First Principles Based Leadership Requires First Order Learning

Premise I read this post by John Hunter, which was originally published in 2014 but is still very relevant. In this blog, he shares one key insight from the work of Deming – managing (or leading) can’t be taught (prescriptive) and needs to be learnt (experiential). First Order Learning Vs Second Order Learning One needs to learn to lead by leading and to manage by managing. We can learn from our own experience (first order learning) or from the experience of those who have gone before us (second order learning). When we learn from our own experience, we start to […]

Leading Successfully in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Premise: I was talking to a friend, who is also the President of a mid-sized business earlier today and we were discussing his role as a leader of the organisation. He was recently promoted to this new role and was sharing some of his challenges with me. One of the things that he shared was the speed at which everything is changing and how difficult it has become for him to not only keep track of all of these changes but also to respond to them intelligently and in a way that drives the business outcome that he is trying […]

Seeing the Unseen!

Earlier today, I read a post by Martha Bird (@anthro_tweeter). She is a business anthropologist at ADP focused on understanding the cultural contexts of work and workplaces. In the post, she talks about the importance of “Leading with Intention and Attention”. You can read the entire post here on the MIT Sloan Management Review site. Personally, I believe that one of the key skills that differentiate good leaders from great is their abilities to spot things that are not spoken or shown. Over time, they have developed the uncanny ability to know when there is more to a presentation or […]