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Davos Debrief: In Resilience We Trust

“What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power,” novelist Michael Ondaatje writes in The Cat’s Table, and it was a strange coincidence that I came across this enigmatic line on the descent down from Davos, the Swiss ski resort that had just convened some of the world’s most powerful men and women for the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Power circles

The paradox of Davos is that it is both highly public and highly secretive. Relationships and business transactions are on show, as much as they are taking place in back room meetings and private encounters on the peripheries, far away from the glitz and glamour and where the buzzing doesn’t need buzzwords. Davos is the great equalizer and the great divider at the same time. The hierarchies are both formal and explicit (manifest by the color of your badge), as well as situational and subtle, with small smart mobs forming around the most sought-after, both on- and offsite (“one minute you’re in, the next you’re out”), in emotional roller coaster, funicular, and shuttle rides between recognition and rejection, belonging and alienation.

I came for the second year, and for the second year I was badge-less, attending as a member of my boss’s, Doreen Lorenzo, entourage (full disclosure: I also serve on the Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Values). I observed the program from the sidelines, with the humble but notable privilege of being able to partake in many of the social functions. The only way to bridge the inevitable gulf that opened at the beginning of each encounter, each conversation, was with a condensed version of “my story,” because, unlike that of regular attendees, it wasn’t printed in large letters on a white badge that would have instantly legitimized my identity and affiliation. But I suspect I wasn’t the only one feeling vulnerable. Everyone does in a setting like this, and only those who feel at ease with high levels of social discomfort and fully open up to the sway of serendipity will experience the most meaningful “Davos moments.”

Of which there were many, both fleeting and lasting – from private dinners on the Schatzalp, a mountain top that allegedly inspired Thomas Mann’s famed ‘bildungsroman’ The Magic Mountain; to adventurous bus rides with militant skiers and mildly tolerant locals; and silent periods of total exhaustion, shared with dozens of strangers, leaning over laptops in collaborative pop-up office spaces along the ‘Promenade’ (the village’s main street that serves as a catwalk for all of the Davos cast and colorful characters).

Davos is full of stories, of course; it is a multi-layered conversation desperately trying to keep pace with the constantly evolving memes and shapes of our economies and societies, relying on a lingua franca that is dominated by technology and management jargon, as well as a stubborn belief in rationality and in balanced multi-stakeholder solutions. Only recently has it broadened its vernacular and vocabulary to include the language of art (heart), and to juxtapose our biggest societal challenges with a more personal quest for meaning, understanding that the two are as interwoven as the circles of power in Davos.

Magic mountains

While the session titles of the Annual Meeting program hinted at these greater philosophical questions, they were only the tips of the icebergs. Yet in the best case, when the fault lines from business, technology, science, politics, religion, and culture converged, they revealed another sort of “magic mountain,” simultaneously elusive and concrete, rich with ambiguity and friction. The best sessions created spaces where avant-garde thinking was rooted in popular demand, elevation balanced with grassroots concerns, and profound knowledge was paired with an unshaken and perhaps naïve belief in “betterness” (Umair Haque) and in positive transformation.

Major themes that emerged during the week were those of the “circular economy” and “resilience,” the latter of which had inspired this year’s Annual Meeting’s theme of “Resilient Dynamism”. The ‘circular economy’ seeks to decouple growth from resource constraints by introducing reverse logistics and heightened consumer awareness. It is not a new concept, but due to the mysterious moods of the Zeitgeist and the vocal presence of evangelists such as Ellen McArthur of the Ellen McArthur Foundation, it garnered significant traction in Davos as a new economic innovation for the business mainstream.

Somewhat related, the rise of “resilience” (propelled by widespread acclaim for Andrew Zolli’s and Ann Marie Healey’s book of the same title, whose release uncannily coincided with Hurricane Sandy and therefore immediately received a lot of media play), describes a set of alternative, systemic ways of rebounding to the whim of forces beyond our control. It signifies a new school of economic thinking that favors nimble, highly adaptive systems over more robust, ‘sustainable’ ones, in a response to irrationalities and externalities that elude traditional categories of strategic planning and management. These systems, according to the economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amount to a situation of “anti-fragility,” tolerating just enough inherent fragility to quickly recover from “black swans”, or highly improbable external disruptions. In a similar vein, Said business school professor Rafael Ramirez advocated a more “pluralistic” notion of strategy (reminiscent of Stuart Evans’ model of “super-flexibility” that views strategy as a portfolio of ever-changing planes and gears).

Moreover, among many other topics, there were panels on China’s soft power, on meditation, decision-making, “mindfulness,” “transformative art,” “beliefs that bond,” the “culture of economics,” smart cities, “digital norms”, the “art of leadership,” the “happiness factor,” the “moral economy,” and “objects of culture.” There was also a wonderfully optimistic session on the future of online education that impressed on the audience that we are indeed witnessing a revolution – the impetus is radical, the outcome is unclear. The three big “revolutionaries” in this space – Coursera, Udacity, and edX – were represented, but the true star of the panel was 12-year old Pakistani girl Khadija Niazi, who was interviewed by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and shared how online classes on Udacity had changed her life.

Civil society and "beautiful organizations"

The broad variety of issues illustrates the Forum’s holistic view of our global economies, understanding them not only as financial markets but as arenas for sympathetic interactions that foster the very social fabric of our societies. This mindset was further bolstered by the ostentatious inclusion of additional and often marginalized constituents: While there were still only 17% female participants (the same quota as in 2011), women leaders such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, and IMF managing director Christine Lagarde counted as the most distinctive voices in the program. The Forum’s Young Global Leaders (leaders under 40) and Global Shapers (leaders under 30) communities were strongly involved in the program (encouragingly, 50% of them are women). And the civil society communities all played a prominent role – for good reason. PR firm Edelman’s 2013 edition of its influential Trust Barometer that surveyed more than 31,000 respondents in 26 markets around the world, released during Davos, indicated that civil society actors enjoy higher trust levels than business and politics when it comes to tackling some of society’s most pressing challenges. NGOs, labor organizations, faith groups, and a range of other emerging actors discussed a comprehensive report on “The Future Role of Civil Society” that the Forum presented in Davos; and the Arts communities, represented by such diverse figures as John Maeda (Rhode Island School of Design), Paulo Coelho, and Eric Whitacre, among others, countered economic logic with creativity and intuition.

With business leaders such as GE’S Beth Comstock they explored how companies can incorporate the arts in their leadership and decision-making frameworks, and whether our economies should expand their definitions of value-creation not just by categories of prosperity, happiness, and well-being (all of which legitimate concerns and arguably viable indicators of economic progress, and as such popular topics in Davos), but also those of aesthetics and transcendence. In this vein, Rafael Ramirez suggested we build “attractive organizations” that create beauty, and proposed an “aesthetical view of management” that is based on Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, which is often translated as “practical wisdom.” He asked civil society organizations, in particular, to create positive visions rather than merely providing efficient solutions to problems, and he called upon them to serve as arbiters of meaning.

Meaning 

Apropos meaning. Emerging as a major theme at Davos, it was mentioned by CEOs, NGO and religious leaders, and academia throughout the five-day program – in sessions on values, civil society, and faith. Elif Şafak, the Turkish bestseller author, made a passionate case for ambiguity and doubt to avoid “living in a polarized world.” She heralded the power of the “grey zone” and suggested we add more commas to our identities (“I am a mother, I am a Christian, I love traveling, etc.”) instead of exclamation marks (“I am a Christian!”). Microfinance pioneer and Nobel prize laureate Muhammad Yunus reminded the audience that education must always include an education of the heart, an education sentimentale, and that rather than just acquiring new skills in pursuit of a career, we ought to learn to grow our capacities as human beings in pursuit of a common purpose, or “the meaning of life.”

It is perhaps no surprise that meaning and spirituality enjoyed such prominence this year in Davos, against the backdrop of a fragmented connected age so volatile that it seems to even lack the one historic watershed moment, the one crisis to agree on (as was the case in previous Davos meetings). In uncertain times, all we have is faith. Both religion and the “faith of the faithless,” the non-institutional spirituality, can serve as major individual and societal transformative forces with the capacity to combine private and public lives. Several panels viewed spirituality as part of our human dignity and demanded we reconcile our predominantly rational systems of politics, science, and business with a “sense of wonder” and a new appreciation of “the divine” in order to improve the state of our world. If spirituality imbues respect for “the other,” empathy, and mutual understanding, then it can indeed help foster our economies’ greatest resource in the connected age – collaboration.

Gianpiero Petriglieri, associate professor of organizational behavior at business school INSEAD and chair of the Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership, consequently spoke in religious terms when he recommended we embrace “devotion” over the much gushed-about “passion.” Devotion stands for a lasting commitment to a conviction, cause, or belief that is less transient in nature and more grounded in a sense of identity and belonging.

And indeed: “What kind of a person do I want to be?” asked theologian Fr. Christopher Jamison in an Open Forum session on “Is Religion Outdated in the 21st Century?” – it will remain the main question for each of the over 2,500 official attendees, the assembled young and seasoned global leaders, far beyond Davos. Constantly reflecting on it may warrant that we follow these leaders, the so-called “Davos Men and Women,” not only to the next management paradigm or the ups and downs of (ir)rational exuberance, but to the creation of a global economy that is resiliently human and engages our complete selves, with head, hand, and heart.

It makes sense then that an artist, the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho, was the most retweeted attendee, and in one of his tweets he truly nailed the overall sentiment with practical wisdom: “Davos: either too hot (indoor) or too cold (outside). Like love.”

Image credit: Forumblog

TEDGlobal 2012: Out in the Open

“All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone,” the 17th century philosopher Pascal famously said. Four centuries later, however, research asserts a direct correlation between openness and happiness. It turns out man is a social animal, after all. “Openness is the freedom to be one’s self,” one self-help blog states, representative of common belief. I concur. In my life, openness has been a prerequisite for almost anything good happening to me – from moving to the US to meeting my wife to, most recently and fittingly, speaking at a TED conference focused on the theme of “Radical Openness.”

The talk I gave at TED University (TED U), the pre-program to the TEDGlobal conference a month ago in Edinburgh, was based on an article called “Openness: Designing for the Loss of Control” that I had written two years ago. From open-source to open innovation to open leadership, comfort levels and standards around openness have significantly changed since then, so that I had to rethink and overhaul my content.

Many organizations have come to realize that embracing openness is key for cooperation as an effective defense mechanism in the reputation markets. But not only that: Openness is now also recognized as a main driver of collaborative value-creation. Later in the conference, on the TEDGlobal main stage, Rachel Botsman, one of the most popular advocates for the business models of ‘Collaborative Consumption’ (taken to market by start-ups from Skillshare to Task Rabbit) heralded reputation as the new capital in the 21st century. Openness, in her eyes, serves as the foundational attribute of the ‘share economy’ in which resources are pooled and leveraged collectively for greater ‘social’ value – based on reputation and trust.

I must have practiced the opening lines of my TED U talk at least 200 times. I gave my talk – to my wife, my two year old, my colleagues (very special thanks and eternal gratitude to Till Grusche!), and mostly just to myself - at airport lounges, in the shower, in the car, on airplanes, during strolls, for weeks and weeks, until my body had internalized every single word and I could simply focus on the performance, on creating a connection with the audience by intonating the non-verbal (for more insights into the psyche of a TED talker and the preparation rituals, read this recent New Yorker piece).

I was the first speaker on the second day of TED U. After waiting for 20 minutes backstage, it was time, and a friendly staff member pushed me on stage, as is the custom. It was a not-so-subtle nudge to now open up and accept that I needed to embrace my own vulnerability in the limelight of the TED stage. The comfort of strangers is not only a refuge, I thought afterwards, but a necessary force towards initiation. He who meets strangers who push him out into the world is a lucky person.

Openness is a function of time and space, and the economy of a TED talk is a stark reminder that intensity does not necessarily correlate with density. In other words, leaving things open, creating open, uncharted space, is an essential luxury when it comes to making meaning. It is stunning how much content you can condense into a six minute talk (the format of TED U). What you decide to exclude is as important as what you decide to include, to paraphrase Chris Anderson, the curator of TED. In the same spirit, composers and music producers know that adding another track on a recording does not expand the sound, it reduces it. The richest and most intense recordings you can conjure are those with a single instrument and a voice. That’s the beauty and power of Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, and Johnny Cash’s American Recordings. The expansion of a soul – its vision –is deeply rooted in solitude (for a much more elaborate and eloquent view on this, read this wonderful piece by William Deresiewicz on “Solitude and Leadership”). You can see, hear, and feel it in any public performance.

This is true for TED Talks, too. The most popular ones, the genre-classics, are the talks that are radically open by being radically restrained. They create something out of nothing. Sir Ken Robinson, Alain de Botton, and Malcolm Gladwell, to name just a few, did away with slides, movies, or other props, knowing that there’s nothing more persuasive, more powerful than the intimacy of the human voice, in perfect harmony with the body it inhabits. The speaker exposing himself to the audience, with no fall-back, no safety net. A trust-based act of cooperation, an implicit contract with those out to judge him: You will accept me as whom I am if show you who I truly am. This is the principle of inspiration – and leadership. When you give more than you receive, you begin to lead.

It is your vulnerability, your putting yourself on the line that earns you trust, respect, and admiration. Authenticity means uniqueness: “What is interesting about you is you.” (Alonzo King). The iconic red circle that marks the TED speaker’s spot on stage serves as a symbol of reduction and expansion at the same time. It is you and the very idea of you “worth spreading.” It is others’ idea of you, and how you both confirm and overcome, perform and transform it. If you stay within that circle – literally and metaphorically – you are not only safe, you are powerful.

Photos: Duncan Davidson / TED

The Remembering Self Reflects on Happiness and Morality at TED

TED conferences, you might think, are happy affairs. You get up early, meet the most fascinating people, listen to jaw-dropping talks (each followed by a standing ovation), have deep conversations, and party until dawn – and all of that for four days in a row, safely remote from your usual daily routine. The reality, however, is more complicated. The event is a physical and mental stress test, an emotional rollercoaster ride that challenges you with constant over-stimulation, extreme cross-pollination, and tidal waves of acceptance and rejection as you navigate the social networks in the conference’s “social spaces.” To slightly paraphrase Heidi Klum: “With one group you’re in, with the next group you’re out.” And yet you will never hear anyone who was lucky enough to attend TED come back and not rave about their experience. Why is that? Daniel Kahneman, the mastermind of Behavioral Economics, provided the answer – at TED2010: TEDsters are happy because they expect to be happy. Let me explain, or rather, let Daniel Kahneman explain.

The future as anticipated memories

In his talk, the first of the conference and for me the most memorable, Kahneman sharply distinguished between “being happy in one’s life" and “being happy about one’s life,” and fervently debunked the “myth of the one self.” Instead, he introduced two different modes of “self” – the Experiencing Self and the Remembering Self. Their notions of happiness can be very different, he stressed, so that happiness cannot just be viewed as a substitute for well-being. The lack of money buys you misery, as Gallup surveys regularly indicate, but an abundance of wealth, as often reported, does not necessarily make you happier. To illustrate his point, Kahneman explained why people relocating to California are reported to be extraordinarily happy – before they even move, their Remembering Self imbues their experience as a happy one, which indeed might make them behave happier and thus infect others with more happiness (Connected co-author Nicholas A. Christakis showed in another TED2010 Talk that happiness, like other emotions, is highly contagious and spreads like wildfire through social networks). While the Experiencing Self is in the moment (and might feel good about it), it is the Remembering Self, the reflective self, that qualifies experiences as memorable experiences. There are 600 million moments in one’s life, Kahneman stated – “the Remembering Self tells us which of these are relevant, meaningful, and worth remembering.” “We choose between memories of experiences,” he concluded; in fact, “we think of the future as anticipated memories.”

It is intriguing to think about the implications of Kahneman’s model for policy-making, business, and also design, especially with regards to product and service experiences. If designers followed Kahneman’s theory, they would design user experiences not only for the Experiencing Self but also for the Remembering Self, which puts experiences into perspective by inferring and deferring. You could also say: the Experiencing Self values usability; the Remembering Self attaches itself to a brand. Users are usually happy when the Remembering Self finds out that its anticipated memories (brand promise) match the Experience Self (user experience). Great brands connect the Remembering Self with the Experiencing Self to make consumers happy, inspire behavior change, and make the world a better place – not a simple feat.

Counting what counts

Speaking of simple, there are other gestalts of happiness: George Whitesides proposed the beauty of simplicity as one. In his definition, “simple components are reliable, repeatable, and predictable” – thus they can be “stacked” to create remarkable systems. “Academics like complexity and emergence. The real world wants simplicity,” he contended, and borrowed some of Thomas Jefferson’s wisdom: “When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.”

Simple – in a good way – was also the happiness formula that Chip Conley, founder and CEO of hospitality chain Joie de Vivre, presented: “Wanting what you have divided by having what you want.” Gratitude plus gratification. Conley evoked the principles of Positive Psychology and re-imagined Maslow’s pyramid of needs as a new hierarchy of “survival, success, and transformation,” suggesting that we start “counting what really counts” – intangible values, spiritual fulfillment, and meaning. 90% of business leaders believe in the value of intangibles, Conley remarked, but the way we run our organizations does not yet reflect that – for we rely on myopic models and metrics: Pareto optimality, shareholder value, ROI, and GDP (of which, according to Conley, only 36%, is made up of tangible values). A metric for meaning, anyone? On the macro-economic level, the government of Bhutan has come close by introducing Gross National Happiness (GNH) as a new national currency that attempts to measure “quality of life” and “social progress.” France and other countries have begun adopting it. When will the first company implement its micro-equivalent?

Spiritually present during Conley’s talk was Enrique Peñalosa, who in his three years (1998-2001) as mayor of Colombia’s capital Bogota made “promoting happiness” the main directive of his governance, boosting the common good in a city characterized by vast disparities of wealth. During his tenure, he improved slums, built schools and nurseries, new libraries, and hundreds of parks and other pedestrian spaces. “We live in the post-communism period, in which many have assumed equality as a social goal is obsolete,” he once said. “Although income equality as a concept does not jibe with market economy, we can seek to achieve quality-of-life equality.”

Science and compassion

Quality of life may be a moral obligation not only for elected officials but for all of us. In this vein, Sam Harris, the zealous atheist, in his TED talk proposed a concept of “objective morality” that would make life better for everyone. In his eyes, the separation between science and human values is an illusion; for him there is only a rather artificial division between values and facts. “Belief is the default state,” as fellow TED speaker and professional skeptic Michael Specter, author of the book Denialism, observed. It was ironic though how Harris fell prey to his own convictions; his belief in the universal validity of “facts” is just that – a belief. ”Do the Taliban have any point on physics worth considering?” Harris asked. No. So why do we consider their views on morality? “Certain opinions need to be excluded from the discourse for morality to flourish,” he requested.

This is, frankly, a scary thought. If those scientists who present themselves as naïve believers in absolute, measurable truths were to determine the tenets of a universal morality, this would constitute a tyranny of science, with some very subjective outcomes imposed on the rest of us. Values need to regulate science, not the other way around. The essence of morality is “compassion,” as Schopenhauer put it: respect for the “other” – the other being and his/her values. Morality, per se, is an open concept with myriad interpretations. It needs to remain an ambiguous space that tolerates divergent values and opinions – if it doesn’t, the concept of the “other” will become obsolete. “Difference,” in other words “quality” (and “quality of life”), will fade, and “moral scientists” will fill the void with a regime of a default absolute morality.

But morality is relative, by definition. No one said it better than Oscar Wilde: “Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.”

Sometimes it just takes one true word to make you perfectly happy.

[Photo: TED / James Duncan Davidson]

TED and Others to Unveil Charter for Compassion

TED India just ended, and the TED team is already off to the next exhilarating project. On November 12, 2009, TED and others will be unveiling the Charter for Compassion, a document about the core shared values and moral code of every world religion, the “Golden Rule.” The Charter is the result of 2008 TED Prize winner Karen Armstrong’s “wish” (if you haven’t read Armstrong’s latest book, The Case for God, I highly recommend it – even, or especially, if you consider yourself an atheist and usually side with Richard Dawkins et al).

More than 75 events are currently planned around the globe to launch the Charter for Compassion on November 12. Everyone can become a part of it by attending one of these events or hosting their own; by emailing, blogging, writing, broadcasting, or offering media space for Charter banners, widgets, and videos. TED says it hopes that in the week following the launch, “thousands of sermons on the nature of compassion will be preached all over the world ... thousands of discussions will be held around dinner tables ... thousands of ideas will be shared.” Because, at the end of the day, “compassion is the best idea humanity ever had.”