While change is undoubtedly accelerating exponentially, the tools to cope with it are also accelerating equally fast. Perhaps the gap between them is constant.
Most of us are convinced we are living amid never-before turbulent times. It is true, but only partially. What do we mean when we say ‘never-before turbulence’? When Covid occurred, it was seen as a ‘once in a century’ event.
Think back to your parents’ and grandparents’ times. Did they not sincerely believe their times were turbulent? When partition occurred in 1947, it was a ‘once in a civilisation’ event.
Contemporary futurologists and visionaries persuade us that AI, ESG, EV, quantum computing and alternative energy will irreversibly change our lives. Leaders naturally feel challenged, if not stressed. The perception of challenge and stress may be more manageable if leaders could remember that times were always turbulent.
Historian Ian Mortimer’s book, Centuries of Change (2015), takes you on a whirlwind tour of the last 10 centuries and pits one century against others to explore which saw the greatest change—a complex and subjective exercise. If I had to summarise the findings of the book, it is that the answer depends on how you look at it. In medicine, it may be one century (think anaesthetics), while in travelling to new lands (think ships), it may be another. If the turbulence of change is measured by the number of people impacted (printing press), then it is one century, but if it is by amount of money spent (space travel), it may be another. Is it likely each generation views its own period as being the most turbulent? Most likely, yes.
On the flip side, it must be noted that the tools for people to cope with change have also improved dramatically. For example, keeping track of when a relative from another city or village would arrive at your home two hundred years ago was vastly different from the tools one would use today.
Then why all this fuss and dire warnings about ‘change or perish’, ‘move fast’, and ‘break things’? It is intriguing to consider if the challenge to cope with turbulent times has been so over centuries, what should people obsess about? The turbulence of change? Or the gap between the change and the tools to cope with it? In my recent book Embrace the Future, I have considered what an organisational response could be. However, that is not the point of this article.
This article is about leadership in turbulent times. Leadership is about human activity, not intellectual and cognitive activities. It is about relational and inspirational activity. It is about being aware and intuitive, rather than rational and analytical. Our brain has evolved far less in recent times compared to technology—it resembles the brain of our ancestors, quite unlike the turbulent changes we experience.
It is appropriate to reflect on technological changes, but equally important to remember it is through the lagging human brain that we can successfully adapt to change. I wonder whether the ‘phase lag’, to use an electrical engineering jargon, between technology and brain change gets as much attention during leadership training courses. Leaders in business and management, apart from technological changes, need to comprehend and adapt to organisational turbulence caused by mergers, acquisitions, downsizing, restructuring, and other such activities. I would like to focus on these kinds of turbulences.
That the subject merits debate is evident from the happenings around us. We saw the case of a promoter-chairman colluding with the CEO and CFO of his listed company to siphon off funds into hidden crevices (CG Power). We saw the downfall of a celebrated startup founder going crazy about growth through acquisitions and reorganisations (Byju’s). We read about a racy financier with a criminal past buying bonds and stocks through cooked-up valuations and concealing matters from the regulator (H2O). We learned that Mars, a confectionary company, acquired Kellanova, a snacks company, for an astronomical sum that may well turn out to be great; but the move has put both companies’ employees in uncertainty for several months, maybe even years.
There are complications with leadership succession. Consider Starbucks, which has ‘run through’ three or four CEOs in just six years. Increasingly, the CEO is hired and tasked by boards as though he or she is a prima donna, a genius who can raise stock prices quickly, quickly bring order to a colossal disorder that has developed over decades, manage the ambiguity of a former CEO who ‘will not go away’ while the board pretends to delegate autonomy.
There are acquisition and merger turbulences that the contemporary CEO must cope with. Reflect on the unfortunate death of Mike Lynch, a central person in HP’s acquisition of Autonomy for about $11 billion 2011. After a year, HP fired CEO Leo Apotheker for having overpaid for the acquisition. Then the company began legal processes against Autonomy leaders. Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hassan was jailed.
Autonomy financial executive Steve Chamberlain and chief executive Mike Lynch faced legal processes in the US for 12 years. The court did not uphold the charges against them. A day before the 13th anniversary of the sale, co-defendant Steve Chamberlain died when a car hit him in the UK. A day after the anniversary, Mike Lynch sank to his death in a tragedy that occurred to his sailing boat.
R Gopalakrishnan
Author and business commentator whose latest book Jamsetji Tata: Powerful Learnings for Corporate Success is co-authored with Harish Bhat
(Views are personal)
(rgopal@themindworks.me)