🎥 Video from Summit Meeting: Where Big Brains Meet Big Hearts II – TRANSITIONS!

TRANSITIONS: What Is Their Impact on You?  
And What Types of Transition Do We All Go Through?

On April 2, 2019, The Personal Business Plan hosted our second Summit Meeting:

Where Big Brains Meet Big Hearts II – TRANSITIONS

The venue was the Danish Architecture Center in the magnificent BLOX building in the center of Copenhagen.

The theme of this year’s Summit Meeting was TRANSITIONS.

And our speakers were, in that order:

• Kent Martinussen, CEO, Danish Architecture Center, about Cultural Transitions
• Bjarne Corydon, CEO and Editor in Chief, Borsen, about Political Transitions
• Mai-Britt Poulsen, Global Chief of Staff, Boston Consulting Group, about Leadership Transitions
• Stephen Bruyant-Langer, President & Founder, The Personal Business Plan, about Existential Transitions

How Do We Exit Our Respective Echo Chambers?

Once again — like at our first Summit Meeting in April 2018 — participants were business leaders, politicians, entrepreneurs, students, consultants, lawyers, anthropologists, neurologists, psychologists, architects, strategists, philosophers, professors – and specialists in digitization, disruption, big data, gaming, organizations, communication, and behavioral design.

Our purpose with the Summit Meeting was to unite people around the theme of Transitions, allowing us all to exit our respective echo chambers and shed light upon the crossroad between technologies and ideologies.  The inspiring venue of The Danish Architecture Center thus became a mental fitness center for all of us.

Looking for Your Future Identity?

As the Summit Meeting progressed, one all-encompassing theme materialized.  Gradually the concept of Identity became clear. During the panel debate, all speakers used this word IDENTITY.  Indeed, transitions are a movement from one state to another. So, are we not in reality looking for our next state?  Namely our future identity?

KENT: How Architecture Depicts our Culture and State of Thing

Kent Martinussen spoke about architecture as the embodiment of culture and resources in societies all over the world.  Some of the fabulous photos illustrating Kent’s talk come from a grand book called Civilization.  The back of the book summarizes Civilization in the following way:

“People, politics, economics, technology, nature, society: Civilization.”

At our Summit Meeting, we nailed most of these dimensions! Kent’s Guiding Principle is CURIOSITY, so that is not a surprise to me.  He really knows how to touch our hearts!

BJARNE: Why Is It So Hard for Mankind to Live in Peace?

Bjarne Corydon gave his view on political transitions based on the Global perspective (Trump, Xi, and Putin), the European perspective (Macron, May, and Merkel) and the Local perspective (Danish Parliamentary Elections coming up).  A tour de force focusing on his Guiding Principle:  RESPONSIBILITY.

Bjarne will do anything in his power to combat populism and extremism.  He is totally fact-based and fundamentally believes that the way forward is through a broad, centric political coalition.  We totally agree with him on this. At the risk of seeming pessimistic, he vividly described the racist and anarchic undertones of the political debate – yet, he stubbornly remains an optimist.  A mindset, which we also totally adhere to.

MAI-BRITT: How Do You Win the ‘20

Mai-Britt Poulsen introduced “Winning the ´20s: A Leadership Agenda for the Next Decade”.  She pointed out these three meta-trends:

1. The speed of change is accelerating
2. Past success doesn’t guarantee future success and
3. Openness and the ability to acquire new skills is crucial.

Mai-Britt has previously described the following three leadership imperatives for top executives in the next decade:

1. Digitization is a journey without an end destination
2. Investment in and motivation of new talented employees is key and
3. Societal responsibility is a must.

All this perfectly matches Mai-Britt’s Guiding Principle: LEARNING.  She is all about growth, development, inspiration, and excellence.

STEPHEN: You Need to Be both Personal and Professional

Kent, Bjarne, and Mai-Britt authentically shared both their personal and professional transitions.  After all, this is what The Personal Business Plan is all about!

Then Stephen Bruyant-Langer followed up, sharing that his own Guiding Principle is INSIGHT.  He focused on existential transitions for each decade of our lives, based on five models:  The Guiding Principle, Levels of Social Maturity, Our Life Phases, Our Existential Questions and Perceived Quality of Life.

Stephen is still on a search for the Mother of All Models, and he is getting closer!

All the best, Mette & Stephen🍀

By Mette and Stephen Bruyant-Langer

Video by Kristian Skov

Photos by Jens Juul