Episode #19
Human Leadership: Why Experience Has No Expiry Date with Faisal Abdalla
Faisal Abdalla became CEO of a 27-country business, stepped down in his early seventies - and took the HR job. What happens when experience refuses to expire? Dean van Leeuwen and Graeme Codrington open this month’s episode with the grey elephants on their radar they see stampeding: the reshaping of global supply chains from efficiency to strategic dependency; 17 countries with simultaneous wildfires; China’s one-child policy time bomb; and OpenAI’s models autonomously hacking Hugging Face - raising questions about whether AI singularity has already quietly arrived. Our guest this month is Faisal Abdalla - former CEO of ALJ Saudi Arabia Motors, now its Chief HR and Kaizen Officer, and author of Emonomics - The Economics of Positive Emotions. With 50 years of leadership across 27 countries, Faisal makes a quietly radical argument: the human being is always the most important driver of any organisation. And love - in the fullest sense of the word - is the practical foundation of effective leadership. You’ll take away: • Lead through informal power - the kind that can’t be granted or taken away • Experience is a strategic asset - the wisdom that leaves with every forced retirement is irreplaceable • HR leadership requires a different patience - culture change takes years; the leaders who understand this build institutions This episode explores: Ageing Populations and Intelligent Advances - two of the seven grey elephants we track at TomorrowToday Global. The Elephant you could name: When was the last time your organisation retired someone whose wisdom you couldn’t afford to lose? Resources mentioned· · Emonomics: The Economics of Positive Emotions - forthcoming book by Faisal Abdalla · Abdul Latif Jameel (ALJ) - global family business founded in Saudi Arabia, operating in 27+ countries (alj.com) · The Jameel Principles - values framework at the heart of ALJ, centred on respect, empathy, and giving back · Kaizen - Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement, embedded in ALJ through its Toyota origins · Hugging Face - open-source AI platform; OpenAI models reportedly gained unauthorised access (huggingface.co) · AI Singularity - Sam Altman’s claim that the point of indistinguishable human/machine intelligence may already have arrived · Ray Kurzweil - futurist who predicted singularity circa 2045 · ELIZA Emulator (elizaemulator.com) · China’s one-child policy - and its second/third-order demographic consequences · The seven grey elephants framework → tomorrowtoday.consulting/greyelephantsintroduction Sponsored by Achilles - building anti-fragile, transparent supply chains. achilles.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
