Leading into the Future

Chapter 1 – The Century of ‘No Return’ “So; it’s time to go home. I want you to know, when you go home and try to talk about this, you will sound crazy. And that’s not productive. So - how do you share what you just experienced with those around you?” This was the insightful caution delivered by Rob Nail (1), the CEO and an Associate Founder of Singularity University (2) in California’s Silicon Valley during his closing address to the participants of the University’s 25th Executive Programme. What will sound crazy? What is it that we learnt, saw and had come to understand? Here a sample: • Massive technology enabled change is imminent • Human evolution is transitioning from biological to technological evolution • Technology is enabling the rapid transcendence of the physical, biological and existential limitations of human beings • Globally, technology is being introduced without a plan, control or brakes • Exponential technology cannot be stopped – (short of global totalitarianism and even then it would just go underground) • Exponential technology is providing ever better tools and systems that can be used to address humanity’s global grand challenges • Technology’s rapid and evidenced impacts will in the very near future challenge what it means to be human including the concepts of life and death • There is no effective moral or ethical frame work governing technological research, developments or applications • There is no effective governance, nationally or globally, to manage and usher in the exponential technology paradigm Do any of the above strike you as crazy? None of those statements are far-fetched; they are neither ‘a panic’ nor some conspiracy against technology, science or progress in general. They are simply facts. I’ve come to understand the reality, the logic and the evidence behind each of them. I’m very aware that similar sentiments considered crazy just 18 months ago, when I began my intensive study, are today no longer so. It was my quest to understand this exponential technology, to check for myself the ‘so what’, the ‘why it matters’ and ‘what if’ that had brought me to Singularity University. I was one of about 80 participants from 23 different countries that heard and understood those words. I had never before been among so many Vice Presidents, Managing Directors, CEO’s, CFO’s CIO’s, (lots of C-level executives), PhD’s, senior military officers, government officials, writers, speakers and so on. Why were they all there? Why Singularity University (SU)? As Rob Nail explains “Everything we do [at SU] is centred on building global awareness of the dynamic forces of exponential technologies happening today that are going to transform our societies and economies of tomorrow.” Corporations and individuals know that massive change (disruptive and opportunistic) is coming. They recognise the need to understand and the critical need for all leaders to be technologically up to speed. As the SU web site attests “CEOs are desperate to know this stuff. Everyone’s trying to figure out what’s coming next." (Mike Federle, COO, Forbes Media). Singularity University, among a range of programmes, conducts ‘Innovation Partners Programmes’ which seek to assist executives in coming to grips with exponential technology and its implications. According to Salim Ismail (3) (author of Exponential Organisations) of the 80 Fortune 500 C-Level executives who attend these events, about 75% admit to having no previous awareness of the technologies involved. That surely is alarming. How are they serving their stakeholders? How effective are they as leaders? How fit are they to steer today’s, let alone tomorrow’s, organisations? Of note is the fact that following their attendance at Singularity University, 80% of these executives recognise and state that they expect their organisation to be disrupted within the next two years; the remaining 20%, give themselves a leisurely five years. Let me stress this: “80% believe they will be disrupted within 2 years”. If you don’t appreciate ‘disruption’ at this stage then what do you know or believe that these people are missing? Eyes Shut I’ve been living and working in the ‘real’ world. As a child I had siblings in hospital with mal-nutrition. I was a migrant in a then foreign world. I’ve been fortunate to experience extreme poverty and sometimes outrageous, if temporary, luxury. Above all, I’ve been given the opportunities to listen to many voices; voices in Europe, Russia, China, Afghanistan, Australasia and the USA. I’ve heard, and somewhat understand, the issues that keep good people from sleeping soundly; I’ve had the privilege of thinking and the curse of looking for meaning. Attending SU was a key step in my search for answers. That the world we believe we know, the one that in the past had delivered a degree of certainty, is changing rapidly should not be beyond our appreciation and understanding. My observations however have made me realise that too many people are uninformed and basically clueless about what is happening or the future that is heading our way at an alarming pace. Most are so focused on their ‘day job’, their very necessary attention to surviving and dealing with situations at hand, that they never get, or take the opportunity, to lift their heads and look up. I gave up my day job. I couldn’t stomach the pointlessness of my recent work environments. The inefficiencies of government, the reckless waste of resources, the poor standard of leadership and management, the old boy networks propping up ever deeper levels of incompetence, careers curtailed by old men distancing threateningly more capable men and women (particularly the young) – yes it was all of that and far worse. I however, was in a senior position; this isn’t a whine about me or my personal dissatisfactions or otherwise. I would get little sympathy based on my past salaries and middle class life style. I could have stayed relatively untouched by the incompetence and stupidity so evident all around me – and that was tempting. It was just tolerable; the security of work, that regular pay check, were good reasons to put up with a lot of crap. It didn’t help when a colleague pointed out that “you know – we executives [basically non-trade qualified managers] are only ever three months away from bankruptcy. I mean, lose your job and how long can you last?” I had become more and more disillusioned with life; unhappy with just about everything. I even developed the habit of shouting at the television set, and mumbling opinions on the inadequacy of this or that news report. I was in fact turning into a grumpy old man and as is natural, I gravitated towards other equally grumpy people who more and more eagerly shared with me their negative views on everything. While this was my everyday experience, my working life, I was most troubled by what was happening around me. I witnessed people being thrown into unemployment; others left behind by poorly thought out and administered organisational changes. I watched managers crumble under the weight of improperly applied technology (mainly ICT), extreme workloads, an absence of believable strategies and operational effectiveness, unintelligent decisions and crippling absences of responsibility and accountability. This dystopian management was evident across many departments; from construction to health and education and also amply evident in the largest corporations we dealt with. What took me a long time to understand was why? Initially, I blamed individuals; that seemed appropriate and obvious. I noticed so many people become dejected at the perceived lack of fairness, compassion, justice and equality, the lack of opportunity; the lack of real progress. I saw colleagues tremble with frustrations; I witnessed nervous breakdowns and knew of several suicides - because they couldn’t cope.