for the students in our audience today the best and most exciting parts of your career lie ahead of you in this audience we have leaders of the future in science technology business management engineering the arts education even video gaming whether or not your aspiration is to be a leader or it's to pursue a career based on your interests thinking about leadership is incredibly valuable about helping us make choices and about helping us make decisions now in my world of research and teaching I work most of the time with very senior global business executives and these are very experienced people and so when we're going to have a conversation about leadership I like to show them a picture and it's this one it's a picture of a large forest and in this forest are lots of pathways some of the pathways are rocks I'm a stone summer sand summer grass some of the pathways are paved some crisscross some get to one point and split off in five different directions but there are pathways everywhere some of the pathways are easy to pass some of the pathways are harder some get blocked and I use this picture to start a conversation about one of the most important insights on leadership that I know and that is that leadership is a journey not a destination we never actually arrive at being the very best leader that we can be we are trying to aspire to be that but we never actually get there the journey continues and throughout our lives and throughout our careers we're making decisions about a new job a new geography a new country to work in maybe a different company maybe a different organization maybe a different career choice every time we make those decisions we are on a new pathway and this journey of leadership is so incredible and the key thing that I found in my research is that many leaders do not think seriously about the new pathways they're on when they make a career change they take their strengths of the past that help them go along a particular career path and they take it into the current pathway even if the skills don't match let me give you an example of John a very senior operating executive that I worked with and John was an exceptional leader manager in crisis situations so there was a crisis he would have the crisis project team he would take action to solve the crisis and in a crisis situation having directive authoritative leadership is an appropriate leadership approach it was clear he was precise he energized the people who were in his team to solve the crisis and solve the problem and he was very good at this command control directive leadership in a crisis situation well John was so well recognized in his company that later on he was given a promotion he was asked to go and take over the business unit leadership of his company's operation in another country now this was a steady state with growth opportunity business area he was going into a very different pathway but he didn't think that John tells me that when he arrived he was feeling pretty good about himself he'd got a big promotion based on his career track record he'd arrived in this situation it wasn't a crisis so he started to create them he'd been used to issuing command and control he said that was successful in the past that's how I'll lead and manage 12 months later he gets his performance feedback from the people who is leading and directing and it's very clear you're micromanaging authoritarian dictator who never listens never consults your crisis style is not right for this pathway and the first insight is to think about the pathways that you will be traveling on throughout your career so how I'm going to suggest we work on this in this discussion is to think about the world we will be leading and managing it this is a world of tremendous opportunity we change but it's also got some challenges in the post Cold War era the world was described as VUCA volatile uncertain complex ambiguous this was a term the military developed to describe leading and managing in a world of uncertainty with geopolitical uncertainty well I will argue that we add two more letters to this for the 21st century of the leadership environment of today and tomorrow the first is a D at the end and this stands for diversity because we will never lead and manage with more diversity than we have now gender diversity cross cultural diversity and perhaps most importantly intergenerational diversity a diversity cross at least three to four generations that will be working together in every workplace of the planet over the coming decades but then I'm going to put a D at the front a big red D for the word disruption because we live in an era where traditional businesses industries and ideas are subject to disruption and change and so for the leaders and managers of today and tomorrow the key is how do i navigate how do I make sense how do I make meaning in a world that is disruptive volatile uncertain complex ambiguous and needs to engage diversity now everyone in this room has caught a commercial airline flight at some stage now if you catch an airline flight the FAA says maximum altitude is around 50,000 feet normal cruising altitude around 35,000 feet this is Felix Baumgartner he's an Austrian skydiver 2012 he's in a capsule at 127 thousand feet above the ground and he's going to do something that's really crazy he's going to dive out of this and fly down to earth this is the largest and highest sky dive through the altitudes in human history and he goes extremely fast well Baumgartner travels down and ultimately in his space suit then protected by the parachute as he arrives on earth so think about altitudes and the ability to go up and down in them we've often flown in planes from takeoff to higher altitudes and then down and now translate this to live and so that brings us to the concept of leadership altitudes now this idea starts with research work from the distinguished author Ram Charan one of the most brilliant advisors to chief executive officers around the world for many decades and ROM working in then in research with our research team we looked at were there altitudes of different levels that leaders needed to perform at to succeed and we found that was the case so what are these leadership altitudes let's put three of them in place and these three are 50,000 feet 50 feet and five feet just three altitudes and what we discovered in our research was that effective business leaders have the great capacity to think at these three different altitudes and not get trapped at any one of them they can go up and down easily between three entirely different modes of thinking so what are they fifty thousand feet thinking is big-picture envision it sees the outside world the unstoppable trends of change technology disruption socio-economic change organizational change it sees possibility in that disruption it understands customers markets but it sees from the outside in and the future back it sees the big picture and as and the leader thinking at this level is kraebel to create a vision and then connect it down to action which happens at the 50 feet level the tactical level the on the ground the day to day the week by week short term goals implementation execution planning activities things that we are within the game field where we communicate with our networks inside and outside the organization and then very importantly the ability to connect that to thinking at the five feet level which is the self to be profoundly understanding of our self and the micro details we need to take care of and be able to connect ourselves healthily from the ground up to the tactical level of 50 feet and then understand what that means for being a big-picture leader at 50,000 feet and this is crucial what we have found is that leaders who can effectively navigate across all three of these levels and be conscious of this where they think they act and they communicate are leaders who are extremely effective so 50,000 feet leaders there are many and there are many leaders who are capable of connecting all three across two examples Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway Gail Kelly former CEO of Westpac Bank in Australia each able to easily connect beat strategy choices either in financial services or insurance or investment connected down to the day-to-day execution and implementation activities that are required to get results and a healthy sense of self-awareness and there are leaders who in traveling across these altitudes produce remarkable things at particular altitudes if you think about the value of 50 thousand for thinking change risk-taking new opportunities technology just think of the incredible 50,000 foot thinking of a leader like Ellen Musk electric vehicles space but it's not just modern leaders go back more than a century and think about a leader in their field who imagined the possibilities of radiation and scientifically examined this and then brought it down to the 50 feet specific experiments that Madame Curie did and ultimately won a nobel prize at the 50 foot level where we're bringing things into the tactics of the field leaders like Larry bossa D the legendary CEO former of Honeywell whose book execution the discipline of getting things done talks about connecting the day to day with understanding the big picture purpose and vision of the future but very importantly with building the talent capacities of the people inside the organization and building that not only in skills but building it through self-awareness at the 5 feet level and then there are leaders who take there are leaders who take a five foot view of the world and they make a very strong 5 foot view of the world if you think about charred tongue who was one of Google's earliest engineers in their founding era who in 2006 set up a very special program on mindfulness around around Google that has become one of the mainstays of people's development in that organization or I think about senior executives and CEOs from very different organizations that we work with on leadership development people who are running infrastructure retail and other businesses who are then saying can I make sure I connect myself my self awareness get feedback reflection time and connect that to my strengths and my talents and then overcoming the big gaps that will hold me back from them being the best leader that I can be the key here is working across three different altitudes and taking it now in our research work one of the most startling things about this idea of altitudes is that we discovered that more than 70% of senior executive business leaders have a really bad phenomenon it's called altitude sickness here is altitude sickness is our leaders and managers who are disproportionately trapped at one of the three levels for too much with no time at the other now the biggest group we found who had altitude sickness were trapped at 50 feet tactical short-term day-to-day there were really good at doing the same thing over and over again but these people are very bad for themselves their organizations and their teams because they come resistant to change they don't open themselves to innovation and new ideas they become very good at competencies and skills of the past like the leaders of Kodak who were very good at their kind of film not did 50 foot thinking I've trapped there does not allow us to see both the opportunities and the threats of disruption and change that's where we found most of these business leaders were trapped and this is not a surprise it's a comfort zone people are well trained for this we're remunerated and rewarded for those kind of tactical short-term results then we found a second largest group with altitude sickness were trapped at 50,000 feet these people had their heads way in the clouds these were over dreamers these were the kind of leaders who announced a vision this week six days later let's have another vision let's do a change here a change here a change here a change here and nothing gets done the ideas are not translated into practical reality and it's the connection of the big ideas and the dreaming to action and reality that is the key here as Nelson Mandela said vision with action will change the world vision without action is just daydreaming then we found there is an even smaller group who are perhaps the most dangerous leaders of all they were trapped at five feet they spent a disproportionately large amount of time thinking entirely about themselves these were the egos the narcissus the absolute micromanagers these were the people who would get in everybody's way provided it was in their self-interest and it it even included people with mental disorders including the psychopathic leaders so my advice is very simple to think about leadership and your future direction to think about leading and making sure that you practice your altitudes right from the beginning of your career spend some time each week thinking about the outside world its possibilities its changes in its trends and what this might mean for either opportunities or threats for what you're doing spend time each week at 50 feet executing implementing and doing and spend time each week healthily at 5 feet reflecting on who we are what we're doing why we're doing it and how we can challenge ourselves to be the best leader we can be as I said at the outset this is a journey it is your journey it is not somebody else's the leadership and career journey is an individual one and the excitement of a 21st century with its disruption its volatility uncertainty complexity ambiguity and diversity is an exciting one but it will also be challenging and to navigate that we need support the support of our own leadership and career plan getting coaching getting feedback doing reflection and very importantly taking into this journey my set of mind sets that work across these altitudes of leadership from the big picture to the tactical to the self take your passion your mastery and your opportunities and may your leadership journey be a successful one just avoid altitude sickness thanks very much [Applause]