0:00:01 – Announcer

You are listening to the National University Podcast.

0:00:09 – Kimberly King

Hello, I’m Kimberly King. Welcome to the National University Podcast, where we offer an holistic approach to student support, well-being and success – the whole human education. We put passion into practice by offering accessible, achievable higher education to lifelong learners. Today, we’re talking about a concept called Futural Leadership Theory. It is very interesting, it’s very relevant and, according to an article recently in Forbes magazine, today’s businesses are accelerating their efforts to prioritize growth and operational efficiency, and leaders are expected to leverage skills that haven’t been as necessary in a post-pandemic world. But on top of that, rapid technological advancements and the need for agile decision-making have created an environment where managers are handling increasingly complex tasks alongside their duties of overseeing their teams.

A very interesting topic coming up on today’s show. On today’s episode, we’re talking about Futural Leadership Theory, and joining us is Dr. Paul Markham, a unique, proven global strategist, transformational leader and futurist committed to first-to-market product development, driving revenue and EBITDA growth in Fortune 100 growth and startup organizations. Dr. Markham brings his decades of experience to advise his clients on artificial general intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain, and is set to deliver the next generation of enterprise systems for the 21st century. And we welcome you back to the podcast, doctor. How are you?

0:01:50 – Doctor Paul Markham

Look, I’m doing very well. Thanks for the intro. I think probably I’d only add one more, I guess specific piece of information. Some decades ago I was actually interviewed by a business consultant, slash psychologist, and all of us had to do this survey and it’s kind of like a Myers-Briggs survey where they find out what sort of personality you are. What I actually found out at that point, way late into my career, is that I’m actually somebody that doesn’t fit on that quadrant. I’m somebody that’s called a blink. You can look this up and Malcolm Gladwell actually wrote a book about it. It’s not an intelligence thing, but we tend to, us blink personalities, tend to see the end point well before others. Again, it’s both a blessing and a curse, and that’s kind of what led me to what we’re going to talk about in this podcast, was this idea of Futural Leadership Theory and also how it’s integrated with a change model.

0:03:03 – Kimberly King

Interesting. I will look that up. I have not heard of that. I think it’s interesting -you and I have spoken before, I’ve interviewed you before, but why don’t you fill our audience in right now, another little bit on your mission and your work before we get to today’s episode?

0:03:30 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, I think you know, from my personal perspective, I’m an engineer, an educator and entrepreneur, and if there’s any mission I’ve got, I’m kind of always searching for questioning and trying to see if there’s the story behind the story, if you like, rather than just marching along with the herd. Traditionally, I have been involved in companies, involved in systems where I’ve kind of, let’s just say, pushed the status quo, and my mission in this case here, literally, is to help the human race as we move towards artificial general intelligence, which in essence is where computers have the level of intelligence that we do, and then beyond that, where we go to artificial super intelligence. And I’m a firm believer that there’s a, there’s a place for something called human metacognitive intelligence, or what I’m calling HMI, which is going to put us, in the people that get involved in it, in a very interesting position on the other side of artificial general intelligence, rather than essentially succumbing to the machines as we move forward so timely and relevant in this time that we live in right now.

0:04:53 – Kimberly King

So timely and relevant in this time that we live in right now. So, doctor, we are talking about futural leadership theory, and what prompted you to create the futural leadership theory and how does it differ from traditional leadership models?

0:05:05 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, it’s interesting where this came from. As I say, something that I do is academia, and a midwestern university some time ago asked me to put a course together that was all about the kind of the leadership and change management. The reason they did this was because of, frankly, I think, cost constraints and they wanted to get these two fairly large topics into one course. So when I built the course, I started teaching the course and what I did, I brought a lot of, I would say, experience from being in everything from large cap to growth and then startup mode, and what I’d learned about leadership and what you had to do, and I actually brought it into this idea that maybe we’ve been looking at leadership and change management from the perspective of scholarly and practitioner for way too long. Now you might say, well, that’s interesting.

You know, traditional theory is related to training leaders on how to act. I call it the Hollywood effect. You know, you can act like a servant, you can act like a transformational, you can act transactional, you can act like a diplomat. Look, quite frankly, there’s another survey out every day on teaching us, the leaders on how to act, right? But we do very little in relation to training people how to think and how to make better decisions. It sounds incredible, but it’s true. You know, the primary function of leadership is change, and yet leadership selection is not directly related to change management processes. Oh no, I’m not kidding, that is actually factual. When we do a change management process, we don’t say, oh, I wonder what sort of leader I should have involved here. No, we don’t.

Thirdly, the research bodies of leadership over here and change management tend to be incremental, right, so they come out with a new model oh, what are we going to be? What type of leader are you going to be this week? The same thing is that both these bodies, even though leadership the primary function, even though leadership the primary function is related to change, the two bodies of research are just not integrated. It sounds incredible, but it’s true. The last thing with regards to that, finally, as artificial intelligence moves towards artificial general intelligence, then what I’m in love with is artificial super intelligence.

There is a need, right, to raise the overall level of human metacognitive intelligence. Right, or what I’ve called HMI. There is a real need- or we have a choice as a human race. We can sit back, and it’s easy to do- you know, hey, Mercedes, drive me home. It’s very easy to become lazy and become kind of accustomed to your digital twin telling you what to do, or this is an opportunity for us to actually import some mindfulness and actually come to a futural leadership perspective where we’re thinking harder, differently, and making better leadership decisions.

0:08:38 – Kimberly King

Wow well, in your paper you emphasize the intersection of leadership and an integrated, avant-garde change management model. How do these two concepts intertwine in the context of this futural leadership theory? And if you have any examples, that would be great.

0:08:48 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, look from a theoretical perspective. I’ll just try and stack this from theory and then the actual practitioner world. Theoretical perspective- this is controversial, but necessary to commence some integration between leadership and change management. Even when you talk to scholars about that, you say, hey, we know the primary function of leadership is change and they all say absolutely so why don’t we actually have an integration between leadership and change management theory? We also know that change management- there’s different numbers, but let’s call it between 60% and 80% of all change management fails, and we know why that happens, right, and yet we continue to do it.

The avant-garde model that I’m talking about here is a model for rapid rate of change in the age of artificial general intelligence and it’s inextricably linked to mindfulness driven, metacognitive leadership thinking. Now, the point of this is the minute you hear mindfulness, you go oh, this is a bunch of people sitting around meditating, and that right there is the problem. We’ve got to get to a point where we can meditate, become mindful and have clarity of thought before we start making leadership thinking. Now, again, right now, the issue is people have got their confirmation biases. They hear a word, they trigger on that, right.

In the same way that people say oh, what’s your new leadership theory? They’re thinking, is it like transformational? Is it like that? I’m saying no. I’m actually going back to the leadership folks and saying you know what? We don’t talk at all about leadership, decision making. And if you honestly have poor decisions, you have poor effectiveness, you have poor credibility and, guess what? You have very low leadership tenure. So no doubt this contradicts all standards, but so too did Galileo and others right when they talked about flat world, a post-spherical, and then the Earth is the center of the universe. So the point is it won’t be popular, but at the end of the day, I think it’s something that’s very necessary. We can’t go into artificial general intelligence and say, oh well, we’ll have to act differently. No, no, we have to raise the level of intelligence.

The leadership integrated model is dynamic rather than reactive. The old model’s right. We turn up to a site, we do, and we say, now, let’s roll this out. And we say, now, let’s roll this out. But in this world that we’re in right now, that’s moving at warp speed. This leadership is now integrated into the change model and it’s a constant. Why? Because the only constant is change. Leadership decision-making directly impacts leadership effectiveness, creativity, tenure and so on. The last thing to just add there- leaders of the future need to be consistent and anticipatory, and the use of this model will be mandatory. They’re going to be forced into either this model or something similar, or it’s just not going to work out for them. They’re going to go to make a decision and, with the machines also in the models, in the models of business, they’re going to have to step. We’ve got to raise our level of metacognitive intelligence above the machines and we need to do it now.

0:12:14 – Kimberly King

You know, again, we’re talking about this day and age and moving things at warp speed. But you know, AI has just really come onto the scene in every aspect and in every form, of where we work, where we go to school, all of the above. You mentioned that the rise of AGI requires us to rethink previous leadership paradigms, and can you explain how AGI impacts leadership theory and change management in the 21st century?

0:12:43 – Doctor Paul Markham

So the first thing I want to say here is Futural Leadership Theory does not displace any other theory. You might go wow, that’s interesting. And it is. You can be a Futural Leader and act, right, like a servant. You can be a Futural leader and act like a diplomat or a democratic leader, and that’s not the political party. There’s all these different styles of leaders. The prior leadership theory focuses on leadership, thinking, decision-making and integrating this into a dynamic change model. So Futural leadership, once we get you trained on how to actually think more and make more objective decisions, right, you can apply this to any other theory that you like. So, on the one hand, it’s definitely contradicting prior models, but at the same point, this is actually something that’s mandatory as we move forward. Look, it’s futile to train leaders on the next incoming style without addressing the decision making. It’s like Hollywood- oh well, now we’ve got action movies, so now we’re going to have to train you on action. Now we’ve got AGI, so we’re going to have to train you on that. No, we need to raise your level of cognitive intelligence, and then you’re going to be able to cope with this.

The confirmation biases, the cognitive biases that we all have. I could give you examples of just, say, in any day as a business person, I go into the office and they say hey, Paul, we’re going to select a new ERP system. Oh great, I used to work with the people at PeopleSoft, so I think they’re great. Immediately, I’m about to confirm and probably make a decision based on biases. That may sound simple.

Same thing is somebody walks in the door- we’re hiring new people right for VP of product management. Someone walks in the door and they go oh, Tony, we used to know each other back in New Zealand. Next minute, that confirmation bias makes me make a horrible decision. You’re getting the idea? It’s not going to work as we move forward, as things move even faster. So this is not applied. The change in most cases, the change management process fails, as I said, between 60 and 80%. By the way, all of the large – I’m not going to mention the names of the companies, but all the large companies know this, right. They know that if the environment isn’t ready for change, it’s just not going to happen.

0:15:14 – Kimberly King

That is so true with everything. Yeah, I still own a typewriter. I still have you know it feels like that and you know, even a phone connected to the walls, like things just go at warp speed. Now that we’re in the digital age, what does it mean to train leaders to think, as you’ve been talking about, metacognitively and increase human metacognitive intelligence, which you said HMI, and how does this enhance leadership effectiveness in a world dominated by AI and quantum computing?

0:15:45 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, look, honestly, humans, unfortunately, like me, I do this stuff. I talk about this stuff. But yet I can have a sleepless night if the trash can is on the left side of the garage and my wife wants it on the left side, but I want it on the right side. I’m being facetious. But really we’re humans and it’s a trained level that you need to get to. So one of the major inhibitors of good leadership decision making or, for that fact, any decision making is our cognitive biases. In fact, when I train people on that, they go I’m not biased, I go really yeah.

The first thing I’ll say is hey, so what do you think about A-B-C? You know a Hells Angels leader opposed to, say, Abraham Lincoln? And they will tell me they’re not biased. And then immediately they don’t know that they’re biased about these things. And we’re all biased about these things in business, right? I mean, I’ve got a sort of a love affair, if you like, with something called Google Me. Why? Because I don’t like Microsoft.

Now, is that a rational decision? Absolutely not. It’s loaded with all sorts of biases, and you know- anchor bias, confirmation bias, framing bias, sunk cost trap, and there are numerous others. Most of us, without some training, of clearing out the brain- meditation, unfortunately, say that people think, oh, it’s a bunch of people sitting around with incense. Let’s call it something different, like I don’t know, concentration, because that’s really what it is.

Humans simply need to upgrade their metacognitive intelligence. Metacognitive intelligence- big words unfortunately- is the ability to understand and control one’s own thinking. You might go, oh, I do that. You’d be surprised. It involves monitoring, adjusting and evaluating knowledge and strategies. The Futural Leadership Model is actually bringing this to life and it’s something that, frankly, you’ve got to ask yourself how did we get this far along? And we didn’t bring a leadership, a new leader in and say, hey, the first thing we’re going to teach you is how to deal with your biases, because if you make lousy decisions, it’s going to mess up the effectiveness, the credibility, and the tenure. Why haven’t we done this before now? That’s the biggest question.

0:18:10 – Kimberly King

Well, you just said, in a world where change is the only constant- and I love that- how can leaders prepare themselves for continuous change, and how does Futural leadership Theory offer a roadmap for this?

0:18:24 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, look, in no way is this a religious statement. It really is not, but it’s a rather excellent way to explain and answer this question. And, please, this is using this statement not to present some religious perspective. But if you listen to this, in Buddhism the statement the only permanent is impermanence. Yeah, frankly, that’s right. Why? Because what I just said now is gone forever. It’s never coming again, and what comes next is changed from what came before.

We don’t think like that in business. We don’t. It means that the fundamental truth of existence that everything is constantly changing and nothing is truly permanent makes impermanence the only consistent reality across the phenomena. The point of it is and I’m not trying to say, oh, the Buddhists should be running the businesses, no, but the point is that their understanding of the constant. We live our world where we think everything’s going to go on forever and we make decisions in business. Oh, my God, I mean, I’ve sat in boardrooms, honestly, where everyone’s high-fiving saying, well, you know, we all went to, you know, Ohio State, I’m not kidding, everybody gets hired, everybody’s group think, social loafing, all the rest of it. Poor decision making. Again. Why haven’t we addressed this before now? Because frankly – and here’s the controversial bit – selling new leadership, training and new textbooks and so on and so forth Even like in leadership, there’s something called situational leadership. Doesn’t sell many books.

Why? Because it is what you have to be as a leader. But the reality is the scholars and so forth. They keep reinventing and incremental as we go along. So in our world, right, the economy, the industry, our company, job and of course, this is going to help our human existence. Once we start thinking in the moment and understand change is the only constant, then the FLT process can commence. If there’s a roadblock here, it’s almost like getting people in and getting them into a state of being ready for this, and there is a way to do it. We can talk about that in the next questions.

0:20:49 – Kimberly King

Thanks, okay, yeah, so yeah, and maybe this is the answer, but you have described your change model as dynamic and avant-garde. So can you explain what this means in practical terms and how organizations can implement this model?

0:21:07 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, I think avant-garde is specifically, basically because this is leadership in action. Right, if we go to the general change models and they’re all wonderful, right, you’ve got Bridges, you’ve got Cotter, you’ve got McKinsey 7, you’ve got StageGate, you’ve got Nudge, you’ve got all these. Basically, they’re all just steps in how change occurs. Lewin’s right, the three-step. But again, as I said before, leadership is the primary function. The primary function is change, and yet they’re not integrated. So the avant-garde side of this is one, it’s actually integrated into a leadership style and this is a five-ballister futural leadership model that almost tracks the concept we talked about with metacognivity. This directly links with change, which is the only constant. Wow, that sounds like. Could this be so simple? The Futural Leader uses mindfulness-driven, metacognitive thinking let’s just call it focused, objective thinking and enacts predictive deduction, simultaneously enacting change. And this is all part of the model. And the model is a constant. It’s like a wheel, but it’s constantly moving.

0:22:31 – Kimberly King

Yeah, and I think that, yeah, we all get stuck when we don’t want to change and there are plenty of people out there that won’t get on the bus, I guess right and realize that we’re all going to change and that’s you know. We have to remain flexible and willing to learn, I think.

0:22:50 – Doctor Paul Markham

What’s interesting before you move on. What’s interesting about what you just said is that change management consulting firms and anyone that’s done change management. There’s a simple answer to it, but it might not be popular because it changes the whole landscape. Again, talk about controversial, of change management consulting. So imagine if I told you that we do this. We all know how to do this, but it doesn’t necessarily sell a lot of consulting services. And the way you actually effect change and this paper papers written on this.

It’s not my opinion, is that it happens in the background and no one even realizes there’s a change happening because somebody has spent a lot of work up front to gain buy-in, to build coalitions and not even talk about a change management model. In fact, announcing a change management model can be the biggest resistor to change. Why? Because we’re humans. We’re going to roll out an ERP solution. Everyone goes like this in the audience, but really a lot of people say, oh my God, am I going to get fired? What’s that going to do to my bonuses? Is something going to happen here? But imagine if it was different. If you’re smart, if you’re futural and all of a sudden you train people into the thinking, this is part of the day-to-day work, it’s happening in the background. What change? I’m just saying there is an answer to all this.

0:24:16 – Kimberly King

Yeah, yeah, it’s so interesting. Again, I think you’re here at the right place at the right time and just getting people on board. How can leaders leverage AGI to enhance decision making, and what role does mindfulness driven metacognitive thinking play in this process?

0:24:36 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, at the end of the day, I think. As far as leveraging AGI, I think I would put it in a way that I want the future leader to be managing AGI rather than being managed by AGI, because I think a lot of people think artificial intelligence is some new thing. It’s been around for decades.

I think what’s happened is that the consumers have seen this little thing called ChatGPT and a few little what I call- it’s almost like the tip of the iceberg has stuck out, but all the machines and all of the let’s just say, the intelligence has been here for a long time. So my point is that, if we can and mindfulness driven, metacognitive thinking, that idea of objective, concentrated thinking that is based on facts and not based on biases, is the driver of predictive deduction and thereby all futural leadership attributes. Right, let’s be honest, no matter how you act as a leader, if you’re poor at making decisions based on bias, then all else is relevant, and I’ve seen this happen. It’s shocking, honestly.

It happens again and again, where somebody gets their latest you know company comes in and says oh you know, you’re a pragmatist, you need to be a pragmatic leader, you need to be this leader or that leader. People get all trained up on it and then the stock market crashes, a health situation, a war, something happens. And guess what happens? In good times, all this leadership stuff is okay. In tough times, what happens is the bias is kicking. We’re humans, right Next minute, poor decisions and then they’re out of a job.

0:26:27 – Kimberly King

Really, that’s a good point, wow. And so how does Futural Leadership Theory address the potential ethical challenges that arise when combining human leadership with artificial general intelligence and quantum computing?

0:26:44 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, look, without going into the real technical details, I’m a believer quantum computing is a far bigger story in the long run. Artificial general intelligence- think about it as kind of optimizing and so forth. But I think quantum computing, the power of quantum computing, is going to change things to a level it’s almost indescribable. But let’s just talk about the ethical side and again, let’s go down controversy road, shall we?

Many government agencies, industry experts and other pundits tend to fearmonger the public related to AI. Oh, it’s going to be the end of the world. Oh, it’s terrible, it’s going to be horrible ethics and it’s going to be dreadful for everyone. And you know, don’t let the AI do this and don’t let the AI do that. They explain the humans built evil masterminds within a computer that are radically unethical. You know, in marketing this is evident, as the digital attention economy needs to build your digital twin as comprehensively as possible to find you. This does present an ethical dilemma. So in marketing, I get it. Okay, I mean, I’m absolutely certain right now the regulators are so far behind. Right, in marketing, I’m certain, right now the engines are so powerful.

People are buying stuff and they do not even realize that they’re basically being told to buy it based on their psychology. However, let’s look at another perspective. In the first run, right, the machines are built by humans, yes, ok. But another perspective is, in the long run, with less human involvement, I’m sorry to say this and the machines will become more objective.

Why? Because they don’t have human involvement and, unsaddled by humans, will deliver- get this- more ethical outcomes. So, look, the controversial side is and something just to consider those who currently control information will lose control of their ability to bias information once the machines move towards being more sentient beings than what they are today. Now, on the one hand, people are frightened, but on the other hand, I’m saying there is another twist here that with less human involvement, you may end up with more ethical information. Because these machines, people say oh, yeah, but they’re going to lie based on the humans building them, yes, to a point. But then the machines are going to basically move to a point where I believe anyway, I would much prefer, I’m sorry, to go to a doctor or a lawyer that is a machine based on their ability to crunch trillions of pieces of data and make decisions and present data to me in a very, very fast format with no, no biases whatsoever.

0:29:54 – Kimberly King

So yeah, it sounds so intriguing and because of the world, how far we’ve come away from just the facts, ma’am, you know, like even in broadcast news, and how there’s so much bias in that. So almost it’s just, we want to just get back to being ethical where there’s no bias in there. So that is. That’s really an interesting thought process, and especially when you mentioned doctors and lawyers. Everybody has opinions and there’s always money that follows and trails along with that, isn’t there? Interesting.

0:30:23 – Doctor Paul Markham

Sure.

0:30:24 – Kimberly King

How do you envision leadership evolving over the next few decades as AGI becomes more integrated into our daily lives and organizations? You kind of were touching on that a little bit.

0:30:34 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, look under traditional thinking, I can see what’s going to happen. Leadership will incrementally innovate and roll out the next dozen styles of incremental styles that leaders should classify by style leaders as actors, leaders as reactive, leaders by directive or leaders as managers. Right, the next rollout of- I mean, honestly, if you go online, you could probably find and I haven’t counted them, maybe 500 different leadership styles that you should be, right. None of them address what we’re talking about with regards to the front end of leadership, which is decision making, or leaders will- So one way is we just keep doing the same old thing, right? Status quo, or leaders will radically innovate and become futile in their approach training themselves and their staffs in mindfulness and metacognitive thinking, self-awareness a key component active engagement and critical evaluation. It’s going to come down to, you know, I believe anyway, it’s going to come down to a point where we’re going to get early adopters. It’s just like product adoption, right, but I think what’s going to happen here. Corporations are going to start making good decisions.

There’s a lot of what happens in the world out there that people don’t fully know about. For instance, there are many leaders of corporations right now- I know because I know of them and I know who they work with- that spend enormous amounts of their time on mindfulness meditation. A lot of them actually even have Buddhist coaches to make them make more objective decisions. So the point is there’s a fork in the road here. Either we do the same old, same old, but what’s different now is the machines are here. So if you want to keep doing the same old, same old, it’s just not going to work as we move forward. So I think the other way is what I’m talking about here, with Futural Leadership, where we have different thinkers and they can act however they like. They can be a diplomat, a pragmatist, whatever. It doesn’t matter to me at all right- whether or not they’re actually thinking properly.

0:32:54 – Kimberly King

Wow, it’s cause for thinking here, you know, this futural, it’s a whole new, you know, division of thinking, I suppose.

0:33:04 – Doctor Paul Markham

Sure.

0:33:05 – Kimberly King

So what are some of the key qualities or skills that future leaders need to develop in response to the changes driven by AI and quantum computing?

0:33:15 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, look, the leaders need to be open-minded, self-aware and self-reflective. Futural leadership starts with a mindfulness optimized thinking foundation and on the one hand you can tell if anyone people will even say oh yeah, I’m totally open-minded. When I talk to people about this they go oh well, so this is kind of like transformational leadership. At that point I know they’re not really listening. You have to get to a point where you are truly open-minded. The thinking harder mindset, the idea with Futurallist kind of attributes, the thinking harder mindset, like when I talked about Galileo and others, where they said, hey, I don’t think that the world is flat. It wasn’t popular, right? Oh, I don’t think the world is the center of the universe. Not popular, but boy, it was fairly effective long-term. This idea of being change-embracing leaders. They’ve got to be dynamic, situational leaders. You’ve got to really be at a point where you’re an artificial general intelligence steward. You’re not sitting here saying, oh my God, what are we going to do? Where’s my job? What’s going to happen? No, you’re on the other side. You’re thinking at the next level, right? Do you see what I mean? Right, this level of today is what’s programmed, we often call it in the software world is that we digitize garbage process. You go to a factory, you go to an organization.

They say, hey, we’re going to roll this out, but we’re going to keep doing things the same way and literally we turn into digital, exactly what they’re doing poorly. That’s kind of the traditional way of looking at it. This is just an entirely new way of looking at things. The five balancers of futural leadership include and just think of how logical, think of this as a wheel: predictive deduction, okay, that makes sense. Yeah, you’re predicting. Proactive assessment, okay, and then, based on those two, you get a precise evaluation, perceptive application and then performant engagement. This is a constant situation. Now, again, it all comes at the start, where you’ve got to get your mind into the right way of thinking.

0:35:33 – Kimberly King

Yeah, yeah, and so a question though. So we’re talking about the leaders, but what about? How do we help engage employees in any organizations to learn this type of leadership?

0:35:44 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, look, I think that if we don’t get the leaders on board, the strange thing about this, this is such a common sense discussion we’re having. This is not like I’m talking about landing a rocket in some big crazy rocket catcher. This is not difficult, what we’re talking about. So I think, if we’re to make this change happen, the ultimate importance is bottom up. And what do I mean by that? Well, we’ve studied leadership for 100 years and plenty of scholars will argue with me about this, but we basically got to a point where we said, oh, hang on, it’s not about the leader, it’s about gee, followership. So I think that what we need to do is to work with employees. We need to actually get people to understand at the most basic level, how bias in a decision is impacting not just their life but the whole world around them. It’s of ultimate importance, as singularity is not about it, rather than when- it’s not about if, it’s about when. Singularity is coming at us, and singularity, I mean the integration of man and machine.

For instance, the road forward changes human resource managers to resource managers. This is happening right now as they manage humans, social robots and robots. No, this is not something out of a crazy Star Trek movie. This is here now. The road forward will be challenging for the human race. Right, moving forward the human equivalent in the metaverse, known as our digital twin, which is already being built today, guys, it is. It’s an immortal thing, it’ll go on for all time. It’s pretty crazy, right, we’ll become so addictive as our personal assistant. Humans will be forced to decide right, are you either going to raise your level of intelligence beyond ASI as I’m calling it metacognitive? Or relax and allow the addictive personal digital assistant hey, Mercedes, drive me home, to become your master. And that’s where we really are in this. This is not even in my opinion. It’s not about what do we do with employees? What do we do with leaders? We absolutely- they’re going to need to do this, or there’s going to be a whole bunch of people sitting around saying, hey, what do we do now?

0:38:16 – Kimberly King

Yeah, yeah, oh, wow, we’re at the precipice of this and again, this is something I know you’ve been working on for quite some time, as AI has been around for some time. But you discussed synthesizing new models of leadership, and how important is collaboration between human leaders and AI systems as we move from artificial general intelligence to artificial super intelligence, and how can this collaboration be fostered effectively?

0:38:45 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, look, I think it comes down to the- As I said, the road forward is challenging for the human race. We really need to, I think. I think the only way that we need to have use cases of this- we need to maybe work with forward-thinking companies. That’s what I’m trying to do right now.

People have read this and they’re- honestly a couple of very large companies read this and said, wait on what that? This is so simple, like why haven’t we all been training ourselves on this before? And the reality is, that we need to actually do bias training, bias awareness training. People need to track this as much, as we’ve spent enormous amounts of money in companies on all sorts of- and let’s even call it sales management. I mean, even if we’re in the most basic kind of, if you don’t have sales, you don’t have revenue, you don’t have a business. But the level of bias in there. We need futural leadership in that area, for sure. But I think, most importantly, if you’re a human, what are you going to do as we move to artificial superintelligence?

And I think we need to, I think, educate people, not on the next leadership model, not on the next change management process, but how are you going to think differently? Right, because if there’s one type of leader out there called a change leader, these people aren’t surprised by anything. All the change leaders I’ve spoken to have basically adopted the concept of Futural immediately. When I’ve spoken to them, they immediately understood it. They said, hey, we should have been focusing more on the decision-making process, but they are people that are always thinking ahead. So if there’s a world war, there’s a health situation or something like that, they already have plan A, B, and C, because that’s the way that they get the word think. Right, they’re not just sitting there saying, oh, I’m a transformational leader, look at me, you know. It’s like Brad Pitt is a good actor. I become a good actor as a transformational leader. That really is how we train people in leadership.

0:41:03 – Kimberly King

Well, and I think so much of leadership is thinking ahead and looking out far away and seeing you know the trends. It should be, yeah, it should be. Exactly. In your view, what are the most critical challenges organizations face in adopting futural leadership theory and how can they overcome them?

0:41:22 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, I think sadly, but factually, the major challenge is the lack of mindfulness and let’s just call it higher level thinking, and that can become the largest resistor to the adoption of something like futural leadership theory. You know, people are so ingrained in how they’ve done stuff before. It’s like talking to people about they don’t even realize how biased they are. For instance, let’s pick politics. I think this is a fun one and don’t worry it, it’s not going to be about any party or the other, because I think a lot of it- I always call it it’s like NASCAR. So in NASCAR we have red and blue, we have the, the Ford team and then the General Motors team, and you’re either a Ford or a General Motors. I’m kidding, but it’s actually true.

0:42:18 – Doctor Paul Markham

So I think it’s the same in politics? Right, it’s the same in politics. And that confirmation bias is so deep that people don’t even realize just how biased they are. So, in this case, just say I go- and I’ll speak about myself. I fell in love with something called transformational leadership. Oh boy, it’s just phenomenal. It’s just like every child should have one. We should have it in every house. Everybody needs to be a transformational leader.

So my bias was so deep in that I used to present at conferences, you know, or transformational leadership, it’s everything. And then I started reading papers right, my biases didn’t really want me to read these papers that said, yeah, it’s good, but in certain situations it actually has a negative impact. I’m like well I don’t like that. What, what, right. So the point of it is the major, the critical challenges are going to be getting to a point of the lack of mindfulness and everybody just keeps doing the same old thing.

There’s industries right now in America and in the world that are going to come to a nasty end because people cannot think outside the box. They literally cannot, I mean, and it’s going to happen. I don’t want to mention what they are, but it’s going to happen because people lack the mindfulness and that objectivity about saying wait a minute, what? Same in politics. People vote for this one or that one, not realizing that really all of that’s kind of bread and circuses because these big banks and capital around the world, they’re really running the world and this is kind of a little sideshow for you guys. It’s like NASCAR, but over here you can do the red or blue. It’s kind of that ludicrous, in corporations to get this across. It’s almost like if we could sit people down in companies, get them to meditate- I’m not kidding here- for 20 minutes, get them to a level of objectivity and then explain this to them. But there is a way around this. There’s a happy ending to this story.

0:44:24 – Kimberly King

You know what, and I love this because back in the day before there were computers in our hands and smartphones, when I was a speech communication major, it was all about critical thinking, and so and it’s literally you know they would give you a subject matter and then you speak to that and then five minutes in, the professor would switch your not your bias, but just the other side. So you had to argue for the other side, and I think that’s missing in everything. We should be able to talk to both sides. As you’re talking red and blue, Ford, Chevy, whatever, I mean, we should be able to be well-rounded in our thought processes, and so if this can help with this new futural leadership, I think we’re heading in the right direction. So how does the Futural leadership theory address the issue of organizational resistance to change, especially and this is where I’m so interested in, especially when it involves integrating AGI into existing systems?

0:45:25 – Doctor Paul Markham

Well, look, you know. So what’s interesting about this? It really is, that I have shamelessly taken some very simple ideas from some of the ancient philosophers, right? So there’s this guy called Socrates. Most people know him. He talked about, you can’t teach anyone anything. What did he say? He said you can teach them to think.

Now you think, oh, wow, that’s so simple, Paul, right? How many times have you ever been taught how to think? That would be kind of in my case, and I mean I don’t know how many university courses I’ve done. I’ve got paperwork coming out of everywhere. No one’s ever taught me anything about how to think and how to think objectively. Not me. Maybe you might be lucky differently. Sometimes they’ve pushed me a little, but I’ve never really been sat down and said, hey, let’s try and figure out your cognitive biases so you make a better decision.

So, as with change management, we know that success often occurs in the background and it’s specifically related to the ability to make this part of the day-to-day work life. So he’s saying, Paul, that if we’re really smart, we could actually get with companies and build this into their goals, objectives and what they’re all used to doing, then they won’t even know that they’re actually doing Futural Leadership? Oh gee, there’s an idea. That’s exactly what we can do here. In essence, FLT adoption is directly related to our knowledge of the nuances of the change management success. We know this is how to make it. In change management world. This is true. We were involved in a site where we did not future of leadership, but was the idea of doing change management in the background. We built it into the goals and objectives. No one even knew this was happening.

Okay, the year after this big change occurred, massive amount of change, right. We went and interviewed people and asked them hey, hey, what do you think about the change? And they said this is, this is truly what happened. What change, what, what change? You see what I’m saying. So I think FLT adoption we can use that. By the way, still today, CEOs will stand up the front of the office and say, oh my god, you’re going to love it, we’re going to roll out this new system, it’s going to be fantastic. And all of a sudden, everybody back there is like, oh my God, I’m out of a job. This is the machine that’s going to take over my world. Blah, blah blah. We can use Futural leadership. Imagine this. Everybody in the company is thinking objectively, right.

And then we have open communication where we make the right decisions. Gee, now let’s think about that. If we make the right decisions, does that mean the company’s more successful, more competitive and actually lasts longer? Gee, I think so. Right, so that’s kind of where this is from my perspective. The happy ending is, honestly, there is a happy ending. Using some fairly simple background. There’s a guy called Holman that wrote a paper on this and, of course, it wasn’t real popular, with a lot of people saying wait, you’re saying change management happens in the background. So why do we need all that? Well, the answer is you don’t need all the models and the rest of the jazz, but you know, the models and the jazz sell a lot of consulting services and books and so on and so forth.

0:48:54 – Kimberly King

I’m glad you ended up talking about that story, the happy ending there, but can you provide an example of a company or a leader who could benefit from adopting this new approach to leadership and change management? And I’m sure it’s pretty much everybody. But is there a specific example you have?

0:49:13 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, look, it’s, every decision a leader makes in a given day could be immediately impacted by FLT. It’s just the fact of it. So, you know, I- I just go back to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of situations. Just one, that one in particular kind of always just triggers in my head.

We’re all sitting in a boardroom and, uh, looking at, they’re I think they’re hiring a chief, um, I don’t know people, officer or something like that. I can, can’t remember. Big job, right. And as we’re sitting in this room, it’s maybe, you know, one of those big walnut suites with the big screen and everything. And we start, they start talking about the resumes. This is a classic, right. And somebody says, oh, this person’s from Wharton. And everyone goes oh, Wharton. Somebody else has got a Harvard MBA. Confirmation bias is everywhere. And you know what happened, of course, don’t you? What happened was all the CVs from these schools got put into one pile the Harvards, the Princetons, the Whartons, and all that and all the other ones. Well, you know where they went.

The fact is, was that the right decision? Absolutely not. Why? Because we’re hiring for Europe, but no one knew that Denmark Business School was number one in the world at that time. I did and I told them. Of course, that didn’t make any difference. I made the decision.

You see what I’m saying the simplest decision could be immediately impacted in a positive way by FLT, for instance, selection of a system, hiring an employee, or making a major financial decision right. Even the way that we read profit and loss balance sheets, cash flow statements me included. I have to step back. I have to be metacognitive before I make decisions, because I tend to read, I always focus in on the P&L. What I should be looking at really is the balance sheet and the impact from the P&L. Do you see what I’m saying? Every single decision is based on our minds and we’ve really got to ensure that several predictive, proactive plans for the future. So my answer, honestly, is it could change everything.

Here’s another thing, classic and honestly, this is my last example. So I go to this company and they’re wanting to do this big rollout of some HR management and the guy says this he says, oh, we’re going to go with uh, McKinsey. By the way, I love McKinsey, it’s a great company there’s nothing at all. And I said, oh, why are you going with that? And I’ve worked with them in the past. What does that mean? Does it mean it was the right system for this particular situation? In the case that we were involved in, it was not. This was what we did end up using was a hybrid of something called Nudge and Adcar, and that doesn’t mean that it just wasn’t the right example, but they were within seconds of signing with one system based on just hey, the bias came in and let’s do it. So that’s kind of a every decision can have an impact.

0:52:43 – Kimberly King

Well, I love, because it sounds so efficient now and again, taking out that bias it sounds very much that way. Finally, as a thought leader in this field, what is your vision for the future of leadership in the age of AGI, and what legacy do you hope to leave through your research and your theory?

0:53:03 – Doctor Paul Markham

Yeah, look, I think I have great hope that leaders and the general public alike by the way, this is not about somebody in a suit on Wall Street, right? This is not about that. You know, if you’re a good futural leader, you may not buy the wrong car. Do you know what I mean? If you’re a good futural leader, you may make the right decision before, like it’s so easy. I know myself.

I have a real thing about anchor bias. I do. I mean, I’m in the business, right, but at least I know about it. If I see a phone plan is $90, $95 a month, I’ll go, wow, that’s good, I will right. And then, oh, we forgot to tell you it’s $3,000 over the long term.

So the point is, I have great hope for the leaders and the general public on life, become more mindful if they just do that through meditation or other methods, concentration, if you want to call it that, leading to higher levels of metacognitive thinking. Why? Because, rather than being petrified about the machines taking your job, become a steward on the other side of the machines. From this perspective, I think that decision accuracy will improve and change outcomes respectively, for everything. I mean, how many times have we what do they call it. There’s even a name for it post-purchase dissonance. I probably shouldn’t have bought that ride on mower because I don’t even have a shed to put it in. I’m just saying, right, we’re irrational in what we do.

So in the process, my closing comment is humanity will elevate their tertiary level thinking, gaining AI stewardship of the machines rather than succumbing to them, which is, you know, the whole concept. Unfortunately, we’re very addictive people and if you think that cell phones are addictive, wait until you get your literal own Siri that will be you. It won’t be Siri, it will be literally a digital representation- I don’t mean physical, I mean of the way you think it’s almost built now, the way you think will be in this, which will become basically something that will live on forever.

0:55:36 – Kimberly King

wow, wow, that’s a lot and I do appreciate it. I’m thinking about it all, but I do. Like I said, I love how efficient this can be. I love that it’s critical as well, critical thinking and still using skills, even though we’re training this AGI to be non-biased. And you know, there’s hope. So you’ve shown the other side of things and I’m intrigued. Thank you, I could talk to you forever. We appreciate you joining us, doctor, and if you want more information, you can visit National University’s website at nu.edu, and thank you again for your time and for showing us the way.

0:56:07 – Doctor Paul Markham

Thank you, I really appreciate you listening, because I know it’s a lot, but it’s a lot and it’s very simple. Just closing thoughts. Socrates told us I can’t teach you anything, but I can teach you to think. People need to start thinking rather than relaxing with the machines. And then, finally, this can be applied to anybody and you don’t have to give up your leadership style, but imagine if you can use that style and actually survive for many long years based on thinking differently and making decisions differently in the future, thank you.

0:56:45 – Kimberly King

Thank you. Wow, great tools. Appreciate it. Thank you. You’ve been listening to the National University Podcast. For updates on future or past guests, visit us at nu.edu. You can also follow us on social media. Thanks for listening.