WRITTEN BY METTE SILLESEN, LOUISE FREDBO-NIELSEN AND ANNE SKARE

FROM MBATO

MBSFROM MEDIOCRE BUT ARROGANT

TO MIND, BODY AND SOUL

T H E F U T U R E L E A D E R

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MBA is getting a dumb and overused buzzword. It has gradually (after the 00’ies) lost its special sta-tus as “the shit” in the bu-siness world. It might be cool to have an MBA on the resume but it causes big problems if you don’t have your mind, body and soul (MBS) with you. Its time for you to listen lou-der to yourself and not only use the left side of your brain and doing what you think other people are expecting of you. With an MBS you are making a much better investment because it’s an invest-ment in yourself. It’s not just a fine certificate but also a holistic method, a philosophy of life, and a daily practice that will ne-ver get outdated. It’s the missing link that can lift you from a strict manager to visionary leader.

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FROM MBA TO MBS

So I was sitting there. At Fancy pants

Business School and was taught

Personal Leadership Development. We

read about Gandhi, Mandela, Churchill,

and Katharine Graham. And then sud-

denly the thought strikes! There are

none of these world leaders who went

to business school. Fuck…

Later that same year a good old fri-

end visited. A real corporate shark of

the international kind. He smelled like

burned matches. We talked about his

career and how he was tired of money

and profit but now he had moved on to

a new death star and a new leadershit

job version 2.0 and then everything

would get a lot better. The conversa-

tion turned to MBAs and he said “oh,

that was just the best time of my life, I

learned so much”. “What did you more

specifically use it for?” Sounded the

humble question. “Oh, oh I used it a

lot. I used it for… I.. I.. on that project…

hmm… To be honest… I never did. It

was crap. Come to think of it, after the

MBA everything started to go wrong in

my life”.

MBA – Mediocre But ArrogantOnce upon a time a just having MBA

on your resume was a direct entrance

ticket to the promotion, clout, and $$

in your bank account. But those times

are over. Today everybody does both

half and full MBAs. Yes, you can even

do a mini MBA and micro MBAs in

24 hours. Just like extreme sports the

MBA education has become Mr. and

Mrs. Smith; you are no longer utterly

impressed when the neighbor again

completed an ironman – because the

guy in 7B and even your sister also did

that! The times where a MBA certificate

was the entrance ticket and statements

like ”Wow, you must be clever and one

of the chosen ones! How did you get

sponsored for the 2 millions tuition

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fee?” is far-gone. But it’s actually not so much because the

concept inflated that you should look in another direction.

No, it’s because the future labor market no longer need more

Masters of Business Administration. The MBA is a manager

education and it’s good for operation and process. Leadership

is something completely different. In the future we will be

looking at skills like vision, empathy, and risk-willingness as far

more important. Specifically, it will more important to:

o See the connection in complexity and accommodate it

o Create followship – to get your employees to follow you instead of controlling them

o Create a space where your coworkers and employees can achieve their potential

o To know the limits of your own knowledge

o Have compassion and empathy, being able to put yourself in other peoples’ place

o Be brave

o Be a front figure for something to believe in, including fighting for moral, ethics, and principles

o Not at least to be able to think for yourself. And to think big

Cancel your seat on the benchDoes this sound a bit fluffy? Maybe. Then let us open the

windows completely and let in a fresh wind instead of

holding on to the old smelly rubbish.

We already feel technology exceeds

human intelligence. Computers and

robots will increasingly take over many

of jobs that people do today. But what

technology does not possess, and which

will increasingly be crucial for being

success in the future labor market, is

jobs of interpersonal character and the

ability to navigate and make sense of

the technology. We futurists forecast

that towards 2030 about two billion jobs

will disappear because of automation.

In the future it will be desirable to

be great at analysis when rational and

heavy data decisions can be made with

our electronic helpers. The mid-level

manger will just be extra fat on the

company’s belly. And the bank director

who climbed the career ladder, because

he was good a mental arithmetic, is

sitting on the bench. It’s not the point

to create fear for unemployment but

to stress that you need to upgrade

your skills to be successful in the future.

Human competences. And skills that are

completely unique for you.

MBS – Mind, Body & SoulThe choice is yours: you can conti-

nue headless (and moreover heartless

and soulless) down the traditional care-

er path and blindly follow the stream,

slowly get eaten up from inside by of

all the leadership books you have read

but never used to create value in the

real world. OR you can re-saddle and

start focusing on your MBS (no More

BullShit).

MBS means to have a balance between

your mind, body and soul. MBS is not

a quick fix or something you can study

for. It should go though the body, be

understood by the brain, and accepted

by the soul. MBS is a journey toward

destination ME and it will never end

– maybe not even at the grave. Still

MBS has success criteria: to have all

three dimensions in everything you do

because only then can you live your

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So wave goodbye to other peoples and especially your own obsolete models. There is no big man coming to tell you what you should do. You have the full responsibility. You are the key to change – and you have all the possibilities.

life’s purpose. Without stress but instead with a feeling of

balance. Your MBS is the road to your success (meaning

and happiness) both professionally and personally. It’s all

about living in accordance with your principles, the ability

to create your own reality, achieve your full potential, and

live a truly authentic life.

Do you resist, or fear change? Stop it!People often scream in agony when it comes to change

and especially when ‘the new’ is messing with all that we

thought was previously good. We did not, for example

burst into happy gospel song when we found out that the

‘light’ products we stuffed our selves with up through the

00ies was far worse than the original sugar bombs. Or

that it is twice as health damaging to go jogging around

the trafficked lakes in Copenhagen during rush hour as it

is to smoke a package of cigarettes. Therefore you might

not consider it as the funniest thing to realize that all that

knowledge you have gathered though centuries only truly

comes in handy when you want to beat your dad-in-law

in Trivial Pursuit. Your computer is far smarter than you!

Just look at IBM’s Watson who gave the Jeopardy cham-

pions a beating. Listen to your inner voice. Yes, the future

is demanding. It would be so much easier to just lean up

against everything you thought and believed you had

to do. All that you believed would make you happy but

showed out to be based on the old, outworn and outda-

ted criteria’ of success. So when you catch yourself falling

back into your old worldview is there nothing left to do

than STOP IT. Just stop it!

Choose yourselfA person who has implemented MBS in life is James

Altucher. James Altucher is a New York based entrepre-

neur who daily blogs about his experiences and call for

FROM MBA TO MBS

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us all to take responsibility of our lives.

James Altucher hit rock bottom and hit so

hard he almost went through – bankrup-

tcies, million$ mortgages, divorces, loss

of friends, suicidal, addict, etc. – But he

worked his way back by, as he so simple

puts it himself, choosing himself.

According to James Altucher it starts by

choosing yourself with health in our four

bodies: The physical body, the emotional

body, the mental body, and the spiritual

body. Sleep, exercise, and a healthy diet

are all essential for being happy and in

balance but it is not enough just to focus

on the physical body. The other three

bodies also need to be maintained and

trained on a daily basis. In other words

it’s all about strengthening the balance

between mind, body and soul. Because

MBS is much more than well being, flexi-

bility and stress coping. When Buddha left

his home it was not to become flexible

and lower his stress level but to become

transformed and enlightened.

Inner demons and old ‘jargons’You will quickly discover that following

your heart is not as easy as it may sound.

When it suddenly becomes specific and

comes down to daily MBS rituals and

practices it can actually seem frightening.

A lot of people are actually more afraid

of the light than the darkness as absurd

that might sound. To follow our hearts

and do what we wish deep inside can

scare us much more than to live a life with

unresolved dreams in a clotted mess. So

prepare yourself on letting your demons

bite your butt in the process.

And if you don’t hit yourself in your head

with old jargons like “meditation is for

hippies in orange clothes” and “I can-

not measure it so it is not serious” then

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others will do it for you. In Denmark we are world

champions in scaremongering. We are afraid of the

unknown, taking risks and doing something diffe-

rent. So when your colleagues, friends, and loved

ones are trying to convince you that you are taking a

crazy step and you should instead read your mana-

gement books, then remember it is just the monkey

brain which doesn’t like change. Forget them! And

choose yourself! Some of what is defining us most is

our social circle. If you want to balance mind, body

and soul then be with people who care about you

for what you are, just as you are.

American suits in lotus positionIn Silicon Valley, the center of the world for inno-

vation and future-proofing, you find one of the

biggest concentrations of spiritual awareness. Here

thrive engineers, programmers, and entrepreneurs

among vegan restaurants and offices equipped

with meditation rooms and ambient technology.

And every year in the end of august they do

something so wacky as going to the Nevada dessert

and leave their mind, body and soul for a week of

raw creativity for the Burning Man Festival.

You should actually take a look at your fellow

citizens ‘over there’. In contrast to the Danish per-

ception of feeling safe the Americans’ are not to

be locked to the threadbare office chair but to take

responsibility and live out dreams. They are not as

afraid to make mistakes because they don’t think in

success versus failure. The mentality is that it’s okay

to fail because you learn from your mistakes; they

develop you and make you smarter and stronger.

So wave goodbye to other peoples and especially

your obsolete outdated models. There is no big

man coming to tell you what you should do. You

have the full responsibility. You are the key to

change – and you have all the possibilities.

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IDEAS TO GET MBS INTO YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE

You can implement MBS in your everyday life in many ways. The most important thing is that you choose things that you’re comfortable with, and do it at a pace that suits you. Here are some rituals that we’ve tried to make into daily routines in Future Navigator. Feel free to steal them and make them into your own:

1) Meditate every day (5 minutes is enough to begin with). Meditation is one of the techniques that are radically going to change our lives. liv.

2) Visualize: We all use at least 5 minutes every night to imagine our dream future and sense how it feels in every inch of our soul. All meetings are visualized the night before the meeting takes place. It is both fun and makes meetings more efficient – in that way we kind of know what it is, the others will say.

3) Work with your energy: Do what you have the energy for, exactly

when you have the energy, instead of forcing yourself to work non-stop and monotonous. Researchers have in fact proved that you are far more effective when you follow your body’s energy.

4) Practice yoga (like hot yoga) as it is one of the only sports we can think of that really unites mind, body, and soul.

5) Lifelong learning: Lifelong learning: We are for example as we speak doing online courses in Neuroscience at Harvard and Enlightened Sex on the Mind Valley Academy.

6) Gratitude: Write a gratitude diary. In future Navigator we all write down 1-3 things daily that we are thankful for. It’s a scientific fact t when we focus on gratefulness.

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You may be thinking, ”yes yes, got it.

Balance, health, and soul is all fine, but

why is it so wrong with that MBA? The

answer is simple: The MBA is ”more” and

not ”better”. It is a clear manifestation of

the old more-paradigm where success is

measured in growth, expansion, optimi-

zation, break-even, number of likes, und

so weiter. And the future does simply not

need that. The future needs conscious

people, who feel everything’s connected-

ness. No one in the future gets successful

alone, and the world will only improve

when we work together and support each

other’s skills and potential. We must the-

refore strive to choose the things that

create energy and change and strengthen

relationships, and consistently opt out of

the things that cannot be turned into

real value. In other words, just think for a

moment, before you pay through the nose

to get an MBA and risk lacking sleep, jobs

and comfort when 1-2 years is over. And

ask yourself if you in this process are going

to work with the integration between your

mind, your body and your soul. Or is the tie

tightened so much that the body and soul

cannot be contacted by the mind?

So if our burnt out MBA friend from earlier

had invested in his MBS instead, we’d bet

our futurist-hats that he both had the most

amazing time of his life and had been

able to tell us what value he had crea-

ted. The Gordon Gekko era and industrial

mindset is history. The future needs visi-

onary leaders (and not more managers);

leaders who have a holistic approach to

their environment and lead with all their

intellects -

the cognitive, the emotional and the

spiritual.

Whatever you choose, it is important that you make it a ritual. Routines, rituals

and persistence - and dare listen to your soul, your body and your mind. They

are actually your three best friends and they’re all trying to tell you something.

The more frightening the message is, the more you need to hear it, and the

more radically, your life’s path will change. For the better - for you.

MBS – A better investment If you can prioritize MBS in your everyday life and take your MBS-training as

seriously as other tasks on your to-do list, you will in time (about 100 days)

find that MBS is far more valuable than an employment contract, retirement

savings, insurance, a master degree, and not least the MBA. Why? Because

MBS gives you a fundamental security and authenticity, because you have

consistency between your mind, your body and your soul; what you are and

what you do.

FROM MBA TO MBS

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