The 18 new voices re-energising management

Brené Brown

We live in uncertain, unsettling times. Having the courage to face that uncertainty with emotional exposure is what makes a true leader, argues author Brené Brown.

“I believe that vulnerability – the willingness to be ‘all in’ even when you know it can mean failing and hurting – is brave,” says Brown, a professor of social work at the University of Houston. Her research ignited a global conversation about vulnerability, daring to fail and building resilience.

As well as being the author of the bestsellers Daring Greatly and Rising Strong, she is the founder of Brave Leaders, an organisation that brings courage-building programmes to teams, leaders and entrepreneurs.

Terence Tse and Mark Esposito

We are living in a world of constant and ever faster change, argues Terence Tse, co-author of Understanding How the Future Unfolds: Using DRIVE to Harness the Power of Today’s Megatrends.

“To us, it is ever more important to understand what is happening from multiple perspectives and how things are connected,” Tse explains.

The DRIVE framework identifies five important trends: demographics; resource scarcity; inequalities; volatility, scale and complexity; and enterprising dynamics.

“We believe that traditional business analytical tools are becoming less able to help identify new market opportunities. DRIVE is different because it is far more encompassing, comprehensive, universal and timeless,” says Tse. “The goal is to help managers make more informed choices now.”

Rachel Botsman

Trust in institutions is evaporating. But, instead of disappearing, trust has shifted to a ‘distributed model’ where we give it away to strangers, online bots and algorithms. The question that arises is: have we given away our trust too easily? And what will be the consequences if we have?

These issues are picked up by Rachel Botsman, a visiting academic at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. Best known for coining the term ‘collaborative consumption’, Botsman’s TED Talks about trust have been watched more than four million times.

In her new book, Who Can You Trust?, she argues that “managers need to recognise that the conventions of how trust is built, managed, lost and repaired are being turned upside down. Companies have to let go of an era where trust could be produced and controlled centrally, by them.”

Joost Minnaar and Pim de Morree

How can work be made more fun? Two Dutchmen, Joost Minnaar and Pim de Morree (above, third and fourth from left, with their fellow ‘Corporate Rebels’), have adopted this as their personal mission, producing a cult blog that is catapulting them up the management-thinker rankings.

They quit their frustrating corporate jobs to visit the world’s most inspiring organisations and share insights as they go. They have compiled a list of 60 companies that they want to visit to uncover their often radical ways of managing and leading. The self-styled Corporate Rebels have identified eight traits of these highly successful organisations.

André Spicer

Stupidity within organisations is endemic. Professor André Spicer hopes to help managers understand why smart people do stupid things – and help them stop.

“Too much management is bulls**t-handling,” he says. “Great leaders need to spot the empty talk and stop it. They should create lots more space for their people to engage with things that have substance. It will also make their followers’ lives much nicer.”

Patrick Debois, Jez Humble, Gene Kim and John Willis

The collaboration and open communication favoured by ‘agile’ advocates are important management principles that are crossing over from tech project management.

The next big piece of innovative thinking to influence how we manage could be ‘DevOps’. The term was coined by Patrick Debois, CEO of Zender.tv, who says the idea promotes mutual respect and greater empathy between all parts of a business so that the whole system is optimised.

“Instead of focusing on their own business unit, managers and leaders will need to optimise for the whole of the company,” he explains. “The first step is understanding the entire system: put all groups together and map out the system.”

Simon Sinek

The way to enjoy career success is to focus on the meaning you derive from your work. For company success, the same concept applies. Leadership guru Simon Sinek’s new book, Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team, will be required reading for managers and leaders alike. One of the biggest stars of the TED Talk scene, Sinek’s books are also huge.

Find Your Why is the follow-up to the global bestseller Start With Why. Sinek has presented his ideas to Fortune 100 companies, startups, government and the US military.

Susan David

‘Emotionally agile’ people experience the same stresses and setbacks as anyone else. The difference is that the emotionally agile know how to unhook themselves from unhelpful patterns, and how to create personal success through better habits and behaviours. Being able to bounce back from upsets is what makes us resilient.

Susan David’s original thinking builds on Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence, and taps into the twin executive preoccupations of self-development and resilience at work. David is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, and is co-founder of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital.

Satya Nadella

Putting empathy at the heart of a corporate turnaround is a surprising idea, but one that has worked for the Indian CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella. He has won many C-suite admirers since taking the helm at the ailing tech behemoth, and for detailing his approach in Hit Refresh.

This approach incorporates a personal leadership philosophy based on empathy, and changing the corporate culture from one of a team of ‘know-it-alls’ to one of ‘learn-it-alls’. At Microsoft, this meant changing the culture from a ‘fixed mindset’, where everyone wanted to be the smartest in the room to a ‘growth mindset’ that prizes uncovering weaknesses quickly to turn them into strengths.

By asking Microsoft employees to put themselves in the shoes of their colleagues and customers, by creating a ‘human mission’ for the firm, and by eliminating ego at work, Nadella has put culture change centre stage in new management thinking.

Jake Knapp

How can you use agile principles to solve any big problem or test any big idea reliably and effectively? Jake Knapp’s book Sprint outlines a design process that can help do this in a focused, five-day, concentrated effort.

“Sprints work because they emphasise individual work (rather than aimless group brainstorms), realistic prototypes (rather than abstract debates) and opinionated decisions by a leader (rather than groupthink),” he explains. “We’ve found that sprints work for all kinds of problems… It’s a pretty versatile method.”

Knapp’s emphasis on tackling one thing at a time without distraction also taps into the backlash against continual multitasking.

Adam Grant

Resilience is one of the hottest topics in self-development, but what happens when our reserves are drained? Wharton management and psychology professor Adam Grant argues that we are not born with a fixed amount of resilience – instead it is a muscle that everyone can build.

The influential academic co-authored Option B with Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg in 2017, turning his intellectual attention towards facing adversity and cultivating resilience. He is an expert on how to find motivation and meaning in our work, and how we can live more generous and creative lives – all concerns that preoccupy forward-thinking managers. Still in his mid-30s, Grant’s Originals was overall winner of CMI’s Management Book of the Year awards in 2017.

Daniel Ek

The unique organisational model pioneered by the Swedish music-streaming service Spotify is based on agile principles and has inspired many. But as the company enters its second decade, accompanied by huge growth, how can it maintain its startup spirit?

Co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek has organised Spotify into autonomous squads of no more than 12 people. These then variously form tribes, alliances, guilds and chapters.

The company follows a ‘growth mindset’ approach to management, with continuous one-to-one coaching and no performance management.

Spotify hires people for the right cultural fit rather than for the skills they possess. It’s a non-hierarchical organisational model that may become influential in many large companies.

Sarah Wood

Millennials think and behave differently. They’re digital natives and don’t follow old-school norms. Obvs. So how should they be managed and led? Sarah Wood, co-founder of London tech startup Unruly (bought by News Corp in 2015 for £114m), says the answer is to have millennials take on responsibility as quickly as possible.

In her new book, she says it’s time to chuck out the old corporate ladders, daring the millennial generation to step up to leadership roles early on in pursuit of a career that will be defined by criss-crossing roles and companies, rather than following a predefined corporate path. She urges leaders to manage millennials in a way that allows for this new definition of career success.