The arrival of autumn brings the return of the first viruses. What better time to talk about a mysterious, world-famous virus that has spread among the highest echelons of management at lightning speed: the CEO disease.

Although algorithms often score better than human judgement, we still tend to follow our feelings. And once an algorithm has made mistakes, our confidence tends to drop even further. Making mistakes is part of being human, so we find it easier to accept mistakes from people than from algorithms. As a manager, how do you ensure that your employees are open to algorithms? And that they also use these algorithms effectively when supporting decisions?

Procrastination is often seen as a form of laziness or poor time management. However, research shows that it is more about regulating emotions.

Many leaders find it difficult to respond constructively to failure. After all, if we are no longer allowed to blame an employee when something goes wrong, how can we ensure that employees will still do their best to perform as well as possible? Although many organisations consider learning from failure important, very few of them actually take a good approach to it. Why? Because most managers look at failure the wrong way.

Professor of Human Resources Management Dirk Buyens does not regard the changes prompted by digitisation as in any way troubling. ‘We have to learn to understand the reasons why employees may or may not be engaging.’

COOs increasingly operate on strategic levels, translating external developments into their organisations and implementing necessary internal changes. However, in practice, these continuous changes raise dilemmas. This balance between innovation and continuity is the topic of conversation of a new advisory board in Management Scope magazine. Three Dutch COOs and Professor of Leadership and Coaching, Katleen De Stobbeleir, together devise six best practices to allow problem-free navigation between innovation and continuity.

Digital transformation is a means of survival in the turbulent times that we are currently experiencing and that still lie ahead of us, according to Professor Stijn Viaene. “We have to make this cumbersome tanker change course. We may need to transform it into a fleet of sailing boats - provided that we give everyone the chance to stay on board. Because not only is this our damned duty; it is also the only way that we will be able to pull through.”

How do you, as a leader, deal with such a vague concept as 'the skills for the 21st century'? And what competencies do you need to develop among your employees to make them future proof? Professor Katleen De Stobbeleir advises us to start mapping the challenges today's employees face first.

Curiosity means having an interest in situations from which you can potentially learn, or a desire for new experiences. And a curious mindset has many advantages for organisations, managers and staff. Professor of Leadership Karlien Vanderheyden talks about the different dimensions of curiosity and shows you how to exhibit curiosity as a leader as well as spark curiosity in your staff.

Most of the management principles which we apply today were actually invented 100 years ago. To a great extent, we are still stuck in the basic ideas of that time. According to Dean Marion Debruyne we cannot run and manage organisations which need to be ready for the 21st century using principles from the last century. Along with technological change, we need management change and a different kind of leadership. That’s why unlearning old mental models is just as important as learning new things.