The authors examine the beliefs driving the dominant capitalist and democratic systems that govern the West. They believe we need to change the way we think to imagine a future where all life flourishes. For them, social transformation must be at the scale of previous transformations like the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. Accomplishing this will require change across many social systems, but the authors target one in particular: MBA programs. The authors opine that business schools must ground MBA programs in the liberal arts and science traditions of the great medieval universities while challenging students to approach their work as a calling and using organizational methods and resources to create values-driven, society-scale change.

John R. Ehrenfeld looks to the present model of the brain, in which fundamental rationality is taken for granted, and asks if the answer to the need for systems change lies in the ways the human brain works. This argument raises provocative and (perhaps) discouraging implications. If our economic, social, and political systems reflect the biological structure and function of the brain, what is the potential for changing those systems? Does systems change require fundamental change to cognition, and, if yes, how might that be accomplished? What are the ethical implications of equating systems outside the body with systems inside the body, given the apparent diversity of human thought and behavior? Do we risk valuing one way of thinking over others? If yes, will the privileged group occupying positions of political power decide system structure and function?

This first of two Amplify issues probes the necessary scope and scale of systemic solutions. What does systems change mean? What systems need to change, and how? Which possible future world do we want, which do we need? How can markets deliver such change?

The authors conclude this issue of Amplify by analyzing systems for governing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in markets in the US. They argue that public-private partnerships (PPPs) have the potential to fill the void in market governance left by the failure of the government to enact comprehensive climate change legislation. The authors highlight the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) as a tool that provides companies and other organizations with the means to make specific, credible plans to achieve decarbonization. They argue that aligning PPPs with SBTi target setting would be an effective mechanism to accelerate carbon emissions reductions.

When looking at the characteristics of both the Industrial Revolution and the new knowledge revolution, there is a synergy between them that is critical to helping us understand how to reconcile them.

Healthcare and life sciences companies are applying machine learning, Internet of Things, big data analytics, wearables, blockchain, and other advanced technologies across various processes and operations. Simply put, the degree of innovation taking place within these industries utilizing these technologies is stunning — even to the point where we are seeing new business models that could potentially threaten existing industries.

The elusive question, “Are we doing enough?” is the one we ask privately and quietly when reflecting on our progress toward workplace inclusivity. We ask this question among ourselves and feel somewhat reassured that no one else quite knows the answer either. However, bigger questions remain: Why are the achievements of diversity, equity, and inclusion always somewhere in the future? Why are they always “bonuses” beyond profitability, sustain­ability, and achievement of an organization’s mission?

Curt Hall focuses on the benefits of integrating unstructured data into electronic health records. He describes how biometric data, lifestyle data, and general healthcare information can come together to help clinicians, researchers, and health/wellness companies better understand the effect of patient health behaviors and lifestyles on potential approaches and treatments. More personalized medical treatments, improved health trend identification, and lower healthcare costs are all possible outcomes.

Five Arthur D. Little Partners and Principals predict that big data will move the healthcare industry’s digital transformation forward, providing better admission rate estimation, more effective chronic-care treatments, and a reduction in medication-error rates. Their article includes detailed descriptions of eight drivers of data-driven healthcare: technology trends, data quality and availability, data security, an enabling ecosystem, public-private partnerships, patient participation, the need for better change management, and the development of employees with data analysis skills.

Cutter Expert San Murugesan looks at why health data is so valuable to cybercriminals, why criminals are often successful in their attacks, and the cost of these breaches. He outlines seven technologies/approaches that can help: authentication and access control, encryption, data anonymization, mobile device security, monitoring and auditing, artificial intelligence, and zero trust. Murugesan concludes with a list of processes that should always be in place to secure health data.

Jacek Chmiel examines current challenges in the data processing space. He outlines the issues stemming from multiple health data standards, the need for more developed data quality processes, and the industry’s perhaps unnecessary aversion to data streaming. Chmiel offers hope in the form of federated analytics and federated learning to allow more collaborative data processing between countries and proposes increased use of automation. He also advocates for employing publicly and commercially available data sets and looks at how natural language processing, machine learning, and quantum computing are the future of data-driven pharma.

The authors relate how the data science team at Sanofi’s Toronto, Canada, pharmaceutical manufacturing site moved from a reactive to a proactive operational mode to enhance data analytics and increase efficiency. They describe the prescriptive analytics solution they developed to significantly reduce reaction times when manufacturing issues occur. Their live data analytics engine accommodates various modeling approaches and performs additional data mining.

This Advisor takes a closer look at cyber resilience: companies must protect data systems against cyberattackers trying to take advantage of pandemic-related changes and must adjust their crisis management measures to ensure continuity of activities when a crisis develops.

Leaders need to avoid falling victim to the sunk-cost fallacy. Measure your organization’s perceptions about its emotional investment as well as whatever reputation, political capital, money, time, or any other resource it has committed to the project thus far. The most important step to freeing yourself from making poor decisions based on sunk costs is to recognize the logical fallacy. Even simply being aware of it will help you make more rational decisions in the future.

This article is a compilation of contributions from the Guest Editor’s colleagues at the Atlantic Systems Guild, who believe that the work modes of the pandemic years may have signaled a change in the way we need to work from now on. The article is organized into six potential patterns, from reinvention of the office, the value of group work, and challenges of remote work to work-life-balance, team cohesion difficulties, and the potential to move to an entirely virtual model.

Bill Fox advocates for leaders to transform internally in a way that enables them to shape the future rather than just respond to events. He describes six areas of growth that are key to transformation: forward thinking, self leadership, inner awareness and intuition, inner-leader journey, listening and dialogue, and understanding how the mind works. Fox stresses that insight for new leadership resides not in the “other”; rather, it is accessible to everyone. By enhancing our ability to look and listen within, we shape our world from the inside out.

Debabrata Pruseth and Pooja Subramanian take a sweeping look at how managers can use psychology to mitigate the challenges of today’s changed work environment. The article describes how their Prism View Framework can help us change our work culture, which is based on planning and certainty, to embrace uncertainty. This involves understanding employees’ mental well-being; their need for meaningful goals and flexibility; and the roles of digitization, personalization, and communication. The article also discusses the softer skills that managers can (and should) use to form and sustain successful teams, including self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

Robert Fuchs says self leadership can help us understand teams, ourselves as leaders, and better ways to select and train new employees. He begins by explaining the difference between self and identity (we change identities to suit the situation, but we don’t change our “selfs.”) Fuchs then describes how fragmentation of the selfs makes people less able to use signals from the self in decision making, so we must extend the concept of responsibility beyond our contractual obligations as employees. He explains the importance of understanding the relationship between the soul, the mind, and the body, leading to a discussion of how strong self leadership can result in sustained productivity.

The team is an integral unit of work. Yes, there has always been romantic talk of the superstar, the super-programmer, the one who can outperform a team of 10 mediocre developers, but if you truly watched our world for many years, then it is clear that delivery of the real work is done by teams. In some cases, it comes from teams of teams. And that is why teams are worth studying and are good grounds for discussion; they are fascinating — hence, the reason for this issue of Amplify.

The authors offer their own Agile Teamwork Effectiveness Model via five teamwork components (shared leadership, peer feedback, redundancy, adaptability, and team orientation) along with three coordinating mechanisms (shared mental models, mutual trust, and communication). They describe the three main ways their model can be useful. First, colocated teams can better understand how their team works by reflecting on how well they meet each factor in the model and by using behavioral markers to identify ways to improve. Second, it helps distributed teams, multi-teams, and teams doing safety-critical development to evaluate themselves and make improvement. Third, it’s a way for Agile teams not doing software development to better manage themselves, provided they’re doing knowledge-intensive work.

Jim Brosseau explains that culture and leadership are connected by the form in which power is wielded in an organization. He uses John R.P. French and Bertram Raven’s five forms of power (coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent) to show how these forms result in certain leadership processes and company culture. Brosseau then uses the Lift-Slab Organizational Model to show why organizations in an unpredictable environment must have a participatory structure and a project-centric approach to succeed.

Most cyberattacks come from known vectors and methods that are well-defined. As we explore in this Advisor, these threats can be effectively defended against by ensuring that basic security measures are in place.

Explainable AI (XAI) goes deep within the AI system to identify the reasoning behind recommendations, verify the data, and make algorithms and results transparent. Such explainability reduces biases in AI-based decisions, supports legal compliance, and promotes ethical decisions. This Executive Update explores the need for, importance of, and approaches to making AI systems explainable

CIOs and CTOs must steer their organizations toward the right technology portfolio to effectively realize sustainable business models while generating value for stakeholders. Their role in continuously assessing, designing, and implementing sustainable business models by engaging effectively in a sustainable business model canvas can ensure a future-fit business, which will take organizations closer to a zero or negative impact on socio-ecological systems.

CIOs and CTOs must steer their organizations toward the right technology portfolio to effectively realize sustainable business models while generating value for stakeholders. Their role in continuously assessing, designing, and implementing sustainable business models by engaging effectively in a sustainable business model canvas can ensure a future-fit business, which will take organizations closer to a zero or negative impact on socio-ecological systems.