Leadership Beyond Borders

The Importance of Storytelling cannot be underestimated. The world we live in today could not exist without the influence from past generations, the experiences from people across the globe and the experiences from those that surround us.

As creatures of habit and tradition we instinctively hand down lessons and share knowledge. We crave communal knowledge, which very often comes from the stories we share. It is one of the most traditional and human processes.

Great stories often reflect the world we live in now, combined with the world we do not know or can only imagine.

But the world we live in now has changed. Technology is helping us capture what we experience and share it faster than we ever shared before.

Our ability to use technology to learn from others, share knowledge to give ourselves an insight into our own problems gives us an advantage that we did not have in the past and helps expand the art storytelling.

Everyone knows the famous expression in English: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. But many people do not like challenges, they like predictability, and when we cannot inject predictability into our lives, we sometimes get frustrated and do not know how to cope. Today live in a time where there is very little predictability. In the last 3 months many people lost jobs, we have seen borders opened and closed, we live with new rules and we do not know what is around the corner. We cannot predict anything. These are the most adverse times we have seen this century and how an individual copes really shows what that individual is made of. As humans we all know that adverse situations can make us stronger. In this episode we are going to explore why adversity can actually help us grow and how to make the best out of tough times.

More now than ever we require a future perspective, which can take our discussions beyond current issues such as lockdown policies, social distancing, increasing and decreasing COVID-19 numbers, getting children back to school and everything else that occupies our minds daily. Individuals, leaders, and organizations must have a vision of what kind of world we will be facing - a month from now and or even in the next decade. In this episode, we explore the visions of some great minds. We ask if their visions are generally optimistic, seeing the pandemic as a once in a generation opportunity for positive change. Or do they believe we still have a long bumpy road ahead of us? With the co-author and one contributor, of the book: Aftershocks and Opportunities – Scenarios for a Post-Pandemic Future, we discuss some of the opinions of the noted leaders that contributed to the book. While we try to imagine what our lives will look like ten months or even ten years from now.

Paul Van Der Merwe, author and engineer is known for the quote "Money makes the world go around; however, happiness greases the axle. Without this lubricant, life will seize." But most us only know the expression money makes the world go round which can be interpreted that that money is the most important or one of the essential things in life. We all have different attitudes toward money, and we all have different practices when it comes to earning, saving and spending money and some practices better than others. With a worldwide economic crisis and the US national unemployment rate reaching 14.7% in May this year, and around 14.0% in some European Countries such as Spain, our focus has turned to being very mindful about money. Our guest today is an expert on Money and the author of Mindful Money: Simple Practices for Reaching Your Financial Goals and Increasing Your Happiness Dividend. He helps us make the concept of money tangible through best practices and tips.

Most people do not question rules because they are designed to protect the status quo and create a level playing field, but sometimes we need to bend them a little if in order to get a desired result. In the right context, this can be ok because rules are not static, they evolve and are based on the information we have at a certain time. Not to be confused with laws, which are in place to protect us, rules are very often open to interpretation, rules can be changed. Sometimes we need flexibility and we need to "think out of the box". Our guest has studied the subject of rules and processes and has concluded that most successful people engage in what he calls "intelligent disobedience" when it comes navigating the journey to an end goal. This episode explores what intelligent disobedience is and how it can contribute to being a strong leader.

A business that is visible is also considered creditable. Visibility today means being present across all digital channels and using the right tools to make sure you stand out among the competition. With the decrease in foot traffic and increase in online traffic, if customers cannot find you, they will not know who you are, and they will give their business to someone else. As study by Riverbed found that 99% of business decision makers agree that optimizing digital performance is essential to business results. The question is how do you do this if you are not a digital advertising expert? A great online presence consists of many elements, but visibility is mostly driven from a great SEO/SEM strategy. In this episode, we talk to a Sunrise System about what makes a great SEO/SEM strategy. We talk about current online marketing trends, what elements contribute to a strong strategy and how to make sure your company is visible.

During the Corona crisis, tech has been a blessing in many ways. But the use of tracking and tracing apps in various countries have raised the question whether we are putting our privacy at stake. In this episode of Leadership Beyond Borders we speak with Juergen Weichert, CRO of Munich based ad tech company Usercentrics. We talk about the use of tracking and tracing apps in the wake of the corona crisis and why the crucial question is how the data is being stored. We discuss the concept of Consent Management Platforms and help you understand how website and app operators can keep their Opt-in rates high whilst being legally compliant. We also take a glimpse at what the future holds for Consent and Preference Management and what website and app operators can do to be prepared, all this while keeping the end user in mind.

As we start to come out of this crisis and things very slowly get back to normal, those companies that have shown strong leadership are the first ones to bet on. Some industries were impacted more than others, regardless of how strong the leadership is. Still, it is the companies that have shown innovation, flexible business models, excellent customer communication and strong leadership that will recover. In this episode, we explore what great leadership looks like by talking with an influential leader in the digital marketing space. In this episode, we pose questions such as do you need to manage or lead your company in times of a crisis? We discuss what kind of leadership traits are needed to drive short term stability and long-term success. We also explore how important innovation and speed is during tough times. Listen to this episode to learn what real leaders think and do.

Luka Lucic, a Pratt Institute psychologist who studies the effects of war said "People, during times of prolonged, radical change, end up changing," The question we will pose in this episode, how have local businesses changed and what does the new normal look like. Until the Covid-19 is subdued either by a vaccine or by a global campaign of strategically coordinated lockdowns our lives will not look like they did before. Businesses will not look they did before, and we will continue to have challenges, but we will also have opportunities. It is amazing how creative small businesses have become during these times. Developing and finding new business models, finding ways to speak with customers, and coming up with new products and services. In this episode, we talk with a company that helps small business and we speak with a local small business who has had to change his business model.

As the world reaches COVID-19 exhaustion and we all realize that this crisis has already changed our daily lives, very often we do not recognize what else the crisis has changed including its impact on global opinions surrounding politics, the environment and technology. Our attitudes toward potential opportunities—and risks— of using Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to combat COVID-19 are varied. There are examples of data and AI-based technologies that combat viruses and the spread of the epidemics. Many of these examples illustrate the potential of data and AI to combat the invisible enemy, through diagnosing, tracking, testing, monitoring and anticipating a viruses progression. However, many deployments of AI remain experimental and limited. This episode explores the technologies we are using today and what new technologies are evolving because of the pandemic.