Margaret Heffernan: Human capacity for an uncharted future

Margaret Heffernan 00:31

“Once upon a time”, we all tell stories that way don't we? It's all how all the best stories start. Once upon a time, we told stories about a way of life and the way of work that was beautifully managed. Companies would have strategies based on really gritty data and intricate plans and those enable our leaders to identify all the resources that they needed, and all the people that they needed with very precise job descriptions and skill sets and strengths and weaknesses. And then people would know exactly what to do on each day and exactly what way day after day to hit their KPIs and metrics to show that they were doing all the right stuff in the right way, with the right people at the right time. And we even built algorithms and chat dialogues to help people stay on tracks.

People were really regarded as essential instruments, economic units of production that were scrutinised and incentivised or follow instructions, and rewarded Of course, when they did so flawlessly. And the big idea was that we could manage business this way we could manage society this way we could manage markets this way, and everything would be impeccably under control. Managed scientifically.

We grew addicted to prediction. didn't quite work out though, did it? Because weird stuff just kept happening. 911 came out of apparently nowhere a banking crisis came out of apparently, nowhere. Brexit. Wow. Lots of people didn't quite see that coming. And Me Too, who knew that harrassment was so prolific and so common, not just at work. Not just at university, but in schools. And then we got hit by a pandemic, which most people didn't see coming. And black lives it turned out, really did matter. Who knew how prolific discrimination was. And meanwhile, an environmental crisis known about for decades. And suddenly companies were blindsided when their bottled water turned from a staple into a kind of pariah product, and plastic bags were suddenly although produced at great expense in vast numbers suddenly rejected along with their friends, the plastic straws, all came to be seen as source of unacceptable sources of income and unacceptable sources of environmental degradation.

Our scientific model of a scientifically managed world has not been behaving and doing what it was predicted to do. And I'd argue that it will continue to let us down experts in forecasting now argue that if you are extremely rigorous in your forecasting, if you routinely consult a very, very broad array of sources, and you meticulously refine and adjust your forecast, in light of new information on a daily basis, and every time a forecast comes, do you check how correct you were, where you were, where you call, where you went wrong? And what you need to change in your own forecasting methodology.

If you do all of that, and probably the furthest out you can see with a reasonable degree of practical accuracy is 400 days. If like the rest of us, you aren't quite that rigorous. The window for accurate forecasting is 150 days. You can kiss goodbye to your three year plans, your gritty data analysis and your perfect Gantt charts that outline what everybody is going to be doing on every day. In every way. What's happened is that we move from a wall that was generally linear, and although it was very complicated, a huge amount of it was repeatable, and therefore it could be pretty accurately forecast.

We've moved from that very linear assembly line type world where we can see really all the forces that impact each other to a hugely complex world, which is nonlinear where there are patterns but they don't repeat themselves predictably. Where efficiency is a catastrophe because it erodes all of our margins for error and surprise, and what expertise cannot always keep up because the scenarios keep changing. And in that environment, the one which we now have visceral sometimes tragic acquaintance with forecasting, and isn't gritty planning will keep letting us down. In fact, it will get in the way of our alertness and sensitivity to what's happening in the world around it. So what that means is that most of our management tools and the beliefs that underlie them are no longer reliable. We need a different model of leadership and a very different model of work. What that what is that going to require? I think it requires a workforce it's really FY Breil.

In its sensitivity, sensitivity to change to new threats, but also to new possibilities. Groups of people who are highly alert, deeply observant. who constantly keep scanning the horizon and thinking what's happening. What does it mean? Am I seeing patterns? What might they mean? People who are capable of embodying the collective intelligence, which is the basis of all organisational life, the notion that collectively we can see more and solve more and invent more together than we can separately. That's how we make better decisions and we solve harder problems than individuals working alone. And of course, what we know about collective intelligence is that it isn't based fundamentally on individual IQ.

It's based fundamentally on the bonds and relationships and communication between people. A very different model of what outstanding performance requires and looks like. This means that we need leaders who are really great conveners. They're capable of convening broadly diverse groups of people who are really significantly different from each other, not just because they look different, but because they bring a really different array of skills, yes, but also lived experience and the insight and imagination that that different lived experience. Really brings. Leaders who know what questions to ask, who excel at listening, who aren't afraid of ambiguity and uncertainty, and don't seek to eliminate it by pretending that it isn't there.

And leaders who in the midst of all this diversity, understand the fundamental constructive role of conflict, who aren't afraid of initiating arguments, debates, discussion exploration, which may at times feel horribly confusing, but which is the only way truly to come up with something innovative, reflective of the society from which it emerges and with some justified claim to legitimacy, leaders who aren't afraid in the moment of adapting and responding to the world that emerges, and will keep surprising them and keep surprising us. I think it means we need to be deeply weary of efficiency, because the more efficiently we run our organisations, the more we're dependent on predictions, which may quite catastrophically let us down.

Much of the sorrow and tragedy that we've seen during the pandemic derives from the efficiency with which many of our public services were run before the pandemic broke out. And I think it means instead of efficiency, which has been the kind of lodestar of all management for the last at least 100, maybe 200 years, we have to embrace to different concepts. We have to start thinking deeply about preparedness, being willing to invest in people and projects and infrastructure, just in case not just in time, investing with high degrees of ambiguity, because not to do so is reckless, and it's negligent in an age of uncertainty.

Planning doesn't go away, but it has to be underpinned by preparedness, where there's likelihood and impact. And I think it also means that we have to start taking really seriously the fundamental need for creativity. In people in the way that people work, and the way that we all work with each other. I'll never forget talking to a young woman who had finally found the job that she really loved. And she said to me, you know, it's incredible. This is the first place I've ever been work when people said I was creative. They didn't mean I was weird and didn't fit in the weird and doesn't fit in experience is a very shared common experience is about people with imagination.

Creativity that companies have often said they wanted, but then didn't quite know how to use as we keep discovering people are very, very much more than their data. They're capable of exceptional courage, ingenuity, solidarity and imagination, under pressure in remarkable circumstances. We wouldn't have vaccines any other way and no, this isn't because we had one or two superstars. The vaccines on which our lives now depend, derived from 1000s of people working together over decades, building the scientific infrastructure from which these breakthroughs come.

People prized for their independence. of thought, their imagination, their inventiveness, their capacity to ask extremely difficult Trouble, trouble sometimes troubling questions, and not let go just because the answer didn't come quickly. In an age of uncertainty and an age of crises, we will never know everything that we need. Only that we have to be prepared by having on hand, eager enlisted, committed individuals ready to bring all their ingenuity and empathy and compassion and inventiveness and curiosity and resourcefulness to the completely unexpected.

All those skills that typically do not turn up on CVS in resumes, we need those now. Not just for a moment, we need them long term, and we need to take them seriously. Not try to boil them down to a formula and recipes. Here are five steps to mastering creativity. But to recognise that the fact that creativity won't be categorised that it won't be nailed down is actually what gives it its force. Its adaptability and its resilience. We don't know the future. And as we head into economic uncertainty, a crisis of inequality, and as we're continually reminded, we're already in a climate crisis. The one thing we do now, we know we need to do now is we need human imagination. We need to cultivate it, not squash it, cherish it, not sneer at it and develop it in the organisational people and cultures and places and language that support it.

The curious thing to me is of course, a look around and you find this human creativity everywhere. I'm constantly asked by organisations you know, what can I do to make myself my organisation more creative? To which the answer is or what have you done to squash it? Try just topping those things. The creativity companies will need going into a deeply uncertain and ambiguous future. The capacity to respond brilliantly in a moment of unexpectedness isn't in a standard size box, looking like all the others result with a recipe on the back but it is out there and it is ready. And it is willing to confront the unknown. Thank you.

 

Tim Campbell MBE 15:45

Once again, Margaret, thank you so very much for the insight that you bring to such complex conversations about creativity and preparedness of organisation. I suppose the question that I have for you and I've got time for one question is in your book Uncharted you talk about the only true voyage we need to take not to a different place but have different eyes. Yes. So for me, it's about how do we get organisations to be prepared to have different eyes to look in in different ways to be really open to new different directions, as opposed to as you also talk about that hyper hyperbolic narrative of the way that things used to be.

 

Margaret Heffernan 16:24

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think we have to start being pretty humble. About how and where scientific management on his left hands down. I think we have to really kick the addiction to prediction. I mean, it is astounding how it is everywhere. The minute you come up with something somebody says, How do I measure it? How can you prove to me ahead of doing something that's never been done? Before? That it will work? Right.

You have companies packed full of leaders saying we want more innovation and creativity but they want everything proved before they try it, which means it's been done before, which means that it isn't innovation. But I also think that this kind of very new world, I think requires two things. It really means that hiring executives have to read CVS differently.

It means they really have got to think about am I seeing love of learning here am I seeing curiosity here am I seeing really great capacity at change here? notices, you know a reliable performer who I know when I buy this box exactly what's inside, but is there that kind of enlightened, open responsive energy? And I was talking to the CEO of Mozilla, the other day, and she said, you know, we we realised we've been looking at CVS for the wrong stuff. We need to look for what's kind of implicit in it instead of what's explicit in it. And I think also, you know, we really fundamentally have got to learn how to do conflict.

Well, in organisations, you talk to any creative people, especially creative teams, and what they'll tell you is, all I remember is we were screaming at each other all the time. We're all fighting right now. It should be this or it should be that. This is the sort of heat from which really great thinking comes and the kind of packaged, polite not that I have anything against politeness, but kind of buttoned up.

Let me just do what I'm told because that's how I get brownie points culture, I think is what probably the only thing that might stop us from solving the really critical challenges in front of us.

 

Tim Campbell MBE 18:40

Margaret, thank you so very much. I wish I had we had more time to explore deeper, but that just means that people will have to go either follow you on social media on LinkedIn, or go and buy your book where they can give you insight firsthand. Margaret, I hope you'll join us next year if we send you an invite.

 

Margaret Heffernan 18:56

Of course anytime I love the work you do, Tim and everybody, everybody to me is fantastic.

 

Tim Campbell MBE 19:01

And just to give you a quote from our chat, Sharon Green says if I had a mic, I'd have dropped here as always a powerful keynote from Margaret so there you go. You've been elevated to Obama status. And on that note, we just want to say thank you very much enjoy the rest of your day.