David K Hurst: Lead Like a Gardener – An Ecological Approach to Wicked Problems

About the episode: How can businesses share data to enable them to collaborate effectively whilst still retaining control of their data? Ali Nicholl at IOTICS thinks his company has the answer. Guest Name: Ali Nicholl Ali Nicholl is part of IOTICS’ founding team and IOTICS’ Head of Engagement, working across transport, logistics, utilities, the built environment, and defence, focusing on interoperability of IT & OT and digital cooperation across enterprise boundaries. Deploying decentralised, federated approaches that leverage semantics, selective sharing of data and connected digital twins. Ali is actively working on projects supporting the co-creation of transformative services and solutions at the intersection of market sectors and industries – with an interest in ESG, sustainability, and essential sharing networks. Ali also represents IOTICS within industry and academic initiatives such as TechUK’s Digital Twin Working Group, Cranfield University’s Industry Advisory Board and, as Co-Chair, on the DT Hub Community Council. Ali is passionate about enabling and empowering individuals and organisations to use trusted interoperability to unlock the value of their data assets to meet today’s business challenges, with the future flexibility to be ready for as-yet-undefined technology and needs. The opportunities presented by enabling programmatic discovery, data sharing and interaction must be married with a holistic understanding to unify technical and business benefits. Ali’s skills lie in taking a view across technical and sector landscapes to give confidence to those taking their first steps and to reflect impacts for the greater good. Links: LinkedIn: Ali Nicholl IOTICS.com I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: [email protected]. Enjoy, Toby Corballis

About the episode: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US called last year the hottest on record “by far”. During the year we saw many climate-related catastrophes – from large scale fires to unprecedented flooding. And yet, for some, the science of climate change is controversial. Many claim that even climate scientists don’t believe it can be attributed to anthropogenic actions. To understand what climate scientists really believe, we thought we’d speak with one. Professor Russchenberg leads the Climate Institute at the Technical University of Delft and is the scientific director of the national Ruisdael Observatory, both in the Netherlands, an apt choice given that roughly one third of the Netherlands lies below sea level (the lowest being 6.7 metres below) and, so, rising sea levels are an issue. In this episode, Professor Russchenberg and Toby Corballis discuss what businesses can do, the role of technology in mitigating some of the worst effects, why we’re seeing recent events, the warming of the oceans, and where we’re headed. Importantly, we ask what role business can play in helping to mitigate some of the worst effects of climate change. Guest Name: Professor Herman Russchenberg With decades of industry experience, Andrew Gordon-Brooks has built his career across Telco, Finance & Media with both global enterprises and early stage startups. Holding a variety of leadership & executive level positions; including building a global engineering team for a LinkedIn top 25 startup, Andrew is currently Chief Operations Officer for Secure Delivery, a firm spec, a founder member of the OWASP Education and Training Committee, and a key contributor to the OWASP Application Security Curriculum Project. Guest Profile: Professor Russchenberg is a full professor in Atmospheric Remote Sensing and head of the Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing at the Technical University, Delft, in the Netherlands. Since 202, he is the TU Delft vice rector magnificus for climate action. As well as leading the TU Delft Climate Institute, he is the Scientific Director of the national Ruisdael Observatory. His research themes are: Climate change: the role of clouds, rainfall and aerosols in the climate system Measuring the atmosphere Climate engineering Nowcasting rainfall Links: Find out about the work that Professor Russchenberg is doing: https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ceg/about-faculty/departments/geoscience-remote-sensing https://ruisdael-observatory.nl/ Calculate your travel footprint using one of the following: https://www.goclimate.com/travel-calculator https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx https://greentripper.org/ I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: [email protected]. Enjoy, Toby Corballis

As we increasingly connect our devices and our lives to the online world, product security and quality become ever more important. In this episode Toby is joined by Andrew Gordon-Brooks, COO of Secure Delivery, a firm specialising in providing security improvement programmes for software engineers, product managers and leadership. Andrew is also a founding member of the OWASP Education and Training Committee, and a key contributor to the OWASP Application Security Curriculum Project, whose goal is to produce a standard Application Security curriculum across academia and industry. About Andrew: With decades of industry experience, Andrew Gordon-Brooks has built his career across Telco, Finance & Media with both global enterprises and early stage startups. Holding a variety of leadership & executive level positions; including building a global engineering team for a LinkedIn top 25 startup, Andrew is currently Chief Operations Officer for Secure Delivery, a firm spec, a founder member of the OWASP Education and Training Committee, and a key contributor to the OWASP Application Security Curriculum Project. Links: https://securedelivery.io https://owasp.org https://productqualitymatters.com/ I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: [email protected]. Enjoy, Toby

In this episode, we dive into the incredible journey of Sean Jacob, whose impressive career spans across multiple sectors, from Defence to Commercial, Aviation to Finance, both in the UK and internationally. With an exceptional ability to bridge the gap between business strategy and technology, Sean has been the driving force behind numerous successful projects, programmes, and transformations.   Sean’s career would be the envy of many, with roles as Vice President, Operations for L3 Commercial Training Services, Programme Director for the AA Group Plc, and senior-level leadership roles for high-profile organisations such as Unilever, Orange, nPower, O2, The World Bank, T-Mobile, and Compaq.   When given the opportunity to invest in and manage a commercial flight school, Sean embraced it with open arms. After all, he had transformed the work processes and infrastructures of major organisations, worked with exciting start-ups, and even taken a company into the Sunday Times Fast Track 100. Enthusiastically, he set about bringing these skills to bear on a company that appeared to be doing well, had competent and enthusiastic people working for it, and would benefit from someone with considerable commercial experience taking the reins, helping the team work more effectively and creating a company set for success.   But that’s not what happened…    In this episode, we examine the intriguing story behind a slew of negative headlines in May 2023 following the collapse of Shoreham’s FTA flight school. As Steven Bartlett says, “FAILURE IS FEEDBACK, FEEDBACK IS KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWLEDGE IS POWER”.   Don’t miss out on the insights and wisdom Sean has to share from his past successes and, yes, this one failure which contains salutary lessons for us all.   LINKS: Sean speaking at Vistage Steven Bartlett on the power of Failure to teach us lessons

Toby explains how the podcast will change in the coming months to focus more on business. The past few years have seen more than their fair share of challenges for the business environment. An enormous number of businesses are feeling the squeeze and, as a result, looking for ways to increase capacity, capability, and production. At Wicked Problems, we’ve been helping businesses to do exactly that for years, so we thought it would be good to create a series that helps you solve those problems. We hope you enjoy the new format and look forward to seeing you on the first of the new episodes in a couple of weeks’ time.  

Alex is an experienced executive across strategic, investment and operational risks and insurance working within multibillion dollar corporations in Australia, GCC and Europe. Successfully implemented changes to quantitative risk analysis, risk-based decision making and neuroscience. Saved more than $13 million per year in premiums on cargo and PD/BI insurance through industry leading quantitative risk analysis without changing deductibles or limits. Successfully presenting corporate risk profile at the Ministry of finance and helping secure more than $1B in extra funding. Author of the most popular free risk management book in the world, more than 150K downloads in 3 languages. Risk manager of the year, FERMA, 2021, Honourable mention 2021, RIMS. Risk manager of the year, RUSRISK, 2014, Best ERM Implementation, RUSRISK, 2014, Best risk management training, RUSRISK, 2013, 2014, 2015, finalist in risk management awards in 2018 and 2019. I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: [email protected]. Enjoy, Toby Watch this episode at: https://youtu.be/lN7-vhXuHjg Alex’s Links ALEX’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL: @RISKACADEMY ALEX’S BLOG: https://riskacademy.blog

Henry Mintzberg is a writer and educator, mostly about managing originations, developing managers, and rebalancing societies (his current focus). After receiving his doctorate from the MIT Sloan School of Management, he has made his professional home in the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal, where he sits in the Cleghorn Chair of Management Studies, with extensive stints in France and England. He has authored 20 books which have earned him 21 honorary degrees, and publishes a regular blog, a collection of which was published as Bedtime Stories for Managers. He has co-founded the International Masters Program for Managers (impm.org) and the International Masters for Health Leadership as well as a venture CoachingOurselves.com, all novel initiatives for managers to learn together from their own experience, the last in their own workplace. (See further details on mintzberg.org.) I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: [email protected]. Enjoy, Toby

David Hurst is a speaker, writer and management educator. He spent 25 years working in corporations at progressively more senior levels in several countries in a series of organizational “train wrecks”, as the Western World began its radical transition from the industrial era to the age of knowledge and information. He uses complexity science and compelling ecological analogies to convey highly innovative perspectives on leadership, resilience and the dynamics of organizations that promote creativity and learning. For 10 years David was Executive Vice-President of a large North American industrial distributor. He holds an MBA (Finance) from the University of Chicago and a BA (Psychology). He teaches on the EMBA Digital Transformation Program at the DeGroote School of Business as well as three Masters-level programs at McGill University. He was on the Adjunct Faculty for the University of Regina’s Kenneth Levene Graduate School of Business, as well as the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina. He is also a Contributing Editor to Strategy+Business, where he writes articles and reviews books on management. I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: [email protected]. Enjoy, Toby David’s Links David’s website: http://www.davidkhurst.com David’s Author Website: http://www.amazon.com/author/davidkhurst Lead like a Gardner blog post: https://davidkhurst.medium.com/lead-like-a-gardener-b4c6181af8e5 Lead like a Gardner presentation on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ryxJ25pdUY David’s Books:  http://www.amazon.com/author/davidkhurst The New Ecology of Leadership: Business Mastery in a Chaotic World Learning From the Links: Mastering Management Using Lessons from Golf Crisis & Renewal: Meeting the Challenge of Organizational Change Building the Strategically-Responsive Organization

In this edition I am speaking to Keith Grint, Professor Emeritus at Warwick University. We’re discussing Wicked Problems in general, the specific Wicked Problems of Covid-19, Brexit, and Leadership. When Wicked Problems were first introduced by Rittel & Webber in 1973, various people have built upon the idea that it was Professor Grint, drawing on the work of Thompson’s Messy Solutions, who introduced the concepts of Tame and Critical problems, thus contextualising the problem-scape. Keith Grint is Professor Emeritus at Warwick University where he was Professor of Public Leadership until 2018. He spent 10 years working in various positions across a number of industry sectors before switching to an academic career. Since becoming an academic he has held Chairs at Cranfield University and Lancaster University and was Director of the Lancaster Leadership Centre. He spent twelve years at Oxford University and was Director of Research at the Saïd Business School. Go to https://wickedproblems.fm for links to Keith’s books and a special Sage Journal Publication on Covid-19. I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: [email protected].

After nearly 3 decades of building Fortune 500 brands and serving as a 3x CMO, Stephanie founded Mindfire Mastery in 2020 to show leaders the secret power of using disruption to their advantage to catapult from functional to optimal. As a certified professional coach and emotional intelligence teacher of the Google born Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program, she supports Executives and results-driven leaders who are struggling through overwhelming change and stress to build abundant resilience – connecting them more deeply to their mission and teams, so they can positively thrive in their careers with great ripple effects. Her approach blends the art and science of business and brand leadership with cutting edge insights and tools from the disciplines of neuroscience, psychology, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and core energy coaching.  She specializes in supporting leaders to accelerate their careers and pivot through change, so they can achieve even more with less effort, more flow and wellbeing.   Her first book “Waking Up on the Right Side of Wrong” will be published in 2021, showing high achievers the secret power of disruption to accelerate growth exponentially, so they can wake up to more resilience, joy and satisfaction on their own timetable. Stephanie’s brand marketing and leadership experience spans many Fortune 500 organizations includes Hallmark, United Airlines, Kraft, Alberto-Culver, Coca-Cola, Cboe Global Markets and Northern Trust. She is a Certified Professional Coach through the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC), and a Certified teacher of the Google born mindfulness emotional intelligence program, Search Inside Yourself (SIY).  She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a BA in Psychology from Duke University, and she’s also a graduate of the Players Workshop of The Second City.   She is proud and grateful to be a 9 year cancer survivor and a mentor with Imerman Angels to support others in their cancer journey. And to be the mother of two amazing daughters who are lighting up the world in their own unique ways.