Declarations of Resilience

Hurry up and slow down?

As the NASDAQ falls and the job market shrinks, leaders across the business landscape have stopped dead in their tracks to analyze the market, gather their wits, and hide from impending doom. But slow times don't mean languid leadership. We need forward thinkers and risk takers today more than ever.

In search of leadership strategies for tough times, the Fast Company staff tracked down various models and mentors during our RealTime event earlier this week in Philadelphia. We asked them what priorities and principles matter most to them now, what beliefs they question now, and what promises and possibilities get them jazzed now. Here, eight industry leaders share their agendas moving forward, and offer advice and inspiration for change insurgents facing high seas and low morale.

Kevin Roberts

CEO
Saatchi & Saatchi

People say times are tough, but things aren't really that bad. Times are turbulent and exciting, and they don't get any better than this. There are enormous opportunities for people who trust instincts, emotion, energy, imagination, and intuition. Those people will open up a wide gap between themselves and process-driven, management-focused cowards.

I'm most excited about the movement from information to relationships and about the power that is being given to women. The way the world works now plays into women's strengths, because it is about love, relationships, and networking. Women are intuitively more empathetic in those areas than guys, so they have the advantage.

Men used to have a structural edge. They would go to the office and have a whole corporate infrastructure, and they would use that structure to beat up on women. But the Internet has leveled the playing field. With a more flexible workplace and the opportunity to work at home, women are going to kick that disadvantage. They will be able to balance family, kids, and all that stuff.

But women need to find a role for men in this world, or they're going to encounter resistance. Women also need more role models. And they need to start looking after their own more. Women are their own second-worst enemy.

Women needed feminism to get on the radar screen. Get over it. They are now completely there. What is it that will now allow women to power through? It's not stridency. It's empathy and subtlety and taking opportunities as they come up.

Corporate boardrooms are a much better place with women in them. Women make for better meetings. They are more empathetic, they listen more, and they aren't so problem-solution driven. Guys tend to go from A to B very quickly and very laterally. Solution, problem. Problem, solution. But the complexities people have to deal with in the boardroom are generally not just a problem and a solution. They are nuanced. And women really help that. Women in the boardroom enable corporations to make better decisions.

Women also help team dynamics enormously. Putting women in teams is great because they don't have the testosterone and the ego that screw teams up.

(Read Kevin Roberts' RealTime speech here.)

Lynne Waldera

President and CEO
InMomentum Inc.

It's tough to keep the faith today. But nothing good comes without paying a price.

Two years ago, I believed anything was possible. I now believe anything is possible -- but not without persistence and passion. This has been a velvet revolution so far, without much blood spilled. Now it's time for the true believers to exercise real leadership.

As information and bandwidth are further democratized, I believe that our possibilities and opportunities will multiply through outstanding leadership. A lot of people in Silicon Valley have been expressing remorse that the information revolution was taken over by a bunch of money-grubbing robber barons, who were not interested in the technology or its impact. Now we'll see a resurgence of people who really care about making the world a better place through technology.