 Welcome to Brightline's virtual discussion, Mastering Strategic Transformation in Transformative Times. We have a rich program ahead of us, consisting of a short presentation by Edavandro Comforto, who is the Head of Strategy and Research at Brightline Initiative. This presentation will bridge over to a panel discussion led by Ricardo Vargas, the Executive Director at Brightline Initiative, with his panelist, Jeanie Bickford, the Senior Partner and Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group, and also Kit Krugman, who's the Global Executive Director of Women in Innovation and Head of Organization and Culture Design at Co-Collective. Before this presentation and discussion starts, we will tune into a short message delivered by President and CEO of Project Management Institute, Sunil Pashara. Hi there, Sunil Pashara here, the CEO of the Project Management Institute. And thank you all for joining today for this discussion on a very critical topic of strategic transformation during transformative times. And we are certainly living in very transformative times right now as all our organizations try to grapple with the effects of COVID-19 and the implications to our business. You hear the word transformation a lot, but what does it actually mean? And from my own perspective of having managed the transformation here at the Project Management Institute and also before in my career, I've learned a simple truth, and that is transformation is hard. And the reason why it's hard, because it isn't about minor adjustments, it's about big fundamental shifts that pervade the entire organization. And a failed transformation can come at an enormous cost. PMI's own research has found that the cost of failed transformations can be in the trillions. In fact, $2 trillion a year is wasted on failed transformations. And we have to think of ways to reverse that trend. So today, you'll have the opportunity to explore some of the biggest questions confronting leaders today. How can you succeed to drive lasting change in times like these? How can leaders successfully execute on transformation strategies? How can organizations use new ways of working and new technology advances like artificial intelligence and machine learning? And finally, what can we learn from organizations that actually get it right? So today, you're gonna hear insights from our Brightline team and some of their latest research and findings. Some of the key takeaways that they're gonna share, why some industries are pulling ahead and others are failing behind when it comes to transformation. Fast-transforming organizations are nearly twice as likely to focus on developing their internal talent. And even the most advanced technology organizations must have the right environment and culture to allow you to do a transformation. You'll hear more insights from thought leaders like Gene Bickford, who's the senior manager and managing director at the Boston Consulting Group and also Kit Krugman, who's the president and board chair at Women in Innovation. It's a perfect time for us to come together for this discussion. The whole world is changing very, very fast because of COVID-19. And the trends that we're gonna talk about have been super accelerated as a result. As a recent article in Forbes put it, we once saw the future of work unfolding over years. Now, everything we predicted about the future of work will unfold in months. We see it in society today as governments and organizations grapple with big challenges like, for example, climate change or rapid urbanization. And of course, like having to manage pandemics, this is all resulting in an explosion in the number of projects that are going on around the world. We call this trend the project economy, a global mindset in which work increasingly centers around executing projects, both large and small. And of course, any transformation project and change effort requires leaders to have the right skill sets and the know-how and master the details of getting work done. So let's use today as an opportunity to learn some new ideas and new perspectives, things that we can take back home with us to our work environment and apply. Thanks very much. So, okay, thank you Sunil for the message. So I'm gonna kick off now the presentation of the research. We're gonna share a few research background and main findings. And then we're gonna have a panel discussions with our guests, experts from the industry. And Ricardo Vargas is gonna lead this panel. And also he's gonna talk about what are the next steps in transformation. I wanna start this presentation with the main goal. So today we're gonna provide an overview of the takeaways from this research that we completed recently and we published in our website. I really encourage everyone of you to download the full report and also to take a look on the panics with all the data that we collected. Here in this presentation, we're gonna quickly overview some of the topics to fulfill our discussions with our experts and also take questions from the participants. We started this research mid last year with two main concepts as part of our fundamental work. One is what are the strategic initiatives? So we were understanding and define strategic initiatives those ones that are helping organizations realize their vision and bridge the gap between what is a strategy, what's on paper and the benefits and the deliver on the other side of this metaphor that we call the bridge. We also try to understand what is transformation? And for Brightline PMI, transformation refers to a more fundamental change, a quantum leap of cultural and operational shift that diverges the entire organization. So we are not talking only about digital transformation meaning organizations are implementing a certain type of technology, but also changing the culture, changing in ways of working in today's panel. We're gonna talk about a different perspective on transformation. And we started this research by interviewing 15 senior executives and Keith Grubman is one of them. So we are very happy to have her here. And then with a performance survey, a global survey and you with over a thousand executives around the globe and you can see here the percentage of the sample that covers pretty much different continents in the globe. Today I wanna talk about four main key takeaways for this research. And the first one is we found in this research that what are the high performance? What are the organizations that are performing well in a strategic initiatives? And those organizations, we found that also they are performing really well in transformation, meaning if the organization wants to succeed in strategy implementation, and in this case the high performing group is the group that achieves over 80% of the strategic initiatives, those organizations are also extremely efficient and fast in transforming their business, meaning that for every strategy implementation for every strategic initiative, there is no way today we don't see any transformative initiative that is required to implement those strategies or those goals, especially today within the global crisis we are facing. Many organizations had to change the strategy in a matter of weeks. And for those strategies, those goals to be implemented successfully, there is gonna be a massive need for transformation, either the way they work or working remotely, working in distribute to the teams or even changing the whole business model because now there is a lot of risks about continuing the way or with the currency strategy. So the next finding that is really key for our research is that high performance so they are transformed faster and they're using edge of ways of working. So we found that this speed is there is a relationship between adaptability and strategy implementation. So of course, this is not a new break to in terms of research, but there is a strong correlation in being adaptable in order to have the strategy implementation right. Organizations also those ones that have a lot of capability to adapt and also the speed to transform, they use consistent process and formalized process to implement the strategy and also to transform. And over 9% of the adaptable organizations have some ways of formalized process. We also found what are the top frameworks when you ask these executives, what are the frameworks these organizations are using? So most of them are using any type of agile project management frameworks or any type of agile ways of working. They also using a lot of techniques and process to define key objectives and how to align and attach those key objectives with results. Plus other more common frameworks that we know for many decades like balance scorecards, also design thinking be used for both transformation and strategic initiatives, business canvas, et cetera. We also found for those organizations that are really adaptable, they manage to adapt to their strategy and transformation initiatives concurrently. These are the key practices these organizations are adopting starting from review lessons, learning with from past failures, speaking and working closely with customers and users. We evaluating constantly milestones and timelines, analyzing talent and resource and we're gonna talk a lot about talent and leadership and it's simply modifying delivery process as much as possible. Also creating ways and adapting ways to deliver the strategy as the strategy needs to change. I also wanna talk about what are the speed of transformation across different sectors and this chart is very interesting and I would tell you that we finished this research before the crisis. I would tell you now that in terms of speed of transformation for the industry sectors now, probably this chart now is totally different. So you can see automotive, technology manufacturing companies, even consumer companies that are driven by the transformation rate. So they need to transform quickly because they're getting disrupted, technology are changing, et cetera. But in the other, in the other aspect of the chart, you can see government education insurance health medical services that today actually, these are the sectors and the organizations that had to transform in a matter of weeks to deal with these crisis that we are facing now. So the next key takeaway, the third key to ways of power to the people. So within as an organizations and leaders, nurture and develop internal talent to change or to charge the strategic initiative transformation. Those ones that are related to strategic transformation, they need to be changed and transformed as well. And we recently published what we call the Brightline Transformation Compass. And it's really important that you adopt a strategy or transformation initiative that is people driven, it's human driven. So you need to inspire your employees. You need to work with employees in the transformation initiative to help them create what is the personal vision for everyone in the transformation to be part of that transformation. Also, they need to understand what is their takes and their contributions and the benefits for themselves in the transformation. And also, and most importantly, organizations and leaders need to give tools and make sure that the personal is transformed as well as they need to have a transformation plan for themselves. And this is extremely critical because sometimes during the transformation initiative, a lot of people get lost because or either they don't understand why the organization is transforming or maybe they don't have enough information to prepare themselves to be part of the transformation. So we need to be really careful about the transformation initiative because actually the transformation can become a nightmare. You feel not able to engage and to help everyone in that process to be transformed along with the organization. The fourth key takeaway is we need a strong and a visionary leadership to help the transformation in your organization. And here are 10 key factors that will help the organizations to transform. And the first one is leadership. Then you also have the use of new technology, especially because mainly for the transformations, they will deal with a massive amount of data, cultural change as well of transforming the business model. So you need to adopt the emerging technology to help your transformation initiatives. Then organizational cultural behavior, thinking about the new product process and operations will be in those process. We need to rethink the team structure, how we work. And today you see a lot of people working from their homes and actually being productive and also experimenting new ways of working. Management approach and frameworks, decision-making process need to speed up. So we need to really have an efficiency, high levels of efficiency in the decision-making because otherwise you cannot make the change that's necessary to implement the transformation. Talent development and organization structure. And on top of that, we found some of the really important characteristics of the leadership and we're gonna cover more of this and that in our discussions with the panelists to help organizations become faster in transformation. So for example, having clear vision and tangible goals, set a positive example. So the leaders must be the example for their employees and their teams. You need to be committed. So this needs must be visible authenticity. So we need to be authentic in communications and transparency and sharing information. So these are the key characteristics leaders need to develop to help their organizations, their organizations transform, especially now where transformations that most organizations had to do in five years, most of them now need to do in a matter of weeks. So we also found a very interesting aspect about the CTOs about who is in charge of the transformation initiatives. And despite we have a lot of people, a lot of different roles from CEOs, CEOs, chief operation officer, chief financial officers, chief technology officer, leading the transformations. We found that if you have one person that is knowledgeable and experienced in the transformation role, for example, chief transformation officer or a lead or a transformation leader, these organizations will be a little bit more effective compared to those organizations that have other types of roles in the transformation. And some of the key highlights here is that having a chief transformation officer act as a steward for transformation is very important. So we have a very clear defined role for the person that is committed and accountable to drive the transformation. The CTO may serve as a catalyst to formalize process, to define process for transformation, to ensure efficiency and handoffs among teams, et cetera. It's also important to create a CTO position in some organizations because that's a way to create an organization-wise accountability and a visibility about the transformation initiatives and also ensures that there is someone that is concerned before to make transformation initiatives a priority. So transformation has to be a priority because it's linked with the strategy implementation. So just to sum up the key takeaways here from this short presentation, to succeed with the strategic initiatives, the organization must excel at transforming. So there's not all the way to really implement the strategic initiatives that organizations are defining for themselves now without transforming any aspects of the organization. High performance, those organizations that are implementing successfully, the strategic initiatives, over 80% of the initiatives are also faster in terms of transforming and using agile ways to implement their process and goals. We need to leverage and empower the people that is responsible in working within the transformation. So notary in developing internal talent is also key for transformation. And finally, a strong and visionary leadership that will help determine the success in institution transformation for these organizations. So just a short presentation about the key takeaways. We have some other really cool insights and important insights. So I really encourage everyone at you to download this report free of charge from our website. And now I will invite Ricardo Vargas, the executive director of Brightline to take the lead on these panel discussions and we'll kick start with some questions. Thank you. Hello everyone. Thanks, Eddie, for your presentation and also for helping us and leading the work on this report. So it's as Sunil said, it's, I would say, a very challenging and very, in some ways, unexpected time. And we want to discuss a little bit on what is the impact of what is going on today in the transformation and what key takeaways. Do we agree with some of the results? What is the perspective from our two guests that will share their experience with us? The first one is Jeannie from BCG. Jeannie is a great friend of Brightline and one of the key supporters of Brightline since the beginning. So thank you very much for being with us and give us your time to share some of your thoughts. And also I want to welcome Keith Krugman from Win Women in Innovation that will share also her perspectives and also thanks for being part of the interviews that we did on this research. So what I want to kick off with Eugene and based on your experience at BCG, working with executives, what would you say are the three key success factors on the agile way of working on these companies? Yeah, so one of the things I just kind of wanted to share which is an interesting observation in the study we say that one of the top frameworks for the high performance agile ways of working. And well, what we've seen in a lot of our clients is that with the COVID-19 crisis, it's actually forced agile ways of working. So I was just in a discussion with a CHRO basically where he was saying that they are actually making decisions faster. And when I said, well, what are you doing different? You're hearing about daily stand-up, right? You're hearing about cross-functional teams that are getting together to work things through in a, you know, all together in a virtual room, right? Without really using the term agile. So I think maybe one of the first things for leaders to really understand is it is very much around, right? Transformation and effective transformation is around more the underlying principles of agile which is this concept of constantly, right? Being in clear communication with one another. The kind of breaking down the silos and being able to figure out how to have teams that are cross-functional and have all the right skillsets in the room, whatever virtual or physical. So that's one of the first things is to recognize that it's more around a way of working and really getting leaders to really embrace that. The second is that, you know, and we talk about this actually also in Brightline more broadly, which is the fast failing, right? I think COVID-19 has also revealed to a lot of people that you don't know a lot of things and you don't know if you're gonna get it right. But in a lot of cases, right? Particularly if you're not a frontline worker. So if you're talking about your company and you're trying to make some decisions on how you serve customers, how do you roll out products? And I think I work in the financial institutions practice at BCG and a lot of things that we saw in the United States was with a rollout of the CARES Act, banks had to move very quickly to provide the paycheck protection program loans. You don't know, you're not gonna get it perfect, but you gotta have some sort of MVP, right? You have to get something out. And I think that the executives have actually realized that the world didn't end when things didn't go quite right. But you had to actually be open that things didn't go right, but also open around what are the learnings. And I think that as Eddie was presenting on some of those top methods, right? It's iterative, right? That's point number two is it's iterative. It has to be iterative and in transformation more broadly. So taking out of the context of COVID-19 in transformation in general, you walk in with certain assumptions of how you think the world will work. You think assumptions of how your customers will behave, how the process will unfold. But it doesn't always quite work out that way. And it's the ability to really iterate, I think is the second thing. The third thing is really just more around modeling, behaviors, modeling. And I think Eddie, you also referenced that, which is you just need to do these things and try them. It takes, I would say, a lot of 30 days, 60 days, whatever it is of new behaviors to start sticking as you practice them every day. And I think that for a lot of our leaders, it was, this whole situation has been uncomfortable because there are normal ways of working, of taking two, three, four, six weeks to make a decision. We got thrown out the window and what I think they've learned is in that daily stand-up that making the decision wasn't actually that hard. And by the way, the consequences of perhaps getting some of those things not quite right wasn't actually that bad. And those are really the big, I would say, things for someone to take away as a leader is, you just need to think about what is the objective in agile ways of working? Not about agile capital A, to get confused by those things. Two is, again, the iterative nature of learning and feedback groups that you need to be part of. And the third one is, again, this point about learning the behaviors of self and modeling them. That's perfect. It's not thinking too much about agile with capital A, but in finding A's of working with agility on delivery. I want to ask you, Katie, one question related to that. All this turbulence on the transformation and now even more, there is a very strong human component, right? The fears and people afraid about losing their jobs, afraid about not being competitive. So you work with a not-for-profit where the dynamic is a little bit different. So can you share with us, I would say some key factors for you to get people also to transform themselves when organizations are facing such a transformation like today. Ricardo, I'm so glad that you brought up the human component of it because I think that that's one of the most important things in terms of transformation that is often overlooked. So I think about anxiety and anxiety is actually one of the biggest creativity killers, right? It's the thing that holds us back from being able to think outside of the box, et cetera. And when you have this kind of shared systemic anxiety, then it automatically becomes much harder to think about how would I invent a new way of doing this? How would I change a way of doing this? And so a good metaphor, a simple metaphor I think about is when you're on a plane and you experience turbulence and there's nothing from the cockpit, there's no communication, all of a sudden the delta between what you are thinking and what you invent in your mind. For instance, within a minute, you've probably already written your obituary. You're like, oh, we're going down, it's over. But when the pilot comes on to the loud speaker and says, this is completely normal, here's what's happening, here's when it's gonna end, here's what we do know and what we don't know, then all of a sudden you're able to scale back the narrative that you've created for yourself and say, okay, I understand the context and return to what you were thinking about. And so the reason I use that metaphor is I think that going back to what Jeanne shared, the communication is so essential and rapid communication, whether it's what you know and what you don't know, that is what actually enables people to stay focused and not spin up the anxiety that is about the creation of narratives that might prevent them from actually inventing. On the top of that, one key interesting thing that Eddie just presented to us was talking about visionary leadership and technical goals. And sometimes they are not the same language because sometimes you say, oh, look, I want to put people living in Mars. But then suddenly people say, how do I relate to that now? So Jeanne, do you have any advice, for example, for the leaders you support about how to turn this visionary future scenario into something that your team members and the people inside your organization can grasp and actively engage on? Yeah, I mean, I think that we always think about it. We always break it down into three categories. One is, first, you do have to set the vision. There is a need to be, people need to have a purpose that they're working towards. And so I'm combining two things, which is you have a vision to what the future should be and the kind of, I would say the human side of it, which is the purpose behind that vision and what it means. And so I think that that actually is really important to set first and foremost as a grounding point. And then I think it is very much around how do you, I guess, answer the question for most people, what does it mean for me? So putting someone on Mars is interesting, but in my day-to-day work and what I'm trying to do, what does it mean for me? And it has two parts of it, which is what does it mean to me personally, right? My job, my role. And number two is what does it mean for you on a professional level in terms of what you need to do? And that part is where it's really translating that vision into, it's essentially chunking it up, right? It's the best way to eat an elephant is to chunk it up into pieces. And I think that that is actually what you need to be able to do. And if you cannot translate from that vision to chunking it up to stuff that people can actually think about in a tangible way, I think that's where people get lost and the best leaders are the ones that are able to say, in both its bottoms up and top down, I have a vision for what I wanna do, but I have now also engaged all the people that are sitting there thinking about, well, how do I make it happen, right? To be able to bridge the gap between those two and break it down into pieces so that people can actually embrace it and say, okay, I get what I need to do differently tomorrow. You know, what's the work in front of my plate? But I also have a meaning behind it, which is what does it mean for me in my personal, right, personally, as I do these things. Yeah, this is exactly what we did one year, one year and a half ago with the people manifest, talking about people acting on their own best interests. So, you know, what this reality related to what I'm doing and how do I think? I have one, not a question that I want to ask you both. It's about lessons learned. One of the key results that Eddie presented was one of the topics to learn from the past. And then I put COVID-19 in front of us now. And look, I did a webinar recently and I took the economist award in 2020. You know, that very powerful, the economist is an excellent media. And I read it and I say, there was no single line. I'm saying, oh, look, something could shut down the planet in 10 weeks. So we are just suffering something that we never thought it would be so severe and so fast. So what is the value of lessons learned in this current awarding transformation? So I just want, because I don't have an answer. So I would wonder to hear from you, what do you think, and you both can answer that. Gina, do you want me to go first or do you want to go? Go ahead, Kit. Yeah, so I think the one thing I would say is there actually are a lot of people who predicted this. Bill Gates is one of them. You know, even there were investments in that Bloomberg made ages ago in a back stock of ventilators. So I would say that we never expected this to happen. Most people never expected this to happen. And I would say that it is not something we've experienced in our lifetime because this is the first time we have things like global travel at the time where, you know, at the time of the bubonic plague, that wasn't a challenge, right? So I would say that it's not that it, that people thought it wasn't gonna happen. But I do think there is a sort of failure of imagination in terms of once it's so far away and it's not localized to understanding the impact on you, that it's very, very challenging to take action. So the analog I would use is climate change, right? We know what's happening and yet we really struggle to take systemic action. And so we will be in a similar situation there, but we need to find a way to make it hyper-local so that people understand what changes to make now. Yeah, and I think that part of this is, so it's happened, right? But the reality is going forward, there's going to be lots of different things that will happen where we will be, I would say, precisely wrong, right? But directionally, we can actually be correct. And I think that this is where a lot of the learning even now is that we need to do a lot better on scenario planning. So it is not necessarily to say we predict the future, but it is to say there are a number of different scenarios in which the world can unfold that you couldn't possibly imagine on a normal basis, but you need to, right? You need to work through because it's more around preparedness than anything else. And so I think that if you think about organizations and how you do transformations, in the past when we did transformation work, it was something where you said, okay, this happens at least five, 10 years, we're gonna have to do something pretty dramatic in terms of a strategic shift. Well, we all know that that's not true anymore. People are actually making strategic shifts fairly rapidly. And how do you actually build the organizational capability to do that? Well, part of it is the kind of almost scenario plan on how might the world change, maybe in the small way in terms of how you operate as an organization and how you compete to this, you know, broad Maxwell sense, right? That COVID-19 has forced us to face. But in all cases, it's building that organizational capability to be able to sense. So to say, okay, I have certain scenarios that we're thinking through. We think of possibilities, even some extreme cases, but I'm actually constantly paying attention and sensing because the warning signs, even kids pointed out, the warning signs were already there for different, these things to play out again, precisely wrong, but direction correct, that you could have predicted in that sense. And you could have sensed it and then been able to react much quicker. And I think that's really the learning right now. Like I don't really know how to think about today in the sense of, well, can I predict the future? No, but now I know how much more volatility I should be building into my scenarios going forward. Jen, also on that, Eddie, can you just put back the slide about the industry sectors? Because I want to take one question from the audience. Scott Emler did the following statement. He said, I suspect that there is a correlation between the level of competition within an industry and the need to transform faster. So I would ask Eddie and Jen to step in and say, do you agree with that or not? Competition is something that is driving these companies, these industries to transform faster or it's products, what is your take on that? Let me go first, Jeni. I think it's not only competition, right? There's competition per competition we have for many years. I think competition is driven by changing in any other aspects of the, or from consumer perspective, from a consumer perspective, from a technology perspective. If you see, for example, automotive industry, we are talking about electrification, the future of mobility, et cetera. So these are the change or the drivers that are making these organizations to transform faster and faster and faster. And I would risk telling them, and Jeni can also jump in that, that it's not because they wanted to transform, it's because they are being forced to transform. Is that what's happening now with a lot of other organizations that see themselves in a situation that they could not anticipate or be ready for? So the level of responsiveness for these organizations are very low. So that's why they're looking for ways of working. So this chart is representing, so before crisis, so this is before COVID, I would say most of the changes here, the transformation rate is being forced by competition, of course, but also other aspects of their business model or the products or the sector they are in. You can see government and education and insurance on the other spectrum, like health insurance or health or medical services. And today is actually, I will tell you that most of the organizations in these other spectrum are being forced to transform themselves in some way. Retail is one of good example. So I would say that many other aspects that are driven, driving actually, the way organizations are transforming here, in this case, because this data was collected before the COVID, I would say it's there are many aspects to technology and new opportunities like disruption, et cetera. Today, I would say if we inverted this chart a little bit, I would say most of the organizations that are fasting transforming is because they are seeing themselves in a really risky position that they need to take action, no matter what. Ginny? Yeah, yeah, and I would actually say that there's also, and I think the complexity in all of this is also customer demand and behavior. So I think that you can't actually isolate it to a given industry, right? I think what it is, is on top of that, and you can even see it in COVID, with the COVID-19 crisis, is that as consumers, customers, change how they use your products or their expectations of your services because other sectors have done better, right? It actually forces, it puts pressure on you because ultimately, the winning formula is how do I serve my customers? How do I meet their demand? And so maybe to put a finer point on what Eddie just said, I think right now, government is actually being forced to really transform itself first in the near term because of how they need to serve people. But also in the longer term, because I think that as we think about everything from how our various healthcare systems work and the government's role in supporting the resiliency of that through to how do you even serve customers digitally, right? As opposed to having people come into government offices to get things done, right? And I think that that's actually being proved out that right now, the digital transformation that you can actually see across all industries is spurred on by the fact that right now we're forced to only really interact in a remote and digital way. Yeah, that's perfect. I have another question here from Otty. Otty, great to see you. And we met at the World Economic Forum this year and he has a very interesting question that I want to hear your opinion, Kit. To what degree does the current crisis of COVID-19 reinforce or delay the discussions and learnings about the purpose of stakeholder capitalism or being more human on the way we practice capitalism? So do you think this will reinforce and the need for that or this will just delay even more? I'm an optimist. So it's hard for me not to think or to hope that this will expedite some of the conversations about ultimately what is the purpose of corporations and beyond just stakeholder, shareholder value and extend to broader stakeholders, including employees and the environment, for instance. And so my hope is that what this is showing us is some of the vast inequities that existed but are being laid bare. For instance, we've been having many discussions both within my nonprofit and some of the client work around the vast inequities in who has to work right now and to essential frontline workers, both hospital workers and anyone working in delivery and how basically there are people with the choice to protect themselves and people without. And so my hope is that by exposing some of these vast inequities, we start to think about what does it mean to even as a corporation serve your employees and the environment, but we'll see what happens. Ginny, do you want to say something about your view about the new way we'll do capitalism in the future? I think there was already some movement, right, even before everything happened in organizations talking about purpose, right? What is the broader purpose? And I actually don't think that there's a trade-off necessarily, and I think that was the needle that everyone was trying to thread, which is we can have a purpose around doing good, right, in terms of our employees and the environment and our communities, as well as being able to make money and have a thriving business. And a lot of the conversation that has been had has been around if I can actually think through and articulate what is a very clear purpose for my organization and the meaning behind what we do, and use that to guide our choices on what we do, you actually end up having a win-win, right, because you're motivating your workforce, right? They feel like they're taking care of and they're fairly treated, right? You are serving your communities and supporting the communities and your public in a way that causes customers to actually want to buy your product, right? And so those things actually, the motivation of the employees to do better and do better work, be more productive and engaged with the company, and your customers actually finding you attractive as a company to either purchase products and services from. I mean, that's actually a win-win. So I actually, maybe along with Kit, I'm actually being an optimist here that things will actually continue to get better. Yeah, just a follow-up question. So what you as a leader on BCG are telling your young employees in your office that are facing this for absolutely the very first time and some of them, I'm sure, they are afraid about their jobs, their future, you know, their careers, whatever. So what would be your message about to them if you can share with us? Well, I think a lot of it is just a kick to this. We communicate. I spend a lot of time communicating and communicating doesn't mean one way, let me present to you and everything is good. It is communicating in a very authentic way which is to say, these are things I know. This is what's working well. These are things that really matter are priorities for our firm and being very transparent also that like, these are things you also, we need to be able to consider from a risk management perspective and how, you know, all the different complications and the messiness of that and the fact that we don't know a lot of things. And I think that I actually find that that's actually quite, that's actually works really well in its two ways. A lot of fireside chat, people can ask me anything and you're gonna get a fairly just transparent and honest answer. And again, it can be messy and that's okay. And I think that that showing humanity as leaders is actually part of this whole process right now. And so I think that that's helpful and I also think it is helpful in that, again, a lot of things that are happening to us specifically are very novel, but I started at BCG the month after 9-11 in New York. So I work in financial institutions practice and was there in 2008. So you can still draw on these experiences to really tell people that look, I'm actually thinking about this in a coherent, objective way as opposed to purely sky's falling because everything is unknown, which is not true either. It's to be resilient, yeah. Eddie, I have a question for you from Nicholas Riyad. How many of the top transformers going back to the industries, the top transformers are where exponential organizations, okay? As the pilot by Salim's bio and Singularity, these companies that are growing in a dramatic pace. So what is the, is there a correlation between this kind of exponential growth with the ability to transform? So did we find some evidence on that on the research? We don't have any specific relate to the how we characterize the organizations per se. This is more cuts on the industry sector, classification versus what they're doing in terms of transformation practice, et cetera. But I wanna share some perspectives on that. I think most of these organizations that are transforming faster, they found ways of keeping the business or keeping the operations that they need to keep today for the bottom line, plus making sure that there will be something different in the future. So actually anticipating the future and sensing the future and adapting to the future today by adopting new ways of working, by thinking about what technology we can adopt in our organization to make things faster, simple, and et cetera. So I would say there are some characteristics in these organizations that we can talk or relate to exponential growth or exponential organizations to some extent. But I also must say that some of these organizations here and of course we don't have a specific cut on the characteristics of the organization per se, but most of the organizations, if you take a look on these different sectors, they're not necessarily technology driven. So they have from physical products like cars on technology and services that are more inclined to be forced to transform like banks and financial industry. So finance you have here, but you also have all the industry that realize it. So for example, the energy industry, they know that the way we consume energy, the way we produce energy is gonna change in the future. So unless this sector that is really traditional in terms of implementing new technology, new process, new operations, it's very capital driven. Unless they start now transforming the organization or thinking about how can we be different in the future, probably some of them will not be sustainable from a business perspective in the near term, maybe 10 years, 20 years. So we can go from oil production, refinement to producing electricity energy as well. Yeah, on a follow up on that, I want just to bridge what you just said about the sector and Jean said about care experience. So Sergio made a very nice question say, people need purpose in their work and business needs. So what is your advice for those who are leading and working in business that are now rendered has a low value. So if you are working in something that is being rapidly disrupted. So what would be your advice on that? You want me to take this to Kit? Yeah, yeah, please. Yeah, I was thinking about you, Jean, but Kit can step in, please. Well, I think that this becomes almost part of it is actually redefining what it is that you do, right? There's a piece around redefining what it is that you do. So for example, I'm gonna make a very localized example. I have a team of people who do a lot of events, right? And affiliation and things in our office. We can't get together right now. So you could easily say, okay, you know, I don't have a purpose anymore, right? I think that that's actually too easy to give up on that. What I've seen our team do is basically say, okay, my purpose is to really create a sense of community, right? I do these events, I do these activities, not to do the activities, the purpose is to create community and to create togetherness of all the people within our firm or our office. How do I do that now? And so they've actually spent a lot of time thinking through what they're doing in terms of online gatherings, right? I'm probably the least technologically capable of my team at times. And I even did an Instagram takeover to kind of foster, right? To show what it was like to work at home is a way to just foster the sense of human connection. And I think that that's actually, in a very small example, a way to say, okay, how do I redefine what I do, right? To give, to understand what that purpose is. And that actually is also at a personal level. I say, you know, if you're concerned about your job, you're concerned about your job security, it actually requires people sometimes to reimagine what it is that they do by grounding it in the purpose, right? Because I think that that, like in that situation, I have plenty, there's plenty to do for our team that's doing affiliation and events. Because that still has to happen here, even if we're working from home. I'd love to add to that actually, if you don't mind. That really resonates with me. A lot of the work that we do at Co-Collective is centered around purpose and helping organizations define kind of a higher purpose, which we call it a quest. And one of the parameters of a purpose is that it has to pass muster for context change, right? So I think about the example that you said around events, which obviously now that the context is that we cannot gather in person and we must find a new way to gather, the principle remains the same, which is that the purpose is building community. And I think that that actually, I would even go even farther to say that's a prerequisite of a purpose, that it isn't about the tactical application, it is about the what are you achieving all up, which enables you to have more flexibility and thinking through how I could bring that to life. Yeah, that's perfect. I have a question that is very related to that, that is about the use of technology. Stefan Bozakar asked, what is the role of digital technology transformation? And what does it play in the organization capability to transform faster and better? So for example, some of the business, they can become digital in a far easier way than other segments. Let me give you a very simple example, like a financial sector in a hotel. So you cannot say, oh, virtual hotel rooms, I don't know yet, maybe someone will come up with that, but I'm saying the nature of your business sometimes helps you to be faster on implementing digital transformation. So what is your opinion on that in some segments that are not very easy to get digital faster? Is this for me or Jeannie? Any of you, both, both, that's great. So any of you? I would say that one of the learnings that I've had around transformation and change in general and a lot of the literature shows us is that you really do need some kind of, what's called a perturbation or some kind of big moment that emphasizes the change. And I think that, listen, we've been talking a lot about adopting new technologies. And I think a lot about the human resistance to adoption of new technologies and the challenges in getting people to change the way they're working when they've been working that way for a very long time. And then you see something like this and how overnight, we've been talking about remote and decentralized working, all of us have to your point at the beginning around the future of work, et cetera. And then all of a sudden, in the past couple of weeks, everyone has learned how to use multiple technologies, collaborative technologies, online technologies, and that just happened. And so sometimes it is about creating the conditions or taking the opportunity of the conditions to speed up the adoption of new technology because unless it becomes an imperative, not everyone's gonna get on the boat. Yeah, and I would actually just add here, which is someone was just joking, right, that COVID-19 is the cause of your digital transformation across all industries, right? And I think that the question becomes, do you go back to the old ways when we ramp back to some version of a normal or new normal? And the answer is those that are going to win in the marketplace that are going to actually have the competitive advantage are those that are realized that they can use this opportunity to accelerate that change because people have already seen that this works and use that as a catalyst. I think that's actually the big thing here now is that as we've all learned how to do work remotely and use digital channels, I wouldn't want anyone to lose that, like going back, quote, going back, whatever that means, right? Because this is just a best opportunity now to kind of force the digital transformation whether it's in banking or in wholesale. And the question is also, can you go back? One great example that's on the environmental side is in South Africa, when they had the water crisis, there were all of a sudden massive water restrictions and ways that you behaved very differently with water, collecting water from the shower and reusing it to clean the house, for instance. And I was listening to one of the water laureates speak and she shared that the main takeaway from that experience was that after they had kind of gotten out of the crisis moment, the behaviors didn't change actually, that there was a new relationship that South Africans had with water and water conservation. And so I think the question is also, can you go back once these new behavior loops are formed? Yeah, this makes me remember when I was studying my PhD and my professor said, the water in the river, when you observe the water in the river and the water pass, it will never come back because the water will never be the same and you will never be the same after looking. So we really, this is an absolutely golden answer if someone knows how the world will look like after that, because we are still having so many paths to look for. And my question to Eugene, what is your suggestion or advice for those leaders in organizations that are struggling to adapt to this new reality that transformation is an imperative? So what would be your advice to them? Well, I think, so I actually want to give more credit to people because I don't actually think that there's, in this crisis, people have actually had to act. And I think the, all the things I've referred around people creating, especially at the executive level, creating war rooms, control towers, to really drive almost both the essentialness of business continuity through to continuing to operate in a way where they have been quicker to make decisions, quicker to get together other executives and make progress out of necessity. You're really doing it. That's, I mean, I think that a lot of the learning from the study is that a lot of these behaviors that we're talking about are the stuff that we all had to take on, you know? Everybody did, not just leaders. And to recognize that you did okay, right? For the most part, right? And I think that that's the part where I think for most leaders is to reflect perhaps a bit more on during this crisis moment, what was I doing? What did I do well? What did I do poorly? What were some new behaviors I picked up that actually weren't that scary, right? After all, there was a lot of sacred cows that got actually, you know, played in this whole crisis that has forced people to kind of realize it wasn't so bad. And so I think that that's really what I want to tell leaders because a lot of us are successful because of our past behaviors, right? And we kind of go, okay, this only way of working works for me. That's how I got to this position. Well, we just had a reset. And you realize that you're still in position and things actually, you know, maybe in continued crisis mode, but you're still operating and things are still, right? Functioning for you. So that's probably the bar now, right? As opposed to what made you successful in the past. Can I add a follow-up question on that, Ricardo? Absolutely. So we, as part of the right line, we did another study last year on the crisis situation. So how organizations can leverage a situation of crisis to transform themselves, to become a different organization. And one of the findings we found is that even though organizations can emulate some time or migrate the crisis mode's way of working so they can get rid of process, they can make decisions faster like Giniq mentioned, you can create war wounds and get all together. So there is a tension, there is a stress level in a crisis mode that a lot of leaders that we interviewed think that is not sustainable and on long-term. So after the crisis, we're probably gonna go to a new norm or a new way of working. But I think a lot of people, they are thinking in the day, they say, oh, now it's everything back to normal. I don't wanna distress anymore because I love my life before. I don't wanna leave you this stress forever. How we can cope with this anxiety and stress level from this crisis mode? Of course, not losing the gains and the benefits we get from working in a different way but also not making sure people will burn out after working this level after six months. Every kid might be best prepared for this one. There's just so many interesting things that you brought up in that question. And the one I just wanna start with is I've been really loving reading a lot of the writing about the experience of grief and grieving, the loss of the things that we had and the fact that we're entering not into a return to normal but rather what we're calling at least in my organization, a new abnormal. And with any change, I think that sometimes we overlook the element of the stages of grieving. You never kind of leave anything behind whether it was something that you didn't enjoy or enjoy it without a sense of loss naturally. And so I think that understanding that that's a part of the process as well is important in terms of what I like to call the emotional metabolism. I think individuals have emotional metabolism and so do organizations. Organizations are made up of individuals with emotional metabolism and therefore the entire organization has a certain speed at which they process information and adopt new behaviors and new kind of frames of mind. So just a lot of very interesting things in that. Yeah, let me add also, this is also a personal thought is that sometimes on this, life is a set of cycles, different cycles on our life and the world's life. And sometimes one thing that I learned from my history is sometimes for you to move, you need to jump and jump means you need to go for it. And you cannot say, oh, I want to go, but I don't wanna go at the same time because they are mutually exclusive. Sometimes you need really to jump into something that is new to find out what is there. It's not possible because what we want to, we want to have all doors open at all the time and life is not like that. So I remember when I decided to move from Brazil to Denmark, do you imagine how do you feel being a Brazilian moving to Denmark? You know, but there was no way to say, oh, I want to live in Brazil, but doing them, it doesn't work at some point. You need to say, look, I think I have enough information and I just have to go. Sometimes you have to go because it's an opportunity. Sometimes it's just because, you know, it's burning platforms. So you have no other option. So right now, for example, staying home and going digital, there is no other way. If you don't go, you just die. So this is for me, what I think. And this drives me, I have two more questions. So I want to highlight one question here that is very interesting. Prismac asked a question. And this is a question for you three in the current situation, is viable to develop a strategy for the foreseeable future? Or you just build an entry and approach and wait things happen and adapt over time. So I want just to hear from you three, your your opinions on that. Who wants to go first? Have to do it. OK, go ahead. OK, OK. No, you can. OK, so look, I actually disagree with that. Concept of you can't put together a strategy because a strategy has multiple time horizons. The way that I knew not only do a lot of companies are thinking about it, the government are also thinking about it, is we're moving into where we're currently in the flattened stage of the epidemic. And in different geographies, it's going to move to a fight stage and that's really your term of, what do I need to do to get things going again? And there is a set of things that need to happen around that. But that actually has to still be congruent with a longer term strategy of when you are moving into your future stage, which is when you get to a point where maybe there is a vaccine or something, it's in a perhaps more stable situation where you're not going back to the old way of working anyway. So, but what's the through line, right? Because if you're constantly changing the through line on your strategy, that doesn't give your organization enough of an opportunity to actually follow through with your strategic initiative. So there is a bit which is more around time horizon planning, which is to recognize in the near term, there's going to be a lot of things in the fight stage where a lot of it's just tactical stuff. It's not actually strategic, it's tactical stuff, which is a set of must haves you have to do, but you need to make those decisions in light of the broader long term strategy, right? And I think that that's the part that gets lost where I am a strategist, I also am a person who's very focused on kind of the financials and the numbers, but I'm gonna keep going back to culture, right? And purpose, which is if you're constantly shifting, you may actually do things that go against the purpose and culture of your organization, which in the long term hurts you in your competitive advantage. And I think that that's why I actually believe that there is always a through line, but just different time horizons. I totally agree with that. And I think for women in innovation, one of the things that we've tried to think about is immediately providing our teams with what changes and what stays the same. So we had an existing strategy and we have our mission, our values, our vision, and immediately reiterating to the team, those are pieces, the vision stays the same, the mission stays the same, the values stay the same, the way that we actually execute those in this context is gonna change and the team then works to adapt some of our shorter term strategic initiatives to fit into that model. And I think the other side of that is also the opportunities it creates. So to be concrete in the women of innovation, in innovation example, we offer in-person learning and development for women in innovation. And so immediately, and that became difficult. And we also have a chapter model. So we're based in New York, London and San Francisco. But immediately the opportunity for us was that overnight we were a global team with global reach. So we were no longer a chapter structure. And so the thing that we needed to think about was what does that mean in terms of the opportunities that it provides us to further our mission, to further our strategic initiatives to expedite some of the ones that might've been on the back burner. And so I would say that figuring out to Jeanne's point what remains the same and what is the through line and how that ultimately delivers on the purpose you've assembled around. Eddie. I just wanna compliment that we shouldn't waste these prizes to actually we think the way we do things. So strategies is the why for the organizations, why the organization exists and what they want as an organization and as a group of people and how they're gonna do that. So I wouldn't waste these cries actually to we think the way you do business to we think how your organization will look like in the future because there is no other better situation. Unfortunately, even all the bad things that are happening globally to actually stop and say, we can do things differently. And now it's the time to start planning and actually take an action for that. So it's very hard when you are in the stable mode that most organizations somehow were before the crisis and now suddenly you see yourselves in a situation that your organization can go bankrupt in a matter of a month because you don't have any business anymore. So that's the time to stop and say how we do things different, how we innovate the way we deliver our purpose, the way we envision our company for the future. So take this time to actually, we think your organization in the way you deliver value. Right, I have, this is my final question and this kit is for you, okay? You know, I'm managing for 38 or 39 days a transformation with three women at home, okay? And if you, recently I read a Washington Post article talking about women leaders in the COVID crisis, Germany, Finland, New Zealand and they are all doing extremely well on the response of the COVID, comparing with others. So is there any secret that you can share with us on their behavior, their attitude that is driving such a huge success on this transformation? Can you share your thoughts on that? Yeah, one of my favorite topics. I loved that post article and there was also an article in the Atlantic yesterday about Jacinda Arden at her leadership. And you know, I think some of the things that we've been talking about of qualities of leaders are absolutely true in this context. So empathetic leadership, right? Really leading with humanity and with authenticity. I think Jacinda has done that really beautifully. I think communication, we talked about that. Some examples of her doing Facebook live streams and she's wearing her sweatshirt and her family's in the background. It is just truly authentic and shows that she is part of the community. And so the community is really trusting her. And I think the third piece is being extremely decisive. So obviously collecting insights, information and input but being extremely decisive and clear and quickly. They made some of the quickest in New Zealand. They made some of the quickest decisions about what they were shutting down, when they were shutting it down and for how long. And then the last thing I would say which is, which really stood out to me when I read the Atlantic article was the choice in language and modeling that Jacinda has chosen. She's using the word, for instance, bubble to talk about who can kind of be in your sphere. It's a very human word. It's a very natural. It's not a super political word. And then she's modeling it by being on a Facebook live stream and saying, oh, here's Leroy, he's a part of my work bubble. And so she's demonstrating and modeling the behavior that she wants the community to enact. And I just think that those are the qualities of the really extraordinary leader and that we can all learn from, whether it's man or woman. So really impressed by her behavior and the results, right? 12 deaths in New Zealand. That's extraordinary. That is really unbelievable. So look, it's time for us to close. So first, I want to thank you, Kit. Thank you, Ginny. Eddie, thank you. And Eddie, I need a double thank you because he was led the research. So thank you from my heart. Thanks to the whole team that is in the back. Emil, Tairu, Yavnica, Janine, Chin Chin, so all of you, Sergio, you did a great job. And my final message is that you can download this report at brightline.org. And we will be releasing as part of the Project Management Institute. Something quite interesting coming up in May. I cannot disclose the full details, but something that will help those on the project management field to understand more about transformation. So just stay tuned. This will happen very soon and it will help your team to get through that. So thank you very much. My final message to all of you is stay safe, okay? Let's, I hope you found this useful and you can come to us. Thank you very much for joining us and see you until next time, okay? Take care.