Editors, including Sean Moffitt, Rob Tyrie, Ben Thurman, Louise Mowbray and Antonia Nicols. https://www.clubhouse.com/join/grey-swan-guild/QLrkGYpD/mW1D8a2n
Make Submissions to The Wrap any time on The Grey Swan Guild’s LinkedIn Page, with the hashtag #TheWrap. Be pithy, be wry, be relaxed and make some sense of the news with us. It’s a place we hang out during the week too. Join the conversation there and share your ideas, hopes, and worries with us. We are in this together for a reason.
