On January 19, 2018, we sat down with 10 members of the London U.K. business community for another session in our series of discussions. The topic: disruptions. Our participants represented a wide variety of industries, including consulting, banking, high-tech, transportation, and education. We had three questions for them: In terms of disruptions, what are you seeing? What are you doing about it? What should Ivey do to prepare future leaders for disruption?
Mobility matters
Our London discussion started on an elevated plane and pretty much stayed there. When we invoked the word disruption, the first topic that came to people’s minds was migration. This is certainly an issue in many countries around the world, but of special concern in London in the wake of the Brexit debate and vote, which according to many observers hinged in part on the Syrian and African refugee crises that have affected much of Europe. Our participants said migration is increasingly inseparable from technology in two ways:
- Technology helps saturate the world with images, as one participant put it: “Of First Worlders in a rich utopia, on a constant holiday.” Another participant described Facebook as, “A public curation of lies;” and,
- Technology makes the difficult logistics of migration easier: Go here, say this, do that.
Our participants were not sanguine about anyone’s ability to stem the flow of migrants. People will flee conflict. They will go where there’s clean water. They will go where they perceive opportunity.
There are other trends fueling migration, as well. There are far more discounted airline seats. And once again, as in previous discussions in this series, we heard about the tendency of young people today to accumulate fewer static assets than their parents and grandparents did.
“They can drop everything and just go,” said one participant.
In fact, mobility is a defining characteristic of our age. People are mobile, ideas are mobile, and capital is relatively mobile. This kind of disruption helps some industries, such as consulting, but creates uncertainty and ambiguity for most multinational organizations. It also leaves behind individuals, communities, and regions that aren’t mobile, creating a backlash that has been played out in recent elections in several Western democracies.
Keeping pace with artificial intelligence
Our discussion then moved on to a sustained look at artificial intelligence (AI), and the kinds of disruptions it has already sparked and is likely to spark in the future. China, where many Western companies are already looking for innovative ideas, was a central focus. The centrally controlled structure of the Chinese economy means that China is able to use AI in systematic and integrated ways. A perhaps exaggerated example: If you don’t pay your parking tickets in Beijing, your credit score will be affected, and you will look bad on dating services. (Pay your parking tickets!)
Several participants cited industries in which AI has already displaced lower-level workers, including financial services and legal services, and suggested AI will continue to make inroads into traditionally safe white-collar job categories, such as the medical profession. Again, people will be left behind, and this may well lead to social strife. One participant recommended a TED talk entitled Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming.
Looking to the future, participants argued managers will need broader and deeper skill sets and that business schools will have to stretch to meet those needs. They will need stronger analytical skills and better grounding in AI just to keep up with fast-changing contexts. They will need a broader sense of context to be able to identify and serve a wider range of stakeholders.
“There’s going to be a huge premium put on wisdom,” one participant said. Another said it’s going to take wise leaders to make the kinds of long-term investments that good stewardship increasingly demands.
Context is critical
A complementary and somewhat countervailing perspective also emerged. It’s about creating the right context to put people into, said one participant. In a better context, Bernie Madoff might not have been Bernie Madoff. You have to employ and promote people of character and integrity. You have to create the culture at the gateway, when you’re bringing people in. And inevitably, said another, more and more decisions will have to be make in the lower ranks of the organization. One person put it this way: The day of the Superman CEO is over.
Several participants made a pitch and even a plea for business schools to provide a better sense of context. Leaders have to be able to place real (or perceived) disruptions in context to deal effectively with them. They need to draw on precedent to be able to take effective action, or, where appropriate, to refrain from taking action.
“The six most expensive words are ‘this time it will be different,’” said one participant.
Their suggestions included:
- Teach them history, as one participant said: “Otherwise, you’ll find them down at the garden centre, looking for a tulip named ‘bitcoin.’”
- Teach them civics;
- Teach them to reflect on their experience, and the experience of others;
- Expose them to engineering, law, medicine, and psychology; and,
- Teach them empathy and humility.
This is an ambitious agenda. And just to complicate things, one participant made another pointed suggestion: “It’s bizarre that you’re called a business school. You should change your name to large organization school,” he said.
We infer he meant the kinds of challenges business leaders will face, and the kinds of solutions schools like Ivey will devise will apply in a broad range of organizational contexts.
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