Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Our host, Maureen Metcalf, posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI, or check out the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/44buVz8. The audiobook version is now available at  https://amzn.to/4dTCleZ.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work by Ancestry CEO Deb Liu, on how to overcome the obstacles women still face in the workplace – especially in tech. It’s in hardback at https://amzn.to/47OUO9E, and audio at https://amzn.to/3Y6EmOQ.
• Covert Cows and Chick-fil-A by Steve Robinson; it’s available in hardback at https://amzn.to/460LnmQ, on Kindle at https://amzn.to/3RVXhZs, and as an audiobook at https://amzn.to/3xPjBgn.
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Paperback = https://amzn.to/3VEl7cU, Kindle = https://amzn.to/45JGm1L, and audiobook = https://amzn.to/3RPhC2y
• Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane. Hardback (https://amzn.to/48Doh6j) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/48YCRF4)

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Dr. Christopher Washington serves as the Provost and Executive Vice President of Franklin University. He has dramatically increased the number of academic programs as the Chief Academic Officer, and supported the advancement of Franklin’s internationalization through relationships with partnering universities in Europe, Central America, the Middle East region, and Asia. He currently serves as National Board Chair of Global Ties U.S. and has been a member of the boards of The Metro Schools, the International Visitors Council, and the Columbus Council of World Affairs. Dr. Washington was selected for the Fulbright Specialist Roster in 2015 and is a member of the United States Speakers Bureau, and the Forbes Nonprofit Council. Dr. Washington holds a Ph.D. in human resource development from Ohio State University, a master of science in college student personnel, and a bachelor of arts in communications from Western Illinois University.

Transcript
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Unknown Speaker 0:00
As 2024 begins to fade, what lies ahead for leaders in 2025

Unknown Speaker 0:05
geopolitics and new policies will clearly ripple into economics and the private sector, but there are more subtle trends leaders must prepare for in the new year. Based on interviews with major CEOs and hundreds of conversations with thought leaders, our host, founder and CEO, Maureen Metcalf, presents her annual trends ahead report in this episode. Expect a few surprises. Maureen also shares her expertise through our leadership development offerings at the innovative leadership institute, including keynote speeches and coaching. Learn more at innovative leadership.com dot com,

Unknown Speaker 0:48
welcome to innovating leadership co creating our future. I’m your host. Maureen Metcalf, founder and CEO of the innovative leadership institute. I am delighted to be recording our annual trends show with Christopher Washington, Christopher and I are going to do a bit of role reversal. He’s going to be the host, and I’m going to be talking about the trends that we see. Christopher and I are going to take our first shot at what will be an unfolding story over the next year or so. Marina, it’s always delightful to join you for the trend show. I think this is maybe the sixth year in a row we did the trend show together. So we have a whole history of trends that are sort of moving forward. And I always love that you interview leading figures to identify what they see as trends and themes, things to be concerned about, opportunities for the future, and you summarize those for me so perfectly, so that we can have a wonderful conversation about these trends and what it means for leaders today. Let us start by talking about some of the trends you’ve identified through these conversations. You talk about the changing nature of work, environmental degradation, disruption and energy transition, geopolitical shifts, and some of them occurring right in front of us now, shifting economic landscape and a few other trends that we’ll sort of touch on. But let’s start with the changing nature of work. Can you describe what this is all about? In 2025 there are several things that rise to the top for me, AI, we’ve all been talking about it, so there’s no surprise there. What we are seeing is uneven uptake. So there was a recent McKinsey article that talked about employees experimenting a lot more with AI, but businesses not yet implementing at scale. And we recognize that whole scale implementations require a lot of understanding justifying business cases and then implementation. So it’s not surprising that thoughtful organizations are taking their time to identify appropriate use cases with an ROI and then integrating those through the enterprise just takes time. As we’re looking at things like AI agents, the range of implementations will be much broader scale than we are currently seeing. So this is probably over the next decade, going to be one of our top themes with that, we’ll be changing systems, cultures, job roles, org structures. As we start to look at how technology is continuing to change, and as we integrate that machines get smarter, how do jobs change? Are organizations finding that entire categories of jobs are going to disappear as predicted? Or are we just seeing the theme where you’ve heard about leadership? We’re not losing our jobs right now to AI, but we could be losing our jobs to people who are better with using AI than we are. That’s a really important distinction, because, you know, there are universities, for example, that are grappling with the question of how we prepare students for AI use. And of course, there’s this camp that we should discourage people to use AI, and it’s cheating. And then there’s this camp that there’s meaningful, purposeful, ethical, responsible use of AI. And if we’re responsible, we should prepare people to use and leverage the tools they’re going to be using in the workplace. I see this sort of movement and the struggle in the academy, your listeners, for the last six years with these trends, you’ve really shared these trends as a way to help them discern what are the issues so that they can create flourishing organizations. And so my question to you is, what are some thoughts you have in terms of how they might leverage this AI to create more flourishing organizations, more inclusive workplaces, or even create efficiencies we have seen over and over with technology implementations, whether it’s data analytics or.

Unknown Speaker 5:00
For that, various uses of the internet, ERPs, whatever the latest technology is, some companies will jump in because it’s the latest technology. I really encourage organizations to be thoughtful with this, like we have been, or should have been, with other technologies that it’s expensive, it’s disruptive, it’s disorienting for our people and our clients, so be thoughtful. It’s also expensive. As we invest in AI technology, like we would invest in any other technology, taking an enterprise view, where is it most effective for the organization, and not just implement bits and pieces, but really, what does the Enterprise Architecture look like and ensuring that we have strong business cases? Otherwise, it’s awfully easy to have bits and pieces of the organization working in a way that’s disjointed, and then the cost of cleanup, oh, right, that can be pretty significant. Well, the other thing I think that we don’t think about, and let’s use chat GPT as the example. The stats are something like about 40% of employees are using AI, not telling their organization, and in some cases, we’ve seen large companies lose control of some of their intellectual property because employees are using the open version of open AI rather than the paid version. And think about the things we do to just do a simple search or a comparison chart or something. If I’m using data that’s not publicly available and I put it in chat GPT to create a comparison chart, I may, in fact, have then released information that is proprietary or confidential to my organization, and it’s hard to pull it back. So basic education in workplaces, I think, is foundational. There are companies who say don’t use it, but that doesn’t mean their employees actually comply. If they’re at home at night on their personal laptop, pulling something together, the organization may not recognize that they’ve lost control again, there’s a risk with well intended, innovative employees trying to use these new tools right, exposing the organization to pretty significant risk. Well, there is risk associated with this, and you’re suggesting that perhaps a deliberate and intentional adoption of AI is the way to go, and you talked about some things like training and making sure that you have the product that enables a little bit more privacy than the open version of it. What other steps might you encourage leaders who are listening today to ensure that they adopt AI in a responsible way? And when I say responsible, I’m also thinking about, rather than replacing people, sort of enhancing the work life and human creativity and decision making, understand the strengths and weaknesses of AI. We have talked about it as an intern. There are a lot of things it doesn’t do well. I had a comparison chart made last night looking at the research of three different organizations, and it was wrong on some things. And I think we still need to be very clear that just because it came from Ai doesn’t mean it’s accurate. It was a great start, but it was like 50% wrong. Created columns. It wasn’t a little wrong, it was a lot wrong, right? It was still a head start from nothing, but it’s really foundational, depending on our roles, right? As a thought leader, I’m not going to publish something that’s just darn wrong, and we have a lot of people that their professional credibility is bolstered or completely destroyed if they rely on it improperly, and yet, the flip side is I need to be productive, and so knowing where to leverage it is foundational. Checking my sources is also foundational. People are talking about now, AI team members, AI managers, does the AI keep track of some of those management tasks, approve vacations, do a bunch of the very tactical activities that many of us don’t love doing. There’s this idea of, how do we balance the employee’s desire for creativity with precision in work, because you don’t want them getting things wrong and and openness in terms of how it’s used, and perhaps this idea that the paid version that’s behind the firewall of a company which protects its information is a way to go with proper training. But then there’s the question of you raise about the role of leader during this time.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Of adaptation with this new technology and employee well being and fitness. How does this all sort of factor into this idea that our work is changing as a function of the introduction of AI? If we look at some of the mental health statistics and incidents of anxiety and depression, it’s off the charts. It continues to accelerate. And so we’ll also talk about climate disruption and some of the other things that I think are causing anxiety and depression. One of the biggest challenges in this quickly changing world of work is it’s a big change management initiative, so we’ve been implementing change over the course of our careers. This is just another one now it’s potentially bigger and faster, so we have to be good at it. We are leveraging many of the skills that we have used our entire careers on if technology takes over some of these tactical things, that frees me up as the leader to work with my humans, to enable them to change. And I think we can lose the point that what’s really required now is really strong human interaction skills, because people are worried. You know, with every major change, if you frame it from a change management perspective, there’s always hope and fear that accompanies the change. And you said it really affords an opportunity for leaders to work more with their people. This can be a great opportunity to do so. What sort of advice might you give leaders who are thinking about, how do I best work with my people to overcome the fear and uncertainty associated with how we adopt this new technology. You know, one of the things we talk about in the AI book innovative leadership and followership in the age of AI, one is acknowledging the importance of our followers, and that we as leaders have almost a dance of sometimes we lead and sometimes we follow. We talk about an abundance mindset, and abundance versus fear, and I don’t mean delusional. It’s all okay. Kind of mindset, more of if I treat people with respect and dignity and help find how they can thrive and flourish. Then by relating to them and understanding what they require, each person on my team I need to know and relate to, then I can create the conditions for each of them to flourish. If I don’t have that kind of an engagement and open communication and creating a space for people to recommend changes, to offer dissent. When people descend into fear, then their brains aren’t going to function as effectively. They’re not going to give the organization the best that they’re able to give. There are things like the human flourishing project that really lays out, what are these characteristics? But really, a lot of this is not new, if we think about the Gallup research and the 12 questions and do people have the basic tools they need? Have we created an environment that’s open and honest, and people are encouraged to ask for help, rather than feeling afraid of change where they can bring forward recommendations. The best leaders we know do this naturally. It sounds like embracing this technological evolution requires us to revisit ideas around human flourishing and human centered innovation. These are not new ideas you’re suggesting. These are things we need to revisit. Am I correct in saying that you’re spot on? And Christopher, I know you do this by your very nature, and I assume many of our listeners do this by their very nature. It’s just stepping back, kind of taking inventory, and remembering that if we are struggling, the people who work with us are probably also struggling, how do we on our worst days, connect with people, help them take down the anxiety and part of this gets to We talk about anti fragile resilience. What are our practices so that we can show up and be our best selves on our worst days? For me, it’s people are probably sick of hearing me talk about it. It’s a lot of yoga, it’s meditation. It’s the things that we do that when I’m angry, I can walk into a hot yoga class work my butt off and come out feeling better. And I wonder, what is it for you when you’re having a bad day? It’s walking my dog. I like

Unknown Speaker 14:51
take maybe a cup of tea and walk my dog through the woods. That is one of the things that centers me.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
Sort of helps me clarify the experience I’m having. Maybe that’s the general idea for leaders, is to find that thing that enables you to get centered, to get clarity, so that you can be your best self for supporting your employees. Is that sort of the general idea it is, and making a practice of it when I’m stressed is not the time to start thinking about, Oh yeah, what was that thing I did? It’s doing it every day, being clear about my intention, about the kind of person I want to be when I show up, because otherwise I walk in and I don’t take a breath, and I don’t say hello, and I jump into the task, and I don’t create the environment where people feel like they can be their best selves, if so, for me, it takes practice. Takes practice. That’s good advice for us all you know, Maureen AI is not the only phenomena that sort of disrupt in the workplace. You mentioned during this segment. Environmental degradation and disruption and energy transition are also creating anxiety among employees today and challenges for leaders. I wondered if you could sort of elaborate on what that means, and then we can unpack it. You know, I got to interview the CEO of the weather channel this year. Oh, that’s cool. It was interesting that they were talking about just the change in environmental patterns and even how their tools are able to predict and I think it was the night before our interview, there was a storm. May have been a hurricane, went from like cat one to Cat five in 12 hours. I remember that. I also have been researching, you know, what are the most climate resilient locations? It was Asheville, North Carolina. Not so much right now, no, the places we thought were safe are less safe. If I’m looking at building a manufacturing facility, where do I put it? I mean, certainly I don’t want to put it in hurricane alley. But now, what areas of the country are going to be more climate resilient, and if I’m investing billions of dollars, how do I do that? Wisely? If I’m an insurance company, who do I stop insuring? So the economic models behind some of these companies need to be re evaluated, and they are being re evaluated. How do we as leaders of organizations take that into account as we’re leading employees who are also making these decisions? And then the second thing you mentioned is energy transition. So as we’re looking at climate change and climate impact, we’re also looking at the energy requirements based on AI and asking the question, there was a Morgan Stanley survey that mentioned the power demands for generative AI will increase at an annual average of 70% through 2027

Unknown Speaker 17:56
how do we deal with that, And what is the responsible response to all of this productivity enhancement and medical breakthroughs that are happening and all of these positive things that are happening as a result of AI, but it’s not quote free from an energy perspective or a cost perspective. What is the ethical response for companies who are also trying to meet their carbon commitments. So we have this environmental disruption, including energy transition. It sounds like one of the subjects leaders should really think about is, how do I innovate for sustainability in this sort of volatile situation, and in what ways might she encourage leaders to translate this climate disruption into opportunities for innovation? It’s a great question. One of the things that I’m reading about is alternate energy sources. What’s happening with small nuclear plants, the traditional things, hydro, solar, wind and in different locations. Clearly, if you’re in the desert, solar great alternative. If you’re in Seattle, probably not so much. How do we ensure energy stability as we’re transitioning to more environmentally sustainable alternatives? That has to be paced with, ensuring that the heat in my house works in the winter,

Unknown Speaker 19:25
accelerating that a little too much isn’t helpful. There is a responsible pacing that we need to attend to as well. I read somewhere in El Salvador, they’re looking at volcanic energy to power computing systems, which is a unique and innovative approach to this. So I’m curious to see where innovations go in energy creation, in the near term future, if people embrace this idea that innovation is one of the solutions to deal with this sort of environmental disruption in energy transition and.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
The other thing that came to mind Maureen, that raises a question, is when you mentioned Asheville, North Carolina, as a place that was perceived as safe, it begs the question, how do we encourage leaders to have the foresight and agility to think about what potential disruptions might occur? Because if you think about that being a safe place, perhaps very few people prepared for anything like that. So how do we sort of get people to raise the question that environment is unpredictable and leaders have to have foresight and agility to adapt to whatever may come? And there are communities that probably are doing that. If you live in New Orleans, you’re probably accustomed to this kind of disruption. If you live in Asheville, you may have thought you were being entirely responsible, because there were no predictions of this type of kind of black swan event happening. I don’t prepare to be inundated by a mudslide right in a place that’s never had a mudslide. That’s right. So what’s the balance between preparation and just black swans that I’m not managing for Yeah, does it become a lesson for communities that feel safe, that we should at least be thinking about the possibility of a black swan event occurring, and how might we respond as a community when that happens. I’m at a university that’s never experienced a number of major threats or disruption to infrastructure, technology, infrastructure, or violence on campus, those kinds of things that have happened on some other college campuses. But we do invest time in thinking about how we would respond if these kinds of events occur, and it just gives us a higher level of readiness and preparedness. And maybe these kinds of exercises are useful for whole communities and for companies that operate internationally, that have these operations everywhere. What are your thoughts about that absolutely, doing the drills prepares us doing a drill for a university about violence on campus. There’s a university three miles from you that has had violence on campus, it would seem irresponsible not to any large organization that’s not looking at being ransomed those kinds of things, that there’s just a high probability, and we’re doing a lot, even our small company, to insure backups on backups on backups, so that if something happens, we’re able to proceed, and we have cyber insurance and the things that allow business continuity if the worst were to happen, because we don’t want to be down for months, and we don’t necessarily have the resources to pay a ransom. I have clients who’ve been through this have been ransomed. Some fared better than others because they had done the preparation and because they had the insurance. Both these are somewhat serious and somber topics, and I was thinking about this, you know, this sustainability, there are organizations out there that are positioning themselves on the forefront. You know, as they’re growing, they’re consuming more energy, but they’re really increasing their efforts to assure sustainable practices and environmental responsibility. Is there any belief that these practices could be defining characteristics in terms of brand loyalty or profitability? Can they leverage this activity to say this is who we are, we’re about this, and could that contribute to the quality of their brand? Absolutely. Look at brands like Patagonia, that have been around for a long time, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, Tom’s of Maine, their brand promise is on responsibility, and we’ve talked about this over the year, the importance of being consistent with your brand promise. So if you are committed to sustainability, then the backlash if you’re not sustainable is tough. Conversely, Budweiser paid a price for their transposition at Worthington jewelers. Every piece begins with this story yours, Worthington jewelers is actually having their biggest bridal event of the year now through March 21 buy one, get one, 50% off all wedding jewelry. And as a customer of Worthington jewelers, I can tell you that from engagement rings to custom designs, each creation is crafted with care and connection. So take some time and enjoy the biggest bridal event of the year. Buy one. Get one 50% off all wedding jewelry now through March 21 only at Worthington jewelers, where Columbus gets engaged.

Unknown Speaker 24:42
Give me a mouth give me a mountain with lots to do. Give me the sunshine. Give me a two. Give

Unknown Speaker 24:48
me something simple and true.

Unknown Speaker 24:52
All I need is sunshine.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
I

Unknown Speaker 25:01
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Unknown Speaker 25:08
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Unknown Speaker 25:38
depending on what your brand promise is a deviation from that could spark your consumers to react either positively or negatively. In some cases, being more, quote, socially aware isn’t necessarily met with open arms. You know, Maureen, I often wonder, for a lot of leaders out there, they’re wondering, I’m not so into sustainability practices. Are there partnerships or coalitions or resources that might get people to think more about having sustainability practices in their organizations? There are, and I would say, in Europe, these are developed a lot more and there are stronger measures, and they’re built into the governance practices boards report on them. In the US, I would look at my industry associations. One of my clients is in the chemical industry. Their industry associations are better able to provide guidance, because what they do is quite specialized compared to a consulting firm, good advice and counsel. Check out your industry groups. There’s probably some organizations in there that are relatively advanced in these efforts. You know another trend you mentioned is shift in geopolitics, the change in prevailing political power and social political shifts. I wondered if you could describe for your listeners what you see based on themes from your conversations and what’s happened recently in the US elections, perhaps around the world as well. What do you see as these geopolitical shifts that leaders need to pay attention to? So in 2024 there were 73 national elections held across the globe, several of those resulted in changes in the prevailing political party. So we know, for anyone in the US, that we’ve gone from the Biden administration to the Trump administration, those sets of policies are going to be significantly different in many countries, electing less centrist leaders more extreme leaders will lead to volatility in the political landscape. The pendulum swing seems to be more dramatic now, and one of my concerns is that we will have to grapple with those pendulum swings in policy, because the economy likes stability. Businesses like stability. Global landscape like stability. So these broader pendulum swings, whether they’re swinging toward your favor or away from your favor, the volatility creates problem for systems, and I assume then it all systems have to adapt to the new political reality, whether they’re new policies, new regulations, or a removal of regulations, it just sort of impacts throughout the organization has a cascading effect, changing the nature of work to adapt to this new reality. Is that sort of the underlying assumption it is so think about in the US, the Trump administration will probably have less federal regulations, potentially tax cuts for businesses and wealthy people, tariffs, all of those will change the nature of supply chains. The volatility during the transitions will go up if we assess tariffs against China, China will probably reciprocate by assessing tariffs against us. Then companies will go about sourcing domestically. But there’s a lot of stuff that’s just not available domestically. What happens with transportation pipelines? So it’s not that the policies themselves are good or bad. It’s the volatility created by the change that causes significant disruption in access to goods and services. Organizations are perfectly designed to achieve the results they achieve today, and what you’re suggesting is this disruption is going to require a sort of rewiring of organizations based on an awareness of what’s changing and then operational adaptation. What advice might you give to senior managers or leaders on how they might adapt to their organizations, to.

Unknown Speaker 30:00
A changing sociopolitical reality. Several of my clients were doing the What If analysis before the election, right? So if this one wins, this is likely the policy. If that one wins, this is likely the policy. So if Harris won, it would be relatively a continuation of Biden era policies, relatively so the swing would be less dramatic, right? Because Trump won, the swing is more dramatic. I assume most of our listeners have already been engaged deeply in these conversations about, what are the scenarios that are likely to unfold, what are the opportunities those scenarios present, and what are the risks, and how are we mitigating the risks? So scenario thinking and scenario planning are tools in the toolkit that executives can use in working with their teams to think about how their organizations adapt themselves to this reality. Is that right? Absolutely. And again, most of the folks I’m working with have been doing that in advance of this election because of the level of divide between the two parties. It’s not like we had centrist a and centrist B, and it would be a small pendulum. This is a big pendulum, you know. Wonder if in this case, it also creates any opportunity. So for example, if you have a situation where the pendulum swings toward more deregulation, it may create market challenges in who you work with and who you supply products to, or who you buy from, but it also may create new markets or new alliances. And how might you encourage people to think outside of their box, to explore what’s possible in this sort of new reality for domestic manufacturers and service providers. Folks may have been competing with China or other offshore suppliers with tariffs, domestic suppliers may be more competitive. There will be opportunities, as you’ve said, in various places. And so just understanding the economics with any volatility, somebody wins and somebody loses. Being prepared to step into the gaps is really the brilliance. What advice might you give your listeners who want to be on that winning side, find the gaps. Find the gaps right? This is basic economics, and we’ve been doing this forever. In these volatile times, the organizations that step forward to solve the problems that are created by the change in policy, they win. And you’ve got four years, or however long it takes to create the offering through the four years, a lot happens in four years for a nimble organization, who can step in and solve somebody’s problem. Oh, I love it. Be nimble, is what you’re suggesting, rather than this conventional wisdom, if you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always got. In this case, you’re saying, If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re not going to be on the chessboard depending on what you’re doing and how crucial it is. I mean, if you’re doing heart surgery, you’re probably going to stay on the chessboard. Yeah, but you’ve written a lot about anti fragile resilience. If the organization is not structured in a way that it can learn from these shocks and shifts and pivot relatively quickly, then it may be replaced by smaller or larger but more nimble organizations who can spot the opportunity and step in so listeners, you’ve heard it here, you have to rethink your priorities and embrace reinvention during these times of shocks. Love that there is another theme or trend you identify recently Maureen based on your interviews and in your research, and it has to do with the shifting economic landscape. This builds on the geopolitical the golden age of trade appears to be waning with these shifts countries that would go to the most economical provider of goods and services are now moving back to more domestic manufacturing. We are unraveling some of those global interconnections, which will lead again, to opportunities for companies and industries to re evaluate how they conduct business and with whom and on which continents you can win if you’re finding the opportunities you lose if you’re not paying attention, or if you’re just not able to make the shifts. If you’re using raw materials that are only produced in one country on the globe, and they have tariffs, or if they don’t want to supply to you because of the emerging political conditions, you could be out of business. There are companies that have been around.

Unknown Speaker 35:00
Found for generations that will be impacted by these shifts, and there’s no amount of scenario planning that will help them undo the volatility that’s happening. That’s the unfortunate part. Well run ethical organizations, some will get caught up in the instability caused by these shifts. Maureen, these shifts are expected, right? Yep. You mean, we’re talking about global systems. When something happens in one country, it certainly affects us. When their exchange rate changes, or their currency is devalued against the dollar, it sort of affects the flow of resources back and forth and what they’re capable buying, et cetera. But how might you encourage leaders to continue to be mindful of this and to explore opportunities to create more robust economic ecosystems? I love the idea of economic ecosystems, and I am certainly not an expert in global finance. There are companies though, that are we’ve just been doing some podcasts with the leaders of MasterCard, and they have now created financial instruments I can pay people around the world. You know, before it used to be hard, and now it’s Venmo, right? It’s amazing how the friction has been reduced by technology and massive global corporations something like three and a half billion people, so half of the world’s population have some MasterCard instrument. Wow. So that organization may be a wonderful resource for companies that are grappling with this sort of financial ecosystem questions, to bring them in as guest speakers or to talk to them maybe, maybe they have staff who are dedicated to global financial literacy and for getting out into the community and talking about it. In some cases, small, agile organizations are the answer. In other cases, the largest global companies have the footprint. Their role is to create this stability across the globe, even as political systems come and go these financial institutions, their livelihood is based on creating stability in one way, the geopolitics will change our tariffs and those kinds of things. But we’ve also got global companies that move the needle in major ways, and they are absolutely benefited by stability. We have some competing forces, the Microsofts and the Coca Colas and any number of large enterprises are a countervailing force that want stability. Because of their footprint, they’re able to impact the entire global ecosystem to promote that stability. Yes, Marie, my sort of super perhaps final question to you around these trends, they’re serious trends. They have the potential to totally disrupt organizations today. How do you get leaders to think about the seriousness of these trends and the potential competitive advantage that might be conferred if they view these as opportunities rather than threats. What a great point you know. This brings us back to this abundance mindset. What’s the old adage, with every challenge as an opportunity? If I am able to understand that there are opportunities that my thinking actually impacts whether I’m afraid or whether I have the opportunity, the idea of vibrancy thinking or flourishing, looks at systems. If I, as a leader, have the mindset that we can innovate out of almost any challenge we have, I have to be able to see the possibility and then build the systems and the people and then deliver the results. We humans know how to do this, everything from creating fire to wheels to building pyramids to building supercomputers and AI and people living on spaceships. We have imagined these things and then created the financial systems, the hardware, the software, and taught humans to move into space. We know how to do this. It is those leaders who believe it’s possible and then can step back and into the processes, because we’ve seen people who have big ideas, but they can’t implement anything, and we’ve seen people who can implement stuff, but they are lucky to get down the street. So how do we bring together that ability to see Kennedy’s putting a man on the moon? Idea? What’s our moon shot in this era?

Unknown Speaker 40:00
And how do we go from the idea of a moon shot to building the infrastructure, building a spaceship, so to speak? Right? Yeah, yeah. Maureen, every time I talk to you during these trends, I begin by being a bit worried about the future, and end our conversation with a lot of hope and optimism being reminded that we can use our imaginations to be pessimists and to dwell on our problems, or we can use our imaginations to create the world we want. And it sounds like you’re really challenging our leaders to be in the latter camp of really thinking about your own moon shots and what you need to do to take your organizations and its people forward, and Christopher, you are the inspiration and delivering through the university system with young folks and also experienced folks. How do you help them build the knowledge, the ability and the mindsets to deliver these moonshots? So thank you for your work as a provost. It’s a real pleasure and a delight to do that work, to be an educator in these times, in these interesting times.

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