Future Intelligent Leadership Podcast: Exploring Foresight and Leadership for an AI-Augmented World

In todays episode of the Futures Intelligent Leadership Flowcast I am joined by John Sweeney in Kazazstan and Philippe Guichard in Australia.

John is an assistant professor of futures and foresight at Narxoz University in Almaty Kazakstan and Director at the Qazaq Research Institute for Futures Studies and a Foresight advisor for Interpol. John has organized, managed, and facilitated workshops and seminars, multi-stakeholder projects, and foresight gaming systems in both the public and private sector in over 45 countries in around the world.

Philippe Guichard is the founder and creative director at D2 Design and Development. He is an Award-winning international industrial designer with over 20 years of industrial and product design experience. He is also a TED x speaker and presented on the topic “Re-designing our world. Small Changes = Big impact.”

Todays dialogue seemed to focus in on the importance of the inner narrative and how that shapes lens and values through which leaders see the future. One point that John makes was in reference to a study that demonstrated how the narrative and metaphor frames choices and future possibilities.

In the study titled "Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning" (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016782), for half of the participants, crime was metaphorically described as a beast preying on the city, and for the other half as a virus infecting the city. The results revealed that metaphors systematically influenced how people proposed solving a cities crime problem. When crime was framed metaphorically as a virus, participants proposed investigating the root causes and treating the problem by enacting social reform to inoculate the community, with emphasis on eradicating poverty and improving education. When crime was framed metaphorically as a beast, participants proposed catching and jailing criminals and enacting harsher enforcement laws.

In the dialogue John and Philippe also discussed the importance of self awareness for foresight, creating safe spaces to experiment through play and creativity, why command and control no longer works, the importance of collaboration for future leaders, and why foresight needs to be part of a companies hygiene.

Listen and Enjoy.
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In this episode I am joined by Sonja Rasula in California and Dr. Claire Nelson in Jamaica.

Sonja is the founder of Unique Markets; an innovative, modern pop-up marketplaces for small business owners. It has taken place around the United States: Los Angeles, San Francisco, NYC, and Austin for example. Fashion mogul Eileen Fisher named Sonja '1 of 30 Women Entrepreneurs Changing the World', and Los Angeles Magazine awarded her 1 of 10 of LA's Most Inspiring Women. I First met Sonja while presenting my work at her event the Unique Camp. During Camp, small business owners spend 4 days in a digital free environment, while exploring their creativity, business, and human-to-human connection.
Claire is the the Chief Ideation Leader at the Futures Forum; a strategic foresight and sustainability engineering consultancy. She is also the founder and president of institute of Caribbean studies. She is a Key note speaker, presenting on the future in general and specifically on human rights and human flourishing. I met Claire while presenting at the World Futures Society Federation Conference in Mexico.

Today’s episode highlights the importance of individuals taking small steps towards a shared vision of the future. But also reveals the challenges of connection and confidence that individuals experience while taking actions. Leaders can be an example for others and inspire others to see how their individual action is significant, locally and globally.

I am reminded of my time working with the non-profit Kanu Hawaii. The mission of Kanu Hawaii is to empower people to build more environmentally sustainable, compassionate, and resilient communities rooted in personal commitments to change.
What this looks like in practice is people make small commitments formulated into “I WILL” statements. For example, “I will eating more locally grown food”, “I will connect my neighbors”, “I will ride my bike to work”, or “I will bring my own bag to the market.” Kanu Hawaii would track these small commitments to change, calculate their individual impact over time and then calculate the larger impact when thousands of people took the same action together.

Kanu Hawaii and this dialogue is a simple reminder that futures build inertia and moment through small decisions and daily human actions....When individuals take collective action towards a transparent shared vision, the desired future is more likely to emerge.

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In this inaugural episode, host Tyler Mongan shares background on the Futures Intelligent Leadership Flowcast and what you can expect in future episodes.
71% of organizations admit their leaders are not prepared for the future (Brandonhall State of Leadership Survey - 2015) and many organizations claim that current leadership training programs are not meeting the needs of their clients (Center for Creative Leadership: Future Trends in Leadership Development - 2014). What are we doing to train and prepare leadership for the future? How can leadership become more future intelligent? Is there a neuroscience-based approach to leadership that can help? Listen to find out more.

Episode References:

1. Brandonhall State of Leadership Survey (2015): www.brandonhall.com

2. Center for Creative Leadership: Future Trends in Leadership Development - White Paper (2014).

3. Baars, Bernard J. (1988), A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press)

4. Childre, Doc & Howard Martin, Deborah Rozman, Rollin McCraty (2016). Heart Intelligence: Connecting with the Intuitive Guidance of the Heart. U.S.A.: Waterfront Press. See also: Pearsall, Paul (1999). The Heart's Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy. U.S.A. Broadway Books

5. Jing Jiang, Chuansheng Chen, Bohan Dai, Guang Shi, Guosheng Ding, Li Liu, and Chunming Lu, Leader emergence through interpersonal neural synchronization, PNAS April 7, 2015. 112 (14) 4274-4279;

Todays guest on the Futures Intelligent Leadership Flowcast are Paul Gibbons and Adam Pantanowitz

About Paul Gibbons
Paul is a keynote speaker and specialist in leading change, business strategy, and helping businesses navigate ethical challenges (AI, automation, discrimination, harassment, digital privacy, international competition, and fraud). He is a professor at the university of Denver and His current project is a four book series called Leading Change in the Digital Age. He just released the second book in the series called “Impact” which focuses on culture and mindset for digital transformation and the future of work. Interestingly, Paul and I share a background in graduate school studies in both biomedicine and philosophy.

About Adam Pantanowitz
Adam is an Innovator and researcher in technology (specifically in startups, financial & biomedical industries) he draws on a variety of skills from engineering, computing & machine learning to solve problems. He is a seasoned startup executive and currently a lecturer at University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and a faculty member at singularity university.

About this episode
What I really like about this episode is it sets the tone for the The Futures Intelligent Leadership Flowcast. We have two big thinkers discussing a variety of current and future leadership relevant issue that require us to expand the scope of our horizons and challenges leaderships, as Paul says int he dialogue, to look beyond the next quarter and look into the next quarter century.

If you are interested in Agility and Resilience in Rapid Change, Upgraded Cognition, Signal to noise ratios, Technology Access Gaps, and exploring the human competitive advantage, then you will enjoy this episode. Enjoy.

EPISODE 11 of the Futures Intelligent Leadership Flowcast
I am really excited to share this episode with you, because I am joined by two scientist...and am I reminded of my early days in college research parasitic Protozoa and DNA binding behavior within different contexts.

What is interesting is the two guest are many years apart. We have Dr. Jim Giordano who well into his career as a professor and neuroscientist, and we have Gabe Fernandez-Bueno, who is just getting started in his career as a clinical research scientist. So we have perspectives on leadership, not only from the mind of scientists, but also from the perspective of different generations. I think you will find the dialogue very insightful and provide a new lens from understanding what it means to be a leader.

DR JAMES GIORDANO
Jim is a Neuroscientist and neuroethicist focusing upon mechanisms and treatment of neuropsychiatric spectrum disorders, and neuroethical issues generated by brain science and its applications in medicine, public life, and military intelligence and warfare. He is a Professor in the Department of neurology and biochemistry and chief of the neuroethics studies program At Georgetown university.

Gabe Fernandez-Bueno, PhD
Gabe is currently a Clinical research scientist at the translational research Institute for metabolism and diabetes. He is a multidisciplinary scientist with an interest in aiding the advancement of medicine to understand the intricate cellular mechanisms at play during metabolic and autoimmune disease pathogenesis. His focus is on creating the next generation of prevention techniques, therapeutic modalities, health services, and medical devices.

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
One thing I really enjoyed in the dialogue was Jim’s and Gabe’s continual reference to philosophical thought. It helps to remind us that philosophical thought is often at the root of scientific theory and research.

In the dialogue we discuss the Cognitive bases of leader, Participatory leadership and how that also correlates with human cell biology, the importance of the three vistas of capability in the future, How an embodied and embedded brain impacts decision making, Why the ooda loop is really the doodac loop, How our biology is expressed through relationships and responds through psychology, Why mitochondria is important for understanding leadership function and biological energetics, Why understanding causation and disposition are required to complete the story of science, and finally, how initial conditions shape a system and how that impacts the context of leadership.

Lets listen
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