Sasha’s story

Leadership 2042

To conclude we will describe a day in a leader’s life in 2042. Most companies have adapted to Industry 4.0 and maybe even to 5.0. Some even talk about have passed these stages and that we are approaching what the Russian physicist Kardachev called Civilisation 1.0. Some would say that this is particularly true for the leader we are going to talk to today.

Sasha is 33 years old and one of Sweden’s youngest CEOs for a stockmarked listed company. She was born in Luleå and still lives there even though the head-office of her company is in Lund. She is therefore one of the first people born in the 2010s in a leading role in a large company, a company she started herself some 15 years ago. Those born in the 2010s were a generation that were notable in the studies that Quattroporte did during the tough period of the 2020s.

She has by her own admission never actually visited the office. Partly for environmental reasons, but also because in the 2040s it is less necessary to leave an extremely efficient and experience-rich post-physical world in exchange for a low-grade reality – as we usually say.

Hi Sasha, nice to meet you! Can you tell us a bit about your background?

- Sure, I didn’t have that much fun at school as I have a mild neuro psychic variation. This made it difficult for me to make a good impression in social situations. During the 10 years in school and college there was no one who wanted to have lunch with me or spend time with me. My mum felt sorry for me and she used to pick me up and we went to eat together several times a week. I was alone. But at the same time I found school easy. Very easy. Nothing was difficult, except maybe woodwork and needlework.

When I finally started at University things changed and I found my thing. As you may know I started my first million-dollar company when I was 20. It was based on a whole new process with the possibility to scale. To create beautiful things especially adapted at an individual level. The company was bought by IKEA and this made me economically independent at the age of 23. At that time I had already started the company where I work today.

Impressive. But is that really true? It sounds a bit fanciful. Some people including some of your employees claim that they have never met you. And it is notoriously difficult to find any of your schoolmates that can remember you at all. It’s not strange that the people you mention don’t remember me. I was very introverted -almost invisible to some.

There are those who mean that you don’t exist, that Sasha is an artificial system. You are simply a cobot that has developed into the perfect leader, with hard-coded values and a high level of morals and ethics.

- I think your questions reveal more about you than about me. Would it really matter if I were a robot, a person or something in between? As you know it has been possible to improve cognitive and physical abilities using AI for a long time. It is possible to use microchips operated into the body and technical aids.

In a way your fixation reminds me of the time when it was extremely important to classify people by sex stereotypes. That time has passed. What I am is less important than what I have accomplished. But you should not take it for granted that I am a creation of AI.

There is, as you know, an ethical debate today about whether post-humanism will lead to the end of humanity in the long run. That is to say that there is a unique human spirit we should preserve. Is that not important to you? Yes, but that type of pseudo-intellectual discussion we can leave to one side in this interview. We were going to talk about leadership not about post-humanisms consequences.

What is the biggest difference between your leadership, and how things were done in the 2020s?

The perspective of time. I am an activist and an innovator and I try to get my leadership team to see beyond the next quarter, year or even our lifetimes. My perspective is how we will be remembered in 60 years time. Will we be seen as a group who did something valuable and unique? We have an open dialogue and it is a non-hierarchical, inter-disciplinary leadership team. All viewpoints are equally important and it is fine to change your point of view. Then of course we have completely different tools today compared to the 2020s. I can together with the leadership team explore questions and scenarios that would have taken months to do earlier – if that would have been possible at all.

Is it your main priority to ensure that the company performs well and creates value for the shareholders?

Yes, that is what I do. The business plan and the original idea that I formulated for my first company is really the platform that has carried me forward in my leadership. To create objects and services that will never decrease in value and which will last, if not forever, then at least beyond our lifetime. Take our care robot Ethel, who is constantly being updated and adapted to your personality and your needs. It is even becoming more aesthetic. It solved many of the problems with recruitment that plagued the care sector in the 2010s and 2020s. An Ethel does not have a defined lifetime and it can follow you during your whole life if you so wish. It will mourn you if you choose to die and keep the memory of you alive. To the next user. You will become a part of a greater circle of life.

It is possible to run an effective operation that is also meaningful in a broader perspective.

If you could send a message to leaders in the 2020s what would it be?

The most important is your vision. Not how it will be achieved. If you have a creative and smart team you will find the solution. Even to those problems that seem insurmountable.

Have a clear idea how you operation will do good in the long term.

Realise that the big problems that you face today will be solvable, but you and your leadership team often lack a language to describe what is necessary. Who could have made social media understandable in the 1980s or the brain-to-brain communication that we have today in the 2040s? Very few.

Understand that the employees are everything. In the 2020s we began to understand that we faced a global shortage of human capital. Do everything you can to find the right colleagues and let them join you in a never-ending learning journey.

See technology as a possibility and not a threat. Work together with AI systems. Don’t create a battle between AI and humans.