What happens when the world’s most inspiring corporate leaders and leading management thinkers stop being polite and start getting real?
No, it’s not the opening to the nerdiest The Real World season ever recorded. It’s what happened last week at the Thinkers50 London Summit.
The conversations on stage and throughout the 600-year-old Guildhall were honest, raw, and fascinating. The deep dives into purpose, technology, and talent that occurred the following day were challenging and inspiring.
Here are my five most memorable ideas from London.
Dilemmas reveal your values
Erin Meyer, author of “The Culture Map” and INSEAD professor
Most corporate values are useless because they’re absolute positives, terms like “integrity” that have no good alternatives, only opposites (Who would say they have a value of deceit?). If you want values that truly guide people’s behavior, identify the common dilemmas they face and set up a choice between two options.
For example, if you’re told that there may be layoffs in four months but that nothing has been decided, do you tell your team? Yes, that’s the value of Transparency. No, that’s Team Stability.
Manage problems. Lead from opportunities.
Jesper Brodin, former CEO/President of Ingka Group, IKEA
There’s a difference between managing (and managers) and leading (and leaders). Managing focuses on the how, and managers derive their authority from titles and their place in the org chart. Leading focuses on the what and why, with leaders using influence, trust, and shared values to inspire commitment.
Organizations need both. Problems occur when we conflate the terms (and roles) and end up doing only one or the other. Leading, as Jesper explained, requires dreaming and optimism. How many people make time for that?
“Meat Proxy”
Rahaf Harfoush, NYT best-selling author of “Hustle & Float” and executive director of the Red Thread Institute
Friction, struggle, discomfort. These are an essential part of the human experience because they require critical thinking, creativity, and the development of values. AI tools are optimized to eliminate these things and deliver non-controversial, frictionless answers quickly.
When a human accepts AI output without checking it, passing along AI slop, they are a Meat Proxy.
Most average leaders had lots of great bosses
Liz Wiseman, author of “Multipliers” and lecturer at Stanford University
As a follow-up to her book “Multipliers”, Liz Wiseman explored how people grew to become Multipliers, the leaders who use their intelligence to amplify, leverage, and maximize the capabilities of the people around them.
She found that poor leaders had lots of bad bosses, great leaders had a mix of great and bad bosses, and average leaders experienced mostly great bosses. To become great leaders, people needed to experience the contrast between great and awful so they could choose how (and how not) to lead.
It’s OK to not have a purpose
Gianpiero Petriglieri, professor at INSEAD
What’s your purpose? I hate this question because I feel like I should have some brilliant, life-changing answer that causes the clouds to part, a ray of light to shine down, and a choir of angels to sing through the heavens. But usually my answer is, “To get to tomorrow?”
Which is why I loved Gianpiero’s answer that often you only see your purpose when you look back, and that the most important “thing in life is to just do the work, have intent, and be in the making. Don’t find your way, make your way, then commit. Choose how to make. Choose how to live. And always make sure it is your choice.”
FAQs
How do you write company values that actually guide behavior?
Name the dilemma, not the virtue. Erin Meyer, author of “The Culture Map” and an INSEAD professor, says most corporate values are useless because they are absolute positives like integrity, which have no good alternative, only opposites. Useful values set up a choice between two good options, such as Transparency or Team Stability when layoffs might be coming.
What's the difference between managing and leading?
Managing focuses on how work gets done, with authority that comes from titles and the org chart. Leading focuses on what and why, using influence, trust, and shared values to inspire commitment. Jesper Brodin, former CEO of Ingka Group, IKEA, says organizations need both, and problems start when leaders do only one.