Rationale
Leadership needs a reset because there is now a disconnect between the world in which leaders operate and the leadership principles they are applying.
Purpose
We exist because society is on an increasingly dystopian path and so a radical change is needed if we are to move to a more sustainable trajectory.
Vision
Imagine a world where our organisations and communities:
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Value people’s wellbeing.
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Embrace fairness and sustainability.
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Are highly adaptive to increasing disruption.
Mission
Our mission is to support the development of leaders by:
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Creating an open intelligent leadership development framework.
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Building a community of leaders and interested parties to construct and evolve this framework.
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Providing free tools to support the development of leaders.
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Providing tailorable leadership development related services.
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Influencing the influencers to accelerate our impact.
Who are we helping?
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Leaders (Public, private and civil society).
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Aspirant leaders.
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Those responsible for leadership development.
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Policy makers.
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Those wanting to reshape the nature of leadership.
By supporting these people we believe we will play a role in supporting humanity and the planet.
The Model
The ILH has four somewhat overlapping streams of activity:
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Research and development – This will fuel the development of tools and services.
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Community engagement – This will, for the moment, comprise periodic virtual gatherings that will largely explore topics aligned with the current R&D focus.
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Services provision – These are ‘paid for’ services.
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Activism – Currently this is focused on simply raising awareness of the leadership gap mentioned in the ILH’s rationale.
The ILH exists for leaders and for those responsible for the development of leaders, particularly internal leadership development functions. The ILH values the input independent leadership experts, former leaders and academics can provide. It also values the input from interested parties who can influence our thinking and impact through their own experiences and reach. Our community is structured to reflect these groups.
So where do we start?
The issues the ILH is addressing are both global and cross sectoral. At this early stage in the ILH’s development, we will simply follow the energy. In other words, if a volunteer steps forward to say I will lead the way in respect of the automotive market in the US or the public sector in the Middle East then off we go.
In the absence of such people, our starting point will be high growth technology firms in the UK and Ireland. But over time the ILH could extend into areas such as parenting and self-leadership for young people.
Please note that we are all in uncharted territory and so enter this with a spirit of enquiry rather than dogmatism.
The ILH Philosophy
What perhaps differentiates the ILH from other think tanks, change hubs, advisory firms etc is that we believe that humankind has taken a misstep that has led us down a path that is becoming increasingly dystopian. We believe this misstep commenced when we decided to put the needs of factory owners before the needs of the citizens. One could even argue that the bigger misstep was the agricultural revolution.
Regardless of how true that may be, many people today seem to have lost touch with their own humanity and even more are suffering unnecessarily as a result. We believe that by rekindling our human nature, we can in turn build organisations and communities optimised to cope with the most disruptive of conditions. Thus, much of our work will focus on what we can learn by exploring leadership through non-industrial lenses such as anthropology, evolutionary biology and neuroscience.
The good news is that this plays to our natural wiring as individuals and as social animals.
The less good news for some is that the party is over. It’s goodbye security and hello precarity.
This transition is already well underway. Even those for which the game was seemingly gamed are starting to feel the pinch. Social unrest is on the increase. It is a foreshock for what could be a very messy reset. The ILH believes that if we act now, this transition could be less volatile and perhaps even bloodless.
Please bear in mind that the ILH approach is naturally interesting and thus can result in philosophical musing, which is stimulating for sure. However we will always retain a focus on how our findings can help leaders today in navigating uncertainty.
Backstory
The Intelligent Leadership Hub (ILH) is an initiative created by Ade McCormack, a former technologist and Financial Times columnist. Ade is focused on helping organisations transition from an industrial era approach to one better suited to an increasingly disruptive world.
Over the last decade or so, Ade noticed that both business and society were struggling to cope with the increasingly disruptive macroenvironmental forces bearing down on them. To understand what was happening and to provide a way forward, Ade developed a thesis, underpinned by anthropological principles, that he wove into his advisory, speaking and writing work.
This struck a chord with clients and the market in general. Latterly the emerging solution model embraced concepts from neuroscience, technology, evolutionary biology, genetics as well as human performance management.
In late 2021, Ade decided that the best way to make an impact was to support those with the greatest influence. Over 2022 he laid the foundations for a change hub focused on leadership. In late 2022, Ade started to build what might be termed an advisory council.
This led to some very stimulating discussion with some very interesting people. However for various reasons we lost momentum and lost sight of the mission.
In many respects the ILH is a series of stumbling experiments. We learnt a lot from the first experiment and now we are funnelling this wisdom into the next phase.