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  3. Rend Stephan
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Rend Stephan

Founding Partner and CEO
endCX
Country or state 
France
Available to 
Europe,
North America,
...
City 
Paris
Fee 
Languages 
English,
French,
...
Volunteer
Yes

Personal Details

Bio

Hi, I am Rend Stephan: Strategist, Speaker and Author (www.rendstephan.com).

20-year management consulting, primarily at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), advising leaders and decision makers globally, in business and government, primarily in enabling growth and ending complexity.

I witnessed first-hand how complexity has overwhelmed strategy, organization, execution… and why managing complexity is a fallacy that has proven to be very ineffective.

I founded the end-of-complexity firm endCX®, to rally leaders around the world to End Complexity for True Performance and Ultimate Leadership™ (www.endCX.com). We do so via Business Intelligence, Management Consulting, Active Investments.

New book (The Ultimate Leadership Challenge®) planned for Q2, 2020.

Current position (3)

Founding Partner and CEO

endCX

Chairman

Arameic

Speaker | Visiting Professor

HEC Paris

Degrees (3)
MBA, Strategy/Entrepreneurship
London Business School
1997
MBA, Strategy/Finance
Australian Graduate School of Management
1996 to 1997
Masters Civil & Structural Engineering
Ecole Centrale France
1982 to 1986

Presentations

Presentations (10)
The Missing Ingredient

So much has been said about leadership – most of it genuine, insightful and somewhat effective. Some approaches provide tips, tools, tactics; while others focus more on principles, mindsets, character.
But please consider this: why does every achievement drain you, your teams, your organization? Why is peak performance so elusive? Despite the expert advice, massive competency, and leadership development, two-thirds of all major initiatives fail to deliver.
What I’m here to tell you there’s a critical missing ingredient in the leadership equation, and it’s at the heart of most performance failures.
This missing ingredient is complexity.
Engaging with leaders and senior decision-makers around the globe for 20 years, I’ve witnessed complexity spread far and deep, eating away many leaders’ potential, denying them the performance and success they deserve.
Your ability to fight and defeat this Complexity Disease is the critical missing ingredient in your leadership equation.

The Complexity Fallacy

The way we think about and act upon complexity is wrong – dead wrong – and it’s dramatically affecting our performance, our sanity, our lives.
We’ve focused for too long on complexity management. But we hit a wall, again and again, only reinforcing the Complexity Disease to the point we surrender to it and/or become blind to it.
We’re first told the world is becoming overly complex, and then we’re bombarded with frameworks, approaches, initiatives, setups, programs – all quite complex in their own right – that are supposed to help us manage this complexity, and perform better in business, government, or life in general.
This is the Complexity Fallacy. And it is self-inflicted.
Complexity is not a concept “out there” in the world – we create it, we surrender to it, and we let it develop into a disease; then we suffer from it, manage its symptoms to reduce our pain, all with little foresight and courage to fight and defeat it – which is the only path to True Performance.

The Home Renovation Paradox

Renovating a home includes a series of rational decisions that add tangible value. Over time, considering a new replacement home become more difficult– even as you see new homes with a significant difference versus your well-maintained home.
What happened is that your home has become quite “complex”. Whatever improvements one can make, a newly built home will always better fulfill the owners’ needs – in a competitive sense.
That is the “home renovation paradox”: a series of otherwise rational decisions that nevertheless lead to a suboptimal (competitively speaking) outcome. This paradox can be seen everywhere.
Incremental improvements also allow complexity to creep stealthily in, bit by bit. We don’t notice it, and we continue to not take it into account in our decisions. We become used to it, it enters our DNA, so that, even in new programs, we can’t help but add complexity.
It’s time for a new mindset that allows us to escape this paradox at the heart of much under-performance.

The Explosive Mix

Decision-makers ask for more “expertise”, as it will surely generate more insight, reduce the risk of bad decisions, and lead to better outcomes.
This cannot be further from the truth – especially when three ingredients are present:
1. The subject at hand is ambiguous,
2. You assemble experts with complex approaches – for many, complexity is their “raison d’être”,
3. You surrender to complexity and accept the new world order of more is better (data, analysis, expert opinions) before making decisions.
In ambiguous areas, we should have tolerance for ambiguity, but we display none, and so we create more complexity, ultimately leading to worst outcomes.
Expertise is generally not insight – how to decide between 10 experts giving you 10 different answers?
We have chosen to adopt the complex frameworks of many experts, disseminating them across our professional and even personal lives. In ambiguous domains, this is explosive, and highly harmful. Time for this to stop.

The Complexity Definition

I find many attempts to define complexity to be complex in their own right. Hence I would urge you to focus on two insights, from Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”, and
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”.
The first positions seeking simplicity, and hence fighting complexity, as the ultimate goal.
The second explicitly positions complexity on a continuum and warns that going too far in reducing complexity may also be harmful.
I will also add a final insight: intrinsic complexity. Every system has an intrinsic (natural, optimal) complexity level, which is to be sought. I am sure you would acknowledge that a nuclear plant would be intrinsically more complex than an ice-cream factory.
We generally make false assumptions about the intrinsic complexity of a system i.e. we assume it needs to be more complex. This complexity fallacy mindset is at the heart of the complexity disease.

The True Performance Zone.

To fight and defeat complexity – holistically, relentlessly – and reach True Performance, there are three rules:
1. Take the Red Pill.
2. Reframe. Redefine. Redesign.
3. Lead with courage.
Unfortunately, we’re taught the opposite. Our lives are filled with:
1. Addiction to the Blue Pill.
2. “Don’t fix it if it’s not broken.”
3. Leaders overwhelmed by managers and experts.
When leaders consistently follow the three rules, they eventually complete The Ultimate Leadership Challenge, and reach the True Performance Zone. They will identify and act upon the critical missing ingredient in their leadership equation: complexity. They will earn the right to apply all the management and leadership skills and tools relevant to their personality, situation, and goals. They will fail successfully, as they positively learn from what is relevant, not negatively drown in what is irrelevant.
Otherwise, it’s not Leadership. Not True Performance. Just wasted energy and wasted potential.

Insight | Intent | Impact: the trinity of True Performance.

The 3 I’s : there is not competitive growth nor true performance within complexity - period. And complexity must be addressed holistically across Insight (the quest for being lucid), Intent (the art of focusing energy) and Impact (the bias for relevant action).

Inaction - or the art of standing still.

Or the art of standing still. Einstein: constant motion is not forward movement". How to balance the need for relevant action, without spinning around and exhausting the organization?

The Lonely Journey

Your leadership journey cannot be successful or rewarding without the critical missing ingredient: your ability to fight and defeat complexity. Without it, all your other leadership efforts and actions count for little, and cost too much.
Einstein said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
Instead of more frameworks to manage complexity, The Ultimate Leadership Challenge is offering you rules and principles to end it instead.
Complexity management frameworks are to ending complexity principles, what self-help blogs are to philosophy books. Yes, you may be able to improve a few things with self-help tips, but you need a deep philosophical mindset change, i.e. reworking how you fundamentally see the world, to really develop and grow, holistically and sustainably.
That’s the only way to earn the right to be the best leader you can be and want to be.

The 8 Principles

1- Beware of complexity management schemes: it is too complex to manage complexity - you need to end it, now!
2- Escape the trap of the extremes: complex views (the “experts”), and simplistic views (the “eloquent”). Striking the right balance is at the heart of your war on complexity.
3- Assume that ending complexity is the major driver of uplifting performance: you will nearly be always right.
4- Flip the Pareto rule: upon a major change, from 80 / 20 “don’t fix it if it’s not broken”, to 80 / 20 “Reframe. Redefine. Redesign.”
5- End complexity holistically: proper Insight (signal versus noise), proper Intent (focus and alignment), and proper Impact (bias for action).
6- Know when it’s best to stand still: constant motion is not forward movement.
7- Forget the common advice: don’t integrate, unbundle; don’t nudge; commit; don’t diversify, concentrate.
8- Accept this will be quite a lonely journey: the world has few Leaders and too many managers.

Workshops (1)
The Ultimate Leadership Challenge
90 minutes
(View workshop agenda)

Why fighting and defeating the Complexity Disease is the missing ingredient in the leadership equation, and the only path to True Performance.

Past talks (1)
Leadership and Complexity
HEC Alumni Seminar
Paris
January 13, 2020
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Books & Articles (2)

THE ULTIMATE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE
2020
The Ultimate Leadership Challenge®

Expertise (34)

Business
Leadership
Social & Political
Leadership Growth Strategy Mindset complexity Strategy Execution Organization Governance Business Transformation Execution Business Organization Complexity Management 21st Century Leadership Agile Leadership Authentic Leadership Board Governance Corporate Governance Agile transformation Culture Transformation Business Growth Strategic Execution Creative Strategies for Growth Business Strategy Planning and Execution business mindset Agile mindset creative mindset Entrepreneur mindset Business Entrepreneurs Corporate Entrepreneurship leaders

Clients

BPI
E.ON
Total
Mubadala
Zimmer
Saudi Aramco
Qantas
Masdar
Boeing
Avery
Etihad
TD Ameritrade
Deere
Citadel
Recommendations
Why choose me? 

Leaders do not manage complexity - they end it instead: in strategy, organization, execution...

Social media
Affiliations
Evolutionary Business Council
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