final session on saturday. interesting panel.

Dan Golman – Rutgers – the brain is a massive pattern recognizor that goes thru life collecting wisdom. the part that holds this wisdom is connected to the gastro tract. the gut feelings is real. you what you need to do is to raise your self-awareness in order to deal with complexity.

O Grimsson – President of Iceland –  no matter what we think, we have to remember that mother earth is still the final instance. the issue of complexity of the awareness of what is happening in his country. the reality of leadership is very different today – now we are part of a social web that is aware. it requires new capabilities. technology is the primary technology driver of change, not the politicians; the young generation is the first one in history that almost everyone has a choice of where they can or want to live; leaders need to be aware that the best talent can simply move; the  next is the multi-cultural aspect of leadership. you need to be aware of global responsibilities. you have to be more capable to analyze than order, mobilize than tell them whaer to go, you need consensus rather than command and control. you need ‘the vision thing’ is also important.

Probst – WEF – it is coming down to simplifying and managing complexity. on one hand we have to work within structures that are complex. the key is not to destroy these complexities, rather to simplify them. the interaction of the global risks becomes critical to attempt to understand/embrace.

V Mittal – CEO Welspring – the leaders main job is to simplify things in a very complex world. we are accountable to society, the employees and the stakeholders.  i believe that we need to get behind a vision

J Whitbread – CEO save the children – role as a leader is to have the experience to know what excellence looks like; to be able to stand back and see the bigger risks, often we see people who are so committed that they no longer see the risks; to know what questions to ask to find the reality; to be able to master a brief; to expect the unexpected and allow uncertainty to be a part of the role.

Scharmer – Sloan MIT – the real leadership challenge is to pull the systemic and stakeholders together and take them thru an ego system awareness as well as echo system awareness.  five capacities: convening, co-sensing, co-inspiring, co-creating and co-evolving.

Groleman – everyone needs to be able to deal now with people who have different experiences in their lives. they have different norms. we all thave the same tools in our body. we need an increasing amount of empathy. your brain is also distributed in the team around you. yourself with the right people to deal with the challenges you perceive. crystalized intelligence = life experiences. fluid intelligence is more what young folks have. the brain deals with complexity in chunks.

Scharmer – there are three different types of complexity – dynamic, behavioural and emerging.

they have to lead without knowing what the world will look like. the topic really is leading with uncertainty.

Whitbread – what are the qualities that make a difference and how are we going to get it? i like the book, ‘whitewater rafting, leading in times of uncertainty’. the key is to use the unpredictability to get to goal.

how do you get rid of the self-selection confirmation bias? the brain does indeed self-select and confirm your own bias. the brain is anchored in remembering the issues that you want to. the group IQ is key to remove blind spots and reduce group think.

how do you deal with the increased amount of information?

1. unplug. make and take time to unplug every week.
2. reflect on balance of simplicity and complexity. simple on top, complexity behind
3. Mittal start to make the people the heart of the organization, make the heart work the best inspect what you expect, [.....????? find out what they were from him]
4. encourage teams that are multi-apected and use coaching
5. network extensively, listen fully – REALLY listen, listen deeply to yourself  - the still small voice inside that is working for yourself every day —- make time to reflect.
6. MAKE TIME TO REFLECT. THINK. LISTEN. be in the village square in the true sense.
7. remember that leaders are responsible and accountable for many constituencies all over the world.

feedback. every team member is met by their manager once a week to talk about something that they did good. the goal was to highlight strengths and weaknesses. this was monitored and the employees felt that it was setting them up for success.

excellent. session. group IQ. crystalized intelligence. learned skill set. experience. make it simple.

The following are notes that i took during the panel session on the global economic outlook.

Martin Wolf – Financial Times – The mood at Davos seemd to imply a better global growth than the IMF anticipates. The difference between the tip and base of the pyramid remains too great in many ways. the developing nations have grown by 45% since 200 and the advanced countries in agregate by 5%. the following are the big issues for 2011: inflation, Oil prices. currency wars and rebalancing, exchange rate friction betewwn US and china, fiscal tightening, the direction of the Europzone, exit strategy from monitary stimulus around the world

Zoellick – World Bank – the problem of overheating in the developing countries is very real, the US probelm is the deficit nd jobs, in Europe the big issue will be soveirgn debt. then the structural agenda cannot be neglected. it seems to be a hot and cold world, increasingly a world of haves and have nots.

Christine Legarde – France – growth is picking up in Europe, but not too fast. the deficit in relative numbers in 2010 was about 6.4%, growth will be between 1.4 and 1.6% this year. the numbers are not bad. this slow growth is fine when you look at the disparity between the developed and developing countries.

Schaeuble – Germany – we had 3.6% growth last year, but we must not forget that there was a 4.7% drop the previous year. we are not quite back to 2008 yet. we expect 2.3% growth and that is sufficient. economy of Germany will be steady and srong.

George Osborne – UK – the challenge is to move on from stability to growth. the UK does have the largest debt. and the numbers this week were not warming. the silver lining is that the UK economy is rebalancing. manufacturing is up and there is a comprehensive and credible debt reduction, competitive tax reform is underway, and we are undertaking structural reform to the welfare and education systems. the challenge for the nation is the amount of cash that corporates are sitting on [5% of GD and how to get them to spend it.

Ahluwalia – India – smart recovery from the first effects fo the recession. growth will be about 8.5% in the year. inflation was also about 8.5% which we don’t like. there will be a tightening of monetary policy. expect to see a reduction in the fiscal deficit in this year. the goal for growth is 9% next year. in order to do this, we need a private sector led growth thru investment and FDI. the oil prices are of concern, as well as global financial stability due to potential collapse of the Eurozone. as long as the global financial situation is stable, there will be a strong growth in India.

Yu Yongding – China – our problems are due to the financial success of our policy. growth was 10% last year. inflaciotn is now our largetst conscern as well as the real estate bubble. the potential demand for homes is huge. there is a tug of war between the national government, local government and developers. total confidence. there is very little public debt so there is lots of room for investment to stimulate the economy if that would be needed. short term, no doubts. long term could be more difficult. the focus on export is not sustainable. there is a hope that we can continue this rate of growth for another decade.

Bob Diamond – CEO Barclay Bank – jobs and economic growth are inextricably linked. there will be a reduction in stimulus from the public sector in the developed nations. there must be a shift of the job growth obligation to the corporate sector. there seems to be a feeling of cautious optimism in the financial sector.

martin wolf – what are the global consequences of these policies?

India – there is no such thing as decoupling. policy choices impact us. huge amounts of liquidity is sloshing around the world, but India is not interested in hot money, or those that are only interested in short term benefit. more interested in FDI focused on long term gains.

China – we share the concerns. but we are a creditor, not a borrower. thus we can have a very different view. we want the US to grow so that they can buy more things from us. if the RMB does not float we will have problems with this. the question is the pace of the relaxing.

the priorities of the G20: the focus of the activities will be on financial reform, and on infrastructure, especially in Arica. these need to be able to be financed and be effective.  Zoellick’s response. in order for the G20 to be effective, they need to be collaborating with the other groups that are disenfranchised by the membership of the G20. the biggest issue in our view is food. this is both food security and food pricing volatility. we see a good constellation for this already. this is not yet so clear for infrastructure. there is huge interest in PPP ot make this area work. there needs to be a connectedness with the subregions. to the monetary system…we are in a evolution. one key point that one should remember is that the g20 have agreed to have flexible exchange rates.

to the Eurozone: we do not expect any more shocks this year. perhaps there was too much discussion about the stability. the euro will be defended if any member will come into crisis. the volatility has not disappeared. there was an acute problem a year ago, now this could be downgraded to chronic. the European Stability fund was put together in one week and was oversubscribed by 9 times.  there is a common goal and we are confident. the strength at the moment is that each country is indeed taking a care of their own challenges. they are working towards putting their house in order. the biggest challenge is the actual competitiveness of the Eurozone overall.

questions from the floor:

youth unemployment – what will this mean? no sense of pessimism in India. the pressures are good for a government. in china this is a positive pressure. the youth are connected, know a lot about the world and are entrepreneurial. great question. weak answer.

CHL – all in all, it seems there is a belief that this year will be a much better year than last. no clouds…..time will tell.

these days end up as one huge blurr of impressions and thoughts. a stack of business cards is sitting on the little round table next to the window. i put notes on each one, where i meet the person. otherwise is is hopeless to try to reconstruct.  the big take aways or moments from today as midnight passes….

at the end of the Energy Update session a person from the audience asked the panel what they thought about the 1.4 billion people who have no access to any energy…his question was met with total silence. then i suppose one could say embarrassed chuckles as the room realized the elephant was just unveiled.

the ‘new norm’ session revealed a really thoughtful and fascinating CEO, Vineet Nayar [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineet_Nayar]. he talked alot about what it takes to make a successful company today. so much made sense to me. he stated that you have to think of your employees first, and the customer second. it is the employee who creates the value for the firm, so if you have disgruntled or unhappy employees, this will rub off and impact their performance with customers. he also stated that they do their 360degree reviews on-line so anyone can add comments as well as see what others have said. he also noted that it is critical to allow divergent views in a company, but they need to have convergent action. again, this makes total sense and makes a far better direction. final point that i really loved: every company needs to put up a mirror and look itself in the face without their past glories to ask ‘do you still have the right stuff?’

session on state capitalism was instructive. panel was very broad and did not agree on everything [which was refreshing]. there are four types:

1. by default – where the state inherits a bunch of businesses that it really did not want in the first place.
2. sovereign wealth capitalism – like Bahrain, Norway, etc
3. state owned or sponsored – like russia or china
4. state directed.

one quotable statement that i really liked was made by Lord Levene of Lloyds: the new world is no longer America, it is now IndoAsia.

Dinner was with the IT industry. sat next to the CTO from Cisco. a delightful woman who demonstrated throughout dinner what a class act her company is. also in attendance was the Chair of the US FTC and the VP of the EU,  Viviane Reding.