Aviv’s Blog
To Lead is to Transform
My FORBES interview on leadership, conversation, and dynamic companies
Many of you know that I have invested a lot of time and thought into my recent book, Create New Futures: How Leaders Produce Breakthroughs and Transform the World Through Conversation. This book distills many of my hard won lessons in leadership, business, and relationships into what I hope is an engaging read. While I have not seen the need for a much hyped book tour (I...
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The Global Business Context: A Davos CEO Panel
Here are key themes from the Davos panel about the strategic, organizational and operational issues that are reshaping how businesses operate worldwide. The CEOs on the panel included: • John T. Chambers, Cisco • Thomas Enders, Airbus • Klaus Kleinfeld, Alcoa • Duncan Niederauer, NYSE Euronext • Ferit F. Sahenk, Dogus Group • Patricia A. Woertz, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) • Hans-Paul Bürkner, The Boston...
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New Year. New Hope. New Action.
Hope springs eternal. It’s 1.1.11. I am looking at pictures from around the world. People in all places are celebrating their hopes for the New Year. The facial expressions in Sidney Australia, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, Tokyo Japan, Lahore Pakistan, Moscow Russia, Vilnius Lithuania, Warsaw Poland, Paris France and New York are the same. Hope. Exhilaration. Anticipation. A sense of new unknown possibility. The reflex and...
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The 2020 Questions – Twenty Two Questions For A Threshold Decade
“What will this next decade be like?” We asked at a recent future-think-tank meeting. It quickly became clear we are looking at a Threshold Decade. Why is the run up to 2020 a threshold decade? Our think-tank articulated key big questions that converge in an unprecedented way. Consider that during the coming decade, most of these will be addressed and possibly answered in one fashion...
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The Future Is Not Reasonable
The future is not reasonable. How CAN it be? Your reasons are based in what you know and what you understand. The future is not. What is emerging now is not just beyond your reason. It’s beyond reason. The age of reason is over. Sense-making can no longer be based on what you know. But what can it be based on? In 2020 at least...
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The Strategy Imperative
Rethink your mission and strategic objectives: When the unthinkable is the new norm and the unpredictable is inevitable, the strategy imperative is not in discovering “how to respond” and “what to do”. It is in articulating what capabilities need to be developed to meet the uncertainties and requirements of these alternative futures. © Aviv Shahar
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A New Fifth Day
In 2020, about a quarter of the workforce in the Western world will be working a four day work week. Technological breakthroughs, automation, increased productivity and reset of societal values will accelerate the trend, which is already gaining momentum. The important concept that will emerge in the new 2020 paradigm will be a New Fifth Day. After working for four days for your company, and...
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The Future Is Here
Abraham Lincoln is known to have said that “the best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.” That was true back then. Now, the future arrives one tsunami after another, continuously, without a pause. You are immersed in the future now. Your job is more than just to cope with it. You are trying to decipher and understand...
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Prepare For The Future – 10 Benefits
Anticipating the future has been a major preoccupation for people from the beginning of time. Creating scenarios as a way to anticipate the future has been popularized in recent decades. We engage in developing scenarios to increase awareness about possible outcomes and to understand the potential costs, benefits and consequences of any decision or action we may take. In a business context, scenario-based planning is...
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Do You See Constellations Where Others See Stars – The Kaleidoscoping Art
Excerpt from the Fourth Emerald Key: Radical growth – the Learn-ability leverage Kaleidoscoping is the practice and capacity to recognize relationships and patterns. You practice active inquiry that seeks to understand the core principles that are the basis of all systems. Kaleidoscoping is the ability to compare and correlate seemingly unrelated fields and apply concepts from one to the other. For example, using the terminology...
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