Leadership training has long been a cornerstone of professional development, with the MBA often seen as the gold standard. But in a world increasingly defined by complexity—think AI, sustainability, and global interconnectedness—are we preparing leaders for the challenges of tomorrow, or are we stuck solving yesterday’s problems?
This question sits at the heart of my conversation with Ed Fidoe, the founder and CEO of the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS), in the latest episode of Sticky From The Inside. Ed believes that while traditional leadership programs have their merits, they’re not enough to tackle the complex, multifaceted issues of our time. Instead, he advocates for an entirely new approach—one grounded in interdisciplinary thinking, adaptability, and foresight.
Why the Old Ways Might Not Be Enough
For decades, the MBA has promised to equip leaders with the tools they need to succeed. Case studies, pattern recognition, and deep dives into past business scenarios have been the backbone of this model. But as Ed points out, those lessons, while useful, don’t necessarily prepare leaders for the shifting terrains of today’s world.
Here’s the challenge:
How do you train leaders to thrive in environments where rapid technological change and societal pressures collide?
What skills are critical for navigating ecosystems as complex as global supply chains, urban systems, and digitized economies?
Can leaders afford to think in silos when every problem—from climate change to inequality—demands cross-disciplinary solutions?
These questions form the foundation of our discussion and highlight the urgency of rethinking how we prepare the leaders of tomorrow.
What Makes a “21st-Century Ninja” Leader?
Ed introduces the idea of the “21st-century ninja”—a leader who doesn’t just master a single discipline but thrives in complexity. These leaders understand how to engage with experts across fields, from AI to sustainability, and think long-term in a world often obsessed with short-term results.
During the episode, we explore:
Why foresight is more valuable than pattern recognition – Leaders must look forward, not just backward, to anticipate and navigate emerging challenges.
The need for adaptability and interdisciplinary thinking – Combining insights from multiple disciplines is essential for solving today’s most pressing problems.
How to train for complexity – LIS’s approach organizes education around real-world challenges, not abstract disciplines, to cultivate versatile, future-ready leaders.
Rethinking the MBA: A Call for Change
Ed also delves into why the MBA, despite its legacy, may no longer be fit for purpose in its current form. While it still holds value in terms of credibility and foundational business knowledge, he argues that modern complexity requires something different. Leaders need training that goes beyond functional skills like marketing and finance to develop broader perspectives and the ability to engage with complex systems.
The Bigger Picture: Leadership as a Societal Imperative
Throughout the episode, one thing becomes clear: the stakes for leadership have never been higher. Organizations can no longer afford to ignore issues like trust, sustainability, and the long-term impact of their decisions. Leadership, as Ed explains, isn’t just about managing teams or hitting quarterly targets—it’s about shaping a better future.
Why You Should Listen
This episode is a must-listen for anyone curious about the future of leadership and education. Whether you’re an aspiring leader, an educator, or a business executive, you’ll walk away with fresh insights on:
How to break free from traditional models of leadership training.
The skills and mindsets that will define successful leaders in the coming decades.
Practical steps for building foresight and interdisciplinary thinking into your approach.
Listen Now
You can listen to the full episode using the embedded player below or read along with the full transcript provided. Dive in to discover why leadership training needs a revolution—and how you can be part of shaping the leaders of tomorrow.
What do you think? Are traditional models of leadership training still relevant, or is it time for a radical shift? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Full Transcript
Andy Goram (0:10 - 3:49)
Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition smashing, consistently successful organisations from the inside out. I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them and create tonnes more success for everyone. This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that.
Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses, the sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it. So if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on.
Leadership at a Crossroads: Why Traditional Approaches Fall Short
Okay then, leadership today is, I believe, at a crossroads.
The world of work is evolving at an unprecedented pace and the traditional playbook for success, whether in business, education or leadership, is, in my opinion, starting to show its age. Technological disruption, global crises, shifting of societal values and the rise of purpose-driven business models are rewriting the rules of what it means to lead effectively. For decades, an MBA has been the gold standard for aspiring leaders.
It promised a toolkit of skills to navigate organisational complexity, drive results and build profitable businesses. But is the MBA of today fit for the challenges of tomorrow? Can we truly rely on a system born in the industrial age to prepare leaders for a digital, interdisciplinary and deeply interconnected world?
Let's consider the future. Automation and AI are changing the nature of work. Climate change is forcing businesses to rethink sustainability and long-term strategy.
Generational shifts in the workforce demand not only more inclusive workplaces but leaders who understand the nuances of purpose, belonging and ethical decision-making. Against this backdrop, the question arises, what are the ninja-like skills that aren't in common practice today but will be absolutely critical tomorrow? Think about it.
What if the leaders of the future need to be experts in adaptability, empathy and systems thinking? What if the ability to weave together knowledge from different disciplines, to collaborate across boundaries and to act decisively under uncertainty becomes far more valuable than your ability to master spreadsheets or champion case studies? Whatever those needs for tomorrow are, how do we start preparing leaders for that future today?
And this is exactly where today's desk comes in. I'm thrilled to welcome Ed Fidoe, the founder and CEO of the London Interdisciplinary School. Now Ed and his team are reimagining education and leadership training from the ground up.
They've built an institution that's designed not to solve yesterday's problem but to equip a new generation with the tools, skills and mindset to tackle the complex, messy and interwoven challenges of tomorrow. So what does that look like and how can we as individuals and organisations prepare for a future that's probably already knocking on our door? Well, we're about to take a look.
Ed, welcome to the show.
Ed Fidoe (3:49 - 3:50)
Thanks, Andy. It's good to be here.
Andy Goram (3:51 - 4:10)
So good to have you here. When I found out about you and your organisation, I was so intrigued. I felt I really, really want to get under the skin of what this interdisciplinary school is all about and how it's affecting leaders of tomorrow. And here we are, which is fabulous. It's the joy of doing a podcast. I finally get to speak to you.
Ed Fidoe (4:11 - 4:12)
That's great. Well, I'm looking forward to it.
Andy Goram (4:13 - 4:25)
Do me a favour quickly, Ed, before we get going. Can you just give us a little bit of your background? Tell us who you are, what you're up to and what sparked this passion for interdisciplinary education?
Meet Ed Fidoe: The Vision Behind the London Interdisciplinary School
Ed Fidoe (4:26 - 7:13)
Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, I'll say what we are to start with. I mean, we are a new university.
We opened three years ago. We were the first new university to open with degree awarding powers since Warwick University in the 1960s. So it's quite a historic thing that we're part of here.
There was a legislation change in 2017. It's not that we're the best thing since 1960. But every other university has had to open with a validating partner, which basically means a babysitter, another university telling them what to do, which means you don't get any innovation, right?
So we don't have that. We can award LIS degrees from the start. And that meant we could create this very innovative degree.
And we're offering a bachelor's, we're offering a master's and we're looking to launch an MBA next year, which I'm sure we could talk more about. And then my background is before this, I co-founded a school, a 4-18 school in East London in Stratford called School 21. And that was after the government had introduced the free school policy in 2010.
Michael Gove brought that in with the coalition government when he was education secretary. And which is interesting because I've got many mixed feelings about Michael Gove. I even have mixed feelings about the free school policy because I think it's a slightly mad policy that anybody can start a school and get publicly funded money to do so.
And there weren't enough, in my view, checks and balances around it. But of course, as someone who'd always wanted to start a school, and I can say a bit about why I did, it was a gift. And so I quit my job at McKinsey, which is where I was working in 2010, to start the school.
We opened in 2012. So I'm sort of working backwards, if this is not too confusing. I was a management consultant for about four or five years.
I was a theatre producer before that, which basically meant I put on plays with my friends and lost money. And then I did mechanical engineering at Imperial. And I went to a tiny school for 14 years the whole time, an all-through school in the East Midlands.
I was there from four to 18. There's only about 300 people in the whole school. And then on the side, I was also in a TV show, a children's TV show called Woof, which if your listeners are between the ages of about 43 and 49, they may remember.
And to sort of finally answer your part of the question, why am I doing this? I think my educational experience had some slightly peculiar characteristics. So this sort of small school, very focused on exams, combined with going off and making a children's TV show, really made me think there's got to be more to school than just academics, basically.
And then when I was creating the school with Peter and Ollie, my co-founders, I started to think, wait a minute, we're just narrowing everything down. So by the time they're 18, they just choose one subject. That seemed mad to me too.
So that's where the interdisciplinary comes from.
Andy Goram (7:14 - 7:54)
I absolutely love that. Because I think the topic of interdisciplinary and what you've just described, I mean, I can't hide from it. My own two kids went through school with learning difficulties and had a tough old time.
They're finding their own way now. Brilliant. They've got lots of help along the way, but the educational system wasn't really set up to help them unlock and find their things, which is why I'm really interested in a different approach, which is what it sounds like for you.
You've sort of touched on what interdisciplinary means in the context of education. How's that relate to leadership and what you're doing, Ed?
Why Interdisciplinary Thinking is Crucial for Future Leaders
Ed Fidoe (7:54 - 9:35)
First of all, our argument for interdisciplinarity goes beyond just for leaders, which is that the problems we face in the world, the challenges we face, or even the opportunities we face in the world today, none of them are organised like a library, into corridors. We do these disciplinary segregations to organise knowledge, to make sense of it all. And they're really, really useful, because otherwise you just have a big soup of knowledge.
You go to school and just be learning stuff. So you go to an exam and you're like, what's this exam? It's just more stuff.
So they're really useful disciplinary categories. But as you get older, they become less vital, of less use, and actually they start to get in the way. You see this with young people.
This is where the kind of idea of a man with a hammer sees everything as a nail. It's a problem. If you're an engineer, you just see everything as an engineering problem.
You speak to academics, actually, and they do see if they're a psychologist, it's all about Freud, everything. So when you're dealing with complex problems like climate change, sustainability, AI, threat of large-scale war, just biology or just philosophy isn't going to crack it. We need a bunch of people, not everyone.
We need a bunch of people who can combine different disciplinary perspectives. And I think leaders in a world where organisations have to address these problems now. So if you're leading a company now, you cannot ignore some of the things I've just mentioned, technology, sustainability, these things, the impact of your company on the world around you.
Your customers want to know what you're doing about it, your employees want to know, and your future success depends on it. So you need to understand these interdisciplinary problems. And that's where interdisciplinarity comes into leadership.
Andy Goram (9:37 - 9:55)
And do you think then, when we think about the traditional models of education, in preparing people to face these challenges today, it is that almost rigidity or that narrow focus that is where they fall short. They're not fit for today's purpose.
Ed Fidoe (9:56 - 12:08)
No, I think that's right. I mean, you could argue collectively, if everybody studies all these different subjects, then collectively as a society, we've got this really good mix of all the different kinds of experts we need. Now, there's a separate argument you can have about whether you actually become an expert if you do a degree in something.
I mean, I got a mechanical engineering degree and I got a decent 2.1, but I'm not an engineer. My parents would certainly think I wasn't much used to them fixing anything that went wrong at home after I got an engineering degree. So I think there's a question about whether you become an expert in these things.
Are you an expert physicist after three years of studying it? The reality is that expert physicists would say, no, of course not, if you're an undergrad. So that's the first thing to say.
But the other thing is that I would say, of course we need people who have spent many years nerding out on some very obscure part of either neuroscience or chemistry or nuclear physics. We need those people. We're not saying we don't.
But why is our entire education system essentially homogenous, the same? Every university offers these disciplinary things organised by disciplines. Basically, every university offers the same sorts of courses, right?
We've got 80,000 people studying history. Nothing wrong with history, but why do we think studying history is something that that proportion of all of our students should be doing rather than combining the historical perspective with other things in the degree that you're doing? So I think it's kind of too homogenous.
It's all very samey. Every university is doing the same. There's very little variety, really.
When you really pull back and think, God, what could education be? A whole range of different things. All universities sort of look the same.
I blame the way that research is organised for that. It's effectively a jobs market for academics. They're trying to move around.
So it's useful for universities to broadly look a bit like Oxford and Cambridge, because that's kind of where the academics all want to end up, right? So there's not much incentive for the academics to create this different model, because it might not help their career progression. But that's not good enough when we've got to think about what society needs from its workforce, and I don't think it needs a bunch of people that have all been educated in a very narrow discipline.
Andy Goram (12:09 - 12:21)
So practically, what does it look like for an LIS student? How are they tackling this complexity, this blend, this mix in how they're studying? And how would you see that as really very, very different?
Ed Fidoe (12:22 - 14:09)
Yeah, well, I mean, I'll talk about the undergrads to start with, because it's concrete, and that's been running now for three and a bit years. We've had our first graduates go through it. So the key thing, it's quite hard to innovate in education, by the way, because education has been around since we've been around.
It's tens of thousands of years, right? We've been passing on knowledge. I think what we're doing is unusual, though.
So rather than organising by discipline, we organise by a complex problem. So that's the thing around which we organise all the knowledge, the problem at the centre, not the discipline. And it means that when you start in term one, they're looking at inequality, and another term, they might be looking at AI and ethics, right?
So let's take AI and ethics. They will start a term, and they will be understanding from some organisations that we bring into the degree some of the problems they're wrestling with, concrete problems around AI and ethics. And then they will take a philosophical perspective, a legal perspective.
They might take a political science perspective. They might take a sort of machine, understand something about machine learning and look at it from that perspective, how algorithms work and so on. And they will be being taught by a philosopher, a machine learning expert, a legal scholar, who have joined us from LSE, Birmingham, Oxford, to teach with us together.
So they're being taught these different perspectives, all pointing at the same problem. They're also learning a bunch of interdisciplinary, what we call methods. So they're learning statistical analysis, coding, which are kind of quanti.
And they're learning some qualitative ones as well, like survey design, visual representation of data. So now, you tend to find these methods in different disciplines, but we're extracting them and saying, look, actually, what employer doesn't want you to be able to handle data in all these different ways? Collect, analyse it, communicate it.
So that's how it looks different. And then by the third term, they're working on a problem that they're passionate about, but it has to be complex, and they have to kind of apply these methods to it.
Andy Goram (14:09 - 14:25)
I think that's fascinating. It's such a flip from, I'm going to learn this topic, and then go out, how can I apply it? To, here's an issue, what are all the things I can do to help understand it, get under the skin of it, find some solutions, and put something into practice?
I mean, I think that's...
Ed Fidoe (14:25 - 15:05)
I think it's training. Coming back to this kind of person with a nail, seeing everything's a nail, right? It's like, if the habit of mind is, I'm thinking about this problem now, what would an anthropologist, how would an anthropologist think about this problem?
Or how would a biologist think about this problem? And it's quite different often. And if you can get into that habit of mind, you don't need to be an expert, expert biologist to start to think, right, if I treated this problem as an evolutionary problem, how would I think about it?
I can think about innovation in my organisation, like Darwin would think about evolution. Then I'm thinking about mutations. It's just a very different way than if a computer scientist is thinking about innovation.
And it just opens things up.
Andy Goram (15:05 - 15:41)
I think this is what's really interesting. And look, I have a vested interest in the leadership piece. And you've touched on the MBA.
And I touched on that in the intro about the traditional MBA, right? And I imagine, well, I imagine lots of guys that you were surrounded with at the McKinsey's had their MBA badges and all those sorts of good things. But you're taking a different sort of look at that.
Where does your MBA find its difference? What sort of skills do you think are the most critical going forward that you're really going to be blending in to your MBA approach?
Rethinking the MBA: Developing Foresight for Complex Systems
Ed Fidoe (15:42 - 18:58)
Well, my headline is about understanding the shifting terrain in the world around us. You can understand the shifting terrains and develop foresight. That is valuable.
And you can develop foresight. It's hard to develop foresight by looking only at lessons of the past. Lessons of the past are useful, which case studies at MBA is usually is the methodology.
They're very useful. You get some pattern recognition. You get hundreds of cases if you go to Harvard Business School.
But I think you need something more than that if you're going to develop foresight in a very, very complex set of shifting terrains. And I'll say a little bit about how we think about that. Our sort of exam question we set ourselves was, look, I think the Harvard Business Case Study is about 100 years old today, pretty much.
It's sort of roughly evolved then. It was actually created with a very different philosophy. It was very socially minded.
It was rooted in the role of business in society. And I think through the post-war years and the rise of a more capitalist approach, it got somewhat captured by a different sort of philosophy around just optimising for shareholder value. And then, of course, it perpetuated that.
And it hasn't really changed. It's been a bit trapped. But I still think, even given that, if you did an MBA in the 50s or 60s, you would go into an organisation, even one of the big corporates, with a pretty unusual skill set, like this breadth of knowledge across the different functions and how they work.
It's pretty valuable and quite unusual. I'm sure you'd stand out. I don't think that's what MBAs are giving to people now.
They're giving them credibility. They're giving them a kind of badge, as you called it. They're probably giving them a pay rise, you know, in the end.
I'm not sure they're giving them a... I think it's about catching up with some of your peers. I probably need to do an MBA to catch up or sort of stop, rather than I'm doing an MBA because that will make me freaking stand out in the company.
That will give me the skills I really need. So the exam question for us is, so what are those skills? You called them the ninja skills, which I like that phrase as well.
Like, what are those skills which mean you're going to basically appear as this kind of otherworldly being in your company? Now, I think it's this. I think that companies do not understand enough about the shifts we have facing in intelligence, human and otherwise, the shifts we're facing in energy, the shifts we're facing in diminishing trusts in institutions, the shifts towards long-termism, thinking long-term longevity, the shifts towards really complex ecosystems now that's around supply chains or how we're living in major cities, how companies interact with each other, things like the global financial system, the fact that everything's digitized. These are very complex ecosystems which we're only just sort of getting to grips with.
Now, if you've got someone in your company who has a pretty good grasp, not world expert on these things, but they can have a conversation with an energy expert, an intelligence AI expert, someone who's an expert in kind of human behavior around trust, who thinks long-term, short-term, medium-term, not just about next month's results. I think that's the 21st century ninja. And so that's what our MBA is going to be focused on, not the functions, well, not only the functions around marketing and accountancy and all the usual stuff.
Andy Goram (18:59 - 20:48)
And that's what I find absolutely fascinating because I would say there is still a degree of skepticism if we take one of those areas, if we take the area that I'm clearly biased, overly interested in, in the human behavior piece around leadership. There's still a jury out as to, well, do we really need these skills? We've got this far doing the things we've done in the way that we've done in previous years.
This is all a bit of fluff and nonsense. We need to get people to do what they need to do. I think also within that human behavior piece, we've got another shift going on in the generational shift, whether it's social science or whatever.
But we have a big skills gap hitting our way with the boomer exit, and we have a larger swathe of millennials and zeds, and goodness knows what alphas will be like when they come through, which have a different need state in the main. And actually, the elevation of that human behavior, the trust, the meritocracy, all those sorts of bits and pieces are, I think, really important today, but going to be even more important going forward. But combining those with the things you talk around are intelligence, energy, and particularly the long-termism.
Because a lot of these changes, particularly for things like human behavior, culture, what have you, they end up suffering because of the short-term P&L result today. And I guess tenure in businesses is becoming shorter. So, look, I'm going to be in this business for the next three years.
I'm going to maximize the P&L for three years. It's somebody else's problem after that. And that kind of short-term, long-term friction, I think, is really interesting how you've pulled out that more long-term view.
Because a lot of the bigger shifts and issues around environment, economy, and all that, they are long-term problems to solve.
The Case for Long-Termism in Leadership
Ed Fidoe (20:48 - 22:49)
They're not new. None of these are fads, right? And most things we've talked about, people have known about for 50, 60 years, certainly around climate and energy transition, certainly around AI and technology.
I mean, AI has been being written about by science fiction authors for 60, 70 years, at least, since the dawn of the computer or before that. The thing I say about long-termism is, you know, we thought long and hard about where value sits in all of this. And it's tricky because we don't want to preach, partly because I'm not sure we could even agree internally on what we would be preaching about.
You know, you talk about purpose. I think it's important. So, we sort of say, well, what can we all agree on?
We'd like people to care about a broader range of things, right? So, that would mean, you know, more than the bottom line, but we don't just mean that. It's like we want them to care about all kinds of things, right?
We want to expand the horizons of what people care about. That felt like that was a bit value-laden, but it wasn't. Someone couldn't say, oh, you're just a sort of, you know, it's one of those words like woke, or it's kind of uber-liberal, or whatever it is, right?
And the other thing is that we think there is a shift, and we actually also believe there should be a shift towards thinking about the longer term. You're starting to see this. You are starting to see people thinking longer-term, big businesses, small businesses, so on.
Even politicians are starting to make these kind of longer-term mission-led plans, 10 years, all that stuff. But the long-term thinking isn't particularly values-laden, but it does get you into discussions around thinking about the next generation, and thinking about the sustainability of the planet. It's just that that's not, it doesn't start with that.
So, it's carefully chosen as something which we think is a shift. What I'm trying to say is we're trying to be neutral on these shifts, not saying we should be more this, we should be more that. You're not taking a position, you're recognising them.
Exactly. So, it would still be possible to do our programme and be an evil genius, and we've helped to make it more effective. But one person's evil genius is another person's business genius, right?
Andy Goram (22:50 - 23:21)
Absolutely, Elon Musk. I mean, there's all these sort of things going on, which I think is interesting. When it comes to specific skill sets, because I think there's subject matter, and then there's skill sets and mindsets, where do things play out like adaptability, collaboration, empathy?
You've mentioned ethical thinking. Are they almost like non-negotiables now, from your perspective? I know you're not trying to take a position, you're trying to take an agnostic view.
Building Critical Leadership Skills for the 21st Century
Ed Fidoe (23:22 - 26:37)
Yeah. So, there's not necessarily a right or wrong, but you have to always think about whether you can teach these things explicitly. Yeah, that is behind the question, right?
How do you teach these things? Yeah, how do you teach things? So, do you and do you teach it through theory or practice?
And I also have to constantly have everybody thinking, and what should an academic institution be teaching, right? Someone very senior said the other day, we should teach people how to fire people well. And I think, yeah, people should understand how to fire people well.
We as an academic institution have no bloody idea how to fire people well, so we're not going to be teaching that. I'm not even sure I fire people well, right? I'm probably the only person that fires people around here.
I wouldn't feel I could teach anybody anything about that. So, you have to always ask that question as well. Now, empathy, what is that?
It's about understanding others to some extent, right? Lots of different definitions of it. I haven't sharpened my particular tool on that one recently, but you could say, if you're going to empathize with your R&D team at work, or even just the product person who's kind of making the stuff, right?
Then understanding more material science or understanding a bit more about the technology could really help you with that. Because we'll then be able to have a better conversation with them, better understand where they're at, and you can meet them where they're at. So, that's a form of empathy, right?
It's not emotional empathy, but it's kind of a technical empathy. There is something around the human condition, which I'm very keen for us to explore as kind of a cutting across these shifts. It comes in a bit with trust, it comes in a bit with long-term thinking around how the human condition, what it is to be us, to be human, has changed and has not changed.
Because you talked about Gen X, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, which we're on to now. There's clearly differences in motivations, behaviours, expectations, and habits. There's lots of reasons why you could point to why that's true.
Mostly around technology, social media, so on. But not just that. But there are many, many things.
I would argue, mostly, we're still the same. We're still human, and millions of years of evolution can't be thrown off track by Steve Jobs just creating an iPhone. But understanding what those are also can help you with empathy and can help you as a leader.
I think teamwork, you can't be taught in theory. I think you have to just practice. Our students will be working together in various different ways.
I think there's good and bad ways of doing that. Quite often in the education establishment, people will set up people in teams without a leader. I think that's really dumb.
It very, very rarely happens in the real world that you have a team that comes together without somebody in charge, a captain, or someone at least. You have to think about how you can set these projects up for success and try and emulate what it is in the real world. But in the end, there are some things, back to our original point, that you will learn in the workplace and you shouldn't be learning, or it's not the best place to learn it in an academic setting.
In the end of the day, it is more of an intellectual, cerebral pursuit, what we're doing, trying to understand how to apply these things practically. But there's some stuff you're not going to learn until you're on the job.
Andy Goram (26:38 - 28:19)
I think that's right. That blend of theory and practice is obviously really, really important. From my position, again, whatever biases I carry around, when it comes to performance and leadership and organisations, I'm a big believer in high trust leading to high challenge leading to high performance.
That little link between those three things. For me, trust underpins everything. When we think about the human condition and we think about human behaviour that will elicit better performance through people, which is what leadership is ultimately about, I think understanding not everybody sees things the same, having empathy for different positions, bringing in different perspectives, understanding how to practically build and manage trust, I think is hugely, hugely important. I think the teamwork thing is hilarious because I remember being dumped into various group projects within businesses with no leaders on exec potential programmes and me feeling very whiny because no one was pulling their weight. Then going to the course leader and saying, well, it's not fair.
No one's pulling their weight. She's like, well, that's your problem. Learn.
That was some sort of learning. I didn't feel particularly supported at that point, but it was some form of learning. This kind of notion that you're talking about, does it bring with it some barriers for you to be able to promote this interdisciplinary mindset, or are people, businesses, organisations, wide open to this stuff?
Is it challenging some beliefs? Is it causing you some unforeseen barriers to get across or are people running at you?
Overcoming Barriers to Interdisciplinary Leadership
Ed Fidoe (28:22 - 31:54)
It's pros and cons to it. There's a bit of both. We run our first foray into dealing with these more leadership types because we've got a bachelor's, which is obviously the undergrads you'd expect, but younger.
We do a master's, which is a mixture, but it's a more academic, interdisciplinary master's. This MBA obviously is squarely in the workplace zone. We do a programme called cross-functional leadership, which is a hybrid course that we run across three months.
In the end, it's a sort of taster for an MBA. It's doing some of the stuff we're going to be doing. It's very popular, so we get a diverse group of people interested in doing it.
A lot of people understand the benefit of an interdisciplinary way of thinking, but the thing that I think we sometimes get, and you might get this in your work, I don't know, is that people obsess over, what are the tools that you can give me that I can use on Monday? I get that challenge, and I get that, but there's a couple of things that I would challenge on that perspective. It's not that they're asking the wrong question.
They are asking the right question. I actually asked this same question to her years ago. I was doing a bit of research for a project I was doing as a consultant.
I spoke to a professor at Harvard Business School, and he gave a really interesting answer on this. He said, you would think that the tools like how to build an Excel model, how to do a discounted cash flow analysis, whatever, these sorts of tools would be the tools that give the illusion that that's the tool you can use on Monday. Actually, you might not need to do any of those things, possibly ever.
Some of the people learning that, it is completely useless, but it has the illusion of being useful on Monday morning because it's a tool. I didn't know how to do it. Now I do.
Whereas something more conceptual, like helping you understand how to look at the world in a completely different way, whether it's we talk about these things called super concepts, which are concepts that come from disciplines like biology or physics or engineering, which now can have absolutely loads of applications. Evolution is one. I mentioned earlier about thinking about innovation.
Evolution is a super concept, which you can often apply to all kinds of different things. Entropy would be another one. This idea of entropy is the second law of thermodynamics, which is essentially everything goes to mush unless you work hard at it, right?
That whole cultural entropy. Literally everything. The universe.
Unless you put energy in, the amount of entropy, i.e. mush, will increase over time unless you inject new energy into a system. That is a super concept. Now, people go, how am I going to use that on Monday?
Well, let me tell you this. You're never going to see the world again the same way. Once you really understand that concept, or evolution and how it really works and how it really gets here and how potentially that concept could be applied in your business, you're never going to see the thing from Monday morning, from now, from straight away.
Never again. It'll be useful every day in a tiny, tiny way. It's that sort of lattice work, that kind of build up of all of these different ways of seeing the world.
So that's a block for us, which is that a lot of our stuff isn't the kind of, you know, how to put an Excel model tools that you get at many business schools. So that's a blocker for us. Another blocker is a lot of people go to business school for a brand name.
And we're three years old. Most of your listeners won't have heard of us. They might have seen some of the tube posters in London if that's where they live.
But, you know, we're not targeting them at the minute. So that's, you know, that's a challenge for us because universities are big brands.
Andy Goram (31:55 - 32:13)
Do you think on the, I guess, on the buying side, the organisations, employers, recruiters are ready and looking for this stuff? I mean, it seems daft that people wouldn't be, but you're closer to it. What are people saying?
What are they looking at?
Ed Fidoe (32:13 - 33:51)
No, they are. They are actually. And I have a similar sort of suspicion that people might be a sort of suspicious people are bored with the existing provision.
I mean, you know, at all levels of management, they kind of once you've done the sort of one I want in various things, you just think, well, what am I going to do now? I mean, we talked to kind of a big, big accountancy firms and they say for our partners, they just don't know they can do sort of performance coaching, which tends to be sort of more in a game stuff, right? About you, how you see yourself, how you see other people, that stuff's vital.
But that's reasonably well provided for. But once you've got a coach or you've gone through some coaching, what's next? What's the content?
What's the other kind of education? So there's a bit of a gap and we're providing something different. So there's enthusiasm there.
They worry more. I mean, a lot of people go, yeah, it's a bit, it's a bit, you know, some of that stuff is a bit theoretical or a bit academic, you know? And I referred to the comment earlier about what the Harvard business professor told me, but I loved it.
I'm not sure the rest of my team would sort get it, but I sort of, I think people are hungry for this stuff. I think the rest of your team will get it, you know, give them credit. Many people now in the workplace have got a degree, they sort of done degree level academic learning.
And then their brain, those parts of their brain have not been fired up for a long time. They want to be intellectually challenged and in a way that they can translate it into the workplace. Because I, you know, obviously I think this, but we live in a more complex world than before leading an organization is a challenging intellectual pursuit, right?
I think, you know, keep it simple is a great mantra in many situations, but I think we've been keeping it a bit too simple. And we've had some of the fallout from that is the world we see around us.
Andy Goram (33:51 - 35:26)
It's a refreshing lens for, I guess, an existing leader to put themselves up against because they're going to come with their own biases and background and education and preferences, right? And this is, I think this, whether we like it or not, I mean, leadership comes in lots of different flavors, but what is shown to be important at the top ends up being important at the bottom. And so this kind of, if you can get the top guys really thinking about this sort of approach and encouraging it and evangelizing about it and running around, surely that's where it's got to come from, because I don't know what it's like with your work, but it's certainly in my work, I could sweat blood with a team of people from a company and get them running out of the sessions that we have together, you know, ready to take on the world, build great culture, sort out their own pond first, forget about the glass ceiling above them because people don't get it, you know, create amazing places for people work that people in other teams look over the shoulder and go, why can't we have some of that? Let's do that. But the reality is sometimes those guys do all of those things and then the guys still above them go, well, yeah, well, we're not doing any more of that.
This is the way we do things here. But if they have a different mindset, it's amazing the traction that then happens through the rest of the organization. I guess I'm trying to ask, where does the interest come from?
We talked about ground up, it's the guys who perhaps haven't really led too much, or are you using this for established guys who are trying to sort of move themselves on?
Ed Fidoe (35:27 - 37:13)
So what we find is that at every age group, every level of seniority, there's a minority of people that just look at us and go, that's how I think anyway. You've given it a name now. Okay, I'm an interdisciplinary thinker.
That's cool. Or we have this thing around interactional expertise, which means you're not, you're not the world's leading expert in something, but you kind of know quite a bit about it and can talk, but you're an interactional expert in quite a few things, right? Like a journalist might be in a bunch of topics.
Now, oh, you're giving me, I'm an interactional expert. Okay, cool. I've got interactional expertise in these four areas, and that means I'm uniquely valuable.
That makes me feel better, right? So there's a fair bit of that. And you find those people, or you get a 16 year old in a school who's thinking about, you know, I wanted to do all the A-levels, you know.
So, you know, not all of them are like that. I did a school visit this morning. I'm still doing a few, a couple of year.
And there was a student who's just like, I want to do computer science. I've always wanted to do it. I'm like, cool.
That's great. This university won't be for you. There was another student who said, you know, I'm looking, I'm fascinated by English, but I don't want to leave the sciences behind.
Um, so there's people at all, all the areas. And I think, you know, when they see our two posts or our, or our online ads or, or see an article in the press about us, they just go, oh yeah. Okay.
This is, this is me. And so, you know, we're early on. So we're getting those early adopters.
So those sorts of people who become in the end evangelists for us, it's a very personal thing. They're like, this is the, this is the place with my people. This is my community.
This is a place where I'm not weird or seen as a kind of useless generalist who doesn't know anything about anything. This is the kind of place that values that range of interests and curiosities. Uh, that that's who we're building our community out from.
And of course, we'll have to expand beyond that. We'll have to go in the end. We'll have to sort of convince the grumps who go, well, you know, the old way was good enough for me, but we don't have to do that yet.
Andy Goram (37:14 - 39:21)
But, no, we have to go back to the law of diffusion of innovation and get to the 18% tipping point and go where all the sunshine is, as I like to sort of say, let's go with the energy, go where people really want this because they will prove the case for those of us who are sitting on the shelf going, I'll just see what happens first. We need to go there 100%. And that's what I find really energizing and exciting about what you're talking about and what you're doing, because I think it is a, a different thinking approach.
It's a different practical approach and this kind of bringing together multi-skills, multi-experiences, but not like you say, not necessarily always expertise, but someone who can bring things together, have an appreciation of where these things may be linked or what the bigger picture might be and, and how to process thinking like that. I think that, I think it's fascinating. Um, I would be ridiculously churlish though, if I didn't ask you a question around values and purpose when it comes to the leadership part.
And I know we've said, we don't take a position, we must be more this, we must be more that. I, I get that. I am probably unreasonably biased in this particular area, particularly when I look ahead at the generational shift that we have mentioned and the importance of values and purpose.
And we've seen the growth in purpose driven organizations. And there are myriad examples we could pull out about companies that have really staked a claim and then lived up to it on a constant basis and have outperformed their competitors, retained amazing talent, naturally attracted, uh, like-minded talent to help them go forward. But so I have this belief that I, that many younger students, professionals are going to be of this mindset that they're going to prioritize purpose and values in an organization they go to, but also going to champion it when they, when they get there.
And so I know we've touched on a little bit in this conversation, but where does that play its part in what LIS is doing, do you think?
Embedding Values and Purpose in Leadership Development
Ed Fidoe (39:22 - 41:58)
So in one sense, uh, it's everywhere in everything we do, because everything's organized around complex problems and these are big societal problems. So it's like, you know, we don't, we, one of our terms in the undergraduate is organized around sustainability, sort of the climate emergency or sort of, you know, if you don't believe in climate change, don't come. So, um, and, and by simply saying we care about that inequality is one of them, right?
So that's one of the problems we look at. So it's infused with this stuff, but once you get into it academically, you have to be really careful in an academic institution to not just say it's this, this is true because I believe it. Right.
Yeah. Um, and it has, you have to be open to debate about different values and we have people with very different values in institution, you know, and then, and we sit in the conflicts we see today, particularly around, um, you know, the Middle East, uh, you to say to somebody, well, you just don't have any values or you're not taking a values based approach. We can seem sort of preposterous to them.
And then there's the Jonathan Haidt who wrote, um, uh, I forgot what the book was called now, but it was about these kinds of looking at the value system for Republicans versus the value system of Democrats. And it's quite interesting for me as someone on the left of politics, um, he was basically making the argument that the Republicans have got a sort of more sophisticated, they're drawing on a broader spectrum of values. They care about things like authority.
They care about sanctity and purity. They, you know, which people on the left just don't really care about. They care about those things as much.
Right. So they don't, they don't have to factor those in. So you've got to be really careful when you say, we're going to take a values based approach because people just go, well, obviously you must be in my values, right?
Cause that's what those are the right values. So that's the challenge with it. And that's why we're careful to talk about shifts rather than sort of things you should be worrying about because they're, because we believe they're important.
Now my, my feeling is if somebody wants to make a whole load of money and act like a complete, um, tyrant and make it a miserable work environment, but, but builds a successful, let's say car battery company, right. Um, you could make the argument on balance. That's, that's good.
Cause, cause, cause we, cause we need, we need more, we need better car battery technology. And as I said earlier, that will be possible to do that, but hopefully through helping you, our students care about a broader spectrum of things, um, then you'll have an uncomfortable time here. If you persist to just caring about the bottom line that I suppose that's it.
But, but what I'm basically saying is you have to be careful that you're not just in the end, preaching your own personal values. Absolutely.
Andy Goram (41:59 - 42:04)
A hundred percent. I agree with that. When it comes to company values or organizational values, what are LIS's?
Ed Fidoe (42:05 - 44:15)
So we actually just reviewed them back in there. So, so we, our first team formed in February, 2019. And we came up with one of the first things we did was come up with five values, which then endured for five years.
And we're, we're two or three of them of those five were really central to our daily operations two or three. We didn't talk about so much and that often happens, but one of them was be honest, which might seem sort of obvious, but when you're trying to convince 17 year olds to come to a university that doesn't exist, that's wrestling in truth, wrestling to get that time, um, you know, regulatory accreditation, we thought it was really important to just be completely transparent and honest with these young people about it.
And they really appreciated it in the long run. It really worked. Um, and now we've changed them because we've got a team of 40, 45, that was a crew of sort of six or seven.
And they all, most of those people have since left. So we, you know, we wanted to redo them and some of them are broadly similar, but you know, uh, there's one around curiosity, which you might expect if you're in an academic institution. Uh, there's one around rigor, which I thought was a really important one for us.
Um, and we're doing sessions now. We did one this week on rigor where we got a, uh, the person that was a maitre d' at Le Gavroche, which was the first restaurant in London to get the one, two, and three Michelin stars in the sort of eighties and nineties. Um, he was the maitre d' there for 50 years and we would, we were talking to him about what it meant for him, what rigor and standards meant and trying to kind of bring that value to life from a different perspective, just going to everybody, God, just do better work, you know, uh, and you just get this, this sort of idea, this kind of sense of pride that he had in just kind of this extraordinary service and rigor. He gave one little example, actually, he said, which really stuck with me, which is, um, the, he says he is blown away by the fact that now you go to a restaurant and you, and you give them your name and they, they tap your name on a little iPad.
They could see your name and then they tell you that someone's going to show you to their seat. And they don't tell that person, they never ever tell them that your name, whereas it used to be for him. He used to just be so important because he'd be constantly addressing you by your name because you've got it there in front of you.
Right. So this is a sort of rigor thing. And it was just kind of beautiful.
And he went through countless examples. So I think it's really important to start unpacking. You know, if you've got values, you've got to unpack them and spend time with them.
Andy Goram (44:16 - 45:19)
I agree with that a hundred percent. And I think the interesting link there is about honesty. So whether you are a Machiavellian, um, battery maker or, or whether you're the person trying to solve a lot of the world's ills, I think you just need to be honest about who you are and what you are. And I think this is the thing today is if you profess to be something that you're not, yeah, you have a problem.
Yeah. Whereas in the past we might have put up with it. I think the, the younger generations coming through now are more inclined not to.
And so from a leadership perspective, you know, focusing on the values that really matter to the organization, lead them to success and add value to the people inside that was just really, really important values of the past, which looked good to the city or investors or on a marketing campaign. Not so much if you don't live up to it. I think that's, I think that's, that's the thing for me.
Um, as always with these conversations, they run away and they, they happen very quickly. So we've come to the part of the show that I call sticky notes where I will Oh, right there. Yeah.
I mean, that, that is the shock and awe of it!
Ed Fidoe (45:21 - 45:23)
You warned me about it and I haven't been thinking about it along the way.
Andy Goram (45:24 - 45:47)
So for me, when we're thinking about trying to prepare the next generation of, of, of leaders and you're taking it from a, from an educational perspective or maybe inside organizations, maybe what three pieces of advice that you could fit on three little sticky notes, would you leave behind today?
Sticky Notes: Ed Fidoe’s Three Key Pieces of Leadership Advice
Ed Fidoe (45:48 - 47:19)
Okay. Well, one would be about, um, intellectual range. Now that sounds a bit highfalutin, right?
But I'm from a university. So you gotta expect that. Um, I, I think appreciate that everyone in your organization has got a broader intellectual range than you realize, you know, they don't have to have been to university to have an intellectual range.
People read, people listen to podcasts, read blogs. They have, they are interested in a whole range of stuff. And if you can unlock that intellectual range, you might be, you might be really onto something.
The second thing I would say is be open-minded about the kind of trainings that you embrace. Don't just be worried about stuff that you think is going to be useful on Monday morning. You should welcome, um, training that is a little different and unusual because by the way, when, when an unexpected problem comes, whether that be COVID or something else, right?
There's going to be more of these things down the line. You're going to need some knowledge that you didn't think you were going to need. So in your company, it's really helpful to have a set of kind of slightly unusual skills and trainings, which when crisis hits might mean you can put two and two together and get four rather than three.
Um, and what would the third one be? Well, we've, you've talked a lot about values. And so what's my sticky note on values.
I think you've got to be really hard to, you've got to work really hard to find collective values and be open-minded that people might have a different value system to you, but that that could be valid. Um, there might be a lovely, you know, good person with some surprising clashes, but that's okay. Work hard to find common values because you can do it across an organization.
So how you come up with those values really matters.
Andy Goram (47:19 - 47:39)
Love that. Absolutely concur with all three of those fantastic stuff. And I've really thoroughly enjoyed talking to you and, and getting to chat to you a bit before as well and understand what you're doing and what, where it's, where it's going and the possibilities I think are just, are just fantastic.
If people want to find out a bit more about, about you and the school, where should they go?
Ed Fidoe (47:40 - 48:03)
Well, the only social media platform that I'm on is LinkedIn. So I think it's either Edward Fidoe or Ed Fidoe. You'll, you'll find me.
There's not many Fidoe's around F-I-D-O-E. And then the LIS, uh, is on all the, it's on all the platforms. And, um, typically it's something like LIS.ac.uk or sort of we are LIS. Those are our handles, but you'll, you'll, again, you'll find us. There's not many interdisciplinary schools around and maybe, maybe put it in the show notes or something.
Andy Goram (48:04 - 49:01)
Absolutely. But all of those things will be in the show notes. All the links I can, I can, I can muster will be there.
Ed, thank you for taking a time out of, I know a very, very busy schedule to come and talk to us today. Really appreciate it. And the very, very best of, uh, of luck with all of it.
Thanks a lot. I've really enjoyed it. And it's been a great conversation.
You take care of my friend. Okay, everyone, that was Ed Fidoe. And if you'd like to find out a bit more about him or any of the topics we've talked about today, please check out the show notes.
So that concludes today's episode. I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward. If you have, please like comment and subscribe.
It really helps. I'm Andy Goram, and you've been listening to the Sticky from the Inside podcast. Until next time. Thanks for listening.
Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.
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