NYT Columnist And Author Tom Friedman On Leading In A New Age

“The world is becoming fast, fused, and deep.”

 This was Tom Friedman’s declaration on a recent virtual event with more than 140 executives – from both our CEO Leadership Alliance - Orange County and the Higher Ambition Leadership Alliance community.

I’ve followed Tom for many years, read his books, and have always admired his perspectives. As a columnist for the New York Times and a prolific author, Tom is an ever-curious learner. He writes about companies and leaders that are doing well and creating good in the world. Like our CLA-OC network, he is focused now on collective, collaborative work that drives local and regional progress. 

Here are a few highlights from our hour-long conversation.

According to Tom, the old binary left-right model just doesn't work anymore. Our fast, fused, and deep world demands ecosystem solutions, what he calls complex adaptive coalitions. Think of the transition we’re going through as similar to the shift from classical, binary computing to quantum computing -- going from flipping a quarter to spinning a quarter. 

“The only way to lead in this world is if you are in multiple states at the same time.”

Fast
When it comes to fast, Tom used the example of higher education. He described how the half-life of skills is getting so short that companies are building their own in-house education systems for just-in-time learning, rather than fully relying on colleges and universities. 

“If I showed you IBM’s in-house university or the Infosys in-house university...it would blow your mind. What’s happening in the education space is going to be an emergence of giant ecosystem platforms, where traditional universities and community colleges are going to merge with these business learning platforms.”

It’s already happening with IBM and Northeastern University, where students can take just-in-time learning classes on IBM’s platform, while IBM employees can take traditional college courses from Northeastern. Here in Orange County, we are encouraging educators to work with the industry on the design and implementation of scalable pilots to expand work-based learning opportunities for high school and college students. 

Fused
Tom recently interviewed the chief legal counsel for Qualcomm and learned about the complex relationship the company has with the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. Rather than a single relationship, Huawei is Qualcomm’s customer, supplier, competitor, partner, and shared global industry standards setter. So, when Qualcomm is forced to change its relationship with Huawei, it affects many facets of its business.  

Deep
Deep technology capabilities are leap-frogging the innovators ahead of the regulators. Tom shared a great story of a visit to Israel where he had the chance to go for a ride through Jerusalem in an autonomous driving car with Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua, complete with hills, curved roads, and even donkeys.

“To develop a self-driving car, you actually need to develop and deploy in the same place, because you're constantly iterating. To deploy a self-driving car, as you're developing it, you need an insurance law that defines what constitutes safe for self-driving vehicles...So Mobileye convened an ecosystem. They brought in Volkswagen, the rabbis who run Jerusalem, and the Israeli ministry of transportation. Together, this complex adaptive coalition wrote a law for safe self-driving cars. The law was so good that Google now tests its self-driving car in Jerusalem, and China just took the whole law and translated it into Chinese and made it their law.”

From 30,000 feet to the sidewalk
Tom shifted the conversation from global to local by sharing a story of the small town of Willmar, Minnesota. His aunt and uncle lived there, and he visited them there over a span of 50 years.

We can all learn from the progress in this community. From a 100% white Protestant or Catholic population in the 70s to today where nearly 50% of the town is a minority, including Latino, Somali, Asian, and Native American residents, the town is a microcosm of the growing diversity that has been occurring across the U.S.  

“So why is Willmar doing so well? First, necessity is the mother of inclusion. When you're a small business owner or a farmer in West Central Minnesota, you need labor. It’s the towns that have learned to manage the necessity of inclusion that are thriving today. The second thing is they have a high density of ‘without authority leaders’ – people who say, ‘you know what, I’m not going to let this town fail.’ And they step up as ordinary citizens to help lead change.”

Tom told the story of the fire chief who allowed local Somalis to gather for Ramadan at the fire station because there was no mosque. None of this happens in a straight, easy line. A lot of people didn’t like it at first, but he said, ‘too bad and let the Somali Muslims proceed.  

The third thing that’s happened in Willmar is those leaders without formal authority have coalesced around a complex adaptive coalition to manage the ongoing engagement needed to sustain how the community evolves. That’s where business leaders have partnered with education, government, and other non-profits to address the investment needed in their community to build a thriving future for all. In Willmar, a series of community dinners were organized and then funded by Blue Cross and Blue Shield. The dinners helped identify priorities for the town such as combined toddler and elderly daycare services and programs to help Somali parents recognize autism. Think about it – simple dinners around a table where trust is built and solutions to complex problems are worked out. 

 Bridging the rural-urban divide
Questions from our participants led Tom to talk about the potential of small and rural communities and the need to grow the number of, and access to, digital jobs for the workforce living outside of urban centers.  

“If you want to be able to extend the potential and the benefits of digital work to the whole country, we need to be setting up workshops, opportunity zones, investment centers, and learning centers for digital skills all across rural America. And you need connectivity. Broadband is to the 21st century what electrification was to the 20th century.”

All of this leads to an anticipated shift where people can choose to live where the cost of living is lower, and the quality of life is good. People will be able to work from the locations of their choice. This means cities will have to compete on both cost and quality of life to retain workers. 

The power of trust
Tom challenged us all to ask this question: How do I push authority down to the highest trust level? 

“My teacher Dov Seidman likes to say, ‘Trust is the only legal performance-enhancing drug.’ You can go so fast. When there is trust in the room, it’s like a hard floor you can pivot off of and dunk a basketball, but when there is no trust in the room, it’s like the Syrian desert. You can’t jump a millimeter.”

You can listen to the full recording of our event here, to learn more and hear many other fun stories – from Tom’s visits with staff at Google and Walmart to his admiration for Gilmore Girls.