Wanderful: Inspiration On The Go... with Arne Gast

Arne Gast, Senior Partner McKinsey & Co

“We have to re-write all the rules.”

The core of Arne’s work is creating organisations for the future and making change personal and systemic in high-stake transitions.

As the global lead of McKinsey’s “Powering Performance Transformations” offering, Arne helps to create positive change – through shifts in culture, stronger leadership, new capabilities and liberating structures. McKinsey’s team of more than 1,000 change experts include their own Aberkyn facilitators, communication mavericks, implementation experts, learning architects and organization specialists – trying to combine the best ideas and evidence- based methods for the leaders they serve.

Currently, Arne is working on a book called “Schokland” – exploring the role of leadership teams in this decisive decade. Previously, he was part of the teams writing the books Leadership at Scale, Beyond Performance, Reorg and (as a student at INSEAD) Blue Ocean Strategy.

Arne’s social impact passion is education. He co-founded Leerkracht Foundation with a committed team, and over the years helped more than 1000 Dutch schools with an inspiring cultural change approach to improve outcomes. He also worked with the Dutch-Moroccan Leadership Institute, Young Leaders Malaysia, schools for highly gifted children, and multiple universities including the founding of ISB in Hyderabad, India. His own educational background includes an MBA from INSEAD Fontainebleau, and a MSc Organization Economics from Erasmus University in Rotterdam –preceded by a year of Liberal Arts at Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi.

Arne splits his time between the Netherlands and Malaysia, with his wife, 4 children and a selection of dogs and cats. In his free time, he loves playing or coaching field hockey, gardening and growing apples, dabbling with black-white Leica photography, and visiting small book stores and reading many, many books.

 

Timeline

00.00 - 00.44 Theme & Intro.

00.45 - 05:08 Introducing Arne Gast.

05.10 - 08.45 An inspiring teacher: the story of Mr Bone and the thirst for knowledge.

08:47 - 10.02 The areas of unknowing: the mischievous desire to help people touch the areas they are not familiar with.

10.05 - 11.30 How things work and re-writing the rules: re-inventing and finding a new world.

11.31 - 15.35 Arne’s appetite for the future comes from hope.

15.35 - 16.30 What we can learn from the Nordic countries.

17.00 - 19.39 Re-inventing how we talk to each other.

19.40 - 23:50 Rejoicing in the not knowing: thriving on reinvention.

23.51 - 26.43 Life was ‘easy’ for companies in the past - now we have to do things differently - considering C02 neutral / net positive / digital transformation /

you cannot source from China or Russia anymore / full diversity / climate cri sis - how do we do all of this?

26:48 - 30.40 The role of story and the methods we like to work with: What’s the new narrative?

31.00 - 31.30 What is to what if… rather than concentrate on what the current stories are and let’s imagine different futures.

31.31 - 33.15 The mind is like an art gallery - a lot of Rothko at the moment - can we put a Van Gough in there?

33.48 - 38.22 Telling stories and using experimentation as a way forward.

38.24 - 41:22 Arne’s metaphor - Schokland

41.25 - 44.00 The Wanderful Exercise: Seeing the world as an art gallery

44.15 - 48.45 Epilogue

48.47 - 49.54 Outro and Credits

 

Quotations

“We have to re-write all the rules. It is not the end of history. It is only beginning. It is our time in the next decade that we are going to re-invent it. We are going to do regenerative agriculture together and find the new world.” (Arne)

’Men will not survive, they will prevail.’ (William Faulkner)

“I like starting things anew and when something gets too stable, I want to move on.” (Arne)

“The wisdom is in so many different fragments of people that if we can talk to each other and co-create with each other then we can find a new place.” (Arne)

“I like to spark some joy in the unknowing. It’s all an experiment we are doing. There are no answers anymore and even the questions are unclear right now.” (Arne)

“Be kind with people.” (Arne)

“Narrative is one of the most powerful tools we have. It’s a way to really inspire people.” (Arne)

“Amplification of the bad news is going up and it limits people from taking agency to say what do I want and what is the world I want to create.” (Arne)

“Imagine different futures - let’s use that.” (David)

“The story is the first step. I’ve seen it without really being there. Just by thinking we get the medicine.” (Arne)

“Dip a toe in the water as an experiment but just keep telling yourself… it’s just an experiment.” (Arne)

 

Links

Arne Gast (Guest)

Website: https://aberkyn.com/humans/arne-gast/

David Pearl (Host)

Website: https://www.davidpearl.net/

Instagram: @davidpearl_here

Andrew Paine (Producer & Audio Engineer)

Twitter: @ItPainesMe

Instagram: @Sonicoyster