The New Next Leadership

In the turbulent, uncertain, and uber-tech 2020s, what kind of leadership is required of those who lead organisations? Anne Morriss, (Thinkers50 Ranking) asks three outstanding social entrepreneurs: Shelley Zalis, founder and CEO of The Female Quotient; Neri Karra Sillaman, CEO of Neri Karra; and Jos de Blok, founder of Buurtzorg.

A Dutch home care organisation, Buurtzorg is revolutionising healthcare delivery through a model that radically empowers nurses and puts patients at the centre, a model described by Jos as self-management.People, Jos argues, can organise themselves. And the more autonomy and the more ownership they have, the more accountable they are, and the more they will make the right decisions to make things work for their patients and their colleagues. “We do not have management meetings. We don’t have policy notes. And for 18 years, we have been the most successful organisation in the country.” 

The Female Quotient is a global organisation working to advance gender equity in the workplace. It focuses on empowering women in business and leadership through initiatives like The Equity Lounge, which literally creates spaces for women to come together in male-dominated industries. Changing the equation and closing the gender gap, says Shelley, requires conscious leadership and intentionality. “If we created the internet in 25 years, ChatGPT in two weeks, a vaccine in one year, and sent men to the moon within 10 years, why should it take 131 years to figure out how to pay Sally the same as Peter, or to create a care solution for the workplace or supply chain?”

Luxury leather goods company Neri Karra is known for its deep walk-the-talk commitment to sustainability and social responsibility. Neri herself is a pioneer in ethical business practices, bringing marginalised communities into the luxury goods supply chain, including refugees and women from disadvantaged backgrounds.  With a tagline of Love Made Visible, Neri says she started the company with the intention of creating not just a profit but a better life for her family and the people who are part of their community. Creating a business, she argues, is not about you. It’s about the problem you are solving for other people. “What do your employees need? What does the world need from you? Get out of your own way. It has never been about you.”

Watch here:

Transcript

Anne Morriss:

Hi, everyone. I welcome all of you to a conversation we’re having today in honor of the launch of the new Leaders50 list. I’m Anne Morriss. I’m your host today. I spend my time thinking and writing and talking about leadership, and we’ve come together today to figure out what kind of leadership is needed in this moment, in this turbulent, uncertain, tech-driven moment that we are all living and working in. We’ve gathered an extraordinary group to wrestle with this question who are all at the forefront of creating really innovative new ways to lead today, all in very different contexts, which is just one of the many reasons I’m excited for this conversation. So let me introduce our panelists. Let me start with Jos de Blok, a social entrepreneur and founder of Buurtzorg, a Dutch home care organisation. Jos, your work focuses on revolutionising healthcare delivery through a model that radically empowers nurses and really puts patients at the centre of the model. You describe your leadership model as self-management. What is self-management and what else should we know about your work as context for this conversation?

Jos de Blok:

I think… Yes, I started as a nurse myself in the eighties and my idea is that people can organise themselves and the more autonomy and the more ownership they have, the more accountable they are and they will do the best thing they can to make things work for patients and for their colleagues. So I organised small groups of nurses, 1000 groups at this moment throughout the country, who are working all based on principles of self-management. I avoided creating a management structure, so we don’t have a management structure. We have 15,000 people working at Buurtzorg. We don’t have management meetings. We don’t have policy notes. For 18 years, we have been the most successful organisation in the country. We became the biggest one. We are a nonprofit organisation. That’s important, so we want to serve the public and we have 100 people in overhead roles and 15,000 people in healthcare roles, healthcare professionals.

Anne Morriss:

Amazing. We’re going to have a lot of questions for you over the course of this conversation, but let me get to some of our other panelists. So Shelley Zalis is a social entrepreneur, founder of The Female Quotient, global organization working to advance gender equity in the workplace. Your work focuses on empowering women in business and leadership through initiatives like The Equity Lounge, which literally creates spaces for women to come together in male-dominated industries. You also advise and partner with some of the most influential companies in the world. I will also add that your company has a killer social media game. The algorithm has figured out that I watch everything you put out and have for years. Shelley, what else should we know about your work as context for this conversation?

Shelley Zalis:

Oh my gosh, thank you so much. My life’s work is about changing the equation and closing the gender gap in Fortune 500 companies. What that really requires is conscious leadership and intentionality. I loved what you were talking about. It really is about lived experience. When you think about the workplace, the workplace has been created over a hundred years ago by men, for men and not as a bad thing, but women just weren’t in the workplace. When you think about the biggest challenge that we have is caregiving, we’re losing our best leaders to caregivers. If you really think about what we need, it’s just conscious leadership and intentionality. The World Economic Forum says it’s going to take 131 years to close the gender gap. But why? It’s not that complicated. Global goal… The SDG 17, global goal five is gender equality.

When you think about what it takes to close that, it’s all about data. It’s right in front of our faces of what it takes. It’s not that complicated. It just takes prioritization, consciousness and intentionality. We created the internet in 25 years, ChatGPT in two weeks, a vaccine in one year. We sent men to the moon in 10 years. Why should it take 131 years to figure out how to pay Sally the same as Peter, or to create a care solution for the workplace or supply chain?

Anne Morriss:

It feels like a solvable problem.

Shelley Zalis:

1% of the procurement dollars goes to women-owned businesses and the leadership gaps. So all of these gaps are actually fixable. So we say we can close them in five years with intentionality. So that’s really what we’re up to and that’s what we’re doing.

Anne Morriss:

I love it. I love it and I love your use of the phrase conscious leadership because I think that defines all of the work of the panelists. So let’s bring in our third panelist, Neri Karra Sillaman, social entrepreneur, founder of Neri Karra, a luxury leather goods company known for its deep walk-the-talk commitment to sustainability and social responsibility. You are a pioneer in ethical business practices. Your company focuses on bringing marginalised communities into this luxury goods supply chain, including refugees, women from disadvantaged backgrounds. I love your tagline, Love Made Visible. Let me just start there. What does that mean in the context of your work, Neri, Love Made Visible?

Neri Karra Sillaman:

Such a good question. Well, I think it has to do with our work because the way we work is the love that we create and what we put out. So the reason why I employ refugees and women from disadvantaged backgrounds is myself, I was a refugee at the age of 11. We started our company with the intention of creating, not just creating a profit but better life for my family and people who are part of our community. So that’s why it’s about Love Made Visible, how we create something, how our business is put together and the intention and purpose behind the business. That’s why Love Made Visible. Of course I think it’s a quote from a Sufi poet, Rumi, Mevlana, Turkish-Bulgarian, so that’s the connection as well. That’s why the tagline, Love Made visible. It’s more than work.

Anne Morriss:

That’s beautiful. So let’s dive into the central question that brought us here. What kind of leaders and leadership models are we going to need for the turbulence? Shelley, as you point out, just the acceleration of progress that we’re all living through today and also tomorrow. I do want to point out because in my work we spent a lot of time thinking about the uncertainty and risk of this moment, but this is also a time of incredible possibility. And so Jos, let me start with you. You’ve led Buurtzorg through incredible growth and change. What has that experience taught you about the leadership that will be required for leaders to thrive going forward?

Jos de Blok:

I don’t talk so much about leadership. I think that everybody can be the leader of their own work, their own things they’re doing, day by day. So I call it collective leadership or distributed leadership. So I think we should turn the hierarchical model upside down. We should focus on how everybody can enjoy their daily work and give the best of themselves in their daily work. So I already said that we don’t have a management structure and people in the beginning, when we were just small said, “Oh, it can work when it’s small, but it’ll collapse when it grows.” We grew to 15,000 people and it’s only improving. So the idea, how do you look at the capacities of people? Do you believe that people want to do good things and take responsibility? Yes, I believe that.

I grew up like that. My parents taught me that. So I have two brothers who are also nurses, so we became nurses. We are a very caring family and that’s what we see also in the organisation. Everybody cares for each other and it gives a very strong collective feeling. And year by year, we’re doing the same things. We take care of 100,000 patients at home every year, people who are terminally ill, people with chronic diseases, and we simplified the whole system. So we also did a lot of things in the system that made the-

Anne Morriss:

Jos, let me cut you off for a second. I want to ask you a question. What do you think the lessons of your model are for those of us outside of healthcare? What do you feel is deeply transferable about what you’ve built and learned over this experience?

Jos de Blok:

What I learned is a model where the context and the place where people work give them the freedom and opportunity to do what they think is valuable and needed. It creates a kind of empowerment that you don’t need to organise it, so it’s empowering by itself. I believe that the management structures we build are damaging that, in all kind of HR departments.

Anne Morriss:

The old school models.

Jos de Blok:

Yeah. So I think we are really at the center now and it’s developing all over the world that we say, “Okay, let’s build it from the intrinsic motivation of people and let’s try to create a context where this can grow and flourish based on organic principles.”

Anne Morriss:

Beautiful. Beautiful. It’s such an inspiring model. Shelley, let’s get you into this conversation. I’m curious what you think the traits and assumptions and mindsets are needed for leaders to thrive in this moment and whether you think that list is different for women?

Shelley Zalis:

Yeah. First of all, I think that it’s not about gender. I think it’s about possibilities and intentional action. That’s why when we say, “Oh, we need male allies,” I think we need conscious allies. That’s why… I don’t want to say… I want to go back to what you Jos said. It’s not about leaders. I used to say leadership allies. Now I say conscious allies. When people say, “Oh, it’s unconscious bias,” if you use the word unconscious, you’re conscious. If you’re conscious, you have a choice about something or don’t, right? And so it’s about conscious leadership. The one thing that I talk a lot about is the collective minority is greater than the current majority, so we need conscious leadership. When you look at the Golden Rule, do unto others as you’d want done unto yourself, then we talk about the Platinum Rule. Do unto others as they’d want done unto themselves because what you do to yourself, might not be what someone else would want.

Now we talk about what I’m creating, the Rose Gold Rule, because I love rose gold, is do unto others as a third party. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes, the lived experience, because it’s about what Jos has created his whole model on, lived experience. It’s that lived experience. Someone else might not be a caregiver, but we need to listen to what everybody needs because that’s the whole model of we want everyone to feel like they belong, right? We need to understand what everybody needs in an organisation and what was created before us, might not work. That’s why we need to be conscious leaders, listen to hear if we want to have truly a culture of consciousness, a culture of care in the workplace today. That’s understanding every single person and their own individual needs. That’s the third party piece.

Anne Morriss:

I love that. So for anyone watching who is committed to raising consciousness inside their organisations, do you have any advice tactically on where to start in that journey?

Shelley Zalis:

Yeah, just start with starting. It’s not just following what was. It’s where we are today. Equality is possible, if you want it. That means sometimes creating the new pattern, what was? But today we’re here and open a new door. That doesn’t mean what was done was wrong. It just means we can go zero gap forward and start and open a new door or possibility. Someone has to start the new trend. Then if we all go, you say, “Well, here we are. It wasn’t hard. It’s actually quite easy.” You just have to have an open mindset and then go, boom, bam, bing. Here we are today and-

Anne Morriss:

I love that. And I love… Neri, your life and your business embodies exactly what Shelly has articulated here. Let’s get you into this part of the conversation. What do you think is needed for leaders to thrive both in this moment and going forward?

Neri Karra Sillaman:

So very interesting, when Shelley was speaking and Jos, as well, I’m noting and taking notes. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been working on a book called Pioneers and it’s about business longevity and lessons from immigrant entrepreneurs. I have been thinking a lot about the concept of leadership and what Shelley was saying, “What was, was.” It’s very true because the world of Milton Friedman, where business should exist about profit and about shareholders is no longer the case. We have to even move from the concept of do no harm to actively doing good.

In my research, what I’ve seen is there are eight principles I have identified that will help you achieve business longevity. But even business longevity is not just succeeding or being alive as a business for a hundred years or so, because you can be successful for 100, 200 years, but what have you done with that? What impact did you make? What difference did you make in the world? We have to move to being actively good. It has to start with intentionality. One of the common threads, I would say, that I’ve observed among entrepreneurs who have started businesses of longevity but (also) business of impact is kindness. It was a surprising connection for me. I was looking at the principles and I thought to myself, “What is the common thread among all the principles that I’ve identified?” It’s about kindness. It’s about exactly what Shelley said. How did you say it, Shelley? It’s basically do what… Do not do what you don’t want to be done to you.

Anne Morriss:

Yeah, gold, platinum, and now rose gold. I love that ambition, Shelley.

Shelley Zalis:

You said it Neri. It’s like Love Made Visible. I hire for passion, train for skill, unless you want to be a doctor, lawyer or an accountant. You just said that kindness is that thread because if you want a culture of kindness… When you look at… I just wrote an article on, it’s not the glass cliff, but it really is this immense feeling. We’re losing all these amazing women as CEOs because all these boards look for the short-term profit and not the long-term impact. You just nailed it. We are letting people go too soon because all of them are looking for that profit versus where we’re going in the long-term. You just said it so brilliantly and so beautifully. Thank you for pointing in on that kindness, kindness and that love factor. That’s the heart.

Neri Karra Sillaman:

It was surprising to me when I was doing my research. So I’ve interviewed and I talked to Fortune 500 businesses that were started by immigrants, and these include surprising companies. WhatsApp, Google, Chobani, for example, are just some of them, Noom.

Anne Morriss:

Three great examples. Yeah.

Neri Karra Sillaman:

Yes, incredible. They are all started by immigrant entrepreneurs. So it was quite surprising for me to discover that their intention and their purpose is beyond profit. I am, of course, not kidding myself and I’m not saying that profit is not important. Without profit, their business will not exist, but they don’t make it the core value of their business. There is a compassion, community mindedness, but among all of it is the concept of kindness and importance of community.

Anne Morriss:

Yeah. We’re quite deliberate and it’s sometimes provocative in the boardroom in talking about love and the work that we do to help organisations evolve and achieve whatever they set out to achieve. Our work, we define it as setting high standards and revealing deep devotion simultaneously. As human beings, we’re wired to do one or the other pretty well, but both at the same time is really the challenge. But bringing that word into the conversation and kindness too, it’s a word we hear more and more, allows people to engage with what are the real animal spirits that are going to unleash the potential of this organisation and the human beings inside? There’s no more powerful force in the world than what you both have articulated. All right, Jos, we’re getting you back into this. What is your reaction?

Shelley Zalis:

Can I just say one thing? Could you imagine this conversation in the boardroom, having this conversation at the table?

Anne Morriss:

Oh, I can. Shelley, I can because this is what we do. We bring a whole lot of rigour into it too because every single thing you both have said can be backed up with real data. When you look at the organisations… You look at empire building organisations like Best in Category, you look at companies like Walmart or Microsoft, this is a big part of the story. They use different words, right?

Neri Karra Sillaman:

Yes.

Anne Morriss:

They use different words, but there are really important elements in what you both have articulated that have brought these companies to where they are today and we got to name it.

Shelley Zalis:

This might not sound like a-

Anne Morriss:

We got to name it.

Shelley Zalis:

I mean, hello. This is brilliant. This is genius. I mean, we’re going to start having these conversations in Davos. Okay? This is so good. This has to not be taboo topics at the boardroom table.

Anne Morriss:

Absolutely.

Shelley Zalis:

I mean, I gave a speech, bring a motion to the boardroom. This is what we have to start doing because this is awesome.

Anne Morriss:

Listen, it’s a relational practice, right? Leadership, it’s a relational practice, so it doesn’t work without another person. If you’re going to build that, what are the forces that are going to build the strongest relationship here? It’s everything that you have articulated. Jos, agree or disagree with the direction of this conversation?

Jos de Blok:

No, I agree on this whole idea about love and kindness. That’s the basic attitude of a nurse. I had a privilege to work since I was 20 in between women because if you talk about equality, then-

Anne Morriss:

So this is a familiar room to you, Jos.

Jos de Blok:

96% of the people who are working for Buurtzorg are women, so when we have a festival, then I’m one of the few men. I would add something to it, that’s humour. I think in daily life, we settle a lot of things with humour and also in relationships in the company, we focus on how we can keep things light and how we can stay connected based on what we think is important. So like in your family, in your daily life, you should also, when possible… It should be possible to have the same behaviour at the place you work. So we have all small social structures where people are taking care of their colleagues and we see that if you build it that way, that it will grow in time and relationships grow and we focus on solutions. So we said don’t focus too much on analysing problems, but focus on how you can improve or what can you do more than what you’re already doing?

That gives a very open and nice atmosphere wherever we are. So I agree with most of the things. I don’t agree with what Neri said about profit. I made a non-profit company. I have, I think, made 10 or 15 companies based on the same principles. We have a mental care organisation, which we made steward-owned. So it’s a steward-owned company. So I started it with the psychiatrists. We had 50% of the shares and we said we wanted to give the shares to the company and now the company owns itself and the profit is still between the people who are working there. So these are models that create another way of ownership. We don’t have shareholders, so the pressure of shareholders is not there. So psychiatrists make the difference in their daily work by thinking, giving the best possible interventions to the patients.

So these models that focus on profit, in my idea, creates a lot of pressure on people. We have profit. We are one of the most profitable organisations in the country in our field, but if I had to make it a profit company with shareholders, probably I would have been a billionaire now. I’m not. –

Anne Morriss:

I love what you’re articulating Jos, because I do think that wrestling with, as Neri articulated, where in this stack of priorities does this profit live? Wherever we put it, it’s going to have a different impact on the organisation.

Shelley Zalis:

Anne? I just-

Anne Morriss:

I think the choice you made allowed the relation… Shelley, I know we’re going to lose you. Can we get one last word, advice you have for any leader building this new world?

Shelley Zalis:

Yeah. First of all, a billionaire is one who’s happy with what he or she has. It seems like you are so happy with what you have, so you are a billionaire in what you do. Yeah, for me, leadership is truly about intentional action. I think that we are launching a huge initiative called The Flipping Point, which is truly beyond the tipping point. It does require intentional action for change. So we will change the equation and close the equality gap and we will flip it in five. So we are very excited about that and it is about collective action. We’ve all talked about that and I can’t wait to do this together. I can’t wait to bring you all to Davos with us because this group is, to me, very inspiring. So thank you for all that you do. I love moving it fast and fixing things. I think where we’ve been, where we are, where we’re going is really very exciting. I think it’s all about opportunity for change. So thank you very much.

Anne Morriss:

Thank you for joining this conversation. So great to have you. Look forward to continuing it.

Shelley Zalis:

Sorry to be leaving you. I can’t wait to continue, to be doing it together.

Neri Karra Sillaman:

Bye, Shelley.

Jos de Blok:

Bye.

Anne Morriss:

So Neri, I want to ask you something.

Neri Karra Sillaman:

Sure.

Anne Morriss:

You have this extraordinary refugee to CEO story, as you summarised it. What convinced you in that trajectory that leadership was a path that you wanted to walk? What was one or two of the major plot points that allowed you to envision the life that you have built for yourself?

Neri Karra Sillaman:

Very good question. I don’t think it was intentional in the sense that I said one day, “I’m going to walk this path.” It wasn’t like that. But at the same time, I can also pinpoint to the very moment when we had to escape Bulgaria and it took us overnight to walk through train tracks and we crossed the border finally from Bulgaria to Turkey. I remember all the confusion around me, and I will never forget my father’s scream as we crossed the border, which sounded to me like a wounded animal. In that moment, as an 11-year-old looking around me, I made a decision. Very clearly, I remember this. I said, “If one day I want to have a better life and I want a way out of this, I need to get a good education.” It was just almost… It was a very intentional decision in that very moment.

But it was to say, “I want to get a good education.” It wasn’t necessarily to say, “I’m going to be a leader.” I don’t think I ever called myself that, in that sense. But I guess everything, leadership and the way we define it also has to change in some ways because everyone can be a leader. I remember going to school in the United States, in Florida, when I got financial aid and I ended up at University of Miami. I will tell you the difference between a leader, and maybe rather a bad example of a leader, because I had a teacher who said to me, “Neri, you have done a great job with your first essay with your exam.” It made me really believe that I had a place in that classroom and that I was able to… It gave me hope.

But I also had another teacher, same place a few years later, who said, “I don’t believe you wrote this essay because you couldn’t have.” It made me feel really bad about myself. So I think leadership is a decision. It’s a choice and it’s every day, we have the ability to make someone believe in themselves, to be kind, to be compassionate, to be encouraging or to choose a different path, which is to make them feel not so good about themselves. I think even that is leadership.

Anne Morriss:

Yeah. Wow. It’s such powerful reflections. Thank you. I think what you just said in passing, that everyone can be a leader, is still quite a radical idea in many places. I think that’s one of the threads that connects your work and Jos’ work is that you are both challenging this insidious myth that leadership is… Leaders are somehow born, not made, and it’s this very rarefied experience. Jos, let me ask you this. I know it’s not even a word that you use, I suspect because it’s probably loaded up with this kind of mythology, but how are you developing the kind of leadership or management skills in your nursing team that is needed for the role that you’ve designed, which requires them to play a, I would call it leaderly, but you might call it something else, but role in this system. In other systems, not as much is asked of them. How do you set your team up for success?

Jos de Blok:

Yeah, the funny thing is that actually, you don’t need to do so much for that. So when I started in 2006, ’07, I talked with groups of nurses and I told them my ideas and I said, “Yeah, if you want to start a team in your neighbourhoods, then you have to make your own plan and you have to think about how you want to do that.” That happened all the time. They said, “It looked like something happened with our brains. From the moment we were responsible for creating something, we started to think about all kinds of things that we didn’t do in the organisation we worked before, but here to make it a success, we had to do it.” So we saw the same things happening all the time all over the country and I was driving from one place to another and I saw that usually it was in the evening, I was sitting in a living room with 15, 20 people, and the next day they called me and said, “When can we start? Then we can move on. We can start thinking about what we need to do.”

Anne Morriss:

Wow, the next day.

Jos de Blok:

Yeah. It was such an inspiring feeling. It was almost, I think, spiritual that we were talking about what’s important in your life, what’s important for you to work based on your ethical principles. Because skilled nurses, they’re the best organisers in the world. They don’t need so much to tell them how things should go. They are organisers at home. They sit on boards at school. So these people are really capable of doing everything. But we learned this throughout the years because I thought if we have 100 teams, what will happen if we have 200 teams? Will we have 200 or twice as many problems? But the opposite happened. We had less and less and less problems because we learned all the time from what we were doing. The teams that started in the beginning taught the new teams how to deal with it, so it was not me who had to tell what-

Anne Morriss:

Handing down wisdom from the mountain, right? People were learning from their peers. Beautiful.

Jos de Blok:

The thing that they really appreciated from me was that I was a nurse from background. I understood the language and the practical things they met in their daily life. We made a kind of a very simple concept, but also the business side stayed very, very simple. So I studied economics before I became a nurse and I made one sheet and said, “These are the income and these are the costs and everybody can deal with it,” and it’s still what we have. We have now half a billion euro turnover, but it’s still the same sheet that we’re working with. So in my idea-

Anne Morriss:

I love that.

Jos de Blok:

This idea about you have to teach people how to do that, that’s not necessary.

Anne Morriss:

You have to get out of their way.

Jos de Blok:

That’s it exactly. I’ve been with a lot of companies the last 15 years in boards and big companies, and I see these people struggling with that. They say to me, “We try to give them autonomy, but they don’t take it.” I said, “You can’t give autonomy. You can’t give freedom.” You put yourself in a position that you have so much power over people that you think that you can give them freedom? You take the freedom away and you take the autonomy away, but you can’t give it. So we should create environments where this autonomy and freedom can grow and where accountability will be a result by itself, so people want to be accountable for what they do. So you build on another perspective, I think, than what I generally see based on the traditional management models.

Anne Morriss:

I love that. Super provocative and it really lands with the resonance of truth. Neri, let me ask you the same technical question. How do you think about leadership development and cultivating leadership among your team members?

Neri Karra Sillaman:

Very good question. One of them is showing them trust, what Jos was saying. It’s not… I feel giving them space, that’s a very important aspect of it. Trusting them that they have the ability to be leaders. Another important aspect, especially in my company that I do, is I tend to allow collaboration, create the foundation for collaboration in the company, which means getting designers and craftsmen to work together, people from different departments to work together and realizing that leadership or taking charge is not just for one department. It’s not just for one person. Everyone has the accountability.

Everyone has the role in every step of the process. But also by doing that, you get to allow other people to step into the other person’s shoe. The designer can see the… For example, to give an example from my own company, the designer can see how a manufacturing team works and vice versa. This, in turn, allows them to have more respect for the other’s work, but also tends to create more creativity in the company. You get to create products and services that you wouldn’t normally do. So having that collaborative spirit and giving space and providing trust-

Anne Morriss:

I love that. It’s so vivid.

Jos de Blok:

I totally agree.

Anne Morriss:

Jos, go ahead.

Jos de Blok:

I totally agree. I always thought my lectures with this idea about trust, that’s so fundamental. And then this creativity, I’ve seen what you are making. It’s beautiful and you can see it-

Neri Karra Sillaman:

Oh, thank you.

Anne Morriss:

Gorgeous.

Jos de Blok:

Yeah. My wife, she’s a painter, and she was trying to find out the beautiful things that you’re making and you can see it, that it’s based on a certain idea about beauty and love and you see it through the things, I think, that comes out of it, so thank you.

Anne Morriss:

And I love the idea of what you just articulated, Neri, that it’s not necessarily a lone artistic vision, but it is really the artistic vision of the team that comes through in your products.

Neri Karra Sillaman:

Absolutely. In fact, people will say, “Oh, you are the designer. Who is the creative director?” There is no such thing. It’s all a teamwork. It’s all a teamwork. Productivity, creativity, all of that happens because everyone is in it and you need to listen to everyone’s perspective. It can be a secretary who works in the company. It can be a security guard. It doesn’t matter. You need to listen to everyone’s perspective because you never know.

Anne Morriss:

Yeah. No, speaking of leadership myth, there’s this myth of leadership that it necessarily has to be lonely at the top or as Jos has pointed out, that there’s even a top at all. But the most effective leaders we see are really approaching it as a team sport. I think you both deeply embody that point of view. All right, so we are running out of time. I could talk to you all for the next six hours and be riveted. So thank you for your deep insight and perspective and lessons from your extraordinary lives. If we get, again, super tactical for people watching today, what is one specific action that leaders can take right now or individuals or anyone can take right now to build the world that you all have built inside your organisation, inside their own lives? Give us one piece of advice. Jos, we’ll start with you.

Jos de Blok:

As I would say, I think what looks perhaps easy, but it’s quite difficult to talk on an equal level with everybody and have a dialogue and ask people how they see the world and what I think that could change. So I see a management team struggling with their positions and I also see that lots of people step into a transformation, themselves, to be able to do this. I think it’s very brave, but it’s also what we need. So dialogue and also what Neri said based on trust, trust on your people and that they have perspectives that they will be surprised of.

Anne Morriss:

Yeah, I love that. Jos, I also heard curiosity.

Jos de Blok:

Yeah.

Anne Morriss:

Just starting from a place of curiosity. Beautiful. Neri, we’re going to give you the last word. Give us some advice for anyone inspired by what you have shared today. Where do we get started?

Neri Karra Sillaman:

For me, you are asking… As you ask the question, I am thinking about it. For me, it would be, if I can distill it to one phrase, it’s not about you. So for me-

Anne Morriss:

You say it all the time. I love that. Yeah.

Neri Karra Sillaman:

It’s not about you. You have to have humility. You have to almost get out of your own way. Think about the other person. Have compassion. Have humility. Show kindness. Even… I teach entrepreneurship and even in creating a business, it’s not about you. What is it? What problem are you trying to solve? What problem are you solving for other people? What do your employees need? What does the world need from you? Get out of your own way. It has never been about you.

Jos de Blok:

Beautiful.

Anne Morriss:

I love landing on that note. Thank you, all. This was super inspiring and I am leaving genuinely more optimistic about the future of leadership than I was when we started this conversation. So-

Neri Karra Sillaman:

Thank you, so much.

Anne Morriss:

Thank you so much for being with us today.

Jos de Blok:

Thank you. Thank you, Neri.

Neri Karra Sillaman:

Thank you.