Some people are better at adapting to changing circumstances, yet this is a skill we can learn. Our brains want to revert to that which is familiar and comfortable, yet what is already known may not be what is necessary to move forward. Aaron De Smet and Kevin talk about Deliberate Calm, a practice developed to give leaders new skills to learn and lead. This doesn’t mean less change. It means we are better prepared for change, and the training we have is relevant to the situation.

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Meet Aaron

• Name: Aaron de Smet 
• His Story: Aaron De Smet is the co-author of DELIBERATE CALM: How to Learn and Lead in a Volatile World with Jacqueline Brassey and Michiel Kruyt. He counsels leadership teams as they transform their organizations to improve performance, organizational health, speed, and agility. He is also an expert on organizational design, corporate culture, leadership development, team effectiveness, capability building, and transformational change. He serves clients across several industries, including agriculture, biotechnology, chemicals, energy, financial services, and healthcare.
• Worth Mentioning: Aaron, who writes frequently about organizational topics, has published many articles in McKinsey Quarterly and elsewhere. He is a member of the master faculty of the Change Leaders Forum and of the Organizational Agility Forum, which he helped establish. He has also led McKinsey’s thinking on organizational health and was on the teams that developed the Organizational Health Index (OHI), OrgLab, and Influencer. He has a Ph.D. in social and organizational psychology from Columbia University, where he specialized in organizational dynamics, culture, human resource management, leadership effectiveness, and strategic change.
• https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-on-books/deliberate-calm
• https://twitter.com/harperbusiness?lang=en
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-de-smet/

Innovation is not a one-time event; it’s a continuous cycle. It requires an environment that encourages and supports creativity. It requires an environment that leverages the human-centered mindset. Mauro Porcini tells Kevin that we are in an age of excellence; either you do it, or someone else will. The most important tool for innovation is curiosity. We need to maintain the balance between dreaming and executing and growing through practice.

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Meet Mauro

• Name: Mauro Porcini 
• His Story: Mauro Porcini is the author of The Human Side of Innovation. He is the senior vice president and chief design officer at PepsiCo. In the past ten years, he and his team have won more than 1,800 design and innovation awards, and in 2018 PepsiCo was recognized by Fortune in its Business by Design list.
• Worth Mentioning: He was previously 3M’s first chief design officer. Porcini has received many honors, including Fast Company’s 50 Most Influential Designers in America, Fortune’s 40 under 40, and Ad Age’slist of the 50 world’s most influential creative personalities. In 2018 Porcini was awarded a knighthood (Cavaliere) by the president of the Italian Republic.

Good leadership is essential to success, matters, and is not about you. Dr. John A. White has experienced this firsthand through 6 decades of leading and learning. He stresses that a leader should not focus on their success, instead they should put their team first and create an environment of listen, learn, love, then lead. This approach is not only beneficial for the leader, but also the team and the organization.

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Meet John

• Name: Dr. John A. White 
• His Story: Dr. John A. White is the author of Why it Matters: Reflections on Practical Leadership. The North Central Association of Colleges and Universities called the decade of the White’s leadership of the University of Arkansas transformational, noting significant improvements occurred in all dimensions of the university. During his 6-year service as Georgia Tech's engineering dean, the college advanced from being ranked 11th to being ranked 3rd by U.S. News & World Report.
• Worth Mentioning: After stepping down as chancellor of the University of Arkansas, Dr. White was encouraged by faculty colleagues to offer a course on leadership. Though he'd been an engineering educator for forty-five years by then and had never taught a course that wasn't based on equations, he was intrigued by the idea of sharing his leadership journey with students. For the following nine years, Dr. White taught Leadership Practices and Principles to seniors and graduate students from every discipline, introducing them to fifteen guest leaders over each semester and holding in-depth, frank, and often emotional conversations about the challenges, joys, heartbreaks, and diversity of approaches to successful leadership.

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Benjamin Disraeli, said “Change is inevitable. Change is constant.” Mike Morrison would add that meaningful change is not inevitable. He shares with Kevin that there will be challenges, and it is up to us to make meaning of them. As a leader, we need to excite our teams about change and have a clear vision of the future. We know it gets messy in the middle, and that is where we have the most growth.

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