Keynote by speaker Ade McCormack The future of work – Building the Human-centric organization
Centralized leadership and treating the workers as cogs in the machine are just two characteristics of the industrial era factory model. A model that many established organizations continue to embrace.
Consequently their response to threats and opportunities is somewhat arthritic and potentially fatal. Hence the urgent need for transformation.
Ironically, new technologies are stimulating the need for people as innovation cannot be elicited from an algorithm or robot. So the organization needs to be reengineered around the talent.
Audience takeaways:
- Why cognition is so important to organizations in today’s unpredictable world.
- Why harnessing the cognition of your talent is a win for all stakeholders.
- How to migrate from treating your people as mindless cogs in the machine to self-actualizing
cognitive athletes.
- How to plug the cognitive leaks and make substantial cognitive gains.
Keynote by speaker Ade McCormack Transformation – How to build a super-resilient organization
The world is becoming increasingly uncertain and volatile. Organizations need to evolve from inert soulless factories to living, sensing, opportunistic organisms. Today it is less about winning and more
about ‘staying in the game’. But how can organizations transform given that many are optimized for less volatile times?
Audience takeaways:
- How to build an organization that is emotionally, mentally and physically intelligent.
- Harness the cognitive capacity lying dormant in your people.
- Release the value trapped in your organization’s data.
- Create a culture of experimentation and innovation.
Keynote by speaker Ade McCormack Leadership reset: How to lead in an increasingly unpredictable world
Accelerating market uncertainty is making it increasingly difficult to achieve lasting success. For sustained performance going forward, leaders must press the reset button NOW to unlearn the old ways of thinking and learn how to navigate their organisation through what is an increasingly unknowable environment.
In this session, you will:
- Understand that applying ‘tech pixie dust’ to your organizational model is not enough.
- Discover that in the digital age, your organization needs to operate like a living organism.
- Recognise why assets increasingly trump profits.
- Discover new concepts such as super-resilience, synthetic certainty and the cognitive gymnasium.
- Recognise that we are entering a post-strategy world.
- Understand how organisations such as Amazon and Google have structured themselves to adapt to an increasingly uncertain world.
Keynote by speaker Ade McCormack Employee wellness – From cog to cognitive athlete
Centralised leadership and treating the workers as cogs in the machine are just two characteristics of the industrial era factory model. A model that many established organisations continue to embrace.
Consequently their response to threats and opportunities is somewhat arthritic and potentially fatal.
We need to harness the cognitive capacity of our people. This is a largely untapped asset. Cognition
lies at the heart of being human. We sense. We decide. We act. Organisations similarly need to
behave like living organisms.
Audience takeaways:
- Why cognition is so important to organisations in today’s unpredictable world.
- Why harnessing the cognition of your talent is a win for all stakeholders.
- How to migrate from treating your people as mindless cogs in the machine to self-actualizing
cognitive athletes.
- How to plug the cognitive leaks and make substantial cognitive gains.
Keynote by speaker Ade McCormack Leadership – How to lead in a post-strategy world.
Industrial era leadership was straightforward. Build a factory around an idea and continuously refine the model by minimizing failure and improving efficiency. The problem is today that no amount of process refinement will offset the macro-environmental forces that are increasingly bearing down on the organization.
This requires a new type of leader. One that is comfortable with ambiguity and increasing uncertainty. Post-industrial era leaders know that innovation trumps process and they recognize
that failure is a critical part of the new model.
Audience takeaways:
- Why the factory model is no longer fit for purpose.
- What are the forces that have given rise to this challenge.
- How leaders must adapt to be effective.
- How organizations in turn need to adapt.
- How to develop a more innovative culture.
Keynote by speaker Ade McCormack Innovation – Turning human potential into market value
In a world where dominance or competitive advantage are transient at best, businesses need to make innovation central to their model. Increasingly fickle customers, coupled with markets emerging and dying overnight, will force the pace of innovation.
Innovation cannot be extracted from an algorithm or a robot, people are key. Thus smart organizations are discarding the factory model of the industrial era, where the worker was simply a cog in the machine, to one that turns human cognition into market-pleasing innovation.
Audience takeaways:
- What are the forces driving this seismic shift.
- How the world’s most successful companies are treating their people as if they are
(cognitive) athletes.
- That getting the most out of your people is not the same as getting the best from them.
- How to build your organization around your people.
Keynote by speaker Ade McCormack Disruption – Why there is no post-covid, new normal nor even next normal
Disruption is on the increase. There is no post-covid, new normal or next normal. Abnormal and
increasing disruption is the backdrop to our lives going forward. Simply throwing new technology at
your old business model will not prepare it for what is an unknowable future.
Audience takeaways:
- That digital and biology, in the form of Covid-19, are not the only forces at play.
- Why the industrial era process-oriented approach to business is no longer fit for purpose.
- How to build an organization that is less inert factory and more a living, sensing organism.
- Why strategic planning is becoming a new genre of fiction.
- Why acquiring and retaining the best people must be the organization’s priority.