ARE YOU A POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE THINKER?

| THE FUTURE OF WORK

BLESSED OR
CURSED?
THE OPTIMISM/PESSIMISM ISSUE

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 CAN YOU
FEEL IT
THE DESIRE
FOR BOUNDLESS
ADVENTURE

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2
 IN THIS ISSUE

Features 4
CEO LETTER
The Optimism Illusion

Q&A: Clara Gaymard,

President and CEO,
14 G.E. France

6
The Digital Natives
The Are Restless
Optimism-Pessimism How young directors are
changing the boardroom.
Continuum 22

10
Board Committees
Where the action is.

How (Will?) We Work 13

32 Tomorrow? Taking Off The Mask

How being authentic
accelerates women in leadership.

54
Q&A
Office Of The Future:
Where We’ll Work 40
Sydney Finkelstein
Helping smart leaders succeed.

62
PROFILE
Robert Rotella
ON THE COVER COVER: “Blessed or Cursed?” by Michelle Thompson

50 A Meeting of Minds Big optimism.

69
2 5 TH I S S U E S P E C I A L
An incorrect prediction by someone who
got most other things spectacularly right:
72

“I predict the Internet will PARTING THOUGHTS

25
soon go spectacularly supernova and
in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”
—Robert Metcalfe
Founder of 3Com, inventor of Ethernet, 1995.

T A L E N T + L E A D E R S H I P 3
 The
Gary Burnison
Chief Executive Officer Optimism
Illusion
Michael Distefano
Chief Marketing Officer &
President, Korn Ferry Institute

Joel Kurtzman
Editor-In-Chief

Creative Directors
Robert Ross
Roland K Madrid
Marketing and Circulation Manager
Stacy Levyn
Project Manager
Tiffany Sledzianowski
Digital Marketing Manager
Edward McLaurin

M.C. Escher’s “Circle Limit IV” ©2015 The M.C. Escher Company, The Netherlands. All rights reserved. www.mcescher.com
Contributing Editors
Chris Bergonzi
David Berreby
Lawrence M. Fisher
Hank Gilman
Victoria Griffith
Dana Landis
Stephanie Mitchell
Christopher R. O’Dea
P.J. O’Rourke
Glenn Rifkin
Adrian Wooldridge

BY GARY BURNISON

W
Board of Advisors
Sergio Averbach
Cheryl Buxton
hich do you look for: what’s right in what’s
Dennis Carey wrong—or what’s wrong in what’s right?
Joe Griesedieck Consider the M.C. Escher image (above). Even if the bats
Robert Hallagan
Katie Lahey jump out at you, do your eyes keep searching for the gentler, happier images
Byrne Mulrooney of the angel?
Indranil Roy
The vast majority of people (about 80% according to researcher and au-
Jane Stevenson
thor of The Optimism Bias, Tali Sharot) gravitate toward the good outcome.
They overestimate the likelihood of experiencing good events and underes-
timate the likelihood of experiencing bad ones.
Across all cultures, genders and ages, we are overwhelmingly optimistic.
We acquire this “cognitive illusion” as part of our development to help us
cope with (read: ignore) the ultimate outcome of being alive. We buy into the

25
“happily ever after,” even in the face of such glaring statistics as the divorce
rate (about 40-50 percent) or the likelihood of getting cancer (1 in 2 for men,
and 1 in 3 for women). Even our memories are notoriously subjective—
recalling our vacations as full of fun and relaxation, while ignoring the
boring and mundane.

4 B R I E F I N G S
 FROM THE CEO
With optimism, we savor the anticipation of what least one blind spot—a trait or capability that they
we think is going to be great. That’s why people overestimate. This selective myopia can derail their
prefer Friday, even though it’s a workday, as they look career. Great leaders, however, are highly self-aware
forward to the weekend over Sunday because of the and hyper focused on exposing their own blind spots
prospect of going back to work on Monday. in order to more effectively lead others.
Optimists tend to be healthier (less stress and anx- To lead a team, you need to tap into the optimism
iety). And regardless of how things actually turn out, bias of your followers so that they believe the sky
people with high expectations feel better in general. is the limit. Sometimes literally. In May 1961, in a
When faced with failure, an optimist’s brain speech before Congress, President John F. Kennedy
goes into high gear to figure out why and what went gave the entire country a vision: “…I believe that this
wrong so they can learn for the future and have
a better outcome next time. This is very much
aligned with what Korn Ferry calls learning
agility—the ability and desire to learn from the
past and apply those lessons to new and first-time
challenges and events. Importantly, learning
agility is also the No. 1 predictor of future success.
Winston Churchill, who led Great Britain
through one of its most dire periods in history,
said “a pessimist sees the difficulty in every op-
portunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in
every difficulty.” To that I would add, a realist sees
it all—the angels and the bats.
Like anything, too much of a good thing is
still too much. Too much optimism is a danger.
Optimism blindsides. You need pessimism—with
all its doom and gloom—to warn you that objects
really are closer than they appear. nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, be-
For a leader it’s all about creating a common pur- fore this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon
pose – transforming self-interest to shared interest. and returning him safely to the Earth.”
This establishes the left and right out-of-bounds Even here, though, Kennedy injected the reality of
lines and enables others to achieve more in pursuit of what it would take—a list of scientific developments
organizational purpose. However, a leader must also that would make even the most optimistic NASA en-
use pessimism not only to ensure the organization gineer doubtful: Advanced lunar space craft, alternate
is grounded in today’s reality, but also to anticipate liquid and solid fuel boosters, engine development…
events that could go wrong. But optimistic vision combined with the right
During a difficult time in Korn Ferry’s history, I dose of pessimism was the E=MC2 of reality. In July
started a leadership meeting by 1969, realism claimed victory. (As
showing a picture and asked people Most people focused a young boy, I remember riding
what they saw. Most people, with on a girl picking flowers. my bike and listening through
their optimism bias, focused on A smaller number the neighbors’ screen doors to the
a girl holding a flower blooming focused on urban decay. clapping and cheers of “We did it!”)
in the spring. A smaller number Only 2 of 17 were Our optimism serves us well,
said their focus was drawn to the changing our subjective reality as
drawn to both.
dilapidated buildings in the back- we work to make things better. But
ground. Only 2 out of 17 said they focused on both. we can’t be blinded by that bias. After all the world is
That’s what I was driving at—while there are opportu- not simple—cut and dry, one team wins and another
nities (the flowers), there are always risks to overcome one loses.
and challenges to confront (the urban decay). In the proper dosage, pessimism exposes what you
For leaders personally, it’s all about self-awareness need to pay attention to and worry about.
to reveal their own blind spots. Based on our Reach for the stars, worry about the clouds, and
research, nearly 80 percent of executives have at keep your feet on the ground of reality. 

T A L E N T + L E A D E R S H I P 5
 “There is a huge unmet need
for board expertise in tech and
the creative digital space.”
— SUZ AN N E M U CH I N

e tend to think of optimism and

pessimism as ways of viewing the
THE OPTIMISM VS. future, but they can be equally powerful
1950s

prisms for looking at the past. It’s often

PESSIMISM ISSUE said that hindsight is 20/20, yet what we
remember about a period in time may
also be a product of our own outlook.
Here’s a look back at some of the events
T I M E L I N E that have shaped our world, for better Rosa Parks becomes “the
first lady of civil rights,” triggering a
or worse (or both). change in the decades ahead.

6 B R I E F I N G S
 BY K AREN K ANE

The Digital
Natives
Are Restless
How Young Directors Are
Changing The Boardroom

T
hey walk into the boardroom wearing
jeans and carrying backpacks. As the
meeting stretches over hours, millennial
directors convey with their body language that
they are not used to sitting and listening; they’re
programmed to interact. When the company
serves plated lunches, some order out sushi.
Those who have “grown up digitally” are the
ultimate prize in the hunt for directors who can
help boards and CEOs address the technology
innovations that are fundamentally changing
every business.
A new digital industrial economy is
emerging where every company is a technology
company. It requires directors to develop a core
understanding of how technology can impact
the business, whether it’s lowering the costs,
better connecting to customers or improving
the company’s offerings.

Toyota changes the

Elvis Presley auto industry by implementing
changes the music “lean manufacturing.”
landscape and
popularizes rock ‘n’ roll Sputnik I The Soviet Union
around the world. launches the first artificial Earth
North Korea invades South Korea. satellite into space.

T A L E N T & L E A D E R S H I P 7
 C O R P O R AT E G O V E R N A N C E

A
new group of directors, call them “digital natives,” have
joined the boardroom. They’ve achieved success in tech
companies, and they incorporate technology and digital
platforms in nearly every facet of their lives. With their energy
and techno-savvy expertise, they are changing the boardroom.
Chris O’Neill was managing director of Google Canada
when he joined the Tim Hortons board before the company was
merged with Burger King.
“I was able to leverage my experience in Silicon Valley to provide
insights into emerging digital and broader technology trends
in business, and offer my perspectives on how companies stay
customer-focused and create a winning culture,” said O’Neill.

NOW CEO OF EVERNOTE, O’Neill leads a soft-
ware company that creates productivity tools for the
modern workplace. His success at Google included
achieving dramatic growth as managing director of
Google Canada. He was also once part of Google X,
Google’s moonshot factory.
Nathan Richardson was the digital talent of the
team brought together to restructure and transition
C.M.I. from its yellow-pages origins to a digital com-
pany. Richardson is still on the board of the company,
now called Caribe Media Inc.
The former head of Yahoo Finance, the largest
finance site on the Web, Richardson also was head of
Dow Jones Online. In September, Richardson and his
partners announced closing a $4-million seed round
for Trading Ticket, a new start-up based in New York
that is developing a suite of products to help consumers
become more active investors.
When he joined the C.M.I. board at age 40, Richardson
was impressed with his older board colleagues who were
eager to learn what he could share with them about the
digital challenges and solutions as well as insights into the
millennial culture. To the criticism that most boards are
pale, male and stale, Richardson adds, “and straight.”
TH E FUTU R E BACK TH E N
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender com-
munity has been “the last people to achieve full civil
rights,” said Richardson, who serves as L.G.B.T. diver-
sity adviser. “I’m an advocate for diversity because it
improves decision making.”
Expertise is another component of informed deci-
sion making.
There is a huge unmet need for board expertise in
tech and the creative digital space, observes Suzanne
Muchin, who has been on both sides of the boardroom.
As a national program director for Teach for America,
she interfaced with the prestigious national board and
helped her staff with the regional boards. She currently
serves on the board of Piece & Co., a for-profit private
company in the social responsibility space that hires
women artisans in the developing world to provide the
fabrics and other raw materials for fashion brands.
She sees younger board members bringing an
energy and a penchant for greater work-life balance as
they embrace shorter meetings, working remotely and
making the full board meeting an occasion for active
engagement and meaningful discussions.
“I’m 47, slightly older than what is considered millen-
nial,” said Muchin, “but because I have one foot in the tech

Cuban Missile Crisis

puts the threat of nuclear weapons J.F.K.
at the front of world politics. assassinated.
Berlin
Wall
1960s

erected to
prevent massive
defection from Shell begins
the German scenario planning
Democratic Neil Armstrong to navigate the “oil
Republic. is the first man to shock” of the next
set foot on the moon. decade.

8 B R I E F I N G S

space, one foot in the social impact space, and
an arm in the nonprofits, and I’m a woman and a
business owner, I cross lots of demographics.”
A principal of Mind + Matter Studio, co-
founder and cohost of “The Big Payoff” radio
talk show, podcast and video series, Muchin
has founded several communication firms fo-
cused on developing social impact campaigns.
Her previous company, R.O.I. Ventures (Return
on Inspiration) was acquired in 2012.
Digital directors are often entrepreneurs
like Ryan Morris, who cofounded software
company VideoNote after graduating from
Cornell Engineering. But it was his investment
Nathan Richardson
in InfuSystem that turned him to activism, a
board seat and becoming one of the youngest
chairmen of a N.Y.S.E.-listed company at age 27.
Morris is now president of his own invest-
ment firm, Meson Capital Partners, which
focuses on “constructive, active engagement,
value-investing.” As an investor/operator, he
can “wind up fixing my own problems.”
As an investor in InfuSystem
Suzanne Muchin
(N.Y.S.E.:INFU), Morris met with the board
after it had approved a multimillion-dollar
pay package for the CEO while the company was
failing.  He rallied other investors and demanded three
board seats.  After being rebuffed, he eventually suc-
ceeded in replacing five of the seven directors with a
negotiated settlement.
But the story of young, entrepreneurial and tech-
savvy board members isn’t new.
Mark Tebbe was 31 when he was recruited by Nolan
Bushnell to the board of OCTuS Software (Nasdaq:
OCTS). “Yes, I was flattered,” said Tebbe. “It doesn’t get
any better than working alongside Nolan Bushnell. He’s a
world-class entrepreneur, a giant in the field, the founder
of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese.”
The year was 1992. Tebbe was recruited for his
knowledge of the computer industry. Having moved to
Chicago to work for Arthur Andersen, he started his own
technology advisory firm, Lante Corp. (Nasdaq: LNTE) in
1984, which he took public in 2000, took private in 2002
and sold in 2004. After Lante, he created Answers.com,
Motorola develops the first
working “take along” phone.
Steve Wozniak
1970s
Katharine
Graham
becomes the
first female CEO
of a Fortune 500
company.
T A L E N T
T H E L AT E S T T H I N K I N G
which began as a solution to help his son with his
homework. The Answers Corp. (Nasdaq: ANSW)
was sold to Announce Media in 2011.
Tebbe spent six years working alongside
Bushnell on the OCTuS board. It was the chance
Chris O’Neill
of a lifetime, learning from a master. Since
OCTuS, Tebbe has experienced first-hand the
value boards bring to an enterprise, particularly
for entrepreneurial companies.
Tebbe recruited his own board when he
made the decision to dramatically grow his
business in 1998. “There was so much talent
on my board. I wanted to tap their experience
and leverage their insight because they had so
much more experience than I did.
“I keep that in mind when I serve as a di-
rector,” said Tebbe. “I try to be very involved to
understand and grow the business, because I ex-
pected my board to understand and help me grow
the business. I also push and challenge and look at
strategy from a number of different angles.”
While he doesn’t expect to start a new
company, Tebbe likes to stay on the cutting edge
by teaching at the University of Chicago, by men-
toring entrepreneurs at 1871, and by serving as
chairman of ChicagoNEXT, the technology industry’s eco-
nomic development component of World Business Chicago.
It’s the yin and yang of board culture—younger direc-
tors with digital knowledge and expertise working with
traditional directors with the business experience and
years of perspective.
“Young directors can improve a board’s understanding
of customers and today’s workplace realities,” said
O’Neill. “Customers are living digital lives.  Employees are
using new and exciting ways to communicate with one
another.  Though this is not strictly linked to age, being
younger and more digital certainly helps and is a positive
force in assisting companies to address new markets.”
There are personal benefits as well.
“I learned to view a business through multiple lenses
now. I feel better prepared for my current CEO role
because of my board experience,” said O’Neill.
Black
Monday
Steve Jobs and stock market
crash.
1980s
start Apple Computers.
The first company Tiananmen Square
to implement
massacre results in many student deaths.
360-degree
employee reviews
is Du Pont.
& L E A D E R S H I P 9
 C O R P O R AT E G O V E R N A N C E
T H E L AT E S T T H I N K I N G

Where the Action Is:

Board Committees
BY K AREN K ANE

B
oards of directors face more scrutiny, regulation and threats from
activist investors than ever before. In response, boards are working
harder. The bottom line is there’s more work to do. Fortunately,
boards have committees.
Committees are where directors dive deep into issues, do the research
and analytics and bring their findings back to the full board for discussion
and decision.

TODAY, the rubber meets the road
in board committees.
After the collapse of Enron and
WorldCom, the 2002 Sarbanes-
Oxley Act increased the respon-
sibility for board oversight of
accounting and audit, the details
of which fell largely to the audit
committee, where workloads in-
creased dramatically.
Washington’s response to the
global financial crisis of 2008 was
the 2,300-page Dodd-Frank Act in
2010. Among its 400 new rules and
mandates was the requirement for
boards to ask shareholders to ap-
prove executive pay packages in an
advisory vote. “Say-on-pay” brought
more attention to a board’s respon-
sibility for awarding compensation
as well as its ability to effectively
communicate the company’s com-
pensation philosophy and practices
to win a favorable vote.
While less than 2 percent of com-
panies fail to achieve shareholder
approval, the new rules imposed
more work on the compensation
committee. The length of the com-
pensation discussion and analysis
(CD&A), which grew 17 percent over
five years, is just one metric of com-
mittee time and attention.
Dodd-Frank also required bank
holding companies to add a risk
committee, which some non-banks
embraced. Greater transparency
in director qualifications has
given activists a window into the
boardroom. Eager to exploit every
vulnerability, activists have zeroed
in on board composition and
“refreshment.”
It sounds so quaint—committee
work. For most directors, it’s a key
part of the job.
“From my experience, the real
work of boards has always been
in the committees,” said Cynthia
Jamison, chairman of the board of
Tractor Supply, where she had previ-
ously been lead director. She is also
a director of Office Depot, where she
serves on audit, compensation and
corporate governance committees;
and Darden Restaurants Inc., where
she chairs the audit committee and
serves on the compensation com-
mittee. At Big Lots Inc., she serves
on the audit committee.

“Worm” is one of Six The Internet

the first computer virus Sigma becomes available to computer
attacks, resulting in coined by users around the world.
1990s

$100 million in damages. Motorola’s

Bill Smith.

Google launched
by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Nelson Mandela
walks free, elected president
of South Africa.

10 B R I E F I N G S
 Jamison chaired the audit com-
mittee at Tractor Supply as the
requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley
were being implemented, putting
a spotlight on audit. Then say-on-
pay brought laser attention to the
compensation committee and its
members. Now it seems the heat
is on the corporate governance
and nomination com-
mittees as shareholders
focus on diversity.
“The activists are going
after board composition,
and committees that are
not as attentive as they
need to be,” said Jamison.
“They want to see board
diversity not just in race
and gender but in terms of
different skill sets, different
points of view, appropriate
backgrounds and expertise
to bring real oversight to
their role as shareholder
representatives holding
management accountable.”
Committee work also
helps directors get a better feel
for relevant concerns outside the
boardroom. “Committee members
are talking to experts and advisers.
Whether it’s compensation consul-
tants or audit partners or director
education, you’re interacting with
the people who see across board-
rooms,” said Jamison. “It’s another
way to become more educated.”
CORBIS
Some board members relish the
chance to dig in, create analysis and
offer larger solutions to the full board.
Apple iPhone
introduced with
record-breaking sales.
2000+
9/11 terrorist attack
on the United States.
“I want to be on the committees
where I can add value,” said veteran
digital entrepreneur Mark Tebbe. “It’s
a real chance to learn about some
aspect of the company at a deep level.”
Committees often require ad-
ditional time equal to board meet-
ings. “You do a lot of work between
full board meetings,” said Tebbe.
“And when you have the responsi-
bility to bring the committee’s work
on a specific issue to the full board,
you sweat the details.”
At the same time, members or
chairs of committees may become
part of the company’s shareholder
outreach programs. Those who
have been most successful have
been trained and are “camera-ready”
to meet with shareholders to ap-
propriately discuss governance, not
management issues. In the process,
Manned Chinese
space mission kicks off
a new era in space exploration.
Blockbuster
Video turns down
a deal to buy Netflix.
T A L E N T & L E A D E R S H I P
the directors who meet with share-
holders gain a better understanding
of their issues and bring that insight
back to the full board.
M. Shan Atkins, a public com-
pany director for 15 years, views
audit and compensation as the
“meatier” board committees. “Audit
and compensation committees are
dealing with very technical
issues and take time,” said
Atkins. “In terms of my
experience, the governance
committee has tradition-
ally been lighter, but as
proxy advisers have more
influence, governance
is dealing with issues of
board composition and
refreshment. Governance
committees at some boards
also address issues of sus-
tainability and corporate
social responsibility.”
Not to be overlooked
are the special committees,
which are established on an
ad hoc basis to bring focus
to an assigned task, usually a single
issue that is not ongoing in nature.
“I’ve served on several special com-
mittees, including takeover defense,
shareholder rights plans and several
CEO search committees.” Atkins is
currently on the board of True Value
hardware and SunOpta; she chairs
the audit committee for both boards.
She’s on the boards of Spartan Nash
as well as Darden Restaurants, where
she’s a member of the audit and
finance and real estate committees.
Autonomous car
technology leaps forward.
Facebook
IPO is the biggest
in technology
history.
11
 T H E L AT E S T T H I N K I N G
Continued from page 11
While Sarbanes-Oxley was implemented to reduce
company fraud, Blythe McGarvie believes boards
should keep a spotlight on audit committees. Even
though the incidence of fraud was reduced after
Sarbanes-Oxley was implemented, she observed that
the number of fraud cases have started to tick up over
the past four years. “Audit remains a hot spot where
boards should continue to focus,” she said.
McGarvie serves on the boards of Accenture,
Sonoco, L.K.Q. and Viacom. In addition, she recently
became chair of the nomination and governance
committee at Wawa Inc., a closely held company
where she has been a director for 17 years.
“Culture is so important at Wawa. Culture im-
pacts everything, including customers and especially
employees who own 42 percent of the company
through the E.S.O.P. [Employee Stock Ownership
Plan]. I know a lot about governance, and I’m happy
to take over that responsibility.”
She also noted that in the face of managing risk,
Accenture’s high-performance board culture has
developed a best practice to ensure that no risk falls
through the cracks.
“Once a year we bring together three commit-
tees—finance, compensation and audit—to ensure
that we know what part of risk each committee
owns,” said McGarvie.
Boards evolve. From a focus on audit, compensa-
tion and even governance committees where board
refreshment remains a hot topic for activists, the real
game changer is proxy access, the chance for eligible
shareholders (and activists) to nominate directors.
“Proxy access reached a tipping point,” said
governance expert Peggy Foran. “More than half the
institutional investors say they want it.”
As chief governance officer, vice president and sec-
retary at Prudential Financial, Foran has had regular
conversations with the board on governance issues
for the past six years. They trust her for giving them a
view of the world outside the boardroom. “I could be
wrong, I told them, but proxy access is coming.”
As a result of discussion and board deliberations,
the Prudential Financial board chose to be proac-
tive: The board approved and adopted proxy access
amendments to the company’s bylaws, enabling
eligible shareholders to have their own director
nominees named in the company’s proxy statement.
Proactive boards remain vigilant, knowing that
there is more work to do.
12 B R I E F I N G S
How Being
Authentic
Accelerates
Leadership
in Women
L
eading with greater authenticity, instead of
adopting personae based on other people’s
expectations, may unlock more leadership po-
tential in women and accelerate their impact within
their organizations, according to new research con-
ducted by Korn Ferry.
Female executives who participated in the firm’s
Executive to Leader Institute and Chief Executive In-
stitute programs cited authenticity, as well as greater
self-awareness, as important outcomes gained from
engaging in these programs.
In interviews, the women often described them-
selves as having lived inauthentic or “divided” lives
in the workplace—essentially acting in a certain way
to meet the norms and expectations set by others
within male-dominated cultures. “When I came out
of business school in the mid-70s there were very
few women,” one female executive said. “At work in
particular, I felt I needed to have a persona that was
not necessarily an authentic one.”
The women, nearly all of whom (91 percent) were
mid-career (ages 35 to 51), acknowledged a desire to
integrate more aspects of themselves that had been
hidden or ignored in an effort to fit in. Becoming
more authentic, however, was seen as a process, one
that must be undertaken within the context of the
organization’s culture. “It’s O.K. to be authentic…
to take off the mask, but you will still need to wear
the mask at times, because maybe your level of
authenticity is not appreciated or some people have
not gotten to that level of understanding,” another
female executive said.
The dissonance caused by living an inauthentic
or divided life can be a significant energy drain for
women executives, and may be a factor in why some
women opt out of the leadership track. By expressing
more of who they are and their particular strengths,
 BY JANET FELDMAN • DINA RAUKER
women embrace a wider range of leadership charac-
teristics needed to run an organization.
Women executives are equally qualified to lead
organizations in top executive roles, as previous Korn
Ferry research has found. They are rated higher than
their male counterparts in 17 out of 21 critical leader-
ship skills, including operating and interpersonal ones,
courage and drive—competencies that enable women
to connect with customers, engage employees and
building talent.
The women executives interviewed also high-
lighted the importance of self-awareness of their
strengths and weaknesses, as well as their underlying
motivations and sense of purpose as being vital to
leading more authentically. “My core purpose is not
about the prestige, the title … it’s about the ambition
to get to where I am,” a female executive commented.
“The times in my life I had the most fun were when
Illustration: L I V I A C H I V E S
I was helping people develop, or when I had a huge
impact on the business and building or changing
something and seeing the impact that had on people.”
Taking time for reflection, especially at critical
career inflection points, can raise awareness of one’s
self and one’s purpose. By checking in with themselves
periodically, women gain better appreciation of the
factors and circumstances that have brought them to
T A L E N T
their current situation, while also helping them decide
how they want to shape their leadership in the future.
Specifically, women need to ask themselves:
What is the greatest impact I want
to have going forward? How can I drive
value for the organization and the
people using my unique capabilities
in ways that others may not?
Self-reflection also enables women to discover
or re-engage with their sense of purpose, which be-
comes a powerful motivator of self—and helps leaders
inspire others. Purpose transcends ego or, conversely,
a lack of confidence. A driving purpose becomes a
motivation to assume greater risks and take on roles
that might otherwise be uncomfortable, and can
energize them to be more resilient during challenges.
With greater authenticity, thanks to deeper self-
awareness and a clarified sense of purpose, women
executives can more fully embrace new opportunities
to become their best and devote their full capabilities
to their leadership.
REFERENCES: Orr, J. Evelyn. 2015. Best Practice Series:
Women in Leadership. White Paper. Los Angeles: Korn Ferry Institute.
& L E A D E R S H I P 13
 Briefings Q&A
Clara Gaymard
President and Chief Executive Officer, G.E. France

Women in
Business
Create
Opportunities
Clara Gaymard is a woman of many talents.
She is a published author, a senior European
business leader and an advocate for women.
She has worked in government as the head of
an agency promoting France as a place for
foreign direct investment. In her government
role, Gaymard held the rank of ambassador.
Clara Gaymard has nine children, a husband
whose job and life are every bit as demanding as
hers, and she proudly rides her bicycle to work.

14 B R I E F I N G S
 Photographs by DAVID BACHER

T A L E N T & L E A D E R S H I P 15
16 B R I E F I N G S
 Briefings Q&A Clara Gaymard

D
espite the enormous demands on her time, Gaymard has a large, well-
connected group of friends, many of whom are at the top of French
society. And yet, as she explains, it is not that she “networks.” Rather,
Gaymard likes developing friendships with people who are real and
deep. To do that, Gaymard refrains from everything written in those “how to
network” books. As a result, Gaymard’s friends are real friends, not props or “con-
tacts” or people “in her network.” Still, even with those self-imposed constraints,
Clara Gaymard is said to know “everyone.”
Working with people from diverse backgrounds has been important in Gaymard’s
professional and personal growth. She believes that “working with people who
are different helps you grow faster, especially when you also share values,” she
said. But despite working hard on behalf of women for most of her career, Gaymard
admits progress has been slow and more must be done.
Last summer, Gaymard spoke with Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of
Korn Ferry’s Briefings On Talent & Leadership. Dominique Virchaux, managing
director for France and Spain and its regional market leader for consumer
products in Europe, the Middle East and Africa also took part in the interview.
What follows is an edited version of that conversation.

New rules in Europe set goals to
increase the percentage of board
seats held by women from where
they are now, the low single digits,
to the mid-double digits. There
are also new national goals to
increase the number of female
executives at the top of all business
organizations. Though these
goals are laudable, not much has
changed. The glass ceiling is as real
as ever for French women. Why
haven’t things changed?
The rules are good, but not good enough. Take the
example of the quota for boards, which has already
been implemented in France and in other countries.
It works. More women are now joining boards. But
the numbers are still much too low. In France, just
6 percent of board members are female. The law
requires 40 percent female. That is a law, and because
it is the law we will have to reach the goal. There are
many talented women who will become excellent
members of boards of directors.
Before the law, skeptics said Europe
did not have enough qualified
women to join boards at the rate
and numbers required. What do you
make of that comment?
When you start with an obligation, the process is
always the same. You start by checking the women
who are close to you. They are not necessarily the
best in class. So you start panicking, and you realize
you have a problem, and you ask: “What can I do?”
Some companies started to organize around the goal,
and they created pipelines of good female director-
level candidates for boards. They discovered talent
where they didn’t expect it.
What did they find?
They saw there is actually a huge pipeline of talented
women. But of course, these women are not CEOs of
companies or board members. Not yet. They are not
heading business units. In Europe, there are almost
no women doing that. The talent is not always where
you expect it. You have to find it, which means you
have to look. The woman you need for a board seat

T A L E N T & L E A D E R S H I P 17
 Briefings Q&A Clara Gaymard
may not be standing in line next to you. She may be
younger than you expect or look different than you
expect. But I can assure you, she is here.
Is that what happened?
Yes. I would say that the push of the regulation
is important, but it’s not enough. And there are
obstacles.
Like?
The first obstacle is you need to educate men. You
have to explain to them that if a woman takes a job,
it doesn’t mean a man is going to lose his job. There is
room for everyone, and the competition is not “she is
going to take my seat.” I would say men have to have
the same spirit toward women on this issue that they
have in Silicon Valley. When you go to Silicon Valley,
and I think it’s something that is typical in the U.S. as
a whole, but especially in Silicon Valley, you can see
almost anyone. And the person you are with is likely
to help you. He or she will meet with you because they
understand your success will help their success. It’s
the kind of success that brings new opportunities, new
paths you haven’t discovered yet on your own. It gives
you a window where you can win behind someone
else or beside someone else. It can open up new ideas
and opportunities. Bringing women into business
brings new opportunities, new creativity, new ways
of thinking, new businesses. It’s not taking a limited
number of seats and giving them to women. It’s
opening the company to new arenas of development
and new arenas of growth. Ultimately, when new
groups come into the work force, it adds seats.
Have you seen it happen
in practice?
Yes. If you look at the statistics of all the companies,
and if you take S.M.E.’s — small and mid-sized
enterprises — you see it quite clearly. A lot of S.M.E.’s
are run by women. And they are performing better
than the S.M.E.’s run by men. If you take investment
forums—and you know finance and investment are
very masculine, macho environments—it turns out
that investment forums run by women perform
better than those run by men, and I‘m not talking
about during the crisis alone. I’m talking about
every year. You could say it’s because there are fewer
women in that world, so the ones that are there must
be very, very talented and self-assured. But my view
is that these women simply have different points of
18 B R I E F I N G S
view. It’s not that they choose opportunities that
men are not choosing; it’s that they are the only ones
taking those opportunities, the only ones seeing
them. That’s why they make more money.
What are some examples?
I was having discussions at Sodexo — which is a
global services company. It operates in, like, 130
countries. They conducted a survey and discovered
that among their employees, the teams that were
balanced evenly between men and women performed
better than the ones that were only women or only
men. They discovered balance is very important.
It’s not that women are better than men; it’s that
having balanced teams creates a very strong kind
of creativity and respect and way of understanding
each other. It makes it so everyone is able to capture
opportunities for growth.
I’m the mother of a very big family. My husband
and I have nine children. When our children were
young, people would often remark, how “well-
educated” and how “well-behaved” our children were.
The question could have been
prompted by feelings of admiration,
condescension, annoyance, jealousy
or even fear. It could have been
uttered after the person sucked it in
to have enough courage to speak.
Or, it could have been rudeness.
How did that make you feel?
I don’t think it is as complicated as that. I never
thought it was because of me. I thought it was
because my kids were together, and being the
mother in a big family, like ours, forces respect,
listening, empowering and sharing. Many values in
the business world are the same. The point is that
you grow faster when you share values. Differences
are good to help you see and understand things, but
sharing values is important.
There are studies showing that
diverse groups are more innovative.
Do you agree with that?
Absolutely. Putting diversity into a company
improves success and innovation. It ensures that the
truth gets a seat at the table, and everybody can see it
and has to deal with it. But as I said earlier, you have
to explain to men that diversity is not being done
against them.
 “ The first obstacle is
you need to educate men.
You have to explain to them
that if a woman takes a
job, it doesn’t mean a man
is going to lose his job.
”

T A L E N T & L E A D E R S H I P 19
 Briefings Q&A Clara Gaymard
Isn’t it true that, if people are
comfortable, they do not to want
to change?
It’s complicated. At G.E., we try to be very careful
about the health of our employees. We have people
responsible for health policies. As part of that, I
recently met with a professor who is an expert on
well-being and longevity. This is what he said as a
result of taking scientific surveys inside companies.
He said, “Change is good for health.”
We always believe change will create fear, that
people won’t like it, and so on. The truth is, the
professor said, it’s not change that makes people fearful;
it’s the way you implement change. If you implement
change in a positive way saying, “We are going to bring
in new businesses, and we want everyone who works
in these new businesses to be happy,” that’s good. But
if change comes down from the top, and your people
don’t understand it, and they don’t know where they’ll
be going, where their place is, and if they are afraid
they won’t have a job or a place tomorrow—things like
that—then, yes, people will be afraid of change. Change
is not the problem; change is good for people’s health
when it is done correctly. Change imposed from the top
and executed poorly is the problem.
What about change in general?
The survey also asked other questions. For instance,
“Does the company give you confidence in yourself?”
Only 40 percent of the men’s responses were positive.
Then the question was asked of the men, “Does your
company give confidence to women?” And the answer
was something like 80 percent positive. The men
surveyed thought their companies did a much better
job helping women build up their confidence….
We asked women the same questions, “Do you
think your company gives you confidence?” Only
20 percent of women answered that question in a
positive way. And then we asked them, “Does the
company give men confidence?” And the women
answered 80 percent yes regarding men.
Of course, we know confidence is difficult to evaluate
and measure, especially in a world where everything
is changing. But we also know confidence comes from
promoting diversity, because if you see someone who is
different from you sitting in an office in front of yours,
or next to yours, you know that it’s not because you are
black or red or yellow, or because you are old or young
20 B R I E F I N G S
and so on, that you sit where you do. It’s because you
bring expertise, just like the other people do. It makes
you feel you have something important to offer.
Which is more difficult, managing a
diverse group or a homogenous one?
No question managing a diverse team requires more
effort. Think about it. It’s easy to manage an army.
Your people obey you, and they are like you. They even
wear the same clothes you wear, the same shoes, carry
the same weapons, and they are required to do what
their bosses tell them to do or face punishments. In an
army, everyone is on the same page.
But when you have a diverse team, you see that
when you say something, not everyone understands
it the same way. They do so because of their culture,
their personal backgrounds, because not everyone
understands or speaks English on the same level, or
in the same way, because people are from different
generations and locations and ethnic backgrounds.
You need to be sure everyone understands what you
want to do when you are the leader of a diverse group.
And you need to know everyone understands each
other. You need to take time to be sure everyone is on
board. This means you have to be more sophisticated
and adaptable in the market. There are benefits too.
Instead of having only two eyes, in a geo-diverse team
you have 10 or maybe 20 eyes, and you are able to look
at the behaviors of your customers and colleagues
differently because of that. The relationships you
have with your customer can be different, and your
appreciation of the market can be different.
Most of your career has been in
government, not business. How did
you feel coming to work at G.E. with
a background and set of experiences
so different from the other people
you were going to work with?
At G.E., we recruit people we know will bring
something different to the company. We don’t
necessarily know precisely what that difference is before
they join us, but we know we want it, so we seek it out.
You could say G.E. is built on curiosity and on
capturing everything that is happening. We are a
very big company. We have a lot of expertise. We
especially have a lot of domain expertise. We are
focused. We’re also a high-process company. When
they recruited me, I went to the first meeting, and
I said, “What do you expect of me?” My boss said,
“Look at what was done by your predecessor and
build on it. Bring in more opportunities for the
business. Make the business grow.” And I said to him,
“Yes, but how do I do that?” And he said, “Bring us
your own way of thinking.”
I thought about that, and I went back home and said
to my husband, “I don’t know what this job is all about,
but I know it is full of opportunities.” My husband knew
I wasn’t going to try and do the job that the business’s
leaders were already doing. They have been doing their
jobs for 20 years, sometimes more. They became experts
long ago. I bring something else, something new. I
had the freedom to come not only with my expertise,
but with my own way of thinking. Jeff Immelt, G.E.’s
chairman and CEO, says quite often, he prefers
someone who might say “no” 9 times out of 10, than
someone who only says “yes” all the time. He says he
needs creative people who want to cross the boundaries
without going out of the frame. So of course you follow
the rules of the game, but you are always trying to
improve the game, too.
How do you describe G.E. culture?
It is a culture in which we are all good friends. You
will never send an e-mail to someone at G.E. without
receiving an answer. And if someone can’t give you
the ideal, correct answer, he will put you in contact
with someone who can.
People at G.E. are respectful of one another.
Also like good friends. Close relationships are very
important at G.E. But it was my responsibility to
work inside G.E. and learn the behavior and to be
humble, to ask questions, to learn, and so on. We
are not fixed or ossified. We change. When I arrived
at G.E., we had the health care business, and we
wanted to sell our [magnetic resonance imaging
machines] and our scanners. We did it one way. We
argued France had fewer scanners and M.R.I.’s per
capita than Germany, the U.K. and so on. Because of
that, in France, to get an M.R.I. reading, the average
queue was about 45 days. That’s a long time to wait
for such important information. So objectively,
we knew France needed to buy more scanners and
M.R.I.’s to give the French people the same quality
health care as the British and Germans. However, it
turns out that argument doesn’t work. The reason
it doesn’t work is that when you talk to the [French
T A L E N T
government health officials], that’s not their issue. It’s
not what they care about. Their issue is cost. They
want to know, “How do I cut health care costs?”
As a result, we changed our approach. We started
to look at it and think about it differently. As we did,
we realized we needed people from medical schools
and people with deeper experience in the health care
sector to explain to us how to address the needs of the
[health officials].
So we worked with a health care team, and I said,
“We have to help with the money, the costs.” And
our argument became “How can we help the [health]
ministers reorganize themselves in different ways to
save money?”
We knew we had a lot of M.R.I.’s that were used
only six hours a day. We also knew that [if] some were
used 12 hours a day, and 18 hours a day, it would spread
the costs across more people, procedures and over more
time. So, we put ourselves in the shoes of the people
making the decisions – the ministers. We wanted to
understand the way they saw the world and how they
thought. We wanted to be able to give them the kind
of answers they were searching for. My point is that
we looked around the world and then we changed our
approach. We changed ourselves and our processes.
Did you change it on a company-wide
basis or was it a local change?
On a countrywide basis, because that’s where we had
the problem that had to be addressed.
Is that how you addressed France’s
issues with regard to women in
business? Is that how you set your
own career goals?
I live in a country that is still very macho. If you take
the 150 biggest companies in France, there are no
women CEOs. So, in my own case, I would say I have
taken any opportunity that came to me—and I didn’t
have that many. I didn’t have a career where I thought,
or could think, “I’m doing this job now because in
three years I will be able to do that job.” Never. And it’s
not because I didn’t think I could do the job. It’s that I
didn’t know the opportunity existed for me or would
ever exist for me. I was ignorant about the extent of the
opportunity I would be presented with. Thankfully,
because of the hard work we have all done, a lot has
changed in France, and a lot more opportunities now
exist. But it has taken time. Real change always does. 
& L E A D E R S H I P 21
by David Berreby
I L L U ST R A T I O N S b y M A R C O W A G N E R
 THE OPTIMISM-PESSIMISM CONTINUUM
ONCE,
I had high hopes for this
article. As I began work on it, I
thought it would be compelling,
insightful and influential. Then
I hit some bumps, then a few
more, and the day came when I
began to feel I might barely get
through it. Why, I wondered,
did I take this thing on?
I’d been optimistic at the
outset. Then, I’d gone overboard
in the other direction.
Now, at the end of the project,
both the up and down swings
look like kind of a waste.
Producing this article could
have been achieved in less time,
and with less stress, without
spending emotional capital on
those highs and lows. And yet,
has anyone reading this—or any
organization to which they’ve
belonged—gotten through a
project without these waves of
overly rosy and overly gloomy
intuitions?
25
I suspect the answer is no. Science in the past 20
years has made it abundantly clear that the human
mind is not a clear pane through which we see reality.
It is, rather, a distorting mirror, thanks in no small part
to its optimistic and pessimistic impulses.
Few people, of course, are so purely, foolishly
optimistic as to think that nothing can go wrong,
and just as few live with an Eeyore-like insistence
that everything will. Rather, optimism is a sense that
the unknown problems of the future can and will be
solved. According to one leading psychological theory,
it is a style of thinking about adversity. The optimist is
prone to think that bad events are, first, generally not
part of a pattern, second, not caused by the optimist’s
own mistakes, and third, easily compartmentalized (in
other words, when the car breaks down, the optimist
doesn’t assume this means the rest of the day will go
sour). Conversely, real pessimism is the conviction that
none of this list is true.
All other things being equal, people have habitual,
temperamental tendencies toward one outlook
or another, about which they may not have much
control. (For instance, it appears that the likelihood
of scoring high on a widely used test of optimism is
partly genetic.) And that means, by definition, that we
are ignoring reality, applying our preferred outlook to
new situations, rather than judging each on the merits.
Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t do that—if we could
use a drug, or judicious zaps to the brain, to eliminate
these distortions? Wouldn’t it be great to see through
the window into the future as if it were a distortion-
free glass of crystal-clear water?
The answer is well established by research on the
basis of decision making in the brain—thanks to
studies of unfortunate patients who have brain damage
in the ventromedial frontal lobe, a region necessary
for making us aware of our emotions. They are free
of the highs of optimism and the lows of pessimism,
and their lives don’t work. For example, after a tumor
damaged the ventromedial region in the brain of one
formerly successful businessman, he lost his marriage
and his job. As one of his physicians, the neuroscientist
Antonio Damasio, has written, the man’s brain worked
normally in all other respects—so well, in fact, that he
couldn’t obtain disability payments—but his lack of
 "Perhaps we are inclined to ignore the
odds against us because we, like all living
creatures, have already beaten tremendous
odds. We did it just by existing."
 THE OPTIMISM-PESSIMISM CONTINUUM
highs and lows made him seem “an uninvolved spec-
tator” in his own life. Without such feelings to focus his
attention, he would spend hours deciding what color
pen to use, or where to eat his lunch. Unmoved by his
own unraveling, he simply watched with mild interest,
as if it were happening to someone else.
The lesson here is clear: We can’t sustain our
plans and projects if we’re disconnected from our
passionate and distorted perceptions about their
future. So even if a pill should come into existence
that would allow you to disconnect from the ups and
downs of your feelings about the future, you would
be foolish to take it. Contending with our conflicting
waves of optimism and pessimism is an inescapable
part of planning for the future. As we cannot do
without them, we’d do well to try to harness their
benefits and minimize the damage they do.
Half of this case is easy to make: Convincing
human beings that they need optimism has never been
difficult. A conviction that one can beat unfavorable
odds seems to be baked into the human psyche. After
all, worldwide, lotteries collect the equivalent of
$275 billion annually, even though any rational person
would describe them (as one rational person did) as “a
tax on people who don’t understand probability.”
Perhaps we are inclined to ignore the odds against
us because we, like all living creatures, have already
beaten tremendous odds. We did it just by existing.
In a universe with plenty of barren rocks, we live on a
planet capable of supporting life, which actually has
living creatures on it, some few of which are pretty in-
telligent—something 4 billion years of evolution never
managed before us. All very unlikely success stories.
And what is true about our species is also true for
any individual human being. At the most literal level,
the odds are always against any particular egg being
fertilized and growing to become a healthy newborn.
And the odds of any particular sperm cell reaching its
goal are infinitesimally low. That you exist to cherish
a certain mad optimism is a sort of proof that mad
optimism can be justified.
Some medical research suggests that optimism
accords with our biology. People who score high on
standard psychological measures of optimism tended
to have healthier diets, have lower Body Mass Index
scores, lower blood pressure, blood sugar and choles-
27
terol, according to a recent study in the journal Health
Behavior & Policy Review. Optimists are also known in
the epidemiological literature for getting fewer colds
and suffering less from flu. When they get cancer, they
tend to have better outcomes. As friends, neighbors
and colleagues, they are supposedly more pleasant and
productive—“happiness magnets,” as the former Olym-
pian Mary Lou Retton puts it.
Yet a closer look at the science makes it clear that
optimists have—surprise, surprise—overstated their
case. Pessimists (if they thought it would do any good,
which they might not) can offer their own studies to
counter each point about the merits of the rosy view.
Health benefits? A very long-term Stanford Univer-
sity study of 1,528 people over eight decades was able to
track the entire lives of people whose relative optimism
and pessimism had been assessed when they were chil-
dren. It found that the children who scored highest in
optimism were the soonest to die as adults. Similarly,
a study in the journal Psychology and Aging, reported
last year in The Wall Street Journal, found that people
older than 65 who expected to be less satisfied with
their lives in five years were more likely to be alive and
healthy years later, compared to those who were more
optimistic. Better work and better friendships? Not
necessarily, when the going gets tough. When events
fail to confirm their outlook, optimists cope with the
stress of adversity less well than pessimists, according
to a host of studies. One likely reason: Pessimists aren’t
easily disappointed.
Even if there is no clear verdict about which outlook
is healthier, there is still a widespread prejudice that
optimism makes for better friends, neighbors and
co-workers. Are there any reasons you might prefer
engaging with gloomy Gusses rather than people of
cheerier outlook?
As it happens, there are. One is rooted in the
fact that pessimism isn’t merely the absence of op-
timism—it is its own mode of thinking and feeling
about the future. One that offers some strengths that
optimists lack.
By dint of their uncertainty that they can prevail
over future challenges, pessimists tend to worry. As
they game out potential failures, they can be more
likely to imagine solutions. In other words, while
optimists on a team will expect solutions to arise if
 THE OPTIMISM-PESSIMISM CONTINUUM
needed, generating those solutions may require a few
pessimists who actually thought in detail about how
to handle trouble. According to Adam Perkins, a psy-
chologist at King’s College, London, the pessimistic
tendency to imagine threats is a natural spur to
thoughts about how to meet those threats—in other
words, to creativity.
Other psychological research aligns with his theory
of a link between angst and performance. Experiments
conducted on students—some as young as 6 and 7,
some in college—continually find that those who have
been lulled into a happy mood score lower on tests and
games than do those who have been made sad or angry
just before the exercise.
hese results suggest that overconfidence
arising from optimism leads people to skip the effort
they need to anticipate and solve future problems. But
the problems of optimism may run deeper than lack of
interest in details. When they do settle down to predict
how the future will treat them, optimists often fail to
engage reality—even when they have experience to
guide them.
This is because our innate tendency to prefer rose-
colored glasses causes us to think our goals can be met
more easily than they can be in reality. In fact, the reli-
able tendency of estimates to be too rosy has a name,
coined by the Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel
Kahneman and his late colleague Amos Tversky: the
“planning fallacy.” This is the almost unavoidable ten-
dency of organizations to underestimate the amount
of time and money required to complete a project, due
to an optimistic take on potential future problems and
the organizations’ own capacities.
For example, Kahneman has noted, among rail
projects undertaken worldwide between 1969 and 1998,
estimates of the number of passengers who would use
the system were on average 106 percent too high, while
28
cost overruns ran an average of 45 percent. As Kahn-
eman notes in his summary of his work on human bias
and error, “Thinking Fast and Slow,” these data are
striking because they cover three decades. They show
that two decades of experience in railroad projects
since the late 1960s did not improve the forecasting of
projects started in the 1990s. The planning fallacy is
as much a component of our personal lives as it is of
our work. As Kahneman recounts, in 2002, a survey
of American homeowners who had remodeled their
kitchens found that, on average, they had expected the
job to cost $18,658; in fact, they ended up paying an
average of $38,769.
There are two types of errors in thought involved
in these pratfalls of optimism. One is giving too much
weight to social factors: We human beings are highly
alert to the way others see us, and in convincing on-
lookers that we are skilled and efficient, we convince
ourselves all too easily.
And often organizational politics adds its weight as
well. As an acquaintance told me recently, discussing
meetings about his construction work for a big urban
government, when confronted by the boss’s grand but
impossible vision, direct reports faced a choice: They
could say “it cannot be done,” and earn a lot of ill will
from their superior. Or they could say “yes, indeed!”
and later report that they failed—which earns them a
pat on the back for at least having tried. As the project
planning wore on, he said, everyone involved learned
that the second option was the only safe choice.
Aside from pressure from others to be too opti-
mistic, there is a second source of error in optimistic
assessments. It is, simply, making plans using the
wrong frame of reference. To estimate future costs
in money and time, your project should be compared
objectively to others like it. Instead, people tend to
compare it to the last one they personally worked on,
or to those that seem to them to be similar. If that
comparison yields an unacceptably gloomy projection,
they then look for reasons why, to use a familiar jingle
beloved of optimists, “This time is different.”
The cure for all this is simple: Request—and heed!—
someone who has no incentive to misjudge the future.
Planning needs an outside observer who has no stake
in being admired, liked or rewarded, and has no cher-
ished notion about why this project is special and no
 "We human beings are highly alert to
the way others see us, and in convincing
onlookers that we are skilled and efficient,
we convince ourselves all too easily."

29
 "Optimism is a happiness
magnet. If you stay positive,
good things and good people
will be drawn to you."
—Mary Lou Retton
 THE OPTIMISM-PESSIMISM CONTINUUM
knowledge of your team’s last success story. The cold
eye of the outsider, using the correct reference class to
make comparisons, is much more likely to be accurate
than the “inside view.”
This is easy to say, but social pressure and habits
of thought incline us to resist or suppress the “outside
view” of our plan. In a project Kahneman himself
worked on, one team member with a great deal of ex-
perience had projected that the work would take seven
to 10 years. But before Kahneman had prompted him
to bring his knowledge to bear, the very same man had
estimated that the work would take around two. In this
case, a team member needed help from others to see his
own “outside view” clearly.
then, can you leverage the benefits of each
outlook on life without succumbing to its ill effects?
It’s a tricky challenge in management, both for your-
self and your team.
Consider the experience of Keith Blount, creator of
Scrivener, a writing app beloved of novelists, bloggers
and scholars for its writer-friendly features (full dis-
closure: this article was created on the app). Begun as a
personal project about 10 years ago, Scrivener launched
as a commercial product in 2006, and Mac and then
Windows versions of the app did well for six years. But
by 2012, with the world going mobile, Blount decided it
was time to create an iOS version.
He knew this would be a big project — it involved
not only translating the app into a new operating
system but also creating bomb-proof syncing for very
complex files. He knew that the Windows version
of the app had taken two and a half years to perfect,
even though developers had told him it would take
six months. (“Whenever you speak to a developer
they say, ‘I can do that in six months, easy,’ ” he says
wryly.) He optimistically announced that the iOS ver-
sion was in development, and that it would be ready
by the end of the year.
31
Then came the unpredictable events that dog
every endeavor. Some were directly related to the
work: Bomb-proof syncing of the app’s complex files,
which users would need to switch between computers
and mobile devices, proved much more difficult than
anyone expected. Others were the sorts of curveballs
that pessimists are sure will come and optimists think
they’ll handle if and when necessary. In this case, the
iOS developer hired for the project developed serious
health problems, but didn’t want to admit defeat.
In retrospect, Blount reflects, he should have sepa-
rated from the developer and found someone else. But
optimism—intellectual, emotional and social—held
him back. “The person wants to do it,” he says. “You
want to give them that chance because you’ve got a
personal relationship with that person. And they know
the project really well at that point, so you’re kind of
hoping they can get past these problems.”
The iOS app had to be delayed. Adding to the
stress, some potential users complained—some to
tech support staff that should have been spending
their time on users’ issues with the Mac and Windows
versions of the app.
A second developer came on to the project, then
“hit a brick wall,” Blount recalls, and, again, was kept
on too long. Much as we look to leaders to optimisti-
cally inspire us, he has concluded that there are other
times when leadership requires insisting on pessimism.
“That’s part of being the big bad boss,” he says. “Being
the person who says, ‘This isn’t going as well.’ It’s hard
to be that person when sometimes you need to be.”
Now, three years later, Blount is on his third devel-
oper and finally testing a product. However, he says,
the company’s stance is now “we’re not going to make
guesses about when it will be released, it’s just going
to be finished when it is. We’re on that swing of the
pendulum now.”
Of course, he reflects, he could have simply an-
nounced nothing and kept the iOS project a secret.
However, in the software universe, “if you do that
people think you’re not working on anything at all.
People can be equally frustrated by that approach.”
The dance of optimism and pessimism, both in one’s
own head and organization and in what one tells the
public, is not easy to maintain. Both outlooks have their
uses, and either, applied wrongly can sink a project. It is,
◄
as Blount says, “a really difficult balance.”
BY LAWRENCE M. FISHER

If you consult Wikipedia on Ned Ludd, you will learn that

Ned Ludd may or may not have been his name, and that
he may or may not have smashed two stocking frames
in 1779. The Luddites who emerged three decades later
took the folkloric King Ludd or Capt. Ludd as their
mythical hero. Ned may have gotten a bad rap, if he ever
existed at all, but the organized frame-breakers who
followed were surely only expressing their concern about
the impact of new technology on the future of work.
Today they might go on the lecture circuit.
Or
perhaps they’d write books. Search Amazon
for “The Future of Work,” and you find three
books with that very title, two just published
this year, and 157,971 results with some
variation on the theme. These run the gamut
from the predictably alarmist—robots will
steal our jobs—to the wishful utopian—the
coming post-capitalist life of leisure.
It’s an enduring theme, the future of
work, dating at least since Adam Smith’s
1776 opus, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations,” through Frederick Winslow Taylor’s 1911
“The Principles of Scientific Management,” and on to more
contemporary classics like Peter Drucker’s “Management
Challenges for the 21st Century,” and Charles Handy’s “The Age
of Unreason.” There is no evidence that hunter-gatherers or
subsistence farmers gave much thought to the future of work,
but ever since humanity began to substitute technology for
labor, we have fretted about the outcome.
Some prognostications have clearly come true. Many
credit Drucker with coining the term “knowledge worker” in
1957, when he suggested “the most valuable asset of a 21st-
century institution, whether business or non-business, will be
its knowledge workers and their productivity.” And Handy, who
is sometimes referred to as the British Drucker, was similarly
apt in foretelling “portfolio careers,” a phrase he came up with
in the 1980s to describe people who work for themselves and
serve a portfolio of individuals and entities.
Handy took a more pessimistic tone in a 1994 sequel,
“The Age of Paradox,” but it was also prescient. Technology has
increased wealth and consumption among a few, while reducing
employment and incomes for many, he wrote. Opportunities
for personal fulfillment are complicated by demands for ever-
greater efficiency, and the new freedom to pursue more flexible
lifestyles that account for our personal and professional lives
only increases the inequities between the skilled or talented
haves and the less-fortunate have-nots.
That sounds a lot like today’s workplace. But what about
10 or 20 years from now? What will constitute work? What will
people do? What will go away?
 ns NeedNot Apply
uH ma
j erry kaplan is a serial entrepreneur, having started
pioneering companies in artificial intelligence, Teknowledge; pen
computing, GO Corp.; Internet auctions, OnSale; and social gaming,
Winster. Clearly, he’s an inveterate optimist. But his outlook on the future
of work is more nuanced, as stated succinctly in the title of his new book:
for all the people around; it’s just going
to be different work. People may not be
skilled for the jobs that come along, and
AI technology is just going to accelerate
this trend.”
As Karl Marx pointed out, industrial
“Humans Need Not Apply; A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of automation substitutes capital for labor,
Artificial Intelligence.” Kaplan says. The new generation of AI,
As Kaplan writes, after 50 years and billions of dollars, we have finally which he calls “synthetic intellects,” can
cracked the code on artificial intelligence, and recent advances in robotics, also substitute capital for your mind.
perception and machine learning are enabling new computer systems that The future, he says, will be a struggle of
rival or exceed human capabilities. These developments could usher in a assets against people. But though Kaplan
new period of prosperity and leisure, but there’s a big “but.” is a technologist through and through,
“The transition may be protracted and brutal,” he writes. “Without he sees the struggle primarily as a failure
adjustments to our economic system and regulatory policies, we may be in of public policy, not malevolent smart
for an extended period of social turmoil.” machines.
Social turmoil is a byproduct when new technology is introduced in “We don’t move markets. People don’t
the workplace, but the severity of that turmoil depends on the speed of move markets, it’s algorithms,” Kaplan
the transition. Artificial intelligences may displace Drucker’s knowledge says. “We didn’t sit down and think
workers as thoroughly as tractors replaced farm labor. Indeed, some about it and design things effectively.
already have: Computers now execute an estimated 85 percent of stock Probably we shouldn’t have allowed com-
trades. New technology also creates new jobs, but that takes time. Today’s puter trades. If people could see it, they’d
workers may not be qualified for tomorrow’s career opportunities, and be up in arms. It’s crazy to have cabals of
this time their collars will be white. programmers fighting over fractions of a
“There’s a bunch of new technologies that are going to make a lot second deciding our markets. Or the bots
of current activities susceptible to automation where they haven’t been buying up all the best tickets on Ticket-
before,” says Kaplan. “It’s all a question of how fast it happens. We’re not master: If you had to buy your ticket by
going to run out of things to do. There will ultimately be plenty of work going to the concert hall and you saw 75

35
percent of the people in line were robots,
that would be illegal. ”
Kaplan’s book is longer on description
than prescription, but he argues that
a comfortable future depends on new
policies that get at the heart of inequality,
which will otherwise be exacerbated to
Pharaonic levels. Laws must change to
hold autonomous systems responsible for
their actions; education must prepare stu-
dents for an ever more rapidly changing
work environment; and a program of tax
incentives, portfolio transparency and
increased individual control over assets
must encourage corporations to “do the
right thing.” Otherwise, look out.
“Advances in information technology
are already gutting industries and jobs
at a furious clip, far faster than the labor
markets can possibly adapt, and there’s
much worse to come,” Kaplan writes.
“They are also substituting capital for
labor in completely new ways, delivering
a disproportionate share of new wealth
to the already rich.”
Déjà Vu
All Over Again
If there’s a ring of “we have all been
here before” in today’s lamentations
and forecasts about automation and the
workplace, it’s because we have. The loss
of jobs to machines was a popular meme
during the Depression. It rose again with
a more hopeful, if fanciful, vibe in the
early 1960s, the era of the Seattle World’s
Fair that gave birth to the Space Needle
and the Monorail.
Paul Saffo teaches future studies at
Stanford and Singularity University, and
he for one is not stricken by the latest
round of robot anxiety. “This subject, this
fear of robots stealing our jobs, is a comet
on a loopy orbit that comes screaming
across the sky every few years,” he says.
“This is a profound shift, but everybody is
focusing on the wrong thing. It’s not the
jobs that are being taken by robots that
36
matter, it’s the jobs that are never developed to begin with, because they’re
taken by machines instead of people.”
Saffo points out that today’s most successful companies just aren’t
hiring in the numbers that characterized big companies in the past. Face-
book has a market capitalization of $260 billion, but just 10,000 full-time
employees, compared with I.B.M., valued at $147 billion, with 380,000
employees.
Like Kaplan, Saffo says the other critical element will be how quickly
robots gain new capabilities, and that is a mixed bag. “Robots are capable
of doing things far beyond the capability of human beings,” he says. “They
can see into the infrared and the ultraviolet, but at the same time, some
things that ordinary humans do, they can’t do at all, like opening door-
knobs. Anybody worried about the Terminator in his or her future can
just lock the door. I suspect this is a slow-motion tidal wave, and velocity
matters, because the more slowly it happens, the more we will adapt.”
Saffo doesn’t suggest that the changes aren’t real, or that their impacts
won’t be profound, but he believes that how well society will accommo-
date them is a matter of choice. If society values quarterly earnings over
workplace integrity, workers will suffer. Apocalypse is unlikely, he says,
but jobs will be even less secure, an ever greater percentage of workers will
be unwilling independent contractors, and the notion of a job for life will
be a quaint bit of nostalgia.
“Automation in the ’60s really did change manufacturing,” Saffo says.
“The U.S. is the second-largest manufacturer in the world. The reason
is productivity, which is the substitution of capital for labor. Companies
grew, but they didn’t hire more people. You cannot blame the insecurity
of American workers on robots. There is no reason we have to use this
technology to make workers less secure; we’ve chosen to do that. If I
had to blame one thing for the plight of workers, it wouldn’t be robots, it
would be shareholder value.”
A Failure of Leadership
Don’t blame the robots, blame the leaders, says Jeffrey Pfeffer, a much-
published professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, whose
latest book is piquantly titled “Leadership BS.” Our workplaces are terrible
places to be, and our corporate leaders fail at astonishing rates, he says.
“I think the workplace by every measure—job satisfaction, employee
engagement, income stagnation, income inequality—is bad,” says Pfeffer.
“Some colleagues and I have done work for academic journals about the
health effects of work, and we found it causes 120,000 excess deaths in
the U.S. every year. This is not from accidents; it’s from the stress of work.
We have by every measure, a very unhealthy workplace, and I see no signs
that things are getting better. I see every sign that things are getting
worse. The workplace is a catastrophe by any measure.”
In “Leadership BS,” Pfeffer places much of the blame on a leadership
industry—all those coaches, consultants and conferences—that promotes
a lot of feel-good mantras and inspiring stories that are often at odds with
the characteristics of real leaders. The industry recommends that leaders
inspire trust, be authentic, tell the truth, serve others, be modest and
 Trading Money
self-effacing, and exhibit empathy and emotional intelligence and other
seemingly sensible nostrums. But, Pfeffer asks, where are the successful
leaders with these qualities? And most leaders are not successful; they fail
their people, their organizations, the larger society and even themselves
with unacceptable frequency, he writes.
“Then of course, we evaluate the leadership training efforts, not by
forTime
whether they’ve made the workplace better, but with these happy sheets In a recent article in The New York Times,
that ask, ‘Did you have a good time?’ ” says Pfeffer. “They’re evaluating the Amazon was portrayed as a notably harsh
wrong thing; they’re evaluating entertainment. The correct prescription place to work, and follow-up stories in a
is to change how you hire the people who are going to do the leadership number of publications noted that similar
development and talks, and to require expertise. We need to do what pressure-cooker environments were
medicine did in the early 1900s. Evaluate things based on the changes common in today’s high-tech corpora-
you’re trying to create. If leadership programs are supposed to improve tions. But people are also working longer
the workplace, that’s what you ought to evaluate.” and harder days in professional service
firms and partnerships, driven by the
same technical innovations and the same
need to maintain a competitive edge.
Consider the practice of law, says
Jeffrey Bleich, a former United States am-

“The workplace by every

bassador to Australia, special counsel to
President Obama, chair of the California
State University Board of Trustees, and

measure–job satisfaction,
president of the State Bar of California.
“It used to be that if you were a very
good lawyer, you made a good income,

employee engagement,
but you didn’t become rich. You just
became comfortable, middle class,” Bleich
says. “Judges made a bit more because

income stagnation, income

they had to become great lawyers.” The
workday for a good lawyer at a major
firm was 9 to 6, probably with a two-hour

inequality–is bad.”
lunch break. “If anybody left voicemail for
you after 5, that was considered very bad
form. Most things that needed a response
from opposing counsel were sent by mail,
so once you sent it, you didn’t have to
think about it for two weeks.”
Today’s high-level attorneys make
many times what a judge makes, many
In 1910, a report produced by Abraham Flexner for the Carnegie times what a previous generation of
Foundation transformed the training, and also the science and practice of lawyers made, but there’s a cost. “The
medicine, leading to the closing of one-third of existing medical schools; expectation is they are going to be avail-
the formal licensing of physicians; and the biomedical, scientific founda- able 24/7 by e-mail; they are going to do
tion of modern medical practice. Pfeffer would like to see something filings up until midnight,” says Bleich.
like a Flexner report for business education, something with a scientific “As soon as something crosses their desk,
foundation, but he holds out no hope of such a thing coming to pass. they push it onto the opposing counsel,
“Now, do you believe this is possible, in today’s world, where you can’t so things that used to take a month to
even get a budget passed?” Pfeffer asks. “It is not that the problems are sort out are done in furious e-mails in the
insolvable; they’re completely solvable. course of a day. The ability to go home
It is possible to change this, but the odds of it happening in the cur- and have dinner with your family, or to
rent situation are close to zero. Maybe instead of the Great Place to Work have predictable vacations—those things
list, we ought to put out a list of the companies that are killing the most have gone away.”
people every year.” These changes have come about

37
partly through the adoption of new technology, partly through new billing “I’m very optimistic,” says Wind. “I
practices and partly through shifting customs and practices, says Bleich. think it’s the most exciting time ever.
“Companies are moving at the speed of the Internet, and they expect lawyers Because if people want to be a free agent
billing what they do to move at that speed, too,” he says. “In the course of one they can. If they want to be entrepre-
generation, there’s been a sea change, but it’s been gradual, so people think neurs, it’s the easiest time ever to start
it’s always been this way. People who started 20 years ago don’t mourn their your own company. But let’s put it in
old life, but wish they could trade a bit of money for more time.” perspective. I’m very optimistic for the
Bleich expects advances in automation to have a number of positive highly educated segment of the work
impacts, not just for obvious industries like trucking, but also for home- force. I’m very pessimistic for the unedu-
based workers, including artists and publishers. And he’s not worried about cated. These guys are not going to make
robots replacing lawyers any time soon. it. It’s not a function of the workplace; it’s
“A lot of law is about the emotional connection,” Bleich says. “Can you what we’re not doing to prepare this huge
think how other people do? Can you convey that and bring them around percentage of the population for jobs
to your point of view? Can you read peoples’ reactions in real time, in a in the new world. This calls for a major
way that allows you to quickly recalculate and change the words you use? reinvention of education.”
This is far beyond what anyone is hoping to train some artificial intel-
ligence project to accomplish.”

All Keynesians Now?

The Most Exciting Time Ever A surprising number of the futurists and
management thinkers interviewed for
Jerry (Yoram) Wind is the Lauder Professor and professor of marketing at this article recommended re-reading John
the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and is the founding Maynard Keynes, and specifically his essay,
director of the Wharton think tank, the SEI Center for Advanced Studies in “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchil-
Management. Wind, who co-wrote a book called “The Power of Impossible dren,” written in 1930, during the depths
Thinking,” about transforming life and business, has a distinctly glass-half- of the Depression. Keynes took exception
full vision of the future of work. Big changes are under way, he says, but to the then-prevailing view that a decline
many are for the best. in prosperity was more likely than an
“Among the key forces driving change, one is obviously that consumers, improvement in the decade ahead.
and employees as well, are getting more empowered and more skeptical,” “I believe that this is a wildly mistaken
Wind says. “Today, people want to work for, be part of and buy from com- interpretation of what is happening to us,”
panies that have a purpose, that have a positive social impact. Couple this Keynes wrote. “We are suffering, not from
with the desire of people to have a better balance between work, play and the rheumatics of old age, but from the
family. That’s been coming for years, but it’s much more dominant today.” growing-pains of over-rapid changes, from
Wind sees technology not as a threat, but as a potential source of em- the painfulness of readjustment between
powerment. “The other key force for potential workers is the development one economic period and another. The
of AI, what I.B.M. calls cognitive computing, with Watson,” the company’s increase of technical efficiency has been
name for cognitive computing systems that understand natural language taking place faster than we can deal with
and are not programmed, but instead learn by observation. “Think in terms the problem of labor absorption.…”
of automation, robotics, but also in terms of the impact on white-collar That does have a familiar ring, and it
workers. The nature of work is going to change dramatically because now is comforting. Keynes got some things
you have an intelligent assistant that can give you not only a Google search, right and some things wrong, of course;
but validified responses.” his predictions of unbounded leisure were
Wind says technology will enable free agents to thrive in new types of a bit off the mark. Probably something
business. He points to InnoCentive, a pioneer in the field of open innova- similar is true for today’s prophets as well.
tion, which connects clients who have a problem, with “Solvers,” freelance That post-capitalist utopia will remain
experts from around the globe, who supply a crowd-sourced solution. Wind elusive, but the doomsday scenarios will
predicts that some large companies will no longer build in-house expertise, be ameliorated, possibly by solutions
but will source it as needed from InnoCentive and its competitors. And yet unimagined. The road to the future
as Handy predicted, solvers will build a portfolio of clients, rather than a won’t be free of bumps, but it needn’t be
career within corporations. a dead end either. 

39
 n the 1980s, aided by
the predictions of
such futurists as Alvin
Toffler in his best-selling
book The Third Wave, the office
of the future seemed likely to
be at home, or at least partially
so. Telecommuting was the topic
du jour and Toffler’s “electronic
cottage” set off speculation that
the most productive workers
would be allowed flexible strictures
around their corporate lives. The
office itself, reshaped by advances
in technology, would likely remain
physically unchanged but white-
collar employees would become far
more productive if they could avoid
time-draining commutes and the
distractions of crowded offices.
 By Glenn Rifkin
ILLUSTRATIONS BY LUCIO SHIAVON
42
Though Toffler was prescient in terms of the emerging
popularity of telecommuting, the long experiment in the
concept of work-at-home seems to have come full circle.
Flex time has become an accepted corporate benefit—an
estimated 45 percent of today’s workforce works at least
occasionally at home—but forward-looking companies
such as Bell Labs, Apple, Google, Samsung and Facebook,
have come to realize that innovation rests largely on
effective collaboration of smart, motivated and creative
workers bumping into each other at the water cooler and
in the halls. If ideas are the currency of innovation, the
most effective way to share ideas becomes the blueprint
for the office of the future.

We’ve learned
that face-to-face
interactions are by far
the most important
activity in an office.
In fact,
TECHNOLOGY IS NOW CAPABLE
of measuring such outcomes. Ben Waber,
CEO of Humanyze, a Boston-based
company founded out of Professor Alex
“Sandy” Pentland’s Human Dynamics
Laboratory at MIT’s Media Lab, believes
the data confirms the point. Humanyze
makes “sociometric badges” that capture
interaction, communication, and location
information for employees. The resulting
data is analyzed to determine just what
workers are doing during their day in
terms of time spent with colleagues and
resulting actions
“We’ve learned that face-to-face
interactions are by far the most important
activity in an office,” Waber said. “For
example, we can look at all the people who
just got promoted and see what they do
differently. That’s really powerful.”
While Waber’s technology has demon-
strated intriguing promise, the path to the
office of the future is littered with broken
promises and diminished expectations.
Variations on the “office of the future”
have emerged repeatedly over the past
three decades. Glassed-in offices were
replaced by cubicles; cubicles gave way
to open environments; assigned spaces
morphed into rotating desk assignments;
audio conference calls evolved into sleek
video conference rooms that allowed
virtual face-to-face meetings of colleagues
around the globe. Despite all these modi-
fications, productivity levels remained
stagnant. Facilities managers continued
to be rewarded for reducing costs and in-
creasing usable square footage rather than
for creating more productive work spaces.
But now, things may finally be shifting.
Companies are employing artificial
intelligence solutions, data analytics,
robotics, natural settings replete with
flora and fresh air, and a renewed focus on
human nature to rethink how employees
work most productively. The modern
work-space is being reshaped as much by
44
psychology as technology and the cease-
less quest for innovation has spawned a
wave of dramatic thinking about how best
to create an innovation-prone environ-
ment. Tony Hsieh, founder and CEO of
Zappos, is a proponent of “collisionable
hours,” the idea that smart people
bumping randomly into other smart
people is the optimum source for idea
exchanges that lead to innovation.
Hsieh is reportedly investing $350
million in the area near Zappo’s new head-
quarters in Las Vegas, in order to foster
entrepreneurial activity. The idea is to
bring employees together with area resi-
dents and independent workers to share
ideas and create new ventures. Early on,
the new virtual office space created a 42
percent increase in face-to-face encoun-
ters, a 78 percent increase in participant-
generated proposals to solve specific
problems and an 84 percent increase in
the number of new leaders who emerged
to work on various parts of the project. If
he meets his goal, Hsieh hopes to generate
100,000 collisionable hours per acre in the
neighborhood.
Not surprisingly, face-to-face has re-
emerged as a foundational requirement
for successful companies.
“Even though the Internet provided a
tool for virtual and distant collaborations,
another lesson of digital-age innovation
is that, now as in the past, physical prox-
imity is beneficial,” wrote Walter Isaacson,
author of the best-selling book on Steve
Jobs, in Entrepreneur magazine. Ac-
cording to Isaacson, Jobs fixated on every
detail of the physical layout of his offices.
“When Steve Jobs designed a new head-
quarters for Pixar, he obsessed over ways
to structure the atrium, and even where
to locate the bathrooms, so that serendipi-
tous personal encounters would occur.
Among his last creations was the plan
for Apple’s new signature headquarters, a
circle with rings of open workspaces sur-
rounding a central courtyard.”
According to Isaacson, places like Bell
Labs unearthed the advantages of face-to-
face collaboration as far back as the 1960s
and little has emerged to demonstrate
 that such meetings in the flesh can be
replicated digitally. “The founders of Intel
created a sprawling team-oriented open
workspace where employees all rubbed
against one another,” he wrote. “It was a
model that became common in Silicon
Valley. Predictions that digital tools would
allow workers to telecommute were never
fully realized.” When Yahoo named
Marissa Mayer as its new CEO in 2012,
she immediately dictated that employees
needed to work on site rather than at
home, saying, “People are more collabora-
tive and innovative when they’re together.”
A recent report called Smart Work-
place 2040 from CBRE Global Workplace
Solutions, the Los Angeles-based energy
efficiency giant, took a crack at pre-
dicting the office as we might find it 25
years from now.
“Corporate organizations are still
considering the workplace as delivering
a strong identity and more than ever
as a marketing weapon, creating and
sustaining their corporate identity,” the
report—hypothetically written in 2040—
stated. “The intensity of performance
level improvements increased significantly
over the past ten years, accelerating the
pace of work through the combined power
When Steve Jobs
designed a new
headquarters for Pixar,
he obsessed over ways
to structure the atrium,
and even where to
locate the bathrooms,
so that serendipitous
personal encounters
would occur.
of technology and personalized, choice-
based software solutions. The presence of
technology in every aspect of our life in
2040 is predominating our way of living.
The workplace of 2040 is far more agile,
the presence of technology is ultra pre-
dominant and human beings are highly
reliant on it.”
In other words, the more things
change, the more they are likely to remain
the same. And of course, the seeds of that
future are being sown right now. ●
No longer
static
FOR HASIER LARREA, a mechanical
engineer from the Basque region of
Spain, the office of the future is likely
to be a dynamic and intelligent space, a
new twist on the Internet of Things that
will transform everything we currently
think about physical locations. Larrea
recently graduated from MIT’s Media
Lab where he did breakthrough work on
creating dynamic spaces as part of the
Lab’s Changing Places research project.
Though he remains a research affiliate
with the Media Lab, Larrea donned
an entrepreneur’s hat and is starting a
company called MorphLab to deploy
some of these ideas into the marketplace.
In Larrea’s research, he noted that
the static nature of our work and living
spaces has not evolved very much for more
than 2,000 years. Architectural layouts
today are virtually the same as when the
Romans built their cities. Nearly all of
the improvements in office space depend
on large spaces divided into private and
public areas. A meeting room might be
used for two hours during a day and be
wasted space the rest of the time. But
what if those spaces were dynamic and
intelligent (see the video: https://youtu.be/
3Z8rGrjILX0)? What if the technology al-
lowed the walls, the tables, the chairs and
the floors to hold enough embedded intel-
 ligence to reconfigure themselves
and react to a person’s individual
needs, turning a single workspace
into three different workspaces,
or taking several individual spaces
and transforming them into a
meeting room? What if individual
devices such as laptop computers
would automatically notify the
system of a low battery and a
charger would wheel itself over
to be plugged in? What if such a
system would notify a user that
they had been sitting too long,
hunched over a computer screen
and suggested a break?
“Suddenly all these things
become more malleable and are
transformed effortlessly,” Larrea
said. Through the use of robotic
technology that already exists, an
office space will transform itself
automatically when people enter
the space. Larrea noted that smart
thermostats and utility technology
already allows users to control
spaces with mobile phone apps. But
that is just a beginning.
With vast numbers of people
moving into the world’s biggest
cities, available real estate becomes
more and more limited and spaces
grow smaller and more cramped.
Creating an environment that
not only shifts and changes with
a user’s needs, but does it without
human intervention is going to be
increasingly valuable as office space
becomes more restricted.
“Think about the chair where
you are sitting or the desk where
you have your notebook,” Larrea
said. “We think all these spatial ele-
ments are the key. They are going
to bring new applications and new
Tracking productivity
ideas to really improving the ef-
ficiency, wellness, and health of our
work environment.”
Ultimately, enough intelligence,
using sensors and data, will be
imbedded into a person’s com-
puters or chairs or desks so that
they will be able to judge a person’s
emotional state. Your chair might
feel increasing tension in your
back and shoulders and read those
stress levels and react accordingly.
“All of a sudden, your office can ef-
fectively understand how stressed
you are and trigger action,” Larrea
said. The smart office of the
future will be filled with what a
fellow Media Lab researcher called
“enchanted objects.”
The key to Larrea’s vision, he
explained, is that this revolution
will not require a breakthrough
from a single innovative startup.
Instead, it will be customizable
based on a vast wave of app
development from countless
developers, not unlike the world of
smartphones. “You and I may have
the same iPhone but the experience
we have is totally different because
we customize it with different
hardware and with different apps,”
he said. “The moment you allow
developers to create apps for these
office furnishings, you unleash the
potential of this concept.”
Instead of one company dic-
tating the evolution, the office of
the future will be a platform with
malleable capabilities. Once that
happens, a new eco-system is born
and creative developers will start
flooding the market with apps.
“It will be your office app store,”
Larrea said. ●
IF THE OFFICE OF THE
future is a self-regulating, shape-
shifting entity that encourages
face-to-face encounters, how will
CEOs actually measure the value
of these encounters? Anecdotal
evidence can carry an executive
just so far. Real data to support
the findings makes the investment
in such technology feasible.
Ben Waber of Humanyze ac-
knowledges that most companies
are capable of measuring little
more than cost per square foot.
According to Waber, companies
now have the means to measure
whether the design of a space
helps or hurts performance.
With Humanzye’s badges, the
idea is to shape the design of the
office of the future in terms of
“density, proximity of people and
social nature.” The early returns
demonstrate that face-to-face
47
interactions are indeed by far
the most important activity in
an office.
The badges, worn just like a
corporate ID badge, but equipped
with radio frequency sensors, have
been used in several Fortune 100
companies already—hospitals,
pharmaceuticals, finance and
software companies—to measure
social signals from speech and
body movement and Waber
 pointed out that the results are
uniformly positive. “We’ve gotten
100 percent positive feedback not
only because we deal with the data
in the right way but I can point
to literally tens of thousands of
people at companies like Bank
of America who measurably like
their jobs better.”
In the current office environ-
ment, facilities and real estate
managers are evaluated by cost
per square foot rather than how
useful a space actually is. “People
who work in real estate should be
evaluated based not on how many
more people can be crammed into
smaller offices but much more
around how the physical space af-
fects collaboration,” Waber said.
By monitoring where people
People who work in real estate should be evaluated
based not on how many more people can be crammed
into smaller offices but much more around how the
physical space affects collaboration.
spend their time, who they are
talking to and how they react,
and analyzing the results of these
movements, Waber said that
individual companies can measure
the actual impact of face-to-face
encounters in the workplace.
At Bank of America, for ex-
ample, Humanyze outfitted 80 call
center employees with badges and
then monitored their movements
and activities. A call center is a
fascinating petri dish of the work-
place, Waber said, because they
have been managed essentially
the same way since the 1960s. The
employee sits at a desk all day an-
swering calls from people who are
angry about an issue that is not
that employee’s fault. A call center
person on a break is considered a
negative because they aren’t an-
swering the phones when they are
not at their desk. A company can’t
allow a large group of call center
operators to take a break together
because too many calls would go
unanswered.
With giant call centers around
the world employing millions of
employees, the metrics for mea-
suring outcomes have always been
simple and clear. How long does it
take to complete a call? How many
calls can you handle in an hour,
in a day? Given those measures,
outcomes should be uniform re-
gardless of geography. But Bank of
America was noticing something
odd. With call centers across the
country, organized exactly the
same way with operators trained
uniformly, the bank was noticing
very different performances. It
was assumed that the culture of
that particular call center was at
the heart of the differences but
the bank had no way to isolate the
cause of the problem.
Humanyze came in to one such
call center, deployed its badges to
80 employees and began to mea-
sure how people communicated
with each other, how they talked
to customers on the phone and
how those two factors impacted
performance and turnover. This
office of the future effort might
have felt too similar to a Big
Brother invasion of privacy. But
the response was remarkable.
“Before the data started
coming in, I assumed when it
48
came to performance, what was
going to be the most important
was how people talk to customers,”
Waber said. “You have certain
people who communicate in a
certain way to customers and that
would impact how fast they com-
plete calls. But it turned out that
when it came to performance, the
most important factor was how
you talk to your co-workers. If you
had a really tight-knit network—
people who talk to each other a
lot—those people completed calls
in half the time as those with the
least tightknit networks.”
Not only did the tightknit
group complete calls more ef-
ficiently, they were also a lot less
stressed, an outcome the badges
helped to measure. In a tight-knit
group, an individual’s feelings and
needs become known quickly;
telling one person usually means
that news spreads quickly and
inevitably there is some support
system to help that person cope.
In addition, in most call cen-
ters, there is competition among
co-workers to reap the bonuses
and promotions which are limited
in number. If only the top 10
percent of performers get a bonus,
that means that an employee is
unlikely to share effective tech-
niques and methods for solving
customer problems. If it took one
hour for a call center operator to
solve a customer problem, sharing
that experience with a colleague
who can then solve the same
problem in five minutes using
this new information, makes
the first employee look worse in
comparison. But if they are friends
and don’t fear being sabotaged,
sharing is far more likely to occur
and performance across the board
is improved.
According to Waber, when he
looked at all the data from the
badges it became clear that 80
percent of the interaction among
colleagues took place in the 15
minutes when people’s lunch-
breaks occasionally overlapped.
Noting that, Bank of America
decided to reconsider the group’s
15 minute coffee break. Instead of
staggering the breaks, the entire
team would take its coffee break
at the same time. To control the
experiment, the bank changed
the breaks for only half of the call
center teams. The other teams
continued to take staggered
breaks. Nothing else was changed.
The bank waited three
months to go over the resulting
data. They expected the teams
that got the group breaks to be-
strategically powerful, bring up a
plethora of issues for the office of
the future. While measuring the
impact of social interaction, are
these kinds of tools crossing the
line as too invasive?
Privacy, Waber said, is central
to Humanyze’s efforts. Individuals
must opt-in and agree to wear
the badge. It is entirely voluntary
and the data is confidential. Con-
versations are not recorded and a
person’s boss does not get to look
at the data. “If someone doesn’t
want to participate, they can say
so and we just give them a fake
badge so that no one can know
they are not participating,” Waber
said. Indeed, in its contracts with
customers, if a company tries to
compel an employee to give them
access to the data, they’d be in
violation of the contract and the
company can be sued.
If companies can successfully
assuage fears of individual rights
being compromised, the net
results are likely to turn conven-
tional office wisdom about pro-
ductivity on its head. Executives
have always assumed that a person
sitting at a desk answering emails
or writing reports is being produc-
tive. Coffee breaks and social chat
around the water cooler were the
bane of efficiency experts. But
what if it is just the opposite?
“If you spend six hours of your
day helping ten people you work
with become 20 percent more
effective, now that should be your
job,” Waber said. “Before this, it
has been essentially impossible to
show the impact. There was just
no data. Now, we can put some
hard numbers on these things.
That’s where this becomes incred-
ibly powerful.” ●

come more cohesive and they did.
But in addition, people reported
a 19 percent reduction in stress
levels. They found that by being
able to share trying experiences
immediately with colleagues,
stress was reduced.
But more important, the
experiment had a dramatic impact
on productivity. People completed
calls 23 percent more quickly
after the change was made. In
the groups where no change was
made, call times didn’t change.
On top of that, turnover in those
groups dropped from 40 percent
to 12 percent a year. All this from
instituting a group-wide 15-minute
coffee break.
“What this is showing is that if
you can find the social levers that
people are responsive to and you
can act on them in the right way,
you can get the biggest results,”
Waber said. Such tools, while
Face-to-face
OMPANIES THAT SPECIALIZE in managing
and enhancing office spaces, such as CBRE Global
Workplace Solutions, have been challenged for the past
couple of decades with the infusion of technology into
the workplace. Working with Global 1000 multinational
companies, CBRE is focused not just on managing buildings but
ensuring that these buildings are transformed into spaces that attract,
retain and house productive workers.
Hannah Hahn, CBRE’s Global Workplace Innovation Manager,
pointed out the firm is focused on a road map that it calls “high sense
emergence,” which refers to the influx of technologies such as Waber’s
badges, that touch more senses and make collaboration, even remote
collaboration, more effective.
Though the technology already exists in corporate meeting rooms
to bring together even the most remote workers, Hahn believes that no
technology will ever replace physical proximity.
“It will always be important to have a face-to-face communication
and real human interaction,” said Hahn, who is based in Cologne,
Germany. “In our research looking out to 2040, the digitizing of the
workplace means more mobility and collaboration. But the focus is also
on employee health, wellness, and well-being.” 
By Glenn Rifkin

The Future of Work:

A Meeting of Minds
THE FUTURE OF WORK HAS BEEN THE SUBJECT OF LIVELY
discussion for at least three decades. While optimists and some organizations have
been looking forward to a technology-driven utopian job environment, the nature
of work remains fundamentally unchanged. Still, the advent of powerful tech-
nology and methods has remade the workplace for most organizations.

To explore the implications of the remains elusive. After these techno-

Future of Work, Korn Ferry convened
a conference with the aim of creating
a community of ambitious-minded fu-
ture-focused thinkers and practitioners.
The gathering brought together a cross-
functional group with vision, influence
and a mindset of positive change.
Consider the impact over the past
20 years of game-changing techno-
logical breakthroughs such as the
Internet, wireless communications,
super-high-speed broadband networks
and increasingly powerful microchips.
Try to think of life before e-mail and
smartphones and social media and
texting and Skype. Even those who are
old enough to recall that companies
thrived and work actually got done are
still hard-pressed to contemplate work
life, or personal life for that matter,
without these accouterments. We post
on Facebook, therefore we are.
But with the all the changes, the
realization of a utopian workplace
logical advances, are workers happier,
more productive, or more likely to
remain loyal to an organization?
For corporate human resources
professionals, the transformation
of the workplace environment has
reshaped their mandate and job
description. H.R.’s role is now that of
strategic business partner. The per-
sonnel department’s directive is now
aimed at not only helping to affect
the environment as it is influenced by
technology, but in the acquisition of
talent as well. No longer a corporate
support function, H.R. is now tasked
with partnering with the business
units to create viable talent strategies
and enable employees to build a sense
of purpose and be the best they can be.
Speakers at the workshop included
three leading experts in their respective
fields: Jo Taylor, Dave Coplin and Kursty
Groves Knight. Each has a unique take
on what the future of work looks like.

50
B O N AQ U E
The Future of Work: A Meeting of Minds
DAVE COPLIN:
THE VIRTUAL
WORKFORCE
Dave Coplin has been a futurist and
visionary at Microsoft U.K. since
joining the company in 2005. His
current title is “chief envisioning
officer,” and he is focused on
providing strategic advice
and guidance about the
impact of technology
on society, at work
and at play. Coplin is
an author whose latest
book, “The Rise of the
Humans,” offers a call
to action for harnessing
the “digital deluge” and taking
control of the technology and its
impact on our lives.
As a self-described “alchemist,”
Coplin suggested that we are sur-
rounded by “base metals”—the
organizational structure, the
buildings we are in and the tech-
nology we use—but “we don’t often
combine those elements together to
deliver magic. And that’s the poten-
tial for the future,” Coplin said.
So many of the things we use
today were invented by “alchemists”
who were trying to do the impos-
sible, he said. “The technology af-
fords us a different way of working
and a different way of structuring
organizations,” he said. “The future
requires a few people to paint that
picture, to make some whacky
experiments that will perhaps
never work in the fullness in which
they were painted, so we won’t get
gold out of base metals. But it will
make us think differently about the
potential, and we may invent some
new things along the way.”
According to Coplin, one of his
roles is to show what is possible, to
push through and change concep-
tions about what we do and how we
work, and to deliver “not just tiny
changes or slight improvements on
the way we work, but fundamental
transformative capabilities.”
For example, available tech-
nology could make the office so
different that “it might not be an
office at all,” he said. During the
Industrial Revolution, workers had
to fit inside the physical confines
of a factory or mill, because that
was where the infrastructure was.
Those constraints no longer exist.
“Work should be an activity, or
a set of activities, not a destination,”
Coplin declared. “Work is something
you do, not somewhere you go.”
In fact, the biggest obstacle to
an overhaul of the future of work is
cultural, not technical. “The chal-
lenge of the next decade or longer
is how to make sure this remains
humans plus machines rather than
humans vs. machines,” Coplin said.
JO TAYLOR:
GLOBAL
TALENT
WORK FORCE
Jo Taylor is a talent and organi-
zational development consultant
in the U.K. She has been a highly
successful senior human resources
executive for the past 15 years,
much of which was spent operating
at the board level in a variety of
leadership roles within flourishing
customer-facing organizations. She
was most recently the director of
talent and recruiting for TalkTalk
Telecom Group.
According to Taylor, talent
management within organiza-
52
tions is systematically changing.
Collaboration tools and social
media offerings like LinkedIn,
Facebook and Twitter are creating
generational nuances that will
influence the future of work. “H.R.
has a really important part to play
in not only supporting but also in
demonstrating and enabling busi-
ness leaders to understand how
to lead in this new environment,”
Taylor said.
In the past, H.R.’s role was to
access employee data for an orga-
nization, but today that has been
turned inside out. H.R., she said,
aided by technology, is giving that
responsibility back to the employee
and the manager and that respon-
sibility now rests not in H.R., but in
the business units.
Taylor believes technology is
having a powerful influence on
how staffers communicate outside
the normal channels. With em-
ployees able to work anywhere and
technology available for sharing
documents and data and for virtual
face-to-face encounters, she is
hopeful that time-consuming
meetings will die out.
There is a downside to the tech-
nological tsunami, however, that
must be addressed. Technology has
spawned an “always on” mentality
that is wearing down workers.
With e-mail and powerful mobile
devices, there is no “down time.”
“What did we do before e-mail?”
Taylor asked. “We actually talked
to each other. Now, whether you
are on holiday, on a train or a plane,
you are always ‘on,’ always expected
to be available to answer e-mail and
do more work.” She favors creating
cultures where employees have
permission to shut off the work.
Indeed, Taylor is outspoken
about trusting staffers to work
virtually. “Why do we need offices
anymore?” she asked. “Why not
 work in cafes or at home? We’re
predesigned to be in an office, to
have meetings, to do everything on
PowerPoint.”
In fact, statistics show that
personnel work half as hard in the
office as they do at home. “They get
up earlier and work later when they
are at home,” Taylor said. “In an of-
fice, with meetings and e-mails, you
are less productive.” For the outlook
for the future of work to remain
upbeat, technology must enable a
work-life balance, which thus far
has been an elusive goal.
KURSTY
GROVES KNIGHT:
PURPOSE
AND PROFIT
Kursty Groves Knight is an award-
winning innovation and design
consultant and workplace adviser.
She is passionate about helping
organizations cultivate the right
cultural and physical environments
to support innovation. Her book,
“I Wish I Worked There!: A Look
Inside the Most Creative Spaces in
Business,” examines the drivers to
success for some of the world’s most
innovative companies.
According to Groves Knight,
we’ve moved a great distance from
the transactional world—“I pay
you, you give me goods or services,
and off we go”—to much more of
a service economy that is far more
experiential. “The entire experience
is so important for organizations,
for consumers and employees,”
Groves Knight said. “Because our
world is so much more connected,
organizations need to be genuine
from the inside as well as from the
outside. They can no longer hide
B O N AQ U E
behind a big logo and expect people
to buy their products and services.”
To accomplish this transforma-
tion, commercial organizations
need to become more innovative
and think about much more
than transactions. They have
to be driven by something more
meaningful because that is what
consumers want. Providing a
purpose for an organization
has a profound effect,
not just on customers
and employees but
on the bottom line. A
company without a
clear purpose for doing
what it is doing will not
be able to differentiate itself
in a crowded, fast-moving market-
place, Groves Knight pointed out.
She used Medibank, Australia’s
largest health insurance company,
as an example. Previously run as
a nonprofit government-owned
private insurer, Medibank has
recently changed its business
model and is now a for-profit entity
that pays dividends to the federal
government. According to Groves
Knight, Medibank was a typical
government-run institution with a
“Organizations need to be
genuine from the inside as well
as from the outside. They can no
longer hide behind a big logo
and expect people to buy their
products and services.”
disengaged staff and spotty loyalty.
It was viewed essentially as a
commodity.
“When they became a private
company, they had a really big issue
getting people to buy products,”
Groves Knight said. “They decided
to create a deeper and more
aspirational meaning for
the organization.” The
company created a new
mission statement:
“For Better Health” and
changed its purpose,
from providing health
insurance to creating better
health outcomes for its customers
and employees.
The biggest challenge in making
this transformation is being able to
think “bigger” about value creation
and discarding the myopic view
that sees everything from a finan-
cial perspective, Groves Knight
explained. “When companies take
a bigger leap of faith into the un-
known, that’s when they are able to
take themselves into exciting new
territory,” Groves Knight said. 
 Helping
BY JOEL KURTZMAN

Smart Leaders
Succeed
Sydney Finkelstein knows a lot about
failure. Not his own. His own life has been marked by
accomplishment and success. The failures Finkelstein
has studied are those of CEOs and other leaders of
organizations. Finkelstein studied their failures as
part of his research at the Tuck School of Business
at Dartmouth College, where he has been teaching,
developing courses and writing for the past 21 years.
Much of the subject matter Finkelstein studies,
and the conclusions that stem from it, have found
their way into print. He is a prolific writer of articles
in academic journals, case studies, popular columns
and best-selling books.
Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of
Management and the faculty director at the Tuck
Executive Program and Tuck Center for Leadership.
He teaches courses on leadership, management and
strategy to graduate students and students in execu-
tive education courses.
Before Tuck, Finkelstein taught at the University
of Southern California, where his colleagues included
the late Warren Bennis, Jay Conger and other lu-
minaries of strategy, leadership and organizational
development. At U.S.C., Finkelstein began writing
his international best-selling book, “Why Smart
Executives Fail: And What You Can Learn from Their
Mistakes.” Over the past few years, Finkelstein’s work
changed from focusing on failure to examining the
qualities needed to succeed.
What follows is an edited version of a discus-
sion between Professor Sydney Finkelstein and Joel
Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of Korn Ferry’s Briefings
on Talent & Leadership. The discussion took place
on Oct. 13, 2015 at Korn Ferry’s offices in New York
City. Finkelstein’s newest book, “Superbosses: How
Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent,” will
be coming out in February 2016.

LAURA DECAPUA

54
AN INTERVIEW WITH SYDNEY FINKELSTEIN • Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College

“If you’re lucky,

or maybe ‘smart,’ you’ll
find a superboss to work
for who will make all of
these things happen.”
Y
ou are best known for your work
asking why some leaders fail. What
interested you in that topic?
● There was an endless cascade of books written by
CEOs talking about how great they were. The books
would say, “Do these five things.” As I read those books,
I realized that first, not all of those five things worked
and second, there are dozens of books listing five things
to do so the list must be getting longer and longer. I
began to wonder what really was happening — and
what actually worked. I wondered about patterns of
success and failure and whether you can recognize
them early — especially if you are in an organization
that is spiraling downward.
What did you find?
● In my book “Why Smart Executives Fail: And What
You Can Learn from Their Mistakes” I identified four
underlying drivers of failure. It starts with getting
your strategy wrong, usually because leaders create
a make-believe view of reality. Relying on the wrong
strategic lessons from the past is another. As great and
important as experience is, it cuts both ways. We don’t
talk about it very much, but you can actually learn the
wrong lessons from history. Psychologists have known
about this and have been studying it for probably 80
years. They have a name for it—“negative transfer,”
by which they mean transferring knowledge that’s
just not correct. You can understand how difficult it
is when leaders look at their prior success, learn the
wrong lessons from those observations and then teach
their incorrect findings to their teams.
Sounds like a problem.
● It certainly is. The second issue regarding failure
is cultural. There are two big evils that can develop
here. One is a kind of delusional view where if things
worked in the past, you think they’ll work now. Be-
cause you were successful in the past, you will be suc-
cessful now. The other related problem is arrogance.
You were right in the past, so you’ll always be right.
Together these are a bad — and sometimes lethal —
combination. They really hurt your chances of success.
They create blind spots, or what I call “delusions of
a dream company.” When a leadership team believes
its own hype, it creates lots of problems. Pushback
disappears in meetings, and the leadership team starts
missing the warning signs that things are amiss.
Such as?
● Such as people start leaving the company, and
leaders miss the significance of the fact that some of
their best talent is walking out the door—not because
they’re ready for the next step in their careers, but
because they feel they can’t survive in the make-believe
culture leaders have created. Or, the CEO is on an
earnings call and misses the reason the analysts ask
the same questions and why they do it in certain ways.
In other words, the warning signs are out there, but
they are being missed.
What are some other warnings that
leaders miss?
● At meetings, there is a lot less pushback. People are
afraid to disagree. These are cultural problems, and
they are subtle but very significant. They can create a
culture that is rigid, and you might not even realize it.
Now of course, no one can get it right all the time.
But what you don’t want to do is build a culture that
keeps people from performing as well as they can and
that keeps you from hearing what people really think.
 “When a leadership team
believes its own hype, it creates
lots of problems.”
How does a management team
deal with obstacles like the ones
you just mentioned?
● That’s a good question. Sometimes what works for
entrepreneurs doesn’t work in a company that’s older
and established. Instead of pushing forward no matter
what, as entrepreneurs have to do to survive, in mature
companies, barreling ahead is not always the right way
to go. Some companies miss that.
Why?
● They’re not reading the signals. If brute force doesn’t
work, what does that say? What is it telling you? Maybe
it means the strategy is wrong or the product mix is
wrong, or something else is happening you are not
seeing. Confidence is essential, but you can go too far.
You have to pay attention. What got you to the top is
not necessarily the same as what will keep you there or
enable you to re-ascend to the peak you slipped from.
Rather than arrogance and overconfidence, leaders
need to act with courage and curiosity.
After writing a hugely successful
book about why executives and teams
fail, why turn it on its head and
write about success? Aren’t the
lessons the same?
● I wouldn’t say the lessons are the same. I would say
they are related. And, I came to believe that something
was missing in “Why Smart Executives Fail.” For
example, one of the things I now understand is that
there is no substitute for the ability to generate and
regenerate talent on a continuous basis in an organiza-
tion. It’s like brain cells. They have to keep regener-
ating or else you’re gone. So, why do companies die?
I’m not talking about when some big, secular change
happens—a war is waged, the financial crisis hits. I’m
talking about a company like, say, Kodak, which once
57
was a high flier and owned an entire category. Now it
hardly exists. In “Superbosses” I found some of the best
generators of talent the world has ever seen, and lay
out what I call the “Superboss Playbook” that teaches
leaders, and managers, how to generate and regenerate
talent on a continuous basis. What happened to Kodak
was not preordained.
A number of companies are starting
to understand the importance of
talent. They make a big point of
identifying high-potential people.
They go after them and send out an
alert if one of these people says she or
he is going to leave. When the alert
goes out, one company I know well, a
Fortune 100 company, alerts its CEO
that it’s time for him to get involved
to prevent the high-potential player
from leaving. Do you agree with that
approach? Keep the talent from going
elsewhere, no matter the cost?
● No. Don’t get me wrong: Losing good people can
be an indicator that something big is wrong inside
the company. And, if the leadership is aware that
good people keep leaving, she or he might have time
to act. However, pulling out all the stops for a rising
executive—especially if you don’t really understand
the reasons she is ready to move on — might actu-
ally be counterproductive. You have to understand
what’s really going on and why the rising executive
is moving out. Once you know that, you can decide
what to do.
Sometimes it’s just not a good fit.
● You’d probably know that already. I mean if the
person who is threatening to leave is considered im-
portant enough for the head of H.R. to call the CEO,
the CEO should already know whether it’s a good fit.
So what should the
proper response be?
● Sometimes if an employee is ready to leave, it might
be best to let them leave. Look at it this way. You don’t
get a vote on whether a high performer stays or goes;
she decides. The best talent will want to take on bigger
challenges and run their own show at some point.
Helping them transition out, as radical as that might
sound, is actually the right move because of the loyalty
it engenders. And by the way, becoming known as a
launching pad for great talent is one of the best ways
I know to solidify your position as a talent magnet.
The net result is you’re managing the flow of talent to
achieve what you’re really after: generating and regen-
erating talent on a continuous basis. That’s at the heart
of what superbosses do.
You mentioned pushback is necessary,
and when it is absent or when people
are afraid to say what they think, it is a
danger sign that other things could be
broken. How do you know when the
balance is right between pushback
and agreement?
● I wish I could recognize the precise point where the
balance was about to shift from too much to too little
pushback. The truth is we don’t really know. But we
can help leaders become more self-aware so they’ll be
more likely to notice when there is too little and too
much pushback. They can tell when nothing gets done
or when the wrong things are the only things getting
done. They can grasp people’s level of frustration. The
point is, it is fluid and the balance changes. When the
balance changes there are consequences. Paying atten-
tion to the level of debate and discussion in a team is
critical. Comparing it to the past is also critical.
“Becoming known as a
launching pad for great talent is
one of the best ways I know to
solidify your position as
a talent magnet.”
58
Are there any tools you’ve seen
or used to get at whether the balance
of pushback is right?
● Paying attention to the level of feedback in discus-
sions is important. One tool for doing this is beginning
some meetings with a discussion of the “mistake of the
month (or quarter),” starting with the CEO. The point
isn’t to punish or embarrass anyone, it’s to raise the
question and get honest discussion. That can set the
tone for the rest of the meeting. Occasionally, when
I’ve brought this up, the response is, “but Sydney, I’m
going to lose credibility if I talk about my mistake.”
To that my response is, “Are you the only person who
knows? Does anyone else know?” And of course, other
people always know. Does credibility really go to a
“leader” who pretends bad stuff never happened? We
know better.
I’ve heard from leaders at smaller
companies with boards that don’t
play strong roles asking for that type
of meeting. Some of those CEOs join
organizations that get them more
and hopefully better feedback and
pushback. Or, they hire coaches.
● That shows how important it is to generate real
debate and discussion from people you work with.
Superbosses expect, even demand, that the people who
work for them challenge them. In a well-run company,
you should be able to give and receive feedback from
your colleagues. It’s certainly something I talk about a
lot in my own executive coaching.
 “Does
credibility
really go to a
‘leader’ who
pretends bad
stuff never
happened?
We know
better.”

What about successful bosses who
don’t like when others do well? Maybe
they feel jealous. Or, they want to be
the only ones who get credit. Or they
feel threatened.
● Unfortunately, there are a lot of people like that. But
the best leaders want the people who work for them
to shine. Superbosses are proud when they are able to
hire people who are better than they are. They have a
lot of confidence. In “Superbosses” I write about Gene
Roberts, a former executive editor of the Philadelphia
Inquirer. Roberts was at the Inquirer for 18 years.
Before he arrived the paper had never won a Pulitzer
Prize — which is the top prize in journalism. During
his tenure, the paper won an amazing 17 Pulitzers.
Roberts was a guy who thrived on giving people who
worked with him the room and resources they needed
to shine. He loved it when they did well, and he loved it
when they got credit for their successes.
60
Are you saying that when it comes
to talent, it’s not just hiring the
best people, it’s about giving them
enough freedom so they can pursue
their dreams?
● In a way. When you think about talent, it’s not just
about hiring the best people and then protecting them
so you don’t lose them — as you mentioned in your
example about a CEO. It’s also about being willing to
support the people you hire when they’re ready to take
on a bigger challenge that you can’t offer them. When
they succeed, you and the company succeed. Sure, you
want to protect the people you hire who have lots of
talent by ideally creating huge growth opportunities
for them. But the truth is that one of the best ways to
be successful as a leader is to surround yourself with
world-class talent. And world-class talent tends to have
very high aspirations. I’d rather keep them on my team
for a few years before they head off than work with a
team of second-stringers.
Some books on leadership imply that
anyone can be a leader. And, like you
said at the outset, they give you rules
on how to do it. But that doesn’t seem
right. It is tough to be a leader, or so
it seems. It’s a tough job. Leading a
business may be tougher than any
other type of leadership because
there are so many different things
to pay attention to, and then there is
the audience of shareholders, media,
analysts and so on. People are voting
on your performance every day, every
second of the day. So, it’s a pretty
tough job. Would you agree?
● Yes. This is why learning both from people who
didn’t do so well and from people who did well is so
useful. If we watch what real leaders do, how they go
about their jobs, we’re not all going to be like Jamie
Dimon at J.P. Morgan or Jack Welch at G.E., but we’ll
get better. It takes time. It takes continuous learning,
introspection and continuous feedback. The key thing
is, wouldn’t we want to accelerate the curve? I think
the answer is yes. But it’s not like you can sit in a class-
room and all of a sudden you’re a great leader. There’s
a lot you have to learn. You have to want to learn, you
have to be open to feedback, and you have to learn the
nuances. And if you’re lucky — or maybe “smart” is a
better word — you’ll find a superboss to work for who
will make all of these things happen.
How do you judge a leader? Is it simply
about performance, or are there other
issues you have to take note of?
● It’s about more than absolute performance.
Some things are just out of your control because of
economic conditions, so relative performance (to
competitors) is a relevant metric. Also, you can hit
short-term performance goals while paying a price
in the intermediate or even long term. In some
cases, you can cut back excessively on R&D, or on
61
marketing, to hit a number, but at a great cost to
the future. And then there is your legacy. Norman
Brinker, one of my superbosses, was the godfather of
the casual restaurant chain industry. When he died, a
group of his former employees who became big stars
in their own right took out full-page ads in newspa-
pers around the country to thank him for what he
did for them and their careers. That’s what legacy is.
So the answer is, there are a lot of important things
to focus on beside simply the numbers, especially
short-term numbers. 
 STORY BY CHRIS HODENFIELD

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SARAH HANSON

62 B R I E F I N G S
 Briefings Profile
Robert Rotella

T
here is no guarantee that
tremendous physical ac-
complishment brings with it
a finely tuned mind. Robert “Bob”
Rotella surely knows that. As the
nation’s leading sports psycholo-
gist, Rotella has shepherded mag-
nificent specimens in the fields of
golf, baseball, football, Nascar and
skiing out of the shadows of doubt
and into the bright lights of the
winner’s circle.
The business people who sur-
round these fields of endeavor can’t
help but notice his success. When
Rotella goes to a corporate office
and people hear one of his pep
talks, they want to rush right out
and win, the same way Rory Mc-
Ilroy overcame a humiliating col-
lapse in the 2011 Masters. Armed
with a good bucking-up from
Rotella, Rory went out two months
later and won the U.S. Open.

Optimism
T A L E N T & L E A D E R S H I P 63
 A
nyone would love a dose “I ask people, ‘What is your you can create a level of positive
of optimism like that, at dream? Where do you want to be?’ thoughts and habits to lay over the
least once in a while, and And the big question is: Is the way wild thickets of the subconscious.
so leaders and managers you’re thinking on a day-to-day Even LeBron James has signed on to
from companies like basis consistent with where you the program.
Ford, Merrill Lynch and want to be?” A quarter-century ago, the
General Electric clamor Many of Rotella’s lessons, which idea of “learned optimism” was
for some his modus operandi. he recently assembled in a book advanced by psychologist Martin
“People love me to give them titled “How Champions Think,” Seligman, whose research in cogni-
techniques,” Rotella says with a involve the notion of getting con- tive therapy led him to believe that
laugh. “But the greatest technique trol of your thoughts. While the people are capable of changing
in the world is: It’s your brain.” subconscious can’t be controlled, the way they think. In Britain,

64 B R I E F I N G S

psychologist Richard Wiseman
interviewed hundreds of people and
asked if they felt lucky or unlucky
in life, and then categorized the
profound differences in the ways the
two groups thought. See his book,
“The Luck Factor.”
Although an unfailingly opti-
mistic person, Rotella prefers the
phrase “learned effectiveness.”
Optimism, he says, is only a piece
of the puzzle. You must learn to be
effective.
When Rotella spoke to us, he was
visiting his folks in Vermont and
getting ready to play golf with his
92-year-old father. The Rotellas pro-
vided the kind of Italian-American
family life you never see in the
movies — warm, supportive and
intellectually rigorous.
“Our families came over here to
take part in the dream, and if you’re
going to enjoy America you better
embrace being in a country where
you dream anything you want to
dream. Nobody’s going to put any
limits on you.”
Although Rotella coached sports
such as college lacrosse early on, it
was his six years teaching children
with disabilities to swim that taught
him how joy can affect thinking.
“That was the ultimate optimism,”
he says, sighing. One great thing in
the children’s lives made them “un-
believably happy. It had a big impact
on me, that’s for sure.”
Among his closest allies in life
are two other Italian-American
coaches who have excelled in
making dreams come true: John
Calipari, the University of Kentucky
basketball coach who specializes
in taking squads of freshmen into
the N.C.A.A. Final Four; and Geno
Auriemma, who, after a job recom-
mendation by Rotella, built the
Briefings Profile
Robert Rotella
University of Connecticut women’s
basketball team into a perennial
powerhouse. All create an intense
family environment, all are masters
at teaching self-control.
Rotella leads off the latest book
with an emphasis on learning to be
optimistic. Exceptional people, he
writes, “either start out in life being
optimistic or learn to be optimistic
because they realize they can’t get
what they want in life without being
optimistic.”
For many us, of course, opti-
mism requires training, and nothing
“Exceptional
people either
is more effective than visualizing
the right path. When golf star Seve
Ballesteros was a teenager in Spain,
he spent so much time “seeing” his start out in life
success in America that he stepped being optimistic
or learn to
off the plane confident he’d win.
His first victory in the Masters, he
told Rotella, was anticlimactic. He’s
already seen it happen.
be optimistic
Rotella also appreciates singer because they
Lady Gaga, who brags about the
days when she was young and realize they
arming herself for the future with
the “delusion” of success. “When
can’t get what
people like me are talking about they want in life
‘visualizing success,’ ” Rotella says
admiringly, “we’re actually having without being
you imagine in your mind being
somewhere long before you ever
optimistic.”
get there. But Lady Gaga is such a
clever marketer, she uses a word like
‘delusional.’”
When Rotella trains financial
consultants, he comes up against
various kinds of worried mind-
sets. Those from middle-class
backgrounds, for instance, might be
intimidated by very wealthy people.
“They can’t believe some multimil-
lionaire is going to give them money
to invest.”
Rotella starts by asking for goals,
and then seeing—really seeing—if
T A L E N T & L E A D E R S H I P 65
 Briefings Profile
Robert Rotella
his clients’ actions are leading there.
What if, he wonders, we endured
the famous athlete’s fortune of our
professional lives televised all day?
You’d go home and tell the wife
about your hard day, and she’d say,
“No, you were reading the sports
page all morning, talking B.S. with
your buds and cruising the Web.”
“At some point, we have to come
to grips with the fact that you’re the
one who gets to make these deci-
“People make sions in your life. And you better
choose wisely.”
up this thing When a pro golfer succumbs to
pressure and nervously stabs his
that they’re putter, it’s called having “the yips.”
Rotella warns against business
not talented. people having “the phone yips. They
want to pick up the phone and call
The thing is, certain clients. But they can’t pick
it up because they’re thinking how
people look bad they’re gonna feel when the
person rejects them.
a lot more “But what you hear from the
talented when
top people is, well, ‘I don’t ever take
somebody saying no to me on the
they have an
phone as a rejection. Why would
he reject me? He doesn’t even know
optimistic
me. I’m going to keep calling him
till he says yes.’ ”
attitude about
Thus the optimistic mind tries
to affect perceptions. How smart
things.”
can this other schmo be if he doesn’t
see your talent?
“Perceptions start playing a very
big role, whether it’s your perception
of your talent or someone’s view
of you. People make up this thing
that they’re not talented. The thing
is, people look a lot more talented
when they have an optimistic at-
titude about things.
“Lately I’ve been seeing this
with the golfers I work with. If you
remember, six years ago people were
saying, ‘Oh, that Tiger Woods! If I
had his talent I’d be playing great
golf.’ But in the last year and a half,
now that he’s been so lost and con-
66 B R I E F I N G S
fused, I don’t hear anyone talking
about how talented Tiger is. He
doesn’t look so talented when he’s
not in the right frame of mind and
feeling himself.”
It should be noted that Tiger
Woods might be the only big gun
who has not worked with Rotella.
When counting players on the
men’s, women’s and senior tours,
Rotella has advised the winners of
74 major championships. Note to
Tiger: If you don’t see Rotella at the
next tournament’s practice green,
you can find him at the University
of Virginia’s sports department.
This is not to say that pessimism
doesn’t have helpful aspects. “It’s
possible to be such a blind optimist
that you don’t even look at the
pitfalls and bother to prepare an ef-
fective solution. You’ve got to know
all the things that could go wrong.
You use that to arm yourself for
anything and everything that could
possibly happen. As long as that’s
what people mean by ‘pessimism,’ it
has a useful place.”
Thus real achievement rides
on the proper balance. Optimism
creates your new reality. “Your
attitude does a lot in determining
how far you’ll go. But there’s a
lot of work involved, and they’re
sustaining a commitment that’s
involved. I want people to be opti-
mistic when they do that and take
an honest look at things.”
Honest looks are not always in
demand in business, of course. To
make the sale, the business model
might get tweaked for a totally
sunny view. A climate of enforced
optimism leads to the wrong kind
of delusion. And don’t blame Lady
Gaga for that. The business fell
apart and the war was lost because
someone didn’t visualize all of the
scenery. Too much confidence led to
laziness and arrogance.
T A L E N T & L E A D E R S H I P 67
 Briefings Profile
Robert Rotella
“I think optimistic people look at
potential problems and pitfalls along
the way and then use their optimism
to prepare a successful way of dealing
with it or overcoming it.”
Still worried? Rotella advises
athletes and business clients to set
aside a dedicated time every day—15
minutes, at least—for visualization
exercises. “I don’t mean a quick,
casual daydream,” he says. “I mean
focused mental preparation.” Bedtime
is often the right time.
And don’t forget to visualize
row, second from “When we recently talked with a candidate for
current practices to see if they are
leading to greatness.
“We talk about ourselves con-
stantly,” Rotella says. “We visualize
ourselves constantly. We have per-
ceptions about ourselves constantly.
And if all the thoughts that fit into
those categories are consistent with
where your dream wants to be, then
you’re programming your brain the
right way.”
Weaving through Rotella’s
commentary are variations of this
theme. “Thinking correctly” is what
separates the run-of-the-mill person
and the exceptional competitor. It’s
the subconscious that is the best
controller of physical activities like
directing golf swings or violin solos,
and it’s the subconscious part of the
brain that guides us in our workday.
If certain cues lead to bad habits,
identify them. So the conscious brain
must do what it can to create positive
conditions for the subconscious to
work and lead us into the sunshine of
optimism.
So it takes a bit of work. It’s under-
standable that Rotella doesn’t use the
phrase “learned optimism.” All those
hardworking immigrant-family aunts
and uncles and cousins only coached
him to roll up his sleeves and get to
it. The Rotella way might better be
called earned optimism. 
68
Korn Ferry Sports Practice
Views of Jed Hughes
“T
HE ABILITY to focus
is what separates
the average athlete
or executive from the high
performers,” says Jed Hughes,
Vice Chairman and Global Sector
Leader, Sports. Having worked
alongside six Hall of Fame
coaches in his career, Hughes
brought a concentrated insight
to the placement of dozens of
general managers and coaches in
Hughes in his
days as assistant every major sport. And he knows when he meets
coach at the someone with focus.
University of “You can tell it in an interview,” he says.
Michigan (top
the right.) a position at the Milwaukee Brewers, it was a
three-hour, focused interview. Nothing wasted.
His answers were precise and thoughtful. He understood the
issues, articulated them, gave examples, stayed on track and did
not deviate from the topics for over three hours.”
Early in his career, Hughes was exposed to the powers of
positive reinforcement from the likes of John Wooden, the just-
retired basketball legend at U.C.L.A. who for six years took him
to breakfast on Fridays before football games. He also worked
alongside Stanford football coach John Ralston, a devotee of
the Dale Carnegie system of positive thinking who brought
sunshine to a moribund program, not to mention back-to-back
Rose Bowl titles.
Later, getting his doctorate at the University of Michigan, he
served as linebacker coach under the intense Bo Schembechler.
“Bo’s style was one of loyalty, emotion, passion and hard work.”
Hughes would see more of this as a defensive coach under
Chuck Noll’s Pittsburgh Steelers teams.
Being in the trenches in these situations let Hughes observe
closely as the concept of sports psychology evolved. “At Mich-
igan, we were addressing the preparation necessary for getting
your mind fit and ready to play, even if that meant turning off
the lights and visualizing yourself making a big play.” They were
configuring practices that psychologists like Bob Rotella would
later use to currycomb players’ psyches.
When Hughes made his transition to executive search 18
years ago, he knew what worked. “Clearly I’ve had to live on a
path of being positive in different situations.
“The team we’ve developed here at Korn Ferry is the No. 1
sports-recruiting group in the world. And that’s a result of re-
cruiting good people, having a vision for them, and caring about
them.” Good executive choices are made when the decision
makers involved are aligned, he maintains, to a common vision.
“That goes back to the optimism equation. I don’t think
I’ve ever been intimidated in a situation. The way you’ve been
trained really impacts your life’s journey. If you’ve been dealing
with high-profile athletes and executives, it gives you the level
of confidence that allows you to engage any kind of situation.
As Rotella says, it’s about mental preparation.” —C.H.
B R I E F I N G S
 The aim for
Briefings is
audacious: To
provide great
insights to help
leaders lead.
Not by telling
them what to
think—but what
to think about.

KORN FERRY BRIEFINGS ON TALENT + LEADERSHIP

Dedicated to the advancement of leadership and strategic thinking
about talent, Briefings is proud to celebrate 25 issues. Since the incep-
tion of the magazine in 2009, we’ve featured hundreds of interviews
with luminaries from business, education, government, the nonprofit
sector, sports, and even rock ‘n’ roll. In honor of this milestone, here
are some highlights from issues past and a look at where Briefings’
alumni are today. We invite you to explore the complete archives at
www.kornferrybriefings.com > > >

T A L E N T & L E A D E R S H I P 69
 ISSUE #1 “You have to
be absolutely
Ken Chenault decisive. And
THE STORY
that means you
may bruise some
“Leading In A Time
feelings. But
Of Crisis”
you’ve got to
risk people being
TODAY upset with you,
because you have
The third African American CEO of
a Fortune 500 company, Chenault
to take action.”
has been at the helm of American
Express since 2001 and sees great
potential in the block chain tech-
nology behind digital currencies.

“Ninety-five ISSUE #14

percent of the
time I put myself Angela Ahrendts
in somebody
THE STORY
else’s position
before I decide
“Beyond The
how to handle
Burberry Check”
something.”
TODAY

The former Burberry CEO became

SVP of Retail & Online Stores at Apple
in 2014, where she’s credited with
breaking down silos and revitalizing
the tech giant’s retail culture.

ISSUE #9 “As an undergrad,

I thought, Let me
Reid Hoffman be a scientist;
THE STORY
I’ll use computers
as tools and
“The Brain Behind
metaphors to
LinkedIN”
think through
this. My
TODAY conclusion was
we were modeling
The LinkedIN founder and “most-
networked man in Silicon Valley” de-
thinking when we
votes much of his time to philanthropy, didn’t know what
supporting economic development
and social entrepreneurship causes, thinking was.”
including micro-lending site Kiva.org.

70 B R I E F I N G S
 ISSUE #11 “You can tell if
someone’s frivolous
Angel Martinez or practical. You
can tell if they have
THE STORY
expensive taste.
You can tell whether
“What Shoes Say”
they value comfort
over style... You
TODAY can tell how much
time they spend
The Deckers Outdoor CEO has taken on their feet.
the company’s flagship Ugg brand
from an iconic shoe to a lifestyle
brand, venturing into home goods,
and soon, outerwear.

‘‘I think about the ISSUE #16

little 12-year-old
drummer boy Mick Fleetwood
I was, who didn’t THE STORY
know what he
was going to do, “Fleetwood Mac:
but loved being Band Governance”
around people.
And I’m really TODAY
happy that I still
do what I love.’’ The newly reunited Rumours lineup
is still thinkin’ about tomorrow. The
band recently completed another
world tour and has been recording
new material.

ISSUE #11 “There’s no such

thing as a perfect
Joe Tucci strategy. I’d rather
THE STORY
have a good
strategy that’s
“The Man With
extremely well
The Plan”
executed than a
great strategy
TODAY terribly executed...
Strategies are
Under Tucci’s leadership as Chairman
and CEO, last year EMC was named
living, breathing
one of the world’s top 25 multina- organisms.”
tional workplaces out of 2,800 global
companies surveyed by the Great
Place to Work Institute.

T A L E N T & L E A D E R S H I P 71

PA R T I N G T H O U G H T S
BY JOEL KURTZMAN
Two Battles Fought,
One From the Heart
A Cherokee teaching story describes a fight between two fierce wolves.
One wolf is evil, angry, envious, jealous, self-pitying, guilty and resentful.
The other is good, kind, peaceful, loving, hopeful, serene, humble,
generous, truthful and faithful. The Cherokees ask their seated listeners,
“Which wolf will win the fight?” The answer and the intended lesson is:
The wolf that wins is the one you feed.
ven if you never read or heard this
little short tale before, you probably
guessed the answer. The story obeys
a pattern, as do so many things related to
questions of optimism and pessimism, nega-
tivity and “positivity” and even (to a certain
degree) right and wrong. The answer is typi-
cally some variation on the theme that “the
answer is in your hands. Choose wisely.”
Apparently, an awful lot of people are
wired to be biased toward pessimism. The
reason for that, it was explained to me, has to
do with jumping to conclusions. If your bias
is negative, you are likely to be safer than
if the opposite were the case. If you hear
“If you hear something in
the bushes and conclude it’s
a rabbit (and it’s actually a
mountain lion), there’s no
laughing that one off.”
something rattling around in the bushes and
you conclude it’s a mountain lion, there’s not
much penalty if you are wrong. But if you
hear something in the bushes and conclude
it’s a rabbit (and it’s actually a mountain lion),
there’s no laughing that one off. A bunny gets
a smile, but 85 pounds of startled, angry cat
comes with deadly serious teeth and long
razor-sharp claws.
An economist I knew for almost 20 years
always spoke about the gloom that was about
to descend. I never understood why the
rooms were filled when he spoke. Everyone
knew what they were going to get. Fear. Woe.
Stock market crashes. No surprises there.
My messages were always more opti-
mistic: People are creative. They are problem
solvers. What goes down does come up.
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I could not understand why audiences
preferred my negative colleague’s speeches to
my own. Then it hit me. Suppose I say some-
thing like, “Opportunities are everywhere
thanks to our creativity and our genius.”
Optimistic assessments encourage you to put
your money at risk. If I am right, you make
money and we are both pleased. But if I am
wrong, you lose money—which always car-
ries a sting.
The doomsayer who warns you of a
looming tragedy is your friend because he (or
she) is watching out for you. That person gets
your gratitude even if they are wrong—you
played safe because of his or her gloomy
prediction, and you didn’t have anything at
risk. And if the pessimist is right, and things
fell apart, it’s not his fault—he’s the one who
warned you. It’s your fault if you lost money,
because you were the one who listened to me.
When the wolves fight, it is at night and
fully environmentally responsible manner.
with FSC®-certified papers and soy-based inks in a
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
in the realm of the heart. When the investors
listen to the economist speak, the competi-
tion takes place in the strategy-making
places of the mind.
We have all witnessed metaphorical
battles between “good” and “evil” wolves.
Many of us have taken part in marketplace
competitions involving players who put
things of importance and value at risk. The
rules and ploys for each contest are different.
The Cherokees had wisdom about fights
between wolves. The other conflict is up to
us to understand. 
© Copyright 2015, Korn Ferry
ISSN 1949-8365
Joel Kurtzman
is author of the new
book Unleashing
the Second
American Century.
 kurtzmangroup.com
Celebrate your company’s
greatest gift—people—
this holiday season.

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