By Thornton May
Futurist, Senior Advisor with GP, Executive Director & Dean - IT Leadership Academy

Anthropologists love stories. Storytelling is what we humans do. It was what our various Homo precursors did when huddled around pre-agricultural age campfires and it is what modern humans now do illuminated by the glow of the many screens which define, inform, and enrich our digitally-surrounded lives.... Read more

By Tim Mead
Managing Director - Gustin Partners

“You need to find us a new sales leader.”

If Gustin Partners responded in the affirmative every time one of us heard this imperative through the years, the firm would have recruited a significantly greater number of revenue-generators.

However, in the process, the firm would have done a great disservice to many of its clients.

Why?
... Read more

By Thornton May
Futurist, Senior Advisor with GP, Executive Director & Dean - IT Leadership Academy

On October 28, 1980, while debating President Jimmy Carter, then candidate Ronald Reagan asked:

"Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls, will stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself: ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’"

Every leader every day has to ask himself or herself the question, “Is my organization or my people or am I more or less confused than I was yesterday?”... Read more

By Thornton May
Futurist, Senior Advisor with GP, Executive Director & Dean - IT Leadership Academy

Paul Krugman, economics professor at Princeton University, Op-Ed columnist at the New York Times and winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for economics, counsels key policy makers that, “being a grown-up means planning for the future.” I recently queried a set of thought leaders asking, “In today’s digitally disrupted world, what exactly does/what should ‘planning for the future’ look like?”... Read more

Dennis Flanagan, long-time editor of Scientific American, tells of once meeting the famous New Yorker movie critic, Pauline Kael. After introducing themselves, Ms. Kael admitted to Flanagan that she knew “absolutely nothing” about science. Flanagan responded: “Whatever became of the idea that an educated person is supposed to know a little something about everything?"

This bygone tale of fourth-estate squabbling reminds me how much the world has changed. Today, every executive not only needs to know “a little something” about information technology – he or, increasingly, she needs to play an energetic and informed role in making sure that full value is extracted from the some $3.7 billion dollars we spend annually for information technology.
... Read more

In just about every city in America you will be able to find, if you look hard enough, a comic book store. And in that comic book store, if you ask, you will be directed to the Batman section. Batman, of course being unique among superheroes in that he is “just” a human being1 – a hyper-focused human being able to do amazing things. In a similar manner I believe that in every major organization focused on designing differentiated customer experiences today you will find a section of the executive mind [both individual and collective] influenced by Steve Jobs and the Apple adventure. We frequently forget that Mr. Jobs too was “just” a human being. And that we, too, can do extraordinary things.

Cartographers of the mental landscape of business will confirm that independent of the products and services created by his organizational legacy, Apple Inc., Steve Jobs—the legend, the lore, the rich and seemingly inexhaustible source of lessons—was and remains a cottage industry of sorts. Guy Kawasaki has, for over two decades now, parlayed his time “in the presence of Steve” into a lucrative career on the rubber-chicken circuit. Carmine Gallo ably assists wanna-be moguls in perfecting their ability to craft and deliver a “Steve-like” presentation. Just about every national business periodical, most top-ranked business schools and a significant subset of name-brand consultancies devote significant attention to enumerating what we might learn from Steve Jobs.... Read more

By Thornton May
Futurist, Senior Advisor with GP, Executive Director & Dean - IT Leadership Academy

Every age, era and epoch has a feel to it.

Many journalists, analysts and academics attempt to capture this zeitgeist in an aphorism worthy of a bumper sticker. In the pre-bust dot.com era the mantra frequently heard at the top of the house was “Don’t be Amazoned, ” transforming the iconic company of that age into a verb. Fast forward to the age we just left where for many the chant was “Do more with less.” Judging from interviews and workshops I recently conducted with hundreds of executives, indicates that the mandate for our time might well be:

“Create value with data.”

A defining reality of the age we live in is increased digitization. Just about everything in the business world has become or is well on its way to becoming “machine readable.” This has the knock-on effect of making everything in business “searchable” and of increasingly greater impact subject to analysis. This changes how we must lead and the skills we must cultivate and celebrate in the modern enterprise.... Read more

By Thornton May
Futurist, Senior Advisor with GP, Executive Director & Dean - IT Leadership Academy

In my previous blog post I shared the general consensus that the state of leadership in enterprises today – just about all enterprises – was not good. Workshops conducted with five hundred plus executives at five universities concluded that “the world has changed” and put forth the hypothesis that this change “mandates a new kind of leader.” This hypothesis begs the question – what kind of leader does this changed environment require?

Working with David Weinberger [author of Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room is the Room and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School] I concluded that “digitization has transformed knowledge.” I believe that the transformation of knowledge requires us to re-frame how we think about leadership.... Read more

By Tim Mead, Managing Director, Gustin Partners

Two of the best leaders for whom I have worked in the past made no secret of the sources of their success in building substantial businesses. One called it a framework of excellence, the other core values.  In both cases, what they really created were mini-operating manuals for their managers and employees—ones that could be internalized, accessible at any time and in any situation.  Their very existence allowed for front-line decision making, rarely second guessed and for an efficient management/overhead structure. Adherence to the manuals usually produced desired results—both at a... Read more

by Thornton May
Futurist, Senior Advisor with GP, Executive Director & Dean - IT Leadership Academy

My academic colleagues tell me I am a “cognitive scientist operating as a future-focused ‘in-the-field’ anthropologist studying ‘tribal’ behaviors in modern organizations related to creating value.”

My friends in the media shorten this to the horsey-ducky simple:  “Thornton is an empirical futurist.”

What I do is collect data about how executives think and how organizations prepare for the future. This is not as esoteric, abstract or impractical an exercise as real CEOs with real quarterly targets might initially think.  Otherwise... Read more