Andrea Provaglio

So thank you for being here at 9.03 on a Thursday morning. My name is Andrea, Andrea Provaglio. As you have guessed, I'm Italian. And what I do is I've always been working independently with organizations. The way I describe myself is as someone who tries to, let's see, is it working, is it not working? Okay, yeah, it is working now, of course. I try to help organizations move into the 21st century. That's what I do. So I do have a technical background in software. I've been writing software for a long time, but for the last 10 years, I've been focusing more on the organizational aspects. Hello, Ben. Organizational aspects of IT, and not only IT now. So that's what I do. And one of the things that I've been working on in the last four years, probably, is leadership. Now... Leadership is a very huge topic. There are hundreds of books and training classes on leadership. Because leadership, you can see the leadership from different perspectives. So I'm not going to talk about leadership today as a generic concept. I'm going to talk about leadership for what we do. For IT organizations or agile organizations or lean organizations or knowledge work organizations. So this is the... kind of leadership I want to focus and talk about today, which is, of course, very different from other contexts. Leadership in the military may be different from leadership as we do, or leadership in a hospital. Leadership is very different from what we do. So anyway. If you're interested about leadership, I guess it's because at the end of the day, you want to do business, right? That's why we're here. We all work in companies. Our company has to stay in business, and to do so, we want to be able to generate value. And not only to stay in business, probably also because you want to contribute to the world, you want to enhance how people live, and so on and so on and so on. So there is a business case for leadership, which is delivering value. Now, if you think about it,
Value is generated by your organization, right? So my point is, for the kind of work that we do, it's very unlikely that one single person working alone is able to generate a huge amount of value, or at least that person is very unlikely that that person is able to address very complex problems. If what you do, for instance, is to develop a standalone application for a mobile phone, And probably you can do that by yourself, right? But if you want to deal with air traffic control, just to name one, it's very unlikely that you can do it by yourself. We need to work in teams. We need to work inside our organizations. So the organization delivers value. And the way the organization works depends on how the organization was conceived.
And leadership, the way I talk about leadership is, leadership is what the most influential people in the organizations are able to propagate. And by doing so, they shape up the organization in a certain way, and by doing so, the organization is able to deliver or not deliver value in a certain way.
And before that, there is mindset and skills. So my point is that we need to start talking about leadership in what we do because the way we think has an influence on the way we interact. The way we interact has an influence on the way the organization works, and the way the organization works has an influence on how we deliver value. So that's my point. And that's why I became so interested in leadership a few years ago, because I realized that at the end of the day,
it's not just the processes that we use, it's not just the structures that we use, but it's primarily the way people... think about the organization and influence the organization. So, the kind of work that we do, of course, is, as I was mentioning, is kind of complex. Now, let me give you an example. So, what does it mean for me, leading in complexity? Well, first of all, it means that you need to lead knowing that you do not know this thing here.
Now, okay, I'm keeping losing the connection here. Anyway, don't worry. So knowing that you do not know, that's one thing. So what does that mean, knowing that you do not know? I will explain in a second. But even though you know that you do not know, what you want to do is you want to be able to operate, to function in an intelligent way. So let me give you an example. What I'm trying to say, basically, is that the kind of world that we live in, as you probably know already, the kind of world that we live in is non-deterministic. And by deterministic, it means there is a clear cause and effect relationship. In what we do, most of what we do does not have a clear cause and effect relationship. There are probabilities that things will go in a certain way, but there is no certainty. Let me give you an example.
Let's talk about something that is predictable. My car. I drive a Subaru.
I mean, it's an old car now, but it's still working pretty nicely. And so let's say that the... One day, I go out of the house and I try to turn on the car. I turn the key and the car doesn't start. So maybe at the end of the day, what I do is I take the car to a mechanic. Because the mechanic is an expert. The mechanic knows exactly the causes and effects inside a car. The mechanic knows exactly how the car works. So when I bring the car to the mechanic, I do not know why it is not working. He does not know why it is not working. But the difference between me and the mechanic is that he knows where to look. The mechanic knows where to look because the mechanic understands the causes and relationships inside the car. So if the car is not starting, probably the guy, hopefully, the guy will not check the tire pressure, right? Because there is no cause and effect relationship between the tire pressure and the engine. Right? Okay, good. But for other things, for other things, this cause and effect relationship, even though it may be very complicated, is non-deterministic.
So let's say that usually I play this game with a volunteer here on stage, but it's 9 a.m., so I'm not going to wake you up.
I'll let you sit and cozy where you are.
So let's say that I have a person here. I have Kevin. The guy down there. Okay, so Kevin is here. Okay? And then, just for fun, at some point, I just poke Kevin on the shoulder. Just poke Kevin. And he may do nothing the first time, and then I poke him a second time. And then a third time. And then maybe I see the face is changing, right? And then a fourth time. And now it's time to start to look at me with a strange look, right? And then I keep poking the guy, okay? The thing is, at some point, at some point, I may feel a terrible pain on my leg, and I could ask myself, oh, why is it so, why do I feel pain here? Oh, because Kevin kicked me. Ah, interesting. And what happened before that? Oh, yes, I poked him. Ah, interesting. What happened before that? He told me, stop poking me. Interesting. What happened before that? I poked him. Okay, what happened? So I can recreate the chain of cause and effects, right? If I look at the past, I can recreate the chain of causes and effects. But still, I do not know what will happen if I poke Kevin one more time.
Right? There is a probability that one thing can happen, or a probability that another thing can happen, but there is no certainty. Because it's non-deterministic. Right? Because every time I poke Kevin, Kevin changes. Every time I interact with that person, that person changes. Right? And that's what we do most of the time. Every time you deliver a new feature to your users, your users change. Because now they have more information than they had before. Now they know that certain things are possible, and they come up with new ideas. Right? Or if you put a new product out on the market, There's a probability that your competitors will react in a certain way or another, but you don't know for certain. You need to do that and see what happens. And most of what we do is non-deterministic, is probabilistic, which is interesting. Because that, oh, for instance, if we talk, for instance, not about Agile, this is not an Agile conference, right? It's a Lean conference, Lean and Kanban conference. So let's not talk about Agile, bad word. But let's talk about agility for a second.
This gentleman, Pragmatic Dave, that's the nickname, he defines agility like in this way. Find out where you are. So understand your context, understand your current situation. Then you have a goal. Okay, then take a small step towards your goal. Small step, not a big step. Take a small step towards your goals. Now, once you have taken that step, you have learned something. So now that you have learned something that you didn't know when you were here, adjust your understanding.
in case, make better decisions, and then repeat, take another step, which is exactly what I would do with Kevin. Poke Kevin one time, see what happens.
Get new information, make better decisions, poke Kevin another time. And then at some point I may decide to stop or do something different. So that's agility.
And this part here, I'm going to skip. That's another comment, but it's not relevant. So my point here is...
If we work in a world where we think in terms of probabilities, and we need to learn constantly, we need to adjust constantly, and we need to take small steps, and we need to work in teams, my question is, which kind of organizations are able to do that? How should the organization be designed to be able to do that? And which kind of leadership do we need to design these kind of organizations? So that was my question. And there are certain things that I've learned, that there are certain qualities in organizations that are able to do that, that work. Like, for instance, decentralizing decision-making. It's an interesting concept.
I assume that you know that we recommend having focused, small, self-organizing teams. When you need to do something, when you need to get some work done, it's probably easier if you divide the work and you give autonomy to different teams. They still have a common goal, but they are more autonomous and self-organized. Now, self-organization, by definition, is a way of delegating decision-making. When you let people self-organize, it's because you don't take decisions anymore, but for certain things, not for everything, but for certain things, you let these people decide by themselves. You decentralize decision-making. Because in this way, you create a network of thinking people.
Like a neural network. Another thing that works is continuously learning, scanning, adapting, and so on. I've discussed that already. And the other thing is adapt as you go.
So if you have an organization which is able to work as a neural network, decentralizing some of the decision-making processes, and constantly learning and constantly adapting, probably, probably, you are more fit to deliver value in a complex world, which is my point. How do you deliver value in a complex world? A world that is constantly changing in an unpredictable way. Now, of course, when you start thinking about how the organization works, the formal structure of the organization is very important. And the most common form of organizational structure these days is the hierarchy, right? The organizational chart, the hierarchy. That's the most common these days.
That's not the only one. There's another form which is less common, but it's very common, for instance, in large organizations, which is a matrix organization, which has always been very funny to me, because that basically means that you have one hierarchy with certain delegation of power. Then you have another hierarchy which covers different topics. And then one of these hierarchies, you twist 90 degrees, you put them together, and then everybody's confused.
That's usually a matrix organizer. If you have two dimensions, you can have more than two dimensions. You could have three dimensions. So people are even more confused. But anyway, that's another approach.
I'm sorry, I like to make jokes, but what I'm trying to say is organizations are a very hard subject. So people try different things. That's what I'm saying. And some of these things work in certain contexts and some others don't. So that's what I'm saying. I'm not, of course, making fun of anybody. There's another form now that is becoming more popular, which is the forms of small, autonomous, self-organized, interdependent teams. Or, to use a simpler word, tribes.
Now, I'm not using the word tribes like Spotify does. I'm not using the word tribes like tribal leadership does. I'm just talking about small groups of people who are very focused on something, they're self-organized, and they interact with other groups of people. That's what I'm talking about. different things. That's what I'm saying. And some of these things work in certain contexts and some others don't. So that's what I'm saying. I'm not, of course, making fun of anybody. There's another form now that is becoming more popular, which is the forms of small, autonomous, self-organized, interdependent teams. Or to use a simpler word, tribes.
Now, I'm not using the word tribes like Spotify does. I'm not using the word tribes like tribal leadership does. I'm just talking about small groups of people who are very focused on something, they're self-organized, and they interact with other groups of people. That's what I'm talking about. Then again, it's a way of creating a neural network in the organization. Every team is a small neural network which is connected to a larger neural network. That's the idea. Because by doing so, they adapt faster. So formal structure, of course, is important. Now, if we take this thing here, and I want to make a connection with leadership, if we take the most common form of organizational structure, we need to make a distinction between management and leadership.
Because it's very relevant to what I want to discuss. So, then again, there are hundreds of definitions of management versus leadership. you search on the internet, if you read books, but I chose one which I like to make it simpler for you and to make it simpler for this talk. So I'm using the words by Seth Godin, and he describes management, as you can read, is management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done. So, first of all, in my work, I never use the word resource for a person. So when we talk about resources, we are talking about all other resources which are not people.
And these resources could be, for instance, money. That's the most common form of resource, which is why managers have budgets, because that's a resource they need to manage. They need to manage time. They might need to manage, I don't know, infrastructure, legal agreements, market relationships. I mean, these are all resources, right? So the purpose of management, a manager is someone who has been given by the company the responsibility to manage these resources wisely to get a certain result. That's the role of manager. And we need good managers. It's extremely important that we have good managers because managers take a big responsibility. If you are responsible for a 1 billion euros budget, that's a big responsibility and we need good managers.
And that's management. That's management. And since managers have a big responsibility, they are also given authority. And that makes sense, right? I mean, it's just fair. It would be unfair to hold someone responsible for something they cannot control. If you have responsibility, you must have authority. If you have authority, you are taking responsibility. The two things go together. Make sense? Okay. Good.
Leadership, on the other hand, is defined by Seth Godin in a different way. Leadership is not managing resources. Leadership, as you can read, is about creating change you believe in.
Leadership is your ability to influence your environment and create a change that you believe in. Now, hopefully, you believe in good things, because you can also be an evil leader, and we see these kind of evil leaders everywhere in history, but it's still the same concept. Leadership is about influencing the environment to bring about some kind of change that you believe in. That's leadership. And it's very different from management, right? For instance, managers have reports, people who must report to them, And leaders have followers, people who chose to follow the leader. They didn't have to. They chose to follow. You follow someone because you want to, not because you have to. It's your choice. So leaders have followers, managers have reports. Different story, different story. And so first of all, I wanted to make a difference between management and leadership. Just to clarify these two concepts, at least for my talk. You may have a different definition, but at least now we have a vocabulary. And then I want to make a distinction between accountability and responsibility. Because then again, even in English, these two terms sometimes are used interchangeably. But it's better if we make a distinction. So let's go back again to managers.
Managers hold other people accountable. If I'm a manager and I assign a task to Kevin, I'm sorry, I'm talking about Kevin because we met before,
and I assign a task to Kevin, now I'm holding Kevin accountable for that task to be done. Accountable means that you have to give count. If you are accountable, you need to give count of what is done or not done. How much you spent or you did not spend. And stuff like that. So that's accountability. I can hold you accountable.
In leadership, the thing is, responsibility, real responsibility, is not something that you can impose on anyone. I cannot expect that Kevin will feel responsible. If I just tell him, you have to do this. What I can expect is that Kevin may feel the peer pressure or the social pressure or may be attracted by bonuses or whatever, but that doesn't mean that Kevin feels responsible. Responsibility is something that you can only take. It can never be imposed on you. Real responsibility. Accountability can be imposed. Responsibility can only be taken. Real responsibility. Right? Which means that, which means for leaders that
Leaders take responsibility.
And managers want accountability. Then again, we need good managers, we need good leaders. I'm just making clear that there are two different things. Leadership and management are two very different things, and we need both. And we need both.
So I've been talking about the social structure, sorry, the formal structure of the organization. I've been talking about what is management, with its leadership. But at the end of the day, what really matters for what we do is the way people interact. That's why we want to give them autonomy and so on and so on and so on. Because these individuals and the way they interact, as I mentioned, they are the nervous system, the neural network of your organization. I will come back to this slide later. But first of all, I would like to play a little game with you.
And so I've been talking about creating organizations that can thrive in a complex world like ours. And I've been telling you that we need a form of organizational structure, a type of organization that's probably very different from the traditional ones we are used to. And I've also told you that leadership is what determines this structure. And so my question is for you, which kind of leadership? Which kind of leadership do we need? Now, the reason why I chose this specific picture is because it is so full of, let's say,
stereotypes. It is so full of stereotypes regarding leadership.
It's packed full of stereotypes. So I want to play a little game with you. How many stereotypes can we count? Which stereotypes can we identify here as a group?
Which stereotypes can you identify? Identify in this picture. In the meantime, I'm getting coffee.
I'm sorry.
Oh, he's fighting a dragon, yeah. So this guy is protecting you from bad guys.
Other things? He's a man. That's a very common stereotype. Thank you for spotting that so quickly.
No, because that stereotype is so ingrained that most people don't even see that.
So, good man.
Holding the reins. Yeah, he's in control, right? Yeah.
The white knight. Yes, white knight, and he's standing on this white horse, he's so powerful, and so on and so on. And what else? He's alone. Alone, he's alone. Yeah, probably you don't see that, but back here, there is a castle, okay? And maybe, maybe there's people in here, but who cares? I mean, he's out there alone, and he's saving everybody, right?
What else?
I'm telling you, I played this game with probably a dozen different audiences yet, and it always surprises me what people can spot in this picture.
Violent, yes. He has to use force and violence to do something, right?
Yes, white, yeah. You mean Caucasian, right? Yeah, okay. So, I mean, it's packed full of stereotypes. Now, the thing is, for the kind of leadership that I am talking about, this is not what you want to do. This is not what you want to do for the kind of organizations that we would like to create. So what do we do? That's a good question. So another game that I play, and you are lucky because part of these sticky notes are in French and some are in English.
And the reason is that I was giving a workshop here in Paris this January. And so this is what some people did here in Paris. So every time I give workshops on agile leadership or in general complexity leadership, I always ask people, Which kind of leader would you like to have? Which kind of leader do you think we should have for the kind of organizations that we want to create? And then again, I've run probably a couple of dozen of these workshops around Europe, and I always come up with something like this. You can read, the guy is able to communicate, good listener, empathic, is able to... Give energy, proactive, critical sense, open mind, very social. Charismatic, of course. How can we do without charisma? And is able to create bonds between people. All this nice thing. And of course, this person is all this and... He's also humble. Okay? Of course, right? Of course. So, I mean, it's an old joke. I mean, I've made this joke a few times, but I like it. So what I usually say at this point is that if I ever found someone like this, I don't care about the gender, I would marry this person.
Because that would be such a wonderful human being, right? Beautiful human being. Beautiful.
Probably not easy to find.
But the point is, I think that the question, which kind of leader would you like to have, is kind of a tricky question. Because I think there is a better question. And the better question is, which kind of leader do you want to be? That's a good question. Because you cannot control other people, but you can control yourself. You can decide how you want to be. You cannot decide how other people should be.
So that's a better question for me. Which kind of leader do you want to be?
I don't know if you've noticed, but the structure of this talk is very simple, actually. I started with something very, very generic, like what is leadership in complexity and why should we care about leadership in business? I started with a very generic question, and then I started narrowing it. of zooming in. I started talking about organizations, and then I started talking about how organizations are made, and then I started talking about what is leadership in organizations, and now I'm starting to talk about individual people. So I started with something very generic, and I'm zooming in more and more and more, and I'm focusing more and more and more of
which kind of leaders do we need and what can you do? That's the structure of this talk. So you can follow me better, hopefully. So there are a few things that I've learned about the kind of leaders or the kind of leadership That helps us. Because, you know, if you want to answer this question, which kind of leader, what kind of leader do you want to be? I am pretty sure that if I asked 10 people, I would get 10 similar questions, similar answers, but no answer would be exactly the same as another one. Because everybody has their own way to lead. If I ask this lady, which kind of leader would you like to be? And I ask this gentleman, I would get two different answers. And they would still be good answers, probably. Just different.
But there are certain things that I know that can work. So if you want to lead in complexity, one thing I've learned by experience, by working in companies, by practicing this stuff, is that what you want to do is you want to create an environment where everybody feels feels safe to lead from time to time.
Everybody feels safe to lead from time to time. When? When it's appropriate. Depends on the context. Maybe for certain things, then again, this gentleman is the best leader we can have for different things, that lady could be the best leader we have at that time for other things. So the point is, make everybody feel safe to lead from time to time. This is also called psychological safety, and it's a concept that has been developing recently, but I don't want to talk about psychological safety here. But anyway, everybody leads from time to time. Just a question, and you can answer whatever you want. I'm not imposing anything on you. Do you like this concept that everybody leads from time to time? Any objection to that concept so far? I'm open to objections. best leader we can have for different things that lady could be at the best leader we have at that time for other things so the point is make everybody feel safe to lead from time to time this is also called psychological safety and it's a it's a concept that has been developing recently but I don't want to talk about psychological safety here but anyway anyway everybody leads from time to time just a question you can answer whatever you want I'm not imposing anything on you. Do you like this concept that everybody leads from time to time?
Any objection to that concept so far?
I'm open to objections.
You're still sleeping. Okay, that's good. That's good. I can speak very softly, you know. Just kidding. Now, there are implications to this thing, because if everybody leads from time to time, that means that everybody follows from time to time. If I'm leading, this gentleman is following. If he's following, if he's leading, I am following.
So everybody follows, everybody leads from time to time. Interesting concept, right? Very different from management where you have a clear definition of accountability and responsibilities. Knowing when and how to lead and follow is extremely important. Knowing when to lead is equally important as learning when to follow.
And finally, sorry, there's a word agile there, but it means complexity. Complexity leaders develop other leaders. Because it comes from the first principle. If everybody leads from time to time, we need to help people leading, especially new people. You need to grow other leaders.
Which is very challenging from a traditional point of view, because it means that even if you are in a leadership position, what you want to do is you want to step back and let people give it a try. Let people try leadership. Step back and give people an opportunity to become leaders. I'm not talking about managers. Manager is an official position. in the company. It's on your business card.
And there is salary associated with that. I'm not talking about... I'm talking about leadership here.
Your ability to influence the environment to bring about change, what you can do is you want to step back from time to time and let other people develop their own leadership.
Now, how much time do we have? Okay, we are more or less on time. That's good. How are we doing so far? You guys okay? Good? Okay. I'm sorry?
No, no, no, that's fine. You're a very quiet class. Can I bring you coffee?
I'm sorry, I'm just a silly person. Okay, let's move on.
So I'm talking about leadership, right? We said everybody should be able to lead. They should feel safe to lead from time to time. Which means that they should feel safe to be able to influence their environment, because leadership is about creating change by influencing, not by imposing. And then again, I'm talking about influence, I'm not talking about manipulating people. Okay, manipulating people, bad. Influencing your environment, good. Okay? Not talking about manipulating people. Talking about having an influence. People that want to follow you because they like what you're saying.
So, my question, actually. Okay. Okay.
Let's take these two guys.
You could say that these two people, they are not communicating. But in fact, they are communicating, right? And especially the ladies here, they all go, yeah, they'll communicate.
Men are usually, men are looking around, don't know what you're talking about.
Yeah, but these two guys, they are communicating. They are giving strong signals to each other, right? So they're not talking. Okay, that's good. But they're giving strong signals to each other. So I'm taking this example just to make this point. It is impossible not to communicate. Which means, since it is impossible not to communicate, it means that whatever you say or you do not say, whatever you do or do not do, and whatever you think or do not think, has an influence. The reason why what you think and do not think has an influence is because your thoughts determine your words and actions. What you think determines what you do and what you say. So whatever you think, whatever you say, whatever you do, or you don't, has an influence on your environment. And as a leader, What you might want to do is to become extremely aware of the influence that you are having by doing or not doing, by saying or not saying, by thinking or not thinking.
Because you need an awareness of leadership and you need an ethics of leadership. Because the moment you start realizing that by leading, by your leadership, you are creating a change around you, then you should ask your question, you should ask yourself the question, is this a good change for them?
Which is my ethics in leading.
So you see, I'm narrowing, I'm zooming in more and more and more and more. Now I'm starting to talk about values and principles in leadership. I started from something very generic and now I'm narrowing it even more. So it's about influencing people in a certain way. There are certain things that can determine your sphere of influence. By sphere of influence, it means how far can my influence extend? Sometimes my influence can only include one other person, the guy sitting next to me at the desk. Or sometimes my influence can be larger. So which are the elements that can determine this sphere of influence? One, of course, is how skilled you are. Remember, I'm talking about contextual leadership. So if there is a certain thing to be done, do you have the skills to do that?
Do you have experience on that? The skills are what you know, and experience is what you have lived.
Your history, your background, and so on and so on and so on. And finally, how willing are you to take responsibilities because leaders take responsibility. And people feel when you take or you do not take responsibility. And they would follow you if you take responsibility, and not if you try to avoid it. Would you follow a leader that never takes responsibility?
This silence is very clear, right?
So that's one thing. So if we combine all this, everything I told you, remember this slide? This was about the social network in the organization, which is more important than the formal structure. And then we've been talking about leadership is about influencing. And then I've been telling you that probably you want everybody in this network to be able from time to time to lead, to activate and lead, depending on their skills, experience, responsibilities they want to take, and so on. Maybe, maybe you end up with something like this. You have a kind of leadership where people activate and deactivate in leading from time to time. That's what you want to do. Where everybody feels safe in doing that. And I talk more about safety in a second.
So what you want to do is you want to promote multiple, what I call, acts of leadership. You're not a leader. You exercise leadership. From time to time with your acts.
Very different concept from traditional hierarchical organizational structures. Now, there are a few qualities.
That make people feel more comfortable to see you as a leader. And of course, the first One, the blue circle you see there is your sphere of influence. At the outside, the external layer of your sphere of influence is your ability to communicate.
And to provide a vision. Then again, would you follow a leader with no vision? Would you follow someone who tells you, yeah, follow me? Where? I don't know. I have no idea. We'll find out. Let's try.
Would you follow this kind of person? Probably not. And then again, I'm not talking about big leaders. What I'm talking about, leadership could be something like, okay, I think that if we implement this kind of architecture in our code, we will have this kind of benefit. And I have the skills to do that, I have the experience, and I want to take responsibility. So would you follow me if we try this? So I'm talking about this kind of leadership. It could be very small or very big, depending. The other layer is trustworthiness.
And I will explain trustworthiness in a second.
There are other qualities, some of these I will explain, but at the end of the day, self-awareness is the most important.
As a leader, you must be aware of what you think, what you want, what you feel, And so on. If you're not aware of that, it's very unlikely that you can have a positive influence on the environment around you. So let's start with self-awareness. Let me explain self-awareness just a little bit more. So why is self-awareness important?
Leadership is about influencing people, it's about communication. So, very simply, you cannot communicate with others if you cannot communicate with yourself in the first place.
Very simple. What do I mean by communicating with yourself? Knowing what you want, why you want it, which are your values, knowing how you feel, knowing what your fears are. And if you're not able to have this kind of communication with yourself, if you cannot lead yourself in the first place, how can you expect people following you?
Which is why self-awareness is so important in this kind of leadership.
You cannot take care of others if you cannot take care of yourself. And to take care of yourself, you need to know yourself.
You need to... And simple things. You need to be able to immediately spot when you are not in condition to make good decisions. Maybe because you are stressed, maybe because you are tired, maybe because you are in a hurry. You need to be able to know that. And finally, you cannot lead others if you cannot lead yourself. So self-awareness is, in my opinion, is core to developing a certain kind of leadership which has a positive influence on your environment.
Let me tell you about... Trustworthiness. Now, trustworthiness. Oh, sorry, truthfulness. Sorry, truthfulness. Another thing that we usually see in organizations, this stage is so tall, it's almost embarrassing to be standing here. I would like to be on the floor with you guys. But probably the guys on the back would not see me. So another dysfunction that I frequently see in organizations, especially traditional organizations, is the lack of transparency or the deliberate attempt to provide false information,
which would not be true, basically. Let me give you a few examples.
Walk the talk. This is the first thing I do not see so frequently in organizations. Walk the talk is an English term. It means... If you say something, you do something. You live by your words. And a lot of people I see, sorry, a lot of time I see people in high-ranking positions in organizations saying, yes, we want to change, we need to do that. And then they give out very strong messages, and then they act in a completely different way. The most common thing is, yes, we need to change, meaning you have to change, I don't have to change. Right? Very, very common. So they don't walk the talk. They don't live by their words.
Good leaders, of course, they have to live by their words. Keeping promises.
That's very important. For me, keeping... For me... The concept of promise is not so formal. For me, what I generally see is that usually I make promises like 100 times per day. Like, oh yeah, sure, as soon as you are there in five minutes, we'll get a coffee. And then I do not show up. That's still a promise. Right? It doesn't have to be a formal promise. And that's very important for leadership. And finally, this thing, depicting reality, representing reality for what it is. I'm sure you guys have seen and lived this a thousand times, people telling you that the deadline is January 1st. But in truth, the real deadline is February 1st. But yes, but that's the deadline. So not depicting reality, not showing reality for what it is, clearly it's not good leadership. It could be management. Because you manage resources, you manage pressure on people, but it's not leadership.
So, self-awareness, truthfulness, and finally, trustworthiness, which connects to this concept of psychological safety that I've described. And I think we're probably to be... A couple of minutes late with the talk, but we started five minutes late. Okay, so I'll try to save a couple of minutes.
I was talking about psychological safety earlier. Now, for me, being trustworthy is not something like, okay, if I leave my wallet here, I trust that nobody will steal it. Okay, that's not the point.
Anyway, I'm taking this back. So, just being silly.
For me, trustworthiness is this. If I make myself vulnerable, I trust that he will not take advantage of that. Why is this important? Because we live in a probabilistic world, right? Remember what I told you at the beginning? What we do is probabilistic most of the time. It's not deterministic. And that means that we make decisions, we make hypotheses. And then some of these hypotheses probably will be validated, and some other hypotheses probably will not be validated. That does not mean that we made a mistake. It means that an hypothesis was proven, correctly proven, wrong, which is good. We have proven something to be wrong. In the same way that we can prove something to be true. So what I'm saying is, it's perfectly normal that things will not go as expected in the world we live in, even small things. Or, much more simply, sometimes people screw up. Okay? Sometimes we screw up. That happens. We are human. We make mistakes. So if I make myself vulnerable, if I tell you, oops, sorry, I totally deleted today's work, not recoverable, sorry, I trust. That you will not take advantage of my vulnerability when I declare that. Meaning, I trust that you will not attack me, retaliate me, make fun of me, and so on and so on and so on. This is called psychological safety. Of course, I can expect maybe five seconds of emotional response. What the fuck? Okay, stuff like that. I can expect that. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to suffer for days because of that, right? Okay? So, This kind of trustworthiness is fundamental for good interactions, which is important because we need to create this neural network of people that creates smart organizations that are able to thrive, to live in a complex world, because everybody in the organization feels safe to take leadership from time to time.
It's a lot of stuff. I understand. It's a lot of stuff. But anyway, I'm done. So, quick recap.
I'm not talking about agile, I'm talking about agility, which for me is a way to live in complexity. So what you want to do is you want to promote multiple synergistic act of leadership because everybody feels safe to do so, and frequently that's better than one guy deciding at the top with very little information to make the decision.
Leadership is not a position. It's something that you are, something that you do, but it's not a position in the company. Management is a position. Leadership is what you are. And finally, There are certain qualities of a human being that we need to develop to create these kind of organizations. We need to create, design these kind of organizations. And then again, the people who have more leadership in the organizations, for instance, founders or CEOs, the people who have been there for 20 years, people who have more leadership in the organization are the ones that are most influential in creating the kind of organization that you would like to have. There are, of course, problems in doing that. Sometimes it's not so easy, but that doesn't mean that we could at least give it a try. So I'm done. I'm done. I'll be around, of course. So if you want to keep talking or if you want to ask questions, I don't know if we have time for questions now, but anyway, I'll be around. If you want to continue the conversation offline, my preferred social networks are LinkedIn. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter. And if you like the slides, they are on SlideShare already, along with a bunch of other slides. And I'm done. So thank you.

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