by Dirk Depré - June 27, 2025
by Dirk Depré - June 27, 2025
We live in extreme times and it requires strong leadership to guide the people through all the challenges. We observe the rise of leaders with loud voices in the past 2 decennia: more judgement, noisier with conviction, opinionated over factual and proposing more extreme ideologies. In our societies, it feels like we are not longer speaking past each other, it has become worse, we've became megaphones: listening less, broadcasting more. Can we state that what happens in society will eventually also happen in organisations?
!!! This blog post serves as a call to reflect and embrace critical thinking !!!
Around the 18th Century, peasants and craftsmen were drawn to factories. Since then, the industrial revolutions have brought prosperity and innovation. It helped to grow global economy as we know it now and it will continue to influence that in the future. It has been a slow transition from self-sufficient peasants and craftsmen to dependent workers in factories, spanning several centuries. The type of work keeps evolving. From almost all physical and manual labor, we have grown more into technical intellectual (knowledge) work. In an article (1) written by Caroline Freund and Christine McDaniel for the Hinrich foundation, they stated that the intellectual workers started outnumbering the physical manual workers since 1982. Around 2017, only 16% of work is done manually in the USA. Let that sync in for a minute. Automation and robotisation have created jobs, but also shifted jobs dependent on hands towards jobs dependent on the mind. It has always been stated that technological advancements have created more jobs than it actually killed. Globalisation in combination with technology has brought consumerism at our fingertips. And just lately, Artificial Intelligence really made a significant breakthrough and started to speed up things while being available for everybody. It has already started to change our world as we know it. For the better in the direction we are heading now? That is something we can only evaluate later.
Leadership was once seen as a delicate debate between direction and dialogue, is seems to have emerged into a shouting match: over generalisation and no more nuances. The style of the leader? Using elbows and clawing his way to the top. Vision and connection are thrown out of the window in favour of an unshakeable conviction. And the more we applaud them for their boldness, the more we normalise autocracy as the only way forward. But worse, to say it with Ricky Gervais's words: "the problem with today: people confuse opinion with fact. 'I'm offended', doesn't mean that you are right." The ability to assert is turned in some form of competence and curiosity is seen as a weakness, doubt is seen as a flaw. Leaders today no longer ask, they declare. They no longer listen, they lecture. Look at that political landscape around us: debate has morphed into humiliation theatre. The goal is no longer to be right, but it became about how to make the other look wrong.
Organisations are not immune to what happens around them, they are a fractal of that bigger system. And so they mimic the tone of society. If society rewards the loudest voice, so too will the boardroom eventually. This is happening now at a time when the old guards of organisations are retiring. Those old leaders were shaped in an era where collective achievement meant something. They've climbed the ladder because they were excellent managers and saw themselves being part of the organisation and of that system, taking care of the individuals in the organisation. Bottomline, they offered (a sense of) purpose and a place where people belonged. It seems that the style in the boardroom is changing towards a more autocratic tone of voice.
...
Industrial revolution
Has flipped the bitch on evolution
The benevolent and wise are being thwarted, ostracized
What a bummer
The world keeps getting dumber
Insensitivity is standard
And faith is being fancied over reason
Darwin's rolling over in his coffin
The fittest are surviving much less often
Now, everything seems to be reversing, and it's worsening
...
extract from NOFX's song: "The idiots are taking over" from 2003
Obama is warning us
On June 17, 2025 at The Connecticut Forum in Hartford, Barack Obama warned us: "We’ve been drifting into something that is not consistent with American democracy. It is consistent with autocracies.” He was calling attention to “federal leaders … who, let’s say, have a weak attachment to democracy.” He continued and stressed the danger:”When you don’t have people inside of government who say, ‘No, this is how the law works, and we should follow it,’ … democracy is not self‑executing. It requires people, judges … who take that oath seriously.” Obama reminded everybody that liberal democracy isn’t just about elections: it is consistent with an ecosystem of rule of law, independent courts, free press, minority protections and citizens committed to the truth. They serve as guardrails for that democracy. Without them governance becomes performance, nuance is the enemy, socialisation turns to radicalisation.
Obama’s warning is stark and clear: “Democracy is not self-executing,” he said. “It depends on people inside the system who say, ‘No, this is how the law works, and we’re going to follow it.’” Without that courage, he cautioned, “we start drifting into something that is not consistent with American democracy, but it is consistent with autocracies.”
Let’s build on Obama’s thinking and ask ourselves some confronting questions: what will happen when that same drift seeps into our organisations? What happens if it all about performance and less about principles? What if we reward decisiveness without deliberation? Who will hold the line if questioning is framed as obstruction? Who still dares to speak up and say the inconvenient truth when doubt is seen as weakness?
I must say, Obama’s words really spoke to me and his words cut deeper than only politics. Actually, he asks us all to be aware. The danger isn’t just in who governs, but in how we normalise governance. We don’t need only charisma, but we need character. We don’t need bold declarations, but thoughtful restraint. Let’s ask for integrity while given direction.
We are accelerating. Technology makes the unthinkable suddenly possible. Artificial intelligence will outsmart us all soon. It provides us with the opportunity of trading in average intelligence for the smartest available intelligence in the market. But if we really only choose efficiency over empathy, then what will happen to the human being that needs belonging? Professor Liebermann once described our need for social connection as more fundamental than food or shelter. We are social animals. But there is a risk that the current trend in leadership runs in the opposite direction: individualism, control and isolation. If Ai is about progress, then autocracy may become its social side-effect. We are accelerating, but the question is: where to? There is an antidote if it is solitude we run towards: social as in connection, empathy and humility. We need to find a balance in everything we do. As soon as we start recognising that polarisation is a radicalising force which further drifts us towards extremes, we give ourselves the opportunity to find balance in technological advancements and being social human beings. History has shown us already what extremism can lead us to. We would do well not to forget. For that sake, let's keep asking questions and let us choose leaders who admit they don't know it all. Let's stay curious.
The tools of progress like big data, algorithms, artificial intelligence, should liberate us. But it seems they fuel something deeply primitive: control, dominate the space, speak the loudest. Crush complexity with conviction seems to be the way to lead nowadays. With the rise of autocratic leaders during this industrial revolution, do we enter a period of evolution in reverse?
There used to be something else on the horizon and I still believe that it is there. In his book Drive, Daniel Pink argues that what truly motivated people isn't control and rewards (carrots and sticks), but autonomy, mastery and purpose. Those 3 pillars serve great as a moral compass for leaders. But it feels like the autocratic leader likes to bypass that compass: now it’s more about follow the map and speed up! We are evolving towards something else: fast and more efficient. But is it intellect without introspection? If you can't keep up with the pace, you'll be replaced soon. And on top of this all, we throw Ai in the mix to endlessly speed things up.
(1): article Hinrich Foundation: https://www.hinrichfoundation.com/research/tradevistas/sustainable/automation-jobs/