Tomorrow’s People: Margaret Heffernan on leadership today

Today’s discussion featured Margaret Heffernan, an acclaimed author, speaker and expert on the subject of leadership. Perry and Margaret’s discussion centred around the challenges leaders face in today's changing and turbulent times, particularly in the context of forecasting and planning in increasingly complex environments.

They also discussed the impact of climate change on business and leadership, the role of humility as a key skill for leaders, the challenges of succession planning when it comes to leadership roles and the impacts of AI and technology on our lives and our work.

A key part of Perry and Margaret’s discussion surrounded the idea that current organisational and leadership models are struggling to adapt to the increasing complexity and unpredictability of the world.

In Margaret’s experience, “Management has been a process of forecasting, planning to meet that demand or accelerate that demand and execution. And that has worked pretty well for about 200 years, but it isn't working very well now… if your three-legged stool of forecast, plan, execute falls over because one of the legs is broken, what do you do?”

In this current moment, modern leadership requires humility, openness and a willingness to embrace change. This is in stark contrast to traditional models of leadership that emphasise confidence and predictability.

"It takes a huge amount of humility on the part of leaders to recognize that often the power that they have is disruptive in a very negative way," Margaret states. 

She also emphasised the need for leaders to show humility in acknowledging their limitations, and to harness the power of collective intelligence to solve complex problems.

While technology can offer excellent solutions for solving certain problems, overreliance on it can also lead to loss of skills and personal connections.

Margaret quickly pointed out the danger of outsourcing decision-making to machines, "you are going to lose your ability to tell a good decision from a bad decision," she warned. 

She also highlighted the risk of losing personal connections and the ability to articulate one's own ideas when relying too much on predictive technologies.

"Nobody is an expert on the future. It's like saying, ‘who knows what kind of house to build on Mars?’ Nobody knows. Nobody's been there yet." - Margaret Heffernan 

If you’re interested in learning more about the role of leadership, tune in today to this episode of Tomorrow’s People. And stay tuned for the next episode in two week’s time!