How to Keep Up

Dean Judy Olian spoke with PwC's Robert Moritz, who shared his thoughts on the rapidly changing expectations of both the workplace and the workforce

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By Devon Dickau (’15) 

During my first graduate program, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I studied the potential of leveraging media and technology to spark social change. Along with my exploration of television and film as tools for activating people around important social issues, I studied the Twitter revolution in Egypt and the uncanny popularity of YouTube, integrating philosophy, sociology, education theory, and technical knowledge to develop my new understanding of how the world works — and evolves — in a new digital age.

My most poignant takeaway from my time at Harvard: The key to creating change is the ability to keep up with change.

Constant waves in new technologies do the best job of illustrating this phenomenon. For example, any successful marketer today must understand the new technological tools that customers use to communicate. In this way, studying technology from the outside is nearly impossible; as soon as we have a grasp of a technology’s presence and impact, technology has evolved once again.

Dean Judy Olian hosted Robert (Bob) E. Moritz, chairman and senior partner of PwC, as part of Anderson’s Dean’s Distinguished Speaker Series. As a well-published thought leader and member of the U.S. leadership team of the one of the largest professional services companies in the world, Moritz shared insights on leadership style, new trends that traverse industries, and millennials in the workforce. Throughout the conversation, his responses were anchored around a very familiar core concept: To succeed, we must keep up with change.

In professional services — arguably, more than in any other industry — success is dependent on a deep understanding of the latest ideas and trends, and subsequently being able to bring those to clients as tools for change. Internally, applying such tools is just as important.

Polished and practiced, Moritz spoke in concise, yet comprehensive bullet points and lists (e.g., “four fundamental questions,” “three shifts,” “five trends”). PwC understands that it must continuously evolve its service offerings and adapt to an increasingly globalized society, and do so faster and faster.

Firms like PwC, Moritz said, need leaders who “can navigate the grey zone.” The grey zone no longer only symbolizes ambiguity; it references the space between present and future, the active state of shifting from one point to the next. And in that grey zone, Moritz reminds us, failure is not only encouraged, but embraced. Failure signifies risk. And in a faster world, we must take risks in order to keep moving.

Moritz posed a question that he answered himself: “What skills do we need to keep up with the pace of change?” And, in my opinion, that is the key. We — organizations and individual professionals alike — must all cultivate the skills to “keep up.” It is no longer enough to just know how to create change; the most critical skills are agility and flexibility in a rapidly changing world.

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Devon Dickau’s story originally appeared in UCLA Anderson’s MBA Student Voice blog.