Don’t Waste A Good Crisis! – Barry Bloch

Opening the 5th annual COO Leaders Summit with ‘Don’t waste a good crisis – Lets be Optimistic’ was Executive General Manager of BGC Contracting, Barry Bloch. Throughout his career, Barry has had extensive experience in many different sectors with a focus on people development. Working for companies such as PwC, McKinsey, Heidrick & Struggles and Rio Tinto, his experience is unparalleled. Barry has also developed skills in providing organisational and cultural transformation, as well as specialist people support.

Holding a Masters degree in Industrial and Organisational Psychology and being a registered psychologist, Barry opened the summit with an optimistic approach. Any Chief position will be a difficult one, faced with many challenges and the unfortunate crises. However, in the current economic crisis, leadership is insufficient and COOs need to be courageous and not waste a good crisis. 

A good crisis – an opportunity to embrace the ‘Art of the Unknown’ and to challenge our ‘Uncommon Nonsenses’. It is this ‘uncommon sense’ where Barry believes, teetering on the edge of chaos can make a business thrive. Organisations are able to become more “adaptable and dynamic operate in a zone between order and disorder”.

Barry pushed COOs to move from leading change with ‘Clockware’ to driving transformation through ‘Swarmware’. Clockware is the rational planning and decision making, that can only work with a high degree of certainty. Whereas, Swarmware fosters “experimentation, intuition, risk-taking, incubation, exploration and the freeing up of individuals working at the edge of knowledge and experience”.

This  conversation opened up several questions from the COOs. If you have any questions tweet them to @COOLeaders and use #COOLeadersSummit! Or join the discussion on our LinkedIn page!