How important is creative resilience?
The 15th Global Peter Drucker Forum in Vienna took place November 30th to December 1st 2023. It was for Puk and Erik their fourth visit to the conference, and for Thea her first. We went there to get inspired by great thinkers, top leaders and the few practitioners that where speaking at the forum.
“Have we focused enough on resilience to be prepared for what might come?”, as Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. SHRM-SCP President and CEO, SHRM, said in the very first panel debate.
With the theme ‘Creative Resilience, Leading in an age of Discontinuity’ we were anticipating input on all four of the key elements: Being creative, having resilience, leading, and living in discontinuity.
This blog post captures the moments that stood out, made us stop – and think.
Let’s explore what we took home
By Puk Duerlund Falkenberg, Erik Korsvik Østergaard and Thea Tolstrup Bramming
2nd of December 2023
Moments
On verifying or falsifying the existence of the New Ways of Working-movement
“The hierarchical model is [unfortunately] still very dominating; maybe the only one in the minds of leaders and business schools professors”
“To be big on the outside, you have to be small on the inside”
Michele Zanini, Co-founder, Management Lab
“100% allocation makes pockets of progressiveness work”
“The future of work is fluid jobs, fluid organizations”
“Ask for volunteers. If no-one raises their hands, your project will not live”
Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez Visiting Professor at Duke CE, IE,Solvay, Vlerick, Ecole de Ponts
“If you step back and look at the organization, it might look like you’re a middle manager … but once you start FEELING like a middle manager, you know it’s wrong.”
Maria Norrman Global Chief of Staff, EF Education First & Chief of EF Pro Cycling Team
“There is a trade-off from organizing decentralized. We have ownership and drive over synergy and operational efficiency”
Yannick Fierling CEO, Haier Europe
“Sometimes you have to be a grown-up to make the tradeoffs that it takes”
Maria Norrman Global Chief of Staff, EF Education First & Chief of EF Pro Cycling Team
On life and living
“You have one life. Live it gloriously”
“The shadow side of our strength can lead to failure. Be aware, and from this build resilience to transcend and transform your failures.”
Niren Chaudhary Chairman of the Board, Panera Brands
“To rally around [something] our philosophies need to be aligned too”
Anjana Mistry Chief Financial & Operations Officer, Emergn
“Gen Z is not that different as everyone says. You’ve all been 17 years old once. Just treat us as humans.”
Sophie Kaitlin Drescher, high school student and Austria’s youngest moderator
Personal reflections
Puk reflects: I’m wondering why the Forum book practitioners that often are leading some kind of Future of Work and match them with people from academia that most often are old school thinkers … and then no debate is created. Do they still agree? Or are we afraid of the friction?
Erik reflects: I’m glad that “doing good for society” was mentioned, albeit too few times. “Sense and respond” was similarly mentioned. I would love to have more new voices present on the stages, to put even more focus on the movements – and to create some useful friction.
Thea reflects: It was very inspiring to meet, for me, unknown large-scales organizations like Korean Toss and EF Education First operating decentralized. I hope that more research will be done in the space in order for universities and business schools to catch up on the trend and begin educating future talent on new (mental) models for our organizations.
Our major take-homes
Creative resilience is needed. ‘Creative’ in the sense of being innovative and experimenting with new operating models, structures, and mechanisms. ‘Resilience’ to be a part of this changing and complex world.
We took two major things with us:
- Both those sessions that challenged us and those that confirmed us gave us energy
- There is still work to be done
The theme next year is “The Next Management”.
Will we be back ? Yes! We’re not done!
Thea Tolstrup Bramming, Puk Duerlund Falkenberg, Erik Korsvik Østergaard
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