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Leaders are increasingly overwhelmed by the complexities of decision-making. Past models, experience, and pattern recognition can be misleading. The very silent signals at the field level that beget transformative leaps are too often missed. Leaders must re-learn how to hear and how to listen. The journey starts with the very Self as a basis for building organizations for continuous transformation, growth, and survival. "Free Energy Governance", developed by Bijan Khezri, seeks to address this very challenge. The course, transcending the boundaries of business strategy and individual self-introspection, offered new perspectives on the concepts of purpose, generative prediction-error minimization, and self-actualization, encouraging students to challenge and develop their inner compass to lead others: moving from ‘Me’- to ‘I’-awareness.
What is "deep purpose"?
The course kicks-off with challenging students to develop a sharpened self-awareness for life choices and aspirations. In a nutshell, what is the ‘deep purpose’, i.e., finding meaning beyond the Self? A well-grounded deep purpose shapes the vision for an organization and, for that matter, a nation-state. Khezri impactfully demonstrates that being articulate about deep motivations at a personal level is the critical foundation to lead at a higher level. Too often we fail to ask why any particular organization should exist in the first place? Too many organizations lack a deep purpose and fail transforming a business activity into a source of inspiration. Equally, it applies at the individual level: deep purpose-derived aspirations not only help navigate with clarity ambiguous and volatile decision-making/opportunity environments but inspire others to join the journey.
Applying the "Free Energy Principle"
Building upon Khezri’s doctoral thesis, published as ‘Governing Continuous Transformation’ (Springer, 2022), the neuroscientific concept of free-energy minimization, coined by leading neuroscientist Karl Friston, is introduced. Effectively, it is about generative prediction-error minimization and lends itself as a convincing foundation to bridge the human/machine interface in increasingly AI-transformed business environments. We can generatively approximate the ‘emerging future’ by making predictions and generate actions that provide (Bayesian) feedback-loops to improve our predictions and prediction models. Indeed, the world can be turned into a supervisory signal, kind of a crystal-ball. However, it requires that the operational field level (nervous system) and the decision-making cockpit (prefrontal cortex) are re-wired for improved top-down/bottom-up information/signal flow powered with the ability to act. Empowering top-down/bottom-up connectivity and developing new cognitive skills are the future challenges for organizations. The company becomes a prediction-machine. Higher cognitive capabilities will be critical for the human to successfully co-exist and exploit the machine as competitive advantage.
Lessons learned
The course provided a unique perspective and journey for students to move from self-introspection at a deep personal level to advanced governance models addressing the structural, cognitive, and capability challenges in the context of live business case studies. It is not enough to have a career purpose. You must have a deep purpose beyond the Self to be a successful leader. Once each student summarizes their individual learnings from the course, a stronger sensitivity and awareness for the Self emerges. But above all, the students appreciate that successful predictions managements is predicated on the clarity of a deep purpose, at a personal as well as organizational level.
