Leadership in a Tech-Shaped Culture: Three Book Recommendations to Ignite Your Year

Sam Bankman-Fried doesn't read.

Before his fraud trial, Bankman-Fried suggested that anyone who has written a book has "expletive upped," suggesting that they should have instead written a blog post. Perhaps the recently convicted king of crypto will change his mind on literacy as he awaits a maximum sentence of 110 years. And while the literary world enjoys a schadenfreude moment, it's worrisome that his sentiments are becoming increasingly widespread.

Americans are reading 20% fewer books than they read in the 1990s. They are also spending less time reading for pleasure. The average American reads just 16 minutes per day. By contrast, the average teen now spends 4.8 hours per day on social media, mostly on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. If Donald Trump captures the presidency this November, the country will be led by a non-reader who can't be troubled to read daily intelligence briefings, let alone books.

The decline of pleasure reading in our tech-shaped culture is a complex trend exacerbated by the explosion of algorithmic digital content, the constant acceleration of technology, and the proliferation of click-bait summaries in the news media. Too many of us lack the time, patience, and focus to read long-form writing.

Still, I was raised in an elementary school that taught that "readers are leaders" (or maybe it was the other way around). I developed a love of reading because I sensed how it contributed to an ongoing process of reflection and formation - and also because I earned a PizzaHut Personal Pan Pizza for each book report I completed. So with the conviction that focused, intentional reading advances the development of leadership skills, here are three book recommendations for harried, overworked, worried leaders who are navigating this tech-shaped culture.

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman

Neil Postman is best known for his 1985 work Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. While his 1985 book remains as relevant as ever, it analysis primarily focuses on the influence of entertainment.

"Technopoly" emerged eight years later, when Postman could see the emergence of electronic communication and personal computing. Postman argues that mankind has changed from a society that uses technology, to a society that is shaped by technology. For Postman, the invention of a hammer means that there is no such thing as "man with hammer." There is only "hammer man" - whose views of education, politics, and art are inextricably filtered through the unremovable lens of new technologies.

Technopoly is written with greater urgency and moral clarity than its predecessor. It is an essential read in a year where AI will continue its rapid advance, and where short form digital media will continue to redefine communication.

For the leader in a tech-shaped culture, Technopoly poses an urgent question: how might I protect communities and institutions from mindlessly succumbing to the worst impulses of this technological moment? Postman also challenges us to recognize that the answer to this question is far more complicated than simply deactivating one's Twitter profile.

Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley by Carolyn Chen

Technology is not the only juggernaut affecting meaning-making. While Postman writes about the influence of technology, sociologist Carolyn Chen writes about the pervasive influence of the workplace on knowledge, belief, and meaning. While the case studies reflect on religion and spirituality, the book revolves around the core question of how we derive meaning in a growth-obsessed culture.

By tracing the stories of once-religious tech workers who relocated to Silicon Valley, Chen demonstrates the encroachment of the workplace into spheres once occupied by tradition. The mechanisms of this encroachment are often described by Silicon Valley corporations as amenities, or enhancements to workplace culture. From meditation programs that teach "scientific Buddhism" to coaching offerings that promise "inner transformation," the tech industry has used these cultural offerings to displace the role once held by pastors, rabbis, and spiritual directors. Not every workplace has such amenities. But our work is increasingly becoming a personal quest for meaning and purpose.

When work becomes a spiritual journey, it comes to define our sense of purpose. We work harder, we produce more deliverables, we work longer hours. One wonders, while reading Chen's work, what will happen to the Google engineer or the Facebook account manager upon the next round of layoffs.

Chen beckons today's leader to consider how the drive to innovate replaces deeply held values and identities with the demands of late capitalism. It reminds today's leader that if we fail to define values and vision for our organizations, the marketplace will step in to do so on our behalf.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doer

Our final recommendation is the fantastical story of how one particular narrative survived centuries of acceleration to sustain and inspire across the ages. In a world that is turning its back on literacy, Cloud Cuckoo Land mounts a vigorous defense of the long-form narrative.

Set in three different timelines (the Siege of Constantinople, a modern day library, and a futuristic space ship), Doer traces how an obscure Greek drama provides coherence and inspiration on a timeless scale.

Anthony Doer reminds us of the enduring connection between meaning making and stories. Though it is a long book, Cloud Cuckoo Land cautions us about a world in which there are no more stories - only fragments.

For the leader in a tech-shaped culture, Cloud Cuckoo Land invites us to reflect upon and to share the stories that are most significant in our own formation. For even when our work has been lost to the eons, our stories will remain.

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@ryanpanzer is moving his social media activity from Twitter to GoodReads.

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Servant Leadership in a Digital Age

Servant Leadership is a trending topic in all forms of organizational life, from churches to universities to non-profits, small businesses to multi-national corporations. Yet as the popularity of servant leadership has increased, its definition has become increasingly ambiguous. What exactly is servant leadership? How is it practiced? And what might it mean in a world of continuous social change and digital acceleration?

Google searches for servant leadership have doubled in the last 14 years.

Robert Greenleaf first coined the term Servant Leadership in a seminal 1970 essay, "The Servant as Leader."

In the essay, Greenleaf writes:

"The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature."

Greenleaf's roots were in the corporate world. He worked at AT&T for nearly four decades. Yet despite his work in the telecommunications industry, one wonders how Greenleaf's ideas might have evolved were he working in our contemporary tech-shaped culture. He passed away in 1990 at age 86, leaving a legacy that continues to shape leaders of all vocational and spiritual backgrounds. In this post, we'll explore how the idea (really, the ideal) of servant leadership transfers to a digital age, and what it means to be a servant leader in a time of constant technological acceleration.

We need a new approach to leadership

Acceleration and a drive towards efficiency are the only unifying aspects of all organizational life life today. Digital technologies have expedited the flow of information providing us with an abundance of data while conditioning us to move quickly. As communications dart across our screens we cannot help but feeling a sense of busyness, even a sense of overwhelm and malaise. The same corporate world that gave rise to the concept of servant leadership expects constant availability and its responsiveness, far more than it expected from its laborers in Greenleaf's day. Lean staffing structures and ceaseless digital connectivity are a potent pairing, explaining why organizations see increasingly more of their people affected by exhaustion, burnout, and anxiety.

Indeed, this is a time that requires a new approach to leadership. So many of those who aspire to leadership today do so because they believe the can improve efficiency, increase speed, and crank up outputs. Mark Zuckerberg's "year of efficiency" has become a widely adopted template for doing less with more. If aspiring leaders are successful in this drive towards acceleration, the market will reward them accordingly. Yet in prioritizing these outcomes they exacerbate the anxiety and freneticism that characterize organizational life.

Servant leadership offers an alternative to the hamster wheel of digital age efficiency. While still driving towards a meaningful vision of a world that could-be, a servant leader consciously charts an unconventional path.

Motivation: The Heart of the Servant Leader

Motivation is the most distinctive attribute of the servant leader. Their motivation appears rather backwards when compared to their peers.

The conventional digital age leader thirsts for productivity gains and increased effectiveness. And let's be clear - there's nothing wrong with efficient, high performing organizations. But in servant leadership, any performance indicator is understood to be an output. When servant leaders achieve such ends, they do so by starting from a commitment to service above all else. The servant leader chooses to serve - to serve first. Being a servant leader in a digital age is about prioritizing a mindset of service to one's team members, stakeholders, members, or community. To paraphrase servant leadership guru Ken Blanchard, any profits reaped by the organization are the applause they receive in exchange for quality service.

The heart of servant leadership is this orientation towards making people and communities more complete, more whole.

To identify a servant leader, ask them about the purpose underlying their work. Ask them about their why. If their answer is presented in the metrics of the marketplace or in the terms of the efficiency expert, than they may be a conventional manager. But if they are driven to make a demonstrably positive impact on their surrounding communities, then they might just be on the path towards servant leadership.

Best test: The Outcome of Servant Leadership

As with the conventions of motivation, the conventional metrics of the marketplace are outputs to the servant leader.

While they are likely to be as or more effective than their conventional peers in generating revenue, profit, and growth, they measure their effectiveness over time with a different yardstick. The growth logic of the marketplace is less immediate than the growth of people. The servant leader repeatedly inquires as to the effect their work has on colleagues, customers, suppliers, and members. If their leadership is to be meaningful, their entire network must benefit.

Greenleaf established a test for would-be servant leaders when he wrote:

"The best test [of a servant-leader], and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived?"

Servant leaders can be shrewd negotiators and crafty marketers, powerful executives and commanding authorities. They can be successful capitalists and wealthy investors. Each will employ a unique approach to their exercise of leadership. But what will unite them is a continuous process of reflection into the well-being of their community. The best test of servant leadership is in the betterment of others, for the benefits of servant leadership must be shared.

Busy-ness, tech layoffs, and looming spiritual crisis

Writing for The Atlantic in 2019, Derek Thompson described the accelerating influence of "Workism,"or "the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose."

In the piece, Thompson traced two highly interrelated patterns in American culture: the drastic decline of religious participation, and the accelerating rise of those who describe themselves exclusively in terms of their career. Thompson argued that the workplace has supplanted religion and other institutions as a source of identity and belonging. Accordingly, the workplace has become America's new temple.

But I think Thompson's analysis is only part of the story. It's not just that the workplace has become a de facto temple. It's that our way of working - the busyness, the frenetic pace of it all - has become a cultural idol. Busyness, it seems, has entrenched itself as the only core value that we all share in common.

This explains why when asked to describe the state of our work life, we often share that we are "busy," with a smug sense of self-satisfaction, as if the busy are the blessed among us.

The symptoms of "Workism" are visible everyday, but are particularly striking during the summer months. We're working longer hours, taking fewer vacations, and leaving more paid time off on the able. According to the 2017 State of American Vacation report, American workers took an average of 20.3 days of vacation every year from 1978 until 2000. The rate has dropped nearly every year since. This year, Americans will only take an average of 16 days off, essentially donating one week of paid time off back to their employers.

Perhaps the case of the vanishing vacation can be explained not as a product of individual companies but as a broader cultural trend. Despite the fact that firms are doling out more vacation days to attract and retain talent, and despite their supposed support for detachment from email, 79% of American workers still check their work email while on vacation. According to The Washington Post, 4% of Americans check email constantly while on vacation. Workism has wheels, and will be joining you for your summer road trip.

The chief problem with Workism is that it places the things we do, or more specifically, the tasks we complete, at the pinnacle of human identity. When we put so much weight into the pursuit of tasks, we have little capacity left to examine our beliefs (what we think), or more importantly, our values (how we think about what matters). The things we do overshadow the things we believe, while crushing completely the things that we value.

It is ironic, although unsurprising, that our culture has a remedy for workism and task-obsession: namely, better organization of our tasks.

#productivitytok is among the most followed topics on social media. Books on task management are fixtures on Amazon's best-seller lists. And a cohort of productivity experts ranging from academics (Cal Newport) to evangelical Christian pastors (John Mark Comer) stands ready with exercises and checklists to reduce your busyness and organize the things you do - provided you are willing to complete the tasks they prescribe.

This is not to say that the we do is unimportant, or that doing a lot of meaningful work is undesirable. Occupations are often central to our vocational identity, and for good reason. Provided we have the opportunity to continue these efforts, our life may seem well-lived, perhaps even meaningful.

But what happens when our tasks are suddenly taken away from us?

Since the start of 2023, over 150,000 US tech workers have been laid off, their jobs cuts announced by a boilerplate email sent in the middle of the night. These lay offs are just the beginning of the disruption about to impact the workforce.

By some estimates, 300 million jobs globally will be "lost or degraded" due to artificial intelligence. And these jobs aren't the blue collar factory positions long thought of as at risk to automation. These job losses will affect computer programmers, graphic designers, digital marketers, and countless other white-collar professions long thought to be immune from automation and digital disruption.

It's no surprise, then, that layoffs are doing measurable harm to the mental health of workers, particularly those affected by job cuts. Indeed, this moment has all the makings of a shared cultural crisis.

For how can someone have a stable, rooted identity in the work they do when that work is no longer available?

How can one's sense of self be defined through tasks, let alone jobs or careers, when AI displacement and mass layoffs have arrived in seemingly every industry?

What happens when one's sense of identity, rooted not in religion nor in institutions but in the busyness of the workplace, is interrupted by job loss?

It's unlikely that there is a solution to this looming crisis of identity. Disruptions to our tasks and work lives are here to stay. This is not a crisis that has an easy solution. All one can do is to develop a certain capacity for resilience. And in this moment, resilience requires a shift in perspective.

It's time to label Workism as a destructive force, to view busyness as a threat to rather than a source of our identity.

It's time to find mentors, teachers, friends, and yes, even institutions, who can push away our growing list of tasks (if only for a moment) and to help us discover our values. It's time to study the art of discernment, rather than the practices of productivity.

As Carolyn Chen points out in her new book "Work Pray Code,"the world of work has developed its own theologies. These new theologies suggest that alignment between work and vocation defines our "authentic selfhood." In this digital age, our sense of selfhood has been redefined as alignment between work and purpose. It's time to rediscover the beliefs and values that are fundamental to our spiritual identities.