"It is spectacular to experience what a week in the wilderness does to me. Not only there, but even now, months later, I still profit from this every day. "Co Berendsen, Partner Boer&Croon Nextrategy

Implications

For leadership this means that the single most important task of leadership is to unleash human potential. While professor Roberts from MIT found that people’s own assessment of the utilization of their potential in organizations lies at 40%, John Gardner estimates that we use only 10% of our god-given capacity. Most of us recall specific circumstances where we as individuals or in groups realized our potential at traditionally unthinkable levels.

The challenge for us as leaders of organizations is to make these exceptions the rule and to do the same for our personal lives, as our professional and personal lives become more connected in the new paradigm. As Bill O’Brien, former CEO from Hannover Insurance noted:

“The success of an intervention depends on the internal state of being of the intervener”