Monocle interview: The inspiration behind TtU
Nik Gowing, TtU Founder and Director, joined Georgina Godwin on Meet The Writers @Monocle24 to discuss what inspired the Thinking the Unthinkable project and share our findings.
Nik describes how he and fellow Director and co-author Chris Langdon had conversations with hundreds of senior global leaders about the challenges they faced. They revealed they were scared and overwhelmed by the disruption and pace of change.
Nik and Chris were astonished at how frank leaders were. They realised this was a very profound challenge for people at the top. The words that came through were fear, scared, overwhelmed and short-termism. And in 2018, more and more leaders talk of the need for diversity and inclusivity.
The TtU findings reveal that the conformity which gets leaders to the top in many ways disqualifies them from understanding the scale of disruption and change.
Many talk about a rise of populism - particularly in Europe. Nik describes it as ‘push-backism’. Many citizens are fed up with the system. Most leaders are not prepared to accept that.
He says leaders need to have courage and humility. Many of the Next Gen are anxious and frustrated about leadership. They don’t like what they see and this is becoming an existential threat to governments and corporates.
But Nik says it’s not about being pessimistic or fatalistic. Leaders must be realistic and find a new way of leading. The message is that you can still be a great leader. It’s about encouraging people to thrive on change.
You can hear the full 30 minute interview on monocle.com
For the past 12 months, Nik has been an adviser to the current President of UNGA, Miroslav Lajčák (Foreign Minister of Slovakia) on the daunting inadequacies of leadership as they confront the new world of disruption and often sinister unthinkables.
Respect for institutions is being actively trashed. So is respect for the rule of law.
The glue holding together well-tested institutions and relationships between corporations and nations is being unravelled.
Nik described an ‘uncomfortable tension’ in what’s expected of the UN on so many issues. The reality of the world is moving fast in different directions.
The ongoing Thinking the Unthinkable work confirms that many leaders can’t accept the implications of the scale of upheaval, then how the system must adapt.
A first step is to recognise that the next generation have a very different value set. They are pushing back against what they see. They are increasingly frustrated and angry. Leaders ignore this new existential reality at their peril.
“It’s about purpose and values,” Nik told the audience. “They don’t like a lot of what the corporate and political world is doing and producing.”
But the top down nature of the UN, plus the heavy weight of process and protocol diminish the possibility of frank acceptance of this new reality.
The UN as an institution that represents 193 nations must ‘recognise this new normal’. To handle the new disruptions, the way things are is increasingly proving to be not just ineffective but also downright irrelevant to the way things are fast becoming.
The UN mantra remains to build peace and stability. Its lack of effectiveness as a peacebuilder was highlighted separately at a parallel event held in London the same day.
Chris Langdon, co-author of Thinking the Unthinkable was there.
Dr Rim Turkmani, a Syrian scientist and conflict specialist at the LSE, said that UN peacebuilding fails because it is stuck on old frameworks.
The UN has a very limited mandate in Syria.
It seeks an international peace agreement. But this is no longer appropriate in a conflict as complex as Syria, she said as a member of an all-woman panel at the event hosted by four British peacebuilding organisations.
The solution is for the UN to work differently and broker compromises at local, national and international levels, Dr Turkmani added.
The international community must have a higher risk appetite and engage with new civil society actors, said Marwa Baabbad, Yemen specialist at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the LSE.
Alastair Burt, the UK Minister of State for the Middle East, warned at the same event that the increasing trajectory of violent conflict means that the need for humanitarian assistance globally could double to $50 billion by 203O.
“That is not sustainable,” he said.
Are all these issues unthinkables? No, not only. They represent the new reality of unpalatables. They are trends moving the world away from the justifiable expectations for improvements in a sinister direction that most leaders find great difficulty even identifying, let alone accepting.