Managing By Traction (MbT) Reinventing Management in the Cyber-Age

By Mario Raich, Tomasz Krzemiński, Claudio Cisullo, Simon L. Dolan and Bonnie A. Richley

Abstract

“We are at a critical turning point in human history!  We are all prisoners of our paradigms. And as managers, we are captives of a paradigm that places the pursuit of efficiency ahead of every other goal.”¹

In a world of ambiguity and increasing instability, we urgently need to review and reinvent management, and that includes ways of doing business. We need to exercise new leadership competencies and review management paradigms, relevant processes, tools and instruments that are still valid in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA)²  environment and in our highly technological and global world. We argue that there is a great need to adopt bold new ideas and concepts and not merely change existing terminologies. The time has come for a clarion call for a new management framework. Our framework of the new management approach is through the lens of strategic planning, since it plays a key role in management success. We argue that the strategic planning process should be reinvented to become a dynamic-direction operation involving ‘planning by interactive action processes’. Employing such a dynamic focus would also mean that performance reviews will embed concepts such as value creation. In this way, the direction becomes an active part of action, where action can continually reshape the direction. It is highly important to know which direction to choose, why it has been chosen and how to get there.

Often, the selected direction is more of a guiding star than a road map to follow. This also helps to define a dynamic assignment of resources and means, which is a prerequisite to following the selected direction. Actions would include delivering ongoing constructive feedback about the feasibility of the selected direction. In this way, the selected direction defines the desired future, and action is the actual creation of it. Direction is always future-oriented and action is focused on current activities and results.

What we describe in this article is the essence of what we label ‘Management by Traction’ (hereafter referred to as MbT). MbT is a framework that is a powerful enabler for management in the cyber-age. It is based on a short and simple feedback loop.

Introduction

“Imagination is the source of new, unexpected and often better solutions, fuelling bold visions.”

All human actions have an implicit or explicit purpose. But only a meaningful purpose may be attractive and sustainable, and thus provide traction to others.

The ever-changing complexity in which we live and operate in both our personal and business lives can be captured by the future design framework (i.e., preceding the setting of a direction). Once a direction is defined, we can move directly to an action or action(s) which are continuously assessed to verify alignment with the direction, while also being sensitive to the need to change direction if corrections are required. Action and direction are not new, yet they have concurrent impact on the future direction. What is new is the fact that our turbulent environment and key players are constantly changing, generating a feedback loop that is both constructive and dynamic. Such a feedback loop is needed now more than ever. In business strategy terms, one can say that feedback is being driven by a pull strategy far more than by a push strategy (see: https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-push-and-pull-strategy.html).

This pull strategy is applicable to all core management processes, including strategy development, planning and implementation. The pull strategy that we offer differs slightly from classical pull strategies. We call this pull strategy ‘smart strategy’, because it encompasses all three phases: development, planning and implementation, linking theory and practice. Moreover, smart strategy is applicable for corporate governance, resource allocation, performance management, corporate structure, talent development, deployment and all other management processes. Thus, this paper focuses mainly on smart strategy. It may help leaders to learn a new, simplified and very efficient way of developing and deploying ‘strategy’. It may allow a concurrent bidirectional influence in the development of direction and the deployment of actions.

Direction can be developed using Raich’s user-friendly ‘Future Design’ Framework, and its actions can follow the practice which was implemented successfully by Xellect (a Polish-based consulting company: www.Xellect.com). Raich’s Future Design Framework is based on the ability and practice to dive deep into the current context and move on to emerging and future contexts.  More detail is offered in a later section of this article.

Numerous creative solutions are usually needed to develop and sustain the attractiveness of a chosen direction. Many years of experience have shown that the ability to shift the focus from searching towards finding is more important than lots of creativity.

The pace and scope of change today are in permanent acceleration. Additionally, there are an increasing number of key technologies that will be converging during the next decade. We are moving, perhaps, into the fastest, most encompassing and deepest transformation in human history, for better or for worse. This will most likely lead to growing disruption and transformation in all key aspects of human life: society, economy, business, science, technology, education and politics (Raich, Eisler and Dolan, 2014).

Thus, there is a quest for new ideas about how to cope with the emerging different worlds we live in. The governance and management of organisations are becoming messier, and the classical corporate forms, structures, processes, tools and instruments are increasingly becoming incapable of coping with these complex challenges. In a state of permanent transition, it becomes extremely difficult to predict where things are headed. The number of different factors to be taken into account is drastically expanding. Contextual changes are becoming one of the driving forces of transformation. In such an environment, people are eager to implement ideas and projects as fast as possible, in order to adapt and to attempt to gain a sense of security, or to survive. Beyond understanding the immediate business context, it is vital to have solid insights about the future at two levels: the emerging future and the more remote future. This makes the traditional strategic development process not only complex and difficult, but also increasingly more irrelevant.

Therefore, organisations are seeking simpler, faster and more efficient ways to replace the classic strategic thinking and strategic management, so as to be able to cope with increasing complexity and uncertainty. Education also needs to make a big leap in order to catch up with the new emerging reality. It needs a paradigm shift from the traditional approaches towards a new future-oriented core curriculum.

One of the key questions about future management is whether strategy can still be the right way to lead an organisation in the cyber-age. Obviously, we can call everything we do ‘strategy’ (even a state where there is no existing strategy), and wait patiently while doing nothing, until an ‘opportunistic strategy’ emerges, or an ‘ad-hoc strategy’. In essence, the terms ‘strategy’ and ‘strategic’ are very malleable concepts, used whenever something seems particularly important. The question arises:  is a classic ‘strategy’ really useful in times of VUCA and permanent transformation? We argue that today we need to make it possible (and even necessary) for non-experts in the organisation to participate in its forward thinking.

In most cases, once a strategy is developed and agreed upon, it is not flexible to some key factors that may have changed in the context. In principle, the process needs to be started again based on the reframed context.

In a constantly globally transitioning connected world, people are eager to implement ideas and projects as fast as possible, even when some risk might be involved. Take, for example, the rush to develop and use a vaccine to solve the COVID-19 pandemic. There are ample examples where new ideas are deployed, including new processes, new tools in order to deal quickly and easily with emerging problems, and challenges.

And closely related to this approach is the need to engage in new governance principles, and to set up agile structures. Some initial new approaches towards a new governance, business structure and organisation have already been presented by Raich et al. (2019)³ in previous issues of The European Business Review. In this paper, nonetheless, we present and elaborate on the MbT framework, which is focused on Direction and Action embedded in a loop, running concurrently. We hope that this framework addresses the implicit and/or explicit purpose of a 21^st-century organisation.

Reality Check: We Are Living In An Age Of Radical Transformation

“Everything flows, but it flows in a very disruptive manner!”

The present is not what we expected it to be, and the future is even more uncertain and is changing continuously. We are in midst of the transition from the industrial to the cyber-economy. We are discovering that reality is non-sequential, non-systemic and asymmetrical. Models and concepts based on former thinking cannot cope with what is happening around us. Thus, we need to change our mindset about the world. The business world (as well as political leaders) are also desperately looking for new concepts and models that are characterised as organic, systemic, and employing holistic thinking.

Indeed, the ‘new reality’ will generate more questions than answers (e.g., the management of the COVID-19 pandemic). However, it is more important to identify and define the right questions than to get answers that may become obsolete tomorrow (for example, managing the initial eruption of the COVID-19 did not guarantee proper management of the second wave of infections).

Transitioning from the industrial age into the cyber-age is a huge challenge, but it also offers unique opportunities for enterprises and corporations. It requires foresight, appropriate education, and the proper use of the necessary technological infrastructures, as well as a strong dose of entrepreneurial spirit.

We need to be constantly reminded that our world is not only global, but also highly complex, dynamic and interconnected. We are not used to planning actions for a global and systemic world. We have been educated to use converging thinking with the promise of “a solution” at the end. The world around us is full of diverging and disrupting events and happenings. We need to change our view of the world forever. We must learn to find the right questions and adequate creative solutions.

“It is vital to understand what is going on around us!”

Today, with advances in technology, meaningfulness in work is vanishing (Forbes, 2018, based on the work of Ulrich and Ulrich). In addition, people are anxious about automation based on intelligent machines, intelligent programs and robots, which seem to be the principal workforce of tomorrow. Intelligent programs and robots are becoming an integral part of the workforce and of our lives. Therefore, it is necessary to understand what is happening around us.

The highly uncertain and fragile future will lead to restructuring and increasingly change the purpose of companies aiming to survive (and prosper) depending on the opportunities created. A good example is Amazon, which started as a book/music virtual store but, from the opportunities presented, today sells almost anything and anywhere. Uber is a company that started competing with taxi services but has now expanded to include land and air transportation and food delivery. These are only two of many examples that support our argument.

The ‘danger zone’ we need to cross (environmental degradation, social unrest, conflict, fast technological advances, unprecedented levels of inequality, and polarisation) could mean that global disruptions are becoming the rule, rather than exception, in the coming decades. We need the courage to move beyond our comfort zone into the unknown and unexplored territory, to discover what has never been thought of before. It is time to bring connected (holistic and systemic) spiritual, physical, psychological, philosophical and social thinking to the transformation of science and our world view.

Reinventing Management In The Cyber-Age

“The future is not just happening… people make it happen.”

Cyber-reality influences the transformation of work in the cyber-age due to automation and virtualisation based on artificial intelligence (AI). This means that many work activities (not just manual), will be automated, digitised and virtualised. As a consequence, many new jobs related to technology will be created. Virtual reality will also be a driving force in the transformation of work.

“Our future economy will shift from growth to sustainable transformation and innovation.”

We argue that our future economy will shift from growth to sustainable transformation and innovation. We further think that the purpose of business will be to provide solutions that create value and an increased quality of life for everyone. We will witness completely new and different business models. We speculate that the digital value platform (and later on the hybrid value network) will be the most important structure of organisations. However, organisations have to focus on developing individuals to be better at adaptability, innovation and execution. Richley and Lingham (2015) have developed integrated theories and concepts from learning, creativity, design thinking, innovation and work motivation to create a measure to assess, coach and develop individuals to be more adaptive. Further, their work identifies tendencies when innovating and executing, especially when working on projects. As more individuals are assessed, coached and developed, it strengthens the organisation to innovate and provide solutions that will align with the shift in our economy from growth to sustainable transformation. Richley and Lingham (2020, forthcoming) have further elaborated on the importance of this approach in our current organisational and global contexts.

We put forward that business in the future will need to have two executive leadership teams:1. agile and transforming ongoing business; and 2. preparing new business ventures for emerging and uncertain businesses. These executive leadership teams will also need to be assessed, coached and developed to attain higher quality of engagement and improved capacity to innovate and execute following the two-phase approach to achieve ‘high-impact engagement’ in organisations (Lingham & Richley, 2018). Due to the constant transformation in the business corporate environment, strategic entrepreneurship will become a principal driver of business. Early attempts have been made to focus on sustainability in the corporate business environment. However, it is only recently that a model of social business innovation, or SBI, was introduced by Richley (2009) in order to help organisations consider their strategic entrepreneurship and thus expand and add value at the intersection of business and society. The seven characteristics of SBIs should be introduced as part of an organisation’s strategic entrepreneurship as a main driver of business, so as also to benefit society. In addition, corporate leaders will have to become enablers of education, as the cyber-organisation will become a ‘hyper-education community’. Each organisation will also have to actualise its own ‘future intelligence’ to enable the exploration of ideas and solutions that will have the biggest impact in both the short and long term.

Strategy is Shifting Towards Managing by Traction, I.E. Direction and Action

Costas Markides, a professor at the London Business School, argues that there is little agreement among academics as to the purpose of strategy. He also points out that most executives would define strategy as how to achieve the company’s objectives. According to him, that is a technically correct definition, but it is so generic that it is practically meaningless.

The conventional process of setting goals, developing a strategic plan, converting it to an operational plan, and finally executing the approved plan does not work very well today.

For several decades, annual strategy planning has been an essential part of corporate liturgy. Organisations would spend months developing their corporate strategy, followed by operational planning and budget allocation. This approach has worked for many years and is taught in business schools around the globe. The accumulated corporate bureaucracy creates corporate entropy and gets in the way of the required agility and resilience towards unexpected changes and disruptions.

In a VUCA world, planning is becoming obsolete. In 1994, Henry Mintzberg, the leading management guru, observed that the process of strategic planning was effective for about 25 percent of companies. The majority found it to be ineffective. To reiterate, in a world that is constantly in transition and where business is driven by AI and cyber-reality, we urgently need to review and reinvent the way we conduct business, lead and manage processes, tools, instruments and structure. This deep transformation of the business and the business context will inadvertently affect work and education. Permanent disruptions and transformation in a multi-reality world require new ways to lead and to manage society and organisations. We need management by traction (MbT).

The cyber-age creates, huge challenges and opportunities for humanity, but it calls for a deep transformation of business and society, enabling them to harness the power of digital technologies. We can leverage ‘creation’ as a driver to have a positive and meaningful impact on education, culture, business and society. We can bring meaningfulness back into politics and the economy.

“The unfolding fourth industrial revolution has the potential to revolutionise the speed and scope of creation and destruction. The convergence of new technological solutions will alter our life and work far beyond our expectations. It will also change politics and the role of governments. Virtual reality and artificial intelligence are adding a new dimension. The impact is difficult to imagine today, but it will be very deep, way beyond anything we can imagine today!”

A Future Design Framework

“In a world in transition, we need a process focused on the desired future and not just on the expected one.”

To aim at the desired future, we need to define the direction. In the following paragraphs, we describe how to develop the direction and make the transition to action. ‘Direction and action’ are based on the future design framework. Once the direction has been designed, it will run in parallel with the action.

To cope with the environment in transformation we need a future design framework which can help us to cope with the ever-changing future and allows us at the same time to continue with meaningful actions. The traditional management process can be replaced by MbT, which is based on the future design framework, having dynamic direction and interactive action processes at its core. In MbT, the direction becomes an active part of action, which can in turn continually shape the direction. Direction and action therefore operate in tandem. Direction shows the way for the action, and actions shape direction based on the outcomes.

It is critical to know which direction to choose, which choices to make and why, and how to get there. As mentioned earlier, the selected direction is often more of a guiding star, rather than a road map to follow. This also helps to define the resources, the corresponding means and the tools which will be required in order to follow the defined direction.

We need to develop ‘empathy’ towards the future”.

To get a better understanding of the future, we need first to overcome our limitations in order to perceive the reality around us, as well as the deformation of our perceptions due to our cultural and personal biases. We need to develop ‘empathy’ towards the future. Studying our history, international experiences, other people’s views (even controversial), and the use of many different sources (often contradictory) can help shape our view as well. In addition, the development of imagination and intuition is important. We need to overcome our current reality, as it may unconsciously limit our perception based on our dominating world view, our biases, what we consider possible and impossible, acceptable and unacceptable, likes and dislikes, our mental comfort zone, etc. We also need to overcome the human habit of projecting past experiences and present status into the future. Finally, we need be aware of the human habit of generalising experiences and views and preferences, expecting other people to think and behave similarly. To get meaningful insights about the future, it is necessary to release the past, to explore the relevant actual context, and go beyond to the emerging and future context. Is it even possible?

Journey into the unknown

Exploring the future in a fast-changing environment challenges traditional intuition, patterns and wisdom. It is pushing people and organisations beyond their comfort zone. For ‘future exploration’, it is useful to create a ‘mental framework’, (i.e. a generic representation of the ‘scenario’ and the ‘space’ we want to consider). We suggest that we should move from linear simple logic and structures to one that is complex and systemic.

It is a journey into the unknown (unexplored and uncharted), where the paths to follow have often to be discovered or even created. A multi-reality world in transition requires constant focus on the actual, the emerging and the future context. It also requires constant awareness about contextual changes and how they might affect our future orientation. Businesses that are too focused on past successes will have no future. Everything can change in an instant.

As a first step of the entire process, we need to elaborate a generic context framework beginning at the actual level and then moving towards the emerging and future levels. A look at the mega-trends (including industry or other specific mega-trends) can offer deep insights into the actual context by constantly gathering and clustering insights and information. As we move toward the emerging and future contexts, what we know gets smaller as the unknown increases.

To observe the contextual changes, we need to promote and create a culture of exploration. Every key function with contacts to the outside of the enterprise (board of directors, executive board, procurement, R&D, marketing, sales, services, HR) should participate in a constant exploration of the ever-changing context. Pay attention to the changes of the external context bringing in connected (holistic and systemic) spiritual, physical, psychological, philosophical and social thinking to the transformation of science and our world view. Such a design would further link to MbT, supporting “high-impact engagement” (Lingham & Richley, 2018), and align with the seven characteristics outlined in social business innovation (Richley, 2009) as organisations explore new ideas, possibilities and approaches to engage and thrive in the both the emerging and future contexts.

Fortunately, the fastest and most efficient way to leverage and to deploy the growing power of AI is the close collaboration of humans and intelligent machines, leveraging the best from both sides. But this also means heavy investment in the further development of AI and the enhancement of human capabilities in parallel.

MbT Framework

To leverage ‘creation’ and bring back meaningfulness into politics and the economy, we have developed the MbT framework based on two core elements: direction and action. Once the direction is established, the actions will then lead the process, which then continues as an interaction between the direction and action at three levels: actual, emerging and future. This means the ‘direction’ and the ‘action’ processes are running in parallel across all three levels.

This framework focusing on ‘direction’ and ‘action’ is particularly useful for businesses in highly volatile industries, businesses at risk of disruption, entrepreneurial organisations, and any organisation that might want to go beyond the traditional strategy development process.

The core MbT Framework is basically made up of five core elements: an understanding of the world in transition (i.e., driving forces, enablers and mega-trends, and the transformation loop); the future design framework; the direction, the action; and a method to find a creative solution

Action and Results

Direction-driven workflow – toward future and results

Direction-driven workflow is an agreed-upon and designed way for the teams and leader to plan and implement the strategy. It is a management system derived from OKR technologies. OKR stands for ‘Objective and Key Results’. OKR was created by Andy Grove⁴ at Intel. The system is fixed and visualised in the form of a process, its tools and methods.  Tools are sets of templates (canvases), especially GO Model Canvas⁵, that help you design, fix and visualise your prepared concepts. Check out the following OKR best practices to get a better view of your business operations.

Direction-driven workflow is a standard of collaboration tailored to the needs and capabilities of the team. Importantly, this standard is flexible and easily modifiable. This translates into the possibility of an adaptive approach and an agile working style. The composition of the elements contained in it helps the leader and the team to prepare for the effective implementation of the strategy in the VUCA environment. These elements support not only the management of the task flow, but above all at the level of intellectual work of a conceptual nature. This type of work is necessary to create a direction and continuously refresh it. The more vulnerable the team’s work environment is, the shorter will be the prospect of planning goals and strategies, and thus there will be a need to refresh the strategy more frequently.

Direction-driven workflow captures and systematises the intellectual activities on which the future of the company depends and the ability to survive the VUCA environment. It introduces new rules to the work culture and involves preparing an appropriate approach to planning, providing feedback and evaluating results and actions to make decisions and, above all, to build a learning organisation.

Stage 1 

Flow Session. This is a workshop where the team learns about the direction-driven workflow concept and prepares its first version. The next design steps are for Zone 1 Runway, Zone 2 Feedback Loop, and Zone 3 Service. Flow Session is a workshop meeting. The design and fixation of a direction-driven workflow by one team and leader may require a 1-3 session. The wavelength caused by direction-driven workflow can range from 1-3 weeks. In the first approach, the team will need more time than in subsequent cycles, which will only serve to modify and improve the direction-driven workflow model.

Stage 2

Creo Camp. This is a series of team meetings focused on planning and finding solutions. At Creo Camp, the team uses everything they agreed to design direction-driven workflow for Zone 1, RUNWAY. The result of each Creo Camp is the goals and strategy saved using OKR technology. Creo Camp can last from 2 to 4 weeks. The more levels of management there are, the longer the planning process will be. It should start in the last month of the quarter – depending on its length, it may be the first or second week of the month.  It may be completed in the first or second week of the following quarter. Creo Camp is an event that triggers a wave of creative thinking and planning. At Creo Camp, the team and leader will define the objectives and key results (OKR) by submitting them into a coherent strategic concept. They will start looking for solutions that will then be transformed into projects supporting the achievement of the objectives.

Stage 3

Strategic Sprint. This is the stage of the action leading to the implementation of the planned strategic concept. It focuses on the implementation of tasks, monitoring and evaluation of results. What is most important at this stage is working on the basis of agreed principles. The team and the leader should first and foremost focus on achieving the planned results and, of course, solving current problems. The direction and priorities of the action are set out in the OKR and, in addition, tools to help you plan your projects. The team is precisely focused and prepared for work. During the operation, the team will carry out periodic monitoring of their activities and make the necessary adjustments required to stay on course. In each of the subsequent sprints, the team and leader will gain more and more skills and experience in addressing the challenges of the VUCA environment and following in the designated direction.

The Significance of Collaborative Intelligence in Creating Breakthroughs in TrAction

“Humans can experience great peace of mind from the feeling of union with the universe!”

We are at the beginning of the age of collaborative intelligence, since humans and smart AI-based machines have started working together.  Collaborative intelligence (CQ)⁶ is a combination of human mind (HM) (individual and collective) and artificial intelligence (AI) in different forms and at different levels. It delivers the best results by leveraging the most appropriate abilities of both sides.

The collaboration of humans with smart machines and programs creates new solutions, way beyond our imagination, leading to meaningful quality of life, and enhancement of products, services and experiences.⁷ Super-minds together with AI-based machines will be able to create ‘meta-minds’, thus leading to a ‘meta-mind society’.

“Humanity urgently needs a new direction built on a new big dream and accompanied by bold actions!”

Later, when the general AI is well developed and most of the world highly connected, a state of ‘fusion-mind’ may result. The final aim would be the development of the ‘Ω-mind’, a perfect globally connected alignment of natural and artificial intelligence.

A major achievement will be reaching the meta-mind society. The separated and the joint developments are still ahead of us. Collaborative intelligence will lead to major breakthroughs for TrAction, in the development of direction and the deployment of action, and finally in the concurrent development of both.

Implications and Conclusions

“What’s lacking is not insightful analysis, but truly bold and imaginative alternatives to the management status quo – and an army of innovators who have the stamina to reinvent the management from the ground up.”

Here are some suggestions which can help an organisation to survive and thrive in a fast-changing context:

• Create a culture of exploration
• Create an open digital platform with all information about relevant context changes accessible to all employees. Keep them always with the source, and the name of the provider.
• Encourage employees to follow contextual changes and make leadership interest visible
• Make the exploration competitive and attractive, with prizes for best contributions
• Organise regular reviews of the input and create follow-up actions and projects
• Engage students for specific exploration journeys (e.g. to explore the future of your business)
• Build an enterprise-specific network for ‘future ideas’. Involve people from the corporate eco-system to participate
• Use parallel governance – one for the actual and emerging contexts and one for the future business.
• Don’t forget to watch start-ups relevant to your industry and your business. They are an important early indicator of new developments.

Be aware! There is permanent transition on all levels. Get ready for the unexpected. People will be permanently moving:

• From one education phase to another within a lifelong education framework
• From one job to another. A job for life is the exception.
• From one geopolitical constellation to another
• Between different realities: our reality, digital reality, augmented reality, and virtual reality
• AI will be moving toward GAI

Companies will change structure and organisation according to their actual purpose. They will use collateral education and development to create organisational future orientation built through a set of practices that permit the identification and interpretation of changes in the environment and drive adequate actions to ensure long-term survival and success.

Collateral development is spreading and sharing practices and know-how upwards, downwards, and laterally to peers. It is a way of infusing practices into an organisation’s culture. It may be useful to have a direction for the actual and emerging business, as well as one for the future business.

About the Authors

Mario Raich is a Swiss futurist, book author and global management consultant. He Mario Raich is a Swiss futurist, book author and global management consultant. He was a Senior Executive in several global financial organisations, and Invited Professor to some leading business schools like ESADE (Barcelona). He is the co-founder and Chairman of e-Merit Academy (www.emeritacademy.com), and Managing Director for the Innovation Services at Frei+Raich Ltd. in Zurich. In addition he is a member of the advisory board of the Global Future of Work Foundation in Barcelona. Currently he is researching the impact of Cyber-Reality and Artificial Intelligence on society, education, business and work.

Tomasz Krzemiński – Business Designer, consultant, trainer. Has implemented dozens of projects on strategy improvement in various industries, including banks,  manufacturing companies, trading companies, and insurance.  Author of innovative management methods and tools:  GO Model Canvas, Stragiler, Extreme Strategy Design, Strategic Workflow Design. Have participated in the Polish-Swiss Government Project concerning the development of entrepreneurship. More, in:  https://www.xellect.com

Claudio Cisullo is a Swiss-based serial entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder and Chairman of CC Trust, a family office invested across the biotech, leisure, pharmaceuticals, professional services, real estate and technology sectors. Among his most recent investment is Chain IQ Group, a globally active provider of procurements services.

Simon L. Dolan is currently the president of the Global Future of Work Foundation (www.globalfutureofwork.com ). He used to be the Future of Work Chair at ESADE Business School in Barcelona, and before that he taught for many years at McGill and Montreal Universities (Canada), Boston and University of Colorado (U.S.). He is a prolific author with over 75 books on themes connected with managing people, culture reengineering, values and coaching.  His full c.v. can be seen at: www.simondolan.com

Bonnie A. Richley is the Co-Founder and Chief Design and Innovation Officer for Interaction Science, LLC. She previously was an Associate Professor and Chair/Program Director for the Department of Business and Entrepreneurship at Chatham University, the AVP of HR and Asst Professor at Case Western Reserve University. Her work involves positive organization development with expertise in Appreciative Inquiry; executive coaching as a trainer and master coach; and adult learning theories and competency development.

 

References

• Hamel, G. (2007). The Future of Management.
• VUCA is “Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous.
• Beyond Collaborative Intelligence we can see a Meta-Mind Society Surfacing and we can dream about of a Ω-Mind, Mario Raich, Dave Ulrich, Simon L. Dolan, Claudio Cisullo, Bonnie Richley, The European Business Review, September-October 2019
• Grove, Andrew (1983). High Output Management.
• Source: https://www.gomodelcanvas.pl
• Collaborative intelligence, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_intelligence  Christopher Isak, What is Collaborative Intelligence? https://techacute.com/what-is-collaborative-intelligence/
• Beyond Collaborative Intelligence we can see a Meta-Mind Society Surfacing and we can dream about of a Ω-Mind, Mario Raich, Dave Ulrich, Simon L. Dolan, Claudio Cisullo, Bonnie Richley, The European Business Review, September-October 2019.
• Collaborative intelligence, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_intelligence
• Forbes (2018) The Why Of Work: Purpose And Meaning Really Do Matter (https://www.forbes.com/sites/rodgerdeanduncan/2018/09/11/the-why-of-work-purpose-and-meaning-really-do-matter/#5487798368e1 )
• Grove, Andrew (1983). High Output                                     Management. Random House.
• Hamel, G. (2007). The Future of Management. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
• Isak, C. (2015). What is Collaborative Intelligence? https://techacute.com/what-is-collaborative-intelligence/
• Krzeminski, T. Performance Management. Wsparcie w realizacji celów i strategii. SZKOLENIA I WDROŻENIA. www.Xellect.com
• Lingham, T., & Richley, B.A. (2018) High-Impact Engagement: A two-phase approach for individual and team development. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse Publishers.
• Lingham, T. & Richley, B.A. (2015). Teamwork: High Impact Teams. In S.M. Dahlgaard-Park (Ed.). International Encyclopedia of Service and Quality (pp. 800-807). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Markides, C. (2004). What is Strategy and How Do You Know If You Have One? Business Strategy Review,
  15(2): 5-12.
• Nestik, T. Organizational future orientation: a socio-psychological approach, •  3^rd Business systems Laboratory International Symposium (3^rd Business systems Laboratory International Symposium, Perugia, January 21-23, 2015. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321997202_Organizational_future_orientation_a_socio-psychological_approach
• O’Reilly, T. (2017). WTF: What’s the future and why it’s up to us. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers.
• Raich, M., Dolan, S.L., Ulrich, D., & Cisullo, C. (2018). Insights into the Transformation of Business
• in the Cyber-Age, The European Business Review, March – April. https://www.europeanbusinessreview.com/insights-into-the-transformation-of-business-in-the-cyber-age/
• Raich, M., Dolan, S.L., Ulrich, D., & Cisullo, C. (2020) The Cyber-Organization and the new World of Work: Advocating a twin governance and collaborative intelligence solution for overcoming a constant disruptive business context; The European Business Review March – April 2020
• Raich, M., Dolan, S.L., Ulrich, D., & Cisullo, C. (2017). Gloom vs. Bloom of the Future of Work: Can We Chart A Positive Roadmap? The European Business Review September – October 2017
• Raich M., Eisler R., Dolan S.L.  (2014)  Cyberness: The Future Reinvented).  AMAZON.
• Raich, M., Ulrich, D., Dolan, S.L., & Cisullo, C. “Focus on Human Uniqueness in the Cyber-Age.” In preparation (forthcoming).
• Raich, M., Ulrich, D., Dolan, S.L., & Cisullo, C., Richley, B.A. (2019). Beyond Collaborative Intelligence we can see a Meta-Mind Society Surfacing and we can dream about of a Ω-Mind. The European Business Review, September-October.
• Richley, B.A. (2009). A theory of socio-business diffusion: Understanding the influence of Mondragon Corporacion (Cooperativa) as a positive force for change at the intersection of business and society.  Case Western Reserve University Document. Cleveland, Ohio.
• Richley, B.A., & Lingham, T. (Forthcoming, 2020). Enhancing Self- and Other- awareness: Assessing adaptability, innovation, and execution. Kindai Management Review. 
• Surbhi, S. (2016). Difference Between Push and Pull Strategy. https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-push-and-pull-strategy.html