LIFT with Louise Mowbray

Louise Mowbray
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Welcome to LIFT: Lead Into the Future, Today. Here you'll find powerful insights and very human stories from purpose-driven leaders and entrepreneurs who are contributing something noteworthy to shaping our world of work. louisemowbray.substack.com

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  1. 2024/12/31

    Ruminating With Rumi

    Whenever I find myself ruminating about what’s happened, where we are, and what’s in store for us, the 13th-century poet Rumi seems to arrive, filtering into my awareness. I thought I’d share ten pops of wisdom worth contemplating as we head into the new year. Feel free to download these now, or come back for inspiration when you need it (link below). All that’s left for me to do is thank you for your wonderful connection, insight, and support this year - and to wish you the best year yet in 2025! Until next time, take good care of yourself. Best, Louise Useful Links * Masterclasses * Keynotes * Executive Coaching | Team Coaching * Get Relevant: Future-Focused Leadership This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit louisemowbray.substack.com

    1 分钟

  2. 2024/12/23

    Leading an AI-Infused 2025

    If you’ve been thinking about AI and how it will impact your job and your future - and let’s face it, who hasn’t - you may find yourself turning to an AI personal companion for advice and support in 2025. I’ve been tracking the rise of AI learning, coaching, mentoring and emotional and mental support apps over the last couple of years with great interest. Most are still clunky and/or siloed, and best used superficially - with a pinch of salt! It was only a matter of time before we saw the release of an AI that gives us a sense of being better understood. Early in December, Microsoft released a preview of their voice-enabled Copilot Vision to a limited number of Pro subscribers in the US via Copilot Labs. In a recent interview, Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, described Vision as feeling like “another digital species” with “a new plane of connection” that acts “like a second brain” and a “thought partner and companion”. There’s some background here. Suleyman co-founded DeepMind (acquired by Google in 2014) before co-founding Inflection AI in 2022, which developed Pi.ai (proclaimed the first ‘emotionally intelligent’ AI), before joining Microsoft in March this year. We can think of this development as the next step in multimodal AI becoming ‘universal’, deepening its omnipresence. Rather than visiting various platforms or domains to use AI for different purposes, it will act as a constant companion on all of your devices, hearing what you hear, seeing what you see, and remembering what you’ve worked on. An easy-to-talk-to assistant (with a human-like voice), helping you analyse complex data in seconds, coaching you through a difficult learning curve or role-playing an upcoming tricky negotiation. A constant resource that ‘understands’ you, acting as a friend, thought partner, sounding board or devil’s advocate, giving you advice and feedback on the fly. An AI companion that picks up on how you feel by the tone of your voice, providing you with emotional support when needed. Essentially, your personal filter on the world that is on your team and serves your interests in any given situation. Google’s Gemini 2.0 models are not far behind, signalling similar capabilities with the release of Project Astra next year. But there’s a tradeoff here. As enticing as all of this sounds, you’ll only get the full benefits if you’re prepared to invite an AI companion or assistant into your every waking moment. 💡You’ll find more AI-related links at the end of this article. This raises significant concerns - the obvious being privacy and security. Do you really want an AI to ‘know’ you this well, leaving you vulnerable to human or digital coercion, manipulation or yet-to-be-imagined hacks? And who or what will own or have access to (and use of) your data? If you work for a company and use their licence, you’ll likely have no choice but to reveal your ‘whole self’ at work! Playing this movie forward… Will you know if you’re dealing with the person you employed, your boss, your clients - or with their AI companions? And will the future of job interviews mean your AI companion is interviewed, with or without you? What about dating? And will we form deep and meaningful connections with our AI companions, becoming emotionally attached or dependent on them? More importantly, will we suffer from the illusion of being fully understood and rely on AI to ‘think’ critically about our lives and the world on our behalf? I’m all for AI picking up the slack in repetitive, time-consuming tasks and helping us to learn, grow, and find solutions to the big pressing issues of our times. As Jensen Huang of Nvidia said in a recent talk, "Stop thinking of AI as doing the work of 50% of the people. Start thinking of AI as doing 50% of the work for 100% of the people"However, for every upside in making our lives infinitely easier, there are downsides and a vast open landscape of unknowable human and societal consequences. While we ponder the pros and cons, we also need to be aware that our AI companions or assistants will be agentic, able to act autonomously to achieve goals and outcomes without needing our constant guidance. Sounds brilliant! What could go wrong? Be the Wayfinder: 2025 As 2024 draws to a close, I’ve been thinking more deeply about how we can better prepare ourselves for the coming year and beyond. The future of work and AI—and our place in it—need not be fuelled by uncertainty if we develop how rather than what (which will keep changing) we think about it. While we humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future with any accuracy, we can extrapolate from the past (data), and the present (trends and signals of change) to proactively navigate potential new realities. I’ve had the privilege of working with some incredible people and teams this year, and their present trends are beginning to tell a very different story about shaping the future they desire. Those who have embarked on developing their ‘future-focused’ thinking and capabilities report experiencing more adaptability, creativity and innovative behaviours, better team dynamics and coherence, less anxiety, stress and conflict, and most importantly, greater ease in macro and micro decision-making. The elixir. On the surface of things, these changes may appear to be subtle. However, like a fork in the road or a 1° shift in course, the gap always widens significantly over a short period of time. I’m thinking of leaders able to navigate this era of work with greater ease as wayfinders, pathfinders and in some cases, trailblazers. People who can steer their organisations through unchartered territories with courage, using new ways of doing things. It makes me think of Tom Hardy’s character in ‘Inception’ when he says: “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling!” And the good news? This chapter is not yet written—we can all develop the very human attributes, competencies and skills to get better at this. "The future interests me - I'm going to spend the rest of my life there." Mark Twain As we contemplate what we want 2025 to be, I thought I’d share six questions from Professor Sohail Inayatullah (UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies) to help you open up your thinking—and your conversations—about the future. You can repurpose these to use in any context to uncover your current perspective on the future, and what you need to do to be in action of the future you desire. I also suggest doing this with your team. Keep it light, there is no right or wrong. Rather, it’s a great way of surfacing how we individually and collectively think about the future. Alvin Toffler said it best when he proclaimed: "In dealing with the future, it is far more important to be imaginative than to be right." * Will: What do you think (predict) the future will be like? * Fear: Which future are you afraid of? * Hidden Assumptions: What are the hidden assumptions of your predicted future? * Alternative Futures: What are some alternatives to your feared or predicted futures? * Preferred Future: What is your preferred or desired future? * Next Steps: How might you get there? If you’re interested in developing your team or organisation’s ability to navigate the future, bookings for the Future-Focused Leadership Masterclass and Keynote are now open for 2025. ✨ Until next time, wishing you and yours a wonderful festive season. Best, Louise Useful Links * Masterclasses * Keynotes * Executive Coaching | Team Coaching More Depth If you’re reading Relevant: Future-Focused Leadership, you’ll find more depth on the topics I’ve mentioned: * AI: Part III, Chapter 13: Living in an AI-Infused World (in a section titled: Leading an AI-Infused Future) * Thinking and Skills: Part I, Chapter 1: Being Future Fit (in a section titled: Future-Fit Attributes) * Futures: Part IV, Chapter 20: Futures and Foresight * Ethics and AI: Part II, Chapter 9: Ethics and Decision-Making (in a section titled: Ethics and AI) * Wayfinding: Part IV, Chapter 19: Complexity, Sensemaking and Wayfinding (in a section titled: Wayfinding) AI Related Links * Regulating AI: Mustafa Suleyman on Copilot Vision, AI Companions, Infinite Memory, AI Agents, and more * Rowan Cheung: Mustafa Suleyman on Copilot Vision, AI Companions, Infinite Memory, AI Agents, and more * Nvidia: What is Agentic AI? * Rowan Cheung: Demis Hassabis on Gemini 2.0, Project Astra, Agents, Gaming with Elon, and more * Google DeepMind: Project Astra | Exploring the future capabilities of a universal AI assistant If you’re interested in digging into big tech/bio/energy themes and signals, Amy Webb’s “Annual Letter: 2025 Macro Themes + 2024 Signals Review” is well worth the read. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit louisemowbray.substack.com

    2 分钟

  3. 2021/08/24

    We're Caught In a Trap

    Lead Into the Future Today (LIFT) is brought to you by Louise Mowbray of Mowbray by Design, the creative Conscious Leadership Consultancy. If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, you can do so here: This week I thought I would expand on a perilous trap we’re all guilty of falling into, which is all about shutting down our natural curiosity when we think we know something. From a leadership perspective, we’re not talking about honing a skill, technical knowledge or expertise. This type of knowledge is updated regularly in our fields and staying on top of new developments is relatively easy. What I’m referring to is how we think, our mental models, mindsets and lenses on the world. If we are to lead effectively today, with an understanding of how our world of work is evolving, how we think is either the stumbling block or the elixir. There are some key leadership traits and thinking styles worth developing now. You’ve no doubt heard a lot about them and if you’ve got them, wonderful - in the words of Curtis Mayfield, Keep On Keeping On. And if you know you haven’t quite got there yet, start now. There is no time like now. * Agile Thinking and Emotional Agility * Futures Thinking, Systems Thinking and Sensemaking * Creativity and Innovative Thinking & Action * Emotional Intelligence, Self-Awareness & Empathy * Conscious Communications “Don’t make up your mind. “Knowing” is the end of learning.” Naval Ravikant I thought I’d share thirty, short, rather surprising minutes of my life with you, which may resonate and bring some of these leadership ‘thinking and being’ styles to life. Last week I happened to be on LinkedIn when a notification popped up telling me about a Live session that was being held by one of my contacts. I had the time, am interested in the topic and so joined the session. Four white men, each an expert in their field talking about the state of play in our world of work. The first thing that struck me was the lack of diversity on the panel. A few years ago, this might have been a more subtle, subconscious observation. However, in today’s world, we’re all much more aware when a panel, board or leadership team isn’t diverse and I noticed it right away. At one point, one of the speakers - an older, well-known businessman, made a few comments about recent events being black swans. I wrote in the chat saying that we should be cautious about labelling events as ‘black swans’ just because they seemed to be improbable at the time. When the host read my comment to the panel, the older chap sniped “thanks for telling me off, mother”. I was floored. I think we all were by the looks on people’s faces. His original comments had displayed his lack of futures thinking, sensemaking and curiosity about what’s going on in the world and the latter displayed his unconscious bias and lack of emotional intelligence, self-awareness and a whole lot more. One of the other panellists immediately stepped in and the host then revealed that we are both members of a global action-based think tank, exploring ‘grey swans’, connecting the dots and attempting to make sense of the world. He went quiet and eventually, with no apology, muttered something along the lines of needing to explore grey swans. Why? Because his fellow male panellists said something that made him re-think his stance. A clear case of old-school thinking meets unconscious bias, all in one wondrous package. It made me wonder about the culture of his organisation and how difficult it must be to work in that type of environment. I also felt a deep sense of compassion. On the surface of things, until this point, he had been saying all the right stuff, however, he clearly got stuck somewhere in his emotional development and leadership thinking and the world has moved on. And whilst this may seem to be an extreme case of outdated thinking, if you’re a woman reading this you will, no doubt, have countless stories of your own to tell. And if you’re a man reading this, you will know of colleagues, past and present, who are fast becoming irrelevant through their inability to adapt and change. The knock-on effects of outdated thinking are vast. How are we to attract and retain the most diverse talent, foster cultures that drive agile thinking, creativity and innovation, navigate uncertain futures and be able to breathe and avoid burn-out amid relentless change? The future is definitely faster than we think and it takes no prisoners. We can all be forgiven for believing that understanding something we hear about all the time equates to 'getting' it. And yes, the world is noisy - we’re inundated with advice and training on who we need to be and what we need to do, to thrive. However, there is only one way of really knowing if all of the training and advice have had an impact: When the chips are down and you're under pressure, your buttons are pushed or you’re really stressed, ask yourself: "how did I behave"? This is how we know if we’ve ‘got’ it. When what we know aligns with who we are, growth and progress are effortless and in the right direction. Please feel free to comment and share your insight with us and if you know of someone who would also enjoy this edition of LIFT, why not share it? Until next time, take good care of yourself. Best, Louise Learn More Future-Focused Leadership Coaching Leadership Team Development Diversity, Equity & Inclusion POPIA To comply with the new South African Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), we would like to make sure that you wish to continue receiving our content.If you are happy to continue receiving information from Mowbray by Design, you don’t need to do anything. If you wish to unsubscribe from our mailing list, please click on the link at the bottom of this message. If you’re undecided, you can always unsubscribe at a later date. Mowbray by Design is also compliant with the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit louisemowbray.substack.com

    6 分钟

  4. 2021/06/21

    "Complexity Advisor"

    Lead Into the Future Today (LIFT) is brought to you by Louise Mowbray of Mowbray by Design, the creative Conscious Leadership Consultancy. If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, you can do so here: What on earth is a Complexity Advisor? I recently came across one of the most intriguing job titles I’ve seen in a while: Complexity Advisor. I have to confess, my first reaction wasn’t terribly enthusiastic - it was more along the lines of “not another crazy job title”. However, it stayed with me and the more I explored, the more I realised how urgently we need more people who can actually do this. We’re all innovating and working with spaghetti junctions of complexity. What could be better than someone to help us to make sense of it all? A wonderful example of this is Steven Hawking’s role as a member of a team of scientists on a quest to capture the first image of a black hole in the Netflix documentary Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know (well worth watching). On face value, Hawking’s questions to the team appeared to be ones of clarification, and yet, more often than not, he provoked them to see things from a different perspective, which led to a different outcome. Watching this confirmed the awareness that we all know people like this. Mavericks and visionaries who have the ability to fill the role of Complexity Advisor (or any other crazy job title). Complexity is not the enemy. It’s our status quo. With every advancement in tech and science, we create more complexity. The trick is to upgrade our mental models so that we can live with ambiguity and find an elegant simplicity in the midst of it all. Most of the execs and teams I work with are brilliant at what they do. Their gap is increasingly one of mental models; being able to step back, get the big picture, adapt to a changing context, gain clarity and move on. None of this is new. It’s always been tough to have perspective when we’re in the middle of it all. What is different is the intensity and pace of change. What we’re talking about here is emotional agility and agile thinking - two vital mental models well worth developing. If I look back over the last few years - with the last twelve months being the accelerator, even my role has altered significantly. Increasingly, I’m the thought-partner, sounding board and sense maker working alongside leaders and teams to help them to cut through the noise and find better, smarter ways forward. The aim is always to simplify without resorting to reductionist thinking, which can be deeply problematic in itself. “Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.” Winston Churchill Hire Someone Like This Whilst you may not love the job title, there are nuggets in all of this. If you consider the most diverse companies are now more likely than ever to outperform less diverse peers on profitability (McKinsey), it’s pure gold. Why? Because we need the rich diversity of lived experiences, mental models, perspectives and skills to challenge the status quo, innovate and thrive. Over the last decade, we’ve become increasingly obsessed with finding people who are a good fit in our organisations. Don’t do that. Rather, seek out the misfits. Find the people who you would never normally hire. Unearth the people in your organisation who are deeply frustrated by the old-school constraints imposed on them. People with ‘blindingly obvious originality’ who have a different lens on the world. Are you a maverick, visionary thinker? You might enjoy Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different by Sunny Bonnell and Ashleigh Hansberger, Founders of Motto, the award-winning brand consultants. Prioritise Innovation Last, but not least, prioritise innovation! The 50 most innovative companies of 2020 (pre-pandemic) outperformed the MSCI Index by a staggering 17 percentage points over the past year. If we exclude the tech giants (Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Netflix), top innovators’ outperformance was still 13 percentage points. “The number of companies reporting that innovation is among their organisations’ top three priorities is up 10 percentage points in 2021 to 75%… but only about half of companies are investing behind their aspirations.” BCG - Most Innovative Companies If innovation is top of mind, BCG’s report is definitely worth a read. You might also enjoy The CEO Innovation Agenda (part two of the same report), which digs into the need for C-Suite to own the innovation cycle. From a behavioural perspective, which is the foundation of all of this, have a look at our team engagement on Agile Thinking & Innovation - Innovation: Mindset & Toolset. It’s a brilliant programme originally designed for the Kuwaiti Foundation for the Advancement of Science (KFAS), which we’ve re-designed for virtual. Send me a mail if you’d like to explore this for your leadership team. Please feel free to comment and share your insight with us and if you know of someone who would also enjoy this edition of LIFT, why not share it? Until next time, take good care of yourself. Best, Louise This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit louisemowbray.substack.com

    7 分钟

  5. 2021/04/25

    Leaders, The Future Is Faster Than You Think

    Lead Into the Future Today (LIFT) is brought to you by Louise Mowbray of Mowbray by Design, the creative Conscious Leadership Consultancy. If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, you can do so here: The soul of great leadership has always been a little mystical. Why? Because the only way to define or measure outstanding leadership is to discover why people follow one another and to measure some sort of return on this. And the return could be in any form - political power, social impact or making a profit to name a few. So how can we extract all that we know, become better leaders and produce a better return on our efforts? The leadership training and development industry arose out of this age-old quest. In 2020, the global market size was valued at $357.7B, which was down on 2019 ($370.3B) due to the global pandemic (TrainingIndustry.com). That’s a lot of money, especially when you consider that most leadership development programmes fall horribly short of their desired outcomes. You can dig into the ‘why’ of this in McKinsey’s 2020 report: Maximizing behavioural change in leadership development programs. So let’s get into this topic… I believe that ethics will be our greatest leadership challenge yet… Who we need to be as leaders, today and into the future is not who we needed to be three or even five years ago. Because the greatest challenge we’re all facing as we begin to imagine a post-pandemic world is balancing the two most critical ingredients of any business endeavour, that of humanity and technology. Let’s take a broad view of this for a moment. We know that technologies including facial recognition, iris and fingerprint scanning are already in full bloom, as is the debate on how we should use them. We also have tech embedded in our clothing and our phones, screens and cars and Apple have just launched their AirTag with an anti-stalking feature. And we know that Siri, Alexa, Google and all of our social platforms know way too much about us. Take the next step, which is closer than you might think and imagine a world where we’re now embedding nanotech in our physical bodies. It’s not a great stretch, embedded and attached medical devices have kept us alive and improved the quality of our lives for some time. The big shift here is the boundaries between our bodies and the devices that we will wear and/or embed - and the networks that these devices will interact with will become increasingly integrated. If we think this through, the one leadership quality we are going to need, above all else, is a well developed ethical lens. And yes, I am focusing on us as human beings rather than the changing face of our world of work because they are wholly interconnected. Leaders will have an increasingly tough mandate… We know that science and technology can or will be able to achieve most things going forward. I say most things as NASA has just produced oxygen on Mars (MIT News) making living on uninhabitable planets ever more possible. On a side note, if only we applied our minds and funds to our earthly challenges in the same way… However, I digress… As we have seen with developments in Genomics over recent years (How a Chinese Scientist Broke the Rules to Create the First Gene-Edited Babies | WSJ), the latest developments will always be ten steps ahead of regulation, ethical policies and law. Every technological or scientific breakthrough we celebrate will present us with an ethical quandary: should we do it? And who gets to decide? Leaders in the not too distant future will have to make increasingly difficult decisions on incremental advancements in tech and how we use it. Ultimately, science and technology will challenge our concept of what it means to be human, which we have been debating a’la Singularity (Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics | Stanford) for some time. There are three Big Q’s worth asking ourselves right now are: * What are my values, what do I value and where are the lines I won’t cross? * Where do I stand on various issues - is it really a stand or could someone/thing twist my arm for the glory of discovery or profit itself? * Am I prepared to stick my neck out and risk my current livelihood or standing to be on the right side of “should we do it”? And what is the right side? These are what I like to call research Q’s. In other words, they don’t need an immediate answer, rather we need to become deeply curious and keep these Q’s front of mind as we go about our day-to-day lives. The answers will become clear with each practical choice we are faced with over time. The foundation of developing an ethical lens on the world, as you lead yourself, your team and your business into the future, rests firmly on your beliefs, your mindset, how you think and ultimately, how well you know yourself. 🔎 If you’d like to know yourself better, I recommend taking the award-winning Lumina Spark Profile. Unlike most personality profiling tools, Lumina measures your three persona’s, revealing who you are under different circumstances. Learn more. Q: So back to my original question: how can we extract all that we know to become better leaders and produce a better return on our efforts? There are loads of leadership models out there and whatever you follow, whether it’s conscious leadership, servant leadership, integral, inclusive, transformational, empathetic or any other style, they are all right and good. They all have value and are designed to take us on a journey of self-awareness, self-knowledge and self-mastery. So whatever leadership modality floats your boat, whatever speaks to you right now, go with that. And know there will always be a “what else and what’s next?” All human development is continuous and our discoveries across neuroscience and epigenetics are doing a great job of informing the changing face of leadership methodologies. Future Ready Leaders Jacob Morgan, the best-selling author, keynote speaker and futurist’s latest book The Future Leader explores the makeup of future-ready leaders. Morgan interviewed over 140 of the world's top CEOs and surveyed nearly 14,000 people. The result is that whilst we still need the foundations of creating a vision and executing on strategy, those surveyed believe there are nine critical skills and mindsets for leading into the future: Skills: * Coach: Leaders need to appreciate employees as individuals and develop them. * Futurist: Leaders need to consider multiple scenarios and think through new possibilities (more on this below). * Technology Teenager: Just like teenagers, leaders need to be tech-savvy and digitally fluent. * Translator: Like translators, leaders need to be master listeners and communicators. * Yoda: Leaders need to be emotionally intelligent like Yoda and develop their empathy and self-awareness. Mindsets: * Global Citizen: The mentality of the Global Citizen means thinking globally and embracing diversity.  * Servant: The mindset of service means that you practice humility and you serve all of your stakeholders. * Chef: Leaders must masterfully balance the two most essential ingredients of any business: humanity and technology. * Explorer: Future leaders need to be like explorers of old and embrace the unknown. Let’s also talk about some major shifts in the realms of leadership development over the last few years, which are gaining momentum and are in my view, here to stay. The first is Leadership Team Coaching: we’re shifting from coaching individual leaders to coaching leadership teams. Why? Because we need the rich diversity of everyone’s thinking, skills and experience if we are to thrive. Our world of work is way too complex and changing way too fast to work in any other way. The second is a shift from being thought-leaders to being thought-partners. If we’ve learned anything over the last year, it’s that no one has all the answers. We need to collaborate with all of our stakeholders and find better ways forward. So rather than coming up with a new solution and presenting it as a fait accompli, we need to navigate the future together. The third is all about purpose and impact. A vision, mission and strategy used to be enough. Today and moving into the future, we need to keep refining our purpose and measuring our impact. Conscious capitalism, conscious business, B Corps, impact economics, the circular economy (and various flavours of these) serve to give us frameworks to work with. But who do we, as leaders, need to be to drive all of this? Do you have a purpose that is greater than profit? If not, you may find yourself falling behind. The fourth is we need to think like futurists. Have you noticed that the language of strategic foresight has crept its way into mainstream business-speak over the last year? It lived on the edges, gathering momentum and suddenly populated our everyday language in 2020. If you think about it, we are all futurists. To be human is to think about the future. If you’re planning your next holiday or dinner or what you’d like to study or your next business, you’re being a futurist. 💡 I took an accreditation course in Strategic Foresight, through The Futures School (Kedge) a few years ago and it was brilliant. It really helped to refine my thinking around all of this and so much more. If you haven’t got time for a degree, this, or something similar is a great way to get started. Conscious & Transformational Leadership Last, but certainly not least, last week I was honoured to be interviewed by the fabulous Izabela Lundberg, Founder, Legacy Leaders Institute. We discussed all things conscious and transformational leadership and everything in between. Essentially, two leadership geeks exploring who we need to be to lead into the emergent future. I trust you enjoy this conversation as much as we did. Connect with Izabela on LinkedIn So that’s me for the time being. If this has

  6. 2021/04/13

    Trends and How They Help You

    Lead Into the Future Today (LIFT) is brought to you by Louise Mowbray of Mowbray by Design, the creative Conscious Leadership Consultancy. If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, you can do so here: If you’ve been receiving my newsletters for a while now, you’ll notice a fresh new format from here on in. At least once a month, I’ll be digging more deeply into various topics to give you insight, which I trust you’ll find useful in your day-to-day business life. I’ll also be recording these deep dives for you to 🎧 listen to if you prefer. And you’ll be able to comment and have your say - I’d love to hear your views, whatever you’re up to, wherever you are in the world! Trends and How They Help You Introduction: Deciphering our World of Work Right now I’m inspired by and truly grateful for, bright, smart people who can take the complexity of our world of work and make it understandable. And no, I don’t mean people who offer us reductionist thinking, which can lead to stereotyping leaving us wholly unprepared for what’s coming. What I’m referring to is the art of taking the complex, with all its moving parts and deciphering it into something we can actively respond to and innovate for. And innovate we must! Ernst F. Schumacher, the economic thinker, statistician and economist said it best: “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” How can keeping an eye on trends help you? Trends help us enormously if we spend a little time on them. They enable us to make sense of what’s going on - and better prepare us for the future, which we can broadly think of as ‘sensemaking’. Saying this, there’s a vast difference between the types of trends that come and go and megatrends or what I think of as golden threads, which are usually here to stay. Golden threads weave their way through and into all aspects of our lives and ultimately create the fabric of the future. Do you remember Pokémon GO, the 2016 mobile augmented reality game? The game has been downloaded over 1 billion times, which means that at least a billion (mostly young) people are familiar with using augmented reality. These are the young people who will be buying your products and services and who will be on your payroll, probably designing your next offering, in a very short period of time. So whilst the game itself (and the many applications it has inspired) may rise in popularity or disappear into obscurity, knowing that augmented (and virtual) reality are here to stay informs how you build your new products, services, offerings or even a fresh new way of working. Today, there are many talented people and organisations doing the hard work of collecting and distilling vast amounts of global data that point us to the megatrends, so that we don’t have to. One of those people is Amy Webb, one of America's leading futurists and an award-winning author. She is the founder and CEO of the Future Today Institute and publisher of the annual FTI Tech Trends Report. Amy’s resume, which you can read in her LinkedIn profile is beyond impressive and I always look forward to her reports. You will find the latest one titled 2021: 14th Annual Tech Trends Report, which I advise you to read in more than one sitting! You can also 🎧 listen to Amy’s podcast version delivered via South By Southwest (SXSW). Another person worth following is David Mattin, the business, innovation and trends journalist who has appeared everywhere from Fast Company and the Guardian to Google Think Quarterly and the World Economic Forum. David, who you may remember from TrendWatching is the Founder of New World, Same Humans and writes a weekly newsletter, which makes sense of what’s going on. It’s really worth subscribing to: New World, Same Humans. And if you’d like to learn more about longer-term trends, he’s also the Founder of the Strategy and Futures Research Unit (SFRU). In their inaugural report titled Five Trends for the 2020’s, David talks about five big trends that will do much to shape consumer expectations in the decade ahead. Q: I’d really love to hear about your favourite trends, futures and foresight people and organisations. Who do you follow, who helps you to make sense of our world of work? Please share your favourites with us! Three trends piquing my interest right now: I thought I would share three trends that are front of mind right now and how you can use them. The first is EdTech, the second is Regenerative Business and the third is all things Agile. 1. EdTech If you’re familiar with Coursera, Udemy or EdX from MIT to name a few, you’ll be aware of the rise of EdTech or Educational Technology. EdTech harnesses the social reach of the internet to deliver personalised learning and training. In May last year when we were all in lockdown, I had Conversations on Camera with the Deans of two business schools to explore the future of executive education. I was interested to discover how they were adjusting to going virtual and what might happen post-pandemic. Unsurprisingly, major change was in the air and I’ve no doubt we’ll see loads more to come. On the other end of the spectrum, if are a parent, over the last year you’ll have experienced the joys of homeschooling. Depending on the school(s) your children go to, you’ll also have waded your way through hugely varying degrees of competency in adjusting to a whole new way of learning. In conclusion, I think we all agree that most children are better off at school, however, we can’t necessarily say the same for adults. The reason for this is yet another interconnected thread, which is all about being a ‘Lifelong Learner’. Life-long is an extraordinarily long time if science succeeds in having us all live way longer than ever before, which is a topic I explored with the founders of Genome Advisory, which you can watch here. If we are to continue learning over the course of our careers and beyond, stepping out of our lives and being on campus for big chunks of time is not always practical or affordable. This is where EdTech will play an increasingly vital role. On the 23rd March, TechCrunch reported that Coursera is preparing for the biggest EdTech IPO in years (Coursera set to roughly double its private valuation in impending IPO). Coursera was founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors and the business understandably boomed during the pandemic. Its 77M global users (or “learners”) access online courses and degrees from top universities. The company filed with the SEC to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "COUR.” The target price range of $30 to $33 could value it somewhere between $2.4B (its October valuation) and $5B. Another thing to keep your eye on is Google’s recent announcement that could change some aspects of the future of work and higher education. Google Career Certificates is an online platform that delivers professional courses in high-growth fields including IT Support, Data Analytics, Project Management, UX Design and Android Development (so far). The idea is you can earn a credential in about six months online, which may well lead to immediate employment rather than spending time at college without an income. The platform not only allows candidates to get certified - it provides access to career resources like coaching sessions, mock interviews, and a CV builder tool. It also opens up your resume to top employers through the Google Employer Consortium, which connects major companies to a Google certified talent pipeline. This is really interesting and it’s worth keeping an eye on other players in the market who may well follow. As a leader, this is an interconnected megatrend, I’m sure you’re familiar with. It’s big and all encompassing. How we hire, onboard, measure performance, train and develop people is largely becoming ‘digitised’. Saying this, most organisations are clunky and disconnected in their delivery and AI driven systemic bias is a very real issue. Q: How can you use EdTech and the associated available tools and technologies like AI, augmented and virtual reality, the use of neuroscience, behavioural science and our desire to be ‘lifelong learners’ to make this come alive? Becoming a living, breathing ‘learning organisation’ will make you way more attractive to the best talent out there, help you develop the talent you have and and retention will definitely improve. 2. Regenerative Business We’ve all been talking about sustainable everything for some time. From the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) to how we go about developing people, it’s a word hot on everyone’s lips. This is more of a golden thread, weaving its way through every element of our lives, well into the foreseeable future. On a side note, if you’ve watched the Netflix documentary Seaspiracy, you may well be questioning the big business side of sustainability and how well this is regulated, if at all. I came across a model last week, which stopped me in my tracks. It made me realise that I hadn’t actually thought deeply enough about what ‘sustainable’ means. To sustain something means to ‘maintain things at the same level or pace’, which falls massively short of what we, as leaders, actually need to be doing. The model that got me thinking is from Daniel Truran, Director General at ebbf, B Corp Ambassador at B Lab EU, Partner at NOW Partners and business school Professor at EOI, IE & ESADE, which he posted on LinkedIn (you can follow him here): * A Regenerative mindset looks to create more than you consume. * A Sustainable mindset looks to at least put back into the system as much as you took out. * The majority of businesses are in a Depleting mindset, subtracting from what surrounds them in or

    15 分钟

  7. 2020/03/14

    Stan Stalnaker, Founding Director, Hub Culture

    Today I'm talking to Stan Stalnaker, Founding Director of Hub Culture, the conscious social network with over 50,000 global members. Since its inception, Hub Culture has produced over fifty pop-up locations in cities around the world with over 70,000 hosted guests, introduced virtual reality environments, interviewed thousands of cultural and business leaders, and launched integrated financial services around Ven. I wanted to talk to Stan about what Hub Culture is up to today, his recent visit to the Amazon and how the network is serving their digital citizens from a conscious leadership perspective. If you enjoyed this episode, check out the show notes, relevant links and more at: www.mowbraybydesign.com/lift-stan-stalnaker This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit louisemowbray.substack.com

    43 分钟

  8. 2019/12/05

    LIFT Podcast with Tanner Methvin, Partner, Impact Amplifier

    Today I’m talking to Tanner Methvin who has worked in the field of Social Innovation for the last 20 years assisting private, public and not-for-profit organisations to build a more environmentally conscious, socially just and abundant world. Tanner is a Partner at Impact Amplifier, a Director of Earth Capital and sits on several boards. He originally hails from Los Angeles and moved to Cape Town in 1998, where he is now based. I wanted to talk to Tanner to understand more about the social enterprise and impact investment industry, particularly in Africa. If you enjoyed this episode, check out the show notes, relevant links and more at: www.mowbraybydesign.com/lift-tanner-methvin/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit louisemowbray.substack.com

    50 分钟

  9. 2019/11/14

    LIFT Podcast with Dr Jan Bellermann, Founder, the Conscious Leadership Academy

    In this episode of LIFT, I talk to Dr Jan Bellermann, Founder of the Conscious Leadership Academy in Munich, Germany. Jan is an international Keynote Speaker, Trainer and Coach on the big topics of conscious leadership and values-driven cultures. I recently met Jan at the Conscious Companies event on Conscious Leadership and Ethics in Johannesburg, South Africa where we were both invited to speak - Jan delivered an inspiring keynote and I wanted to learn more about his journey so far… If you enjoyed this episode, check out the show notes, relevant links and more at: https://www.mowbraybydesign.com/lift-dr-jan-bellermann/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit louisemowbray.substack.com

    44 分钟

  10. 2019/10/10

    LIFT Podcast with Mathieu Coquillon, Co-Founder, Mama Money

    Mathieu Cocquillon, Co-Founder of Mama Money, Africa's first cashless money transfer system talks about why he and his business partner, Raphael Grojnowski started the business, their journey so far and how Mamma Money is touching the lives and effecting the wallets of millions of people across Africa and beyond. If you enjoyed this episode, check out the show notes, relevant links and more here: https://www.mowbraybydesign.com/lift-mathieu-coquillon/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit louisemowbray.substack.com

    33 分钟

  11. 2019/09/08

    LIFT Podcast: 3 Simple Steps to help you "Think Like a Futurist"

    Lead Into the Future Today (LIFT) is brought to you by Louise Mowbray of Mowbray by Design, the creative Conscious Leadership Consultancy. If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, you can do so here: You’ve probably been hearing a lot about trends, futures and foresight and in this episode of LIFT, I share 3 Simple Steps for you to work with to "think like a futurist" and consciously create your desired future, in the context of your career and business. You’ll find a downloadable .pdf for you to use either whilst listening to this podcast or later, in your own time: 3 Simple Steps. If you’re inspired to "think like a futurist", don't miss my 🎧 conversation with Charlotte Kemp, Futurist, Speaker and Author on her new book “Futures Alchemist”, here on LIFT. If you enjoyed this edition of LIFT, why not share it? Until next time, feel free to get in touch and take good care of yourself. Best, Louise louise@mowbraybydesign.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit louisemowbray.substack.com

    9 分钟

  12. 2019/09/01

    LIFT Podcast with Charlotte Kemp, Futurist, Author and Speaker

    Lead Into the Future Today (LIFT) is brought to you by Louise Mowbray of Mowbray by Design, the creative Conscious Leadership Consultancy. If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, you can do so here: I had a great conversation with Charlotte Kemp, Futurist and Speaker about her brand new book, Futures Alchemist, A Journey of Discovery to Co-Create Preferred Futures. Charlotte advocates “Conscious Futures Thinking”. She loves exploring the origin and natural destination of changes in business and society, as well as understanding to what extent we can influence the major themes in our lives.  Charlotte is a member of the Association of Professional Futurists and serves on the board of the Professional Speakers Association of South Africa (PSASA). She has also organised numerous conferences and events over the 20 years that she’s been a speaker and trainer. The author of four books in total, Charlotte has also had loads of articles published in the media, appeared on radio and television, hosted her own radio show and hosts a podcast.   Links 🌐 Charlotte Kemp 📚 Futures Alchemist Connect with Charlotte on LinkedIn If you enjoyed this edition of LIFT, why not share it? Until next time, feel free to get in touch and take good care of yourself. Best, Louise louise@mowbraybydesign.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit louisemowbray.substack.com

    43 分钟
  • 12 集

关于

Welcome to LIFT: Lead Into the Future, Today. Here you'll find powerful insights and very human stories from purpose-driven leaders and entrepreneurs who are contributing something noteworthy to shaping our world of work. louisemowbray.substack.com

信息

  • 创作者
    Louise Mowbray
  • 活跃年份
    2021年 - 2024年
  • 单集
    12
  • 分级
    儿童适宜
  • 版权
    © Mowbray by Design
  • 节目网站
    LIFT with Louise Mowbray