This week’s five reads all ask you to question something you think you already know, about AI, about age, and about what makes a workplace work.
1️⃣ New Podcast Episode: The full story behind Dean’s driverless car moment in Nashville.
If you caught Dean van Leeuwen’s post last week about getting stuck in a driverless car in Nashville, the new episode of the Elephants in the Boardroom Podcast picks up where the story left off. Five minutes into the ride, a road worker started waving him down near some fresh asphalt, and the car had no idea what to do with a hand signal. It sat there for ten minutes until a human specialist logged in remotely and got it moving again.
On this episode, Dean and Graeme Codrington use the moment to make a bigger point. AI is capable, right up until a situation turns messy. Then you need humans in the lead, not humans watching from the loop. Have a listen here…
2️⃣ Keith Coats sat in silence for four hours to teach a room how to lead.
Keith Coats has an unusual way of teaching adaptive leadership. He puts a chair in the room, sits down, and stops talking. No instructions. No explanation. Only a chair and a room full of people figuring out what to do next. The longest he has held it is four hours. See his recent post on LinkedIn here.
Keith runs a workshop around this idea, called Invitational Leadership. It starts from one belief. There is a best in everyone, waiting for the right environment to bring it out.
3️⃣ More than half of workers would switch jobs for a pet-friendly office.
Jude Foulston works from home with a dog and a cat by her side most days. After recording a recent Future Smart Parent episode with Laurelle Fry, a teacher who brings her dog to school, she started thinking about how workplaces handle pets. A recent Mars report surveyed more than 16,000 European workers. More than half would consider switching jobs for a pet-friendly employer.
Companies like Salesforce, Google and Ben and Jerry’s already allow it. Jude is not suggesting fifty dogs turn up on Monday morning. She is suggesting a small experiment worth trying. Read her full LinkedIn article here…
4️⃣ A woman smoked 170,000 cigarettes and lived to 102.
Winnie Langley started smoking at seven to calm her nerves during the First World War. She kept going for the rest of her life, roughly 170,000 cigarettes in total, and lived to 102. Dean van Leeuwen uses her story to open a much bigger conversation. In 1920, around 5,000 people on Earth were 100 or older. Today it is more than 700,000. Dean calls it one of the Grey Elephant Forces of Progress, and most strategies are not ready for it. Read his full post on LinkedIn.
5️⃣ Executives believe AI could more than double their company’s value. Most are using it to cut costs instead.
Ask a room of senior executives what AI does for their business, and most answers land in the same place. Lower costs, smaller headcount, faster processes. A Harvard Business Review article asked a group of wealth management executives a different question. Picture two similar firms in three years: one has used AI well, and one has not.
How much more valuable is the first one? Their average answer was 135% more, yet almost none of them are investing in AI for growth. Cost-cutting has a ceiling. Growth does not. A firm growing at 7% a year is worth more than double one growing at 3%. The authors turned this into six questions every executive should ask about their AI strategy. Read the full article here…
If something here stood out to you, we would love to hear about it. This is the kind of work we do every day, helping leaders think through exactly these shifts. Contact us and let’s start a conversation.