Hello, everyone and Hello, women Tech. Uh Thank you so much for this opportunity. Uh Thank you for your ears and thank you for your time. Right? My topic today is the perpetual capacity for relevant leadership. You see, relevant leadership is beyond the norm.It's leadership that's beyond the norm. It extends into a lifestyle practice. The first concept of relevant leadership is that relevant leadership must have perpetual capacity. The word perpetual immediately connotes towards a continuum, you know, something that cannot be stopped.

Uh Everyone knows what leadership is because we can feel it, right? We can experience it and recognize it. The thing though is that leadership is a practice in continuum, right? So it's not just this one time thing, leadership must have big capacity and live in this extensive time frame. So here's a definition of leadership that I want you to have. So just think about this relevant leadership is the art and science of applying influences that maximize converging efforts that creates an outcome or a series of outcomes. I know that sounds like a mouthful, but it's extremely important. You see the perpetual capacity for relevant leadership requires that both the art and the science of it converge the science of it is systematic, it's observatory, it's empirical and it's experimental. The art of leadership is anecdotal, experiential, expressive, visual and emotional, but both are required to make leadership demonstratively have perpetual capacity. The second concept that I want to talk to you about is that relevant leadership must be sticky, it cannot be leaky and it cannot be stale uh to make leadership sticky or viable. It must be repeatable. It must start with and be fortified by some core first principles.

And some of these core principles include that sticking leadership must exude infinite capacity, which is what I kind of shed before it must last and last. You see a leader encounters a lot, but also a leader lets go of a lot. A leader's lifestyle cannot be leaky. Now, you know, that is a subject for another talk in terms of what that actually means. But the point I'm just trying to say is that sticking leadership requires unbridled ability to lead. So it must not be compromised. The other thing about sticking leadership, it must be relevant and fresh and this means that it must apply to our. Now your now your teams, now your seasons. Now basically once the conditions of leadership become stale, it is no longer relevant leadership. So the question to all of us so far is how is our leadership against the backdrop of these identifiers? This is a private question I'll leave with you. So think about it the rest of your day. The third concept of relevant leadership is that it must harness the power of uncertainty. A leader must understand uncertainty and how to harness its power. You see uncertainty has the unfailing ability to create an anticipated change. But this is where leadership can come to thrive or where it can be disrupt. Uncertainty does three things. Uncertainty lays bare vulnerabilities and you see what vulnerabilities do they in turn produce resilience, which is power or disintegration, which is failure or disrupt.

You see how you respond to uncertainty can determine whether you lead strong or weak. I'll give you an example. In 1997 the Eastman Koda company spent $500 million per year to develop an array of digital photography products. It was hoping that this would fundamentally change the way people would create store and view pictures. Meanwhile, the Hewlett packet company invested $50 million per year and they pursued a rival vision centered around home based photo printers. So while one tried to shore up the existing market in hopes that it will not go away. The other focused on an emerging trend and sought to empower it. So the truth is that anticipating uncertainty allows for a big conquest and typically the conquest of the traditional and the status quo. Now many times this can be scary and even feel dangerous at the onset. But it's something that we must face something that a relevant leader must tackle. The other thing about certainty is that it enables new accommodations, new accommodations in turn support growth advancement, which is power or a retreat which is failure or disrobe. I'll tell you another story.

In 1977 Kenneth H Olson, who was the CEO of Deck or Digital Equipment Corporation declared that no one would need a computer in their home. In 1977. the sentiment of the statement actually made sense. It was possible because there were no killer applications that demanded this personal computing power. But in the same year, visionaries were already imagining personal computing and its visibility. Remember that Microsoft, the company that eventually enabled personal computing had already opened its doors in 1975.

So you see uh during uncertainty, there is always an accommodation, you can use the data that you have to make room or you can use it to create a dam and what a dam does is that it essentially closes the door. The third thing about uncertainty is that it breeds change, that change can employ and deploy expertise and hope or that change can employ and deploy hopelessness and loss. Let's look at an example. An airline company views the entry of a cheaper no frills airline as a major threat.

The existing business can choose to deploy their expertise to build a confident business case around their services around their roots and their clients or they can cede that route out of fear that they cannot compete on price. This is the Delta versus Southwest story today.

Both of them coexist and they both converged on their consistency in serving their types of customers. You see the truth is that whether uncertainty comes with some clear determinants for potential outcomes or failures or with complete ambiguity full of unknowns like what we experienced with the COVID-19 experience shows us that uncertainty is the arbiter for disclosing true relevant leadership or for disrobing an imposter.

So let's look at the fourth concept of relevant leadership. We're going to look at this through the lenses of what I call contention. So what is contention? Contention is an assertion that is maintained in an argument. So if you are a debater, you know about contentions, I think we all agree today that there exists a contention in the transition from the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, to the emergence of a post COVID era, this is colored by the inconsistency in global schedules, politics and economics.

See at the heart of the pandemic, the ground we all stood on shifted and to some extent it's still shifting. The global rich and poor, the emerging and established the developing and the developed were at one time tackling the same issue. Some were doing it in the same ways, some in different ways, many with confusion, trials and errors, some with strategies, some without. But we learned many things some of the things we learned include that the pandemic started in the east, hit the west and just seem to settle there. That was a fact. We learned that new paradigms can be created from the unknown. That was a fact. We learned that being in a rich country like the US does not automatically guarantee safely safety. That was a fact too. We learned that a vast and tremendous opportunity can be ushered in within a hair's breadth of calamity. But you know what we learned most of all that a relevant type of leadership matters. So let's look at some economic benefits because we can talk all we want about relevant leaderships, but it needs to have some economic benefits. So today, we find ourselves in the most agile industrial revolution, one that amalgamates the previous three and simultaneously characterized by the fusion of the digital, the biological and the physical.

Uh this revolution deploys a host of novel technologies like A I and IOT and uh you know, technologies like that, we call it the fourth industrial revolution. But what is fascinating about it is that the heart of this really big revolution are two fundamental things. The first thing is that it is poised to enable global economic disruptors. This means that some unusual players, unusual countries, unusual economies will emerge. The second thing is that it will present a multidimensional socio-economic strategy and consequences. So it will impact and redefine global values create changes in human engagement and shape privacy, trust and equality policies. We're already seeing that. What was the status quo in business engagement and transactions? We're seeing that transition via, via a continuous flow of creativity as possibilities explode.

We are seeing our societal conscience, we're voting against against what is telling us that true inclusion matters, that leadership relevant leadership must start and end with people. We're seeing that as a society that as we transform, we had demanded from ourselves a new archetype of leadership that will absolutely be different from what is or what we have known. So for the new model of economic growth in this fourth industrial revolution, relevant leadership that is concerned with impact to you and I will be the only type of successful leadership style. It will demand of us an architect, an archetype, sorry. So different from what we have known.

Let's talk about that archetype. So first phase of the archetype is that the relevant leadership must be situated by consistency in justice. So relevant leader must be consistent, consistent in justice. So let me give you an example. There's a man called Greg Popovic. He was the head coach and president of the San Antonio Spurs, he always spoke about uh spoke up about social justice. It was reflected in his work reflected in the way he spent his money, his team management style and his dance. The interesting thing is that that consistency and justice ironically manifested in him being the coach that has won the most NBA games in history. Many people don't know this archetype. Number two, a relevant leader has to be willing to ascend to and attract the uncomfortable.

You say there is this innate ability to find merit. They must have this innate ability to find merit where it's rarely looked for or most unacknowledged. So for example, do you know your list coworker? Could your maintenance person deliver your keynote address at the next banquet?

How many of you know the story of Richard Montanes, the founder of Flaming Hot Cheetos variety. Did you know he went from Jito to executive at Pepsico? You see Montanes invented the Flaming Hot Cheeto. After a broken machine on the Cheetos assembly line split out, spit out a batch of plain Cheetos without the cheese powder dust. Montanes took the Cheetos home, dusted them with chili powder. An idea that he actually credits to grill corn uh dressed with lime and chili powder that is sold by street vendors after test testing the flavor with his family. Montanes first pitched the idea to former Pepsico Ceo Roger Enrico. He did this over the phone and he was given two weeks to prepare a presentation to the Executive Suite. Montanes, came to that meeting with custom design packaging for his idea. So the question becomes what kind of a CEO listens to a janitor. Anyway, it's one who understands the relevance of people first and then ushers in ideas. The second question is what type of janitor comes prepared to a meeting with a CEO with custom packaging. It's one who knows he is meeting a fellow human deserving of his best preparation.

Had either of them missed this. Cheetos might have died and mountainous might have still been a janitor today. So the archetype number three, relevant leadership requires death in maturity. You see it understands that outcomes matters and that what keeps it going are the linkages that hold it all together. So what does this look like? Relevant leader? Leadership ensures that the core principles that are established are undergirded by actions that can create the expected and desired outcomes.

No gimmicks see the words and the ways that things are done must have equivalency. In other words, the means and the achieved end are always complementary, always on the same side. The fourth archetype is that relevant leadership requires tremendous skill. It thrives in honed skills and developed crafts, personalities and tools of the trade that are formed well formed. It creates an environment where excellence and petitions and petition story, an ever evolving better outcome outcomes that are timely and appropriate for the season.

It is by these that it builds a currency or practice of credibility that credibility in turn manifests a capacity of influence that can be traded for so many pathways, it can be traded for internal and external partnerships, for networks and open doors. So in summary, the perpetual capacity for relevant leadership are all those things that hold a mirror to our character, our conscience and heart. So to be a relevant leader, ask yourself, who was I yesterday? Who am I today? And who must I be tomorrow then? Decide an act for now? You know. Thank you so much. It's really been a pleasure talking about this topic that uh I think matters to all of us. So go be a relevant leader, you know, go make changes because you absolutely care and understand what it takes to be one. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Ngozi. You're so heartfelt in everything that you're saying and I feel like that really resonated with people. So thank you so much for being here and part of the Women Tech Global Conference today.

Absolutely. Absolutely. This is a topic that matters so much to me because, you know, sometimes you're bound to that word leadership, but it's probably one of the most important roles you could have and uh you don't have to be in a company even in your home to be considerate of that. Responsibility is a big deal. So, thank you.