“Forty percent of today’s businesses will not exist in a meaningful way in 10 years.” That’s what John Chambers, Cisco’s recently retired CEO, announced at a recent conference here in San Diego. He may be right. More and more large businesses are failing to thrive. Not only do leaders have an outdated skill set, they also suffer from a bad mindset. And it’s epidemic.

As I have written before there are three basic paradigms of leadership power:

1. Hard Power, which is the willful drive to get immediate, self-enhancing results.
2. Soft Power, which is driven by empathy and collaborative skills to maintain high functioning relationships.
3. SMART Power, which blends soft power collaboration with the goal achieving energy of hard power to create genuine human benefits. Put simply, a SMART Power leader is inspired to create a river of value to customers, employees and investors.

Exploit no one; improve the lives of everyone…that’s the mantra of a SMART power leader.

So what’s this got to do with lots of businesses going out of business? It turns out, everything.  The combination of MBA school training, Wall Street demands, and money-fueled politics have enthroned blindly competitive hard power as the mindset of success. But it’s not.

Just look at Volkswagen. The ego driven ambition to become the world’s largest car maker fertilized a culture that internally sneered at environmental regulations and exploited the brains of talented engineers to scam consumers into believing Volkswagen had actually developed high mileage, clean diesel cars. It is a screaming example of negative innovation that permeates today’s business management.

Immoral leadership is not the only result of hard power motives. So is stupidity. Just consider why John Chambers’ observation of mass business failure is likely to continue.

Mckinsey & Company’s new research on corporate performance gives six reasons for a steady slide of established enterprises as they try to compete with newer and more nimble competitors. Here they are:

1. Resistance to the transformation necessary to succeed in a new economy. The new economy is driven by the digital revolution of business models, innovation, customer acquisition and engagement, and organizational processes and structure.
2. Businesses that are organized as silos are internally competitive, rigid and change-resistant. Business agility requires both internal and external talent to be organized as networks, yet few leaders know how to lead talent networks.
3. 90% of capital budgets of large companies are spent on old initiatives.
4. Legacy systems, processes and products are huge roadblocks to new value creation and working relationships.
5. New competitors can use the latest technological advantages to create and hyper scale customer value and convenience at very little cost. (e.g. Uber, Amazon, Airbnb, Etsy, etc.)
6. Public companies that are driven by quarterly profitability cannot compete with venture-backed startups that are willing to over-invest to disrupt the market.

So, are you open to a radical solution? One that will shake up and wake up your leadership? Have you ever considered this?

Most companies already have untapped leadership resources who have the contextual, operational, relational and empathetic intelligence (CORE talent) that, according to brain science, is ideally suited to excel in hyper-competitive environments requiring constant adaptation.  This is talent that they already employ.

It is is the CORE talent of most women.

It’s true. We now have the scientific evidence of over 100 validated studies, including ones from the McKinsey Global Institute, that show that female brains are designed to better deal with complexity. The versatile design of a brain marinated in estrogen before birth makes it easier for most women to deal with a confusing array of interactive and paradoxical forces.

According to experts like Daniel Goleman, most male brains are typically designed for efficiency. We love shortcuts. Simplicity. Speed.Decisiveness. It’s easier to control the short-term than trying to influence the long-term. In business this can easily lead to the common hard power error that speed and continuous cost reductions are a strategy rather than acts of desperation.

The unprecedented challenges of our age are ideally suited to the CORE talent designed into women’s brains. They are:

• Contextual Intelligence: This is the ability to continuously align short-term goals into the long-term big picture.  It’s the intuitive capacity to “see” the interactive effects of multiple decisions in complex circumstances.
• Operational Intelligence: This is the holistic thinking ability to predict the time, talent and resources necessary to execute a project, improve the process, or develop a solution. (In comparative studies performed by Zenger-Folkman, women’s understanding of operational issues in matrix organizations is consistently better than men’s.)
• Relational Intelligence: This is the ability to systematically improve group intelligence by carefully including diverse points of view and resolving competing priorities.
• Empathetic Intelligence: Women are much more likely to create positive innovation that enhances customer’s lives because they have more vivid empathetic imaginations than most hard power leaders. This creates a stream of genuine, positive innovations rather than fake ones like Volkswagen’s.

In the war for talent what is so easy to overlook is that, according to Gallup, more than 67% of women are disengaged in their work because they feel unheard and undervalued. What I tell leaders is that if they really want to create a competitive advantage they need to unravel the invisible biases that disable soft power women and men to create an agile, SMART Power culture. It will require a revolution…a wholesale change of mindset. But it is absolutely necessary if you are to thrive in a new world full of unexpected technologies and unseen competitors.

It’s not impossible to change.  I have helped many hard power leaders adjust their behavior to act SMARTER. I have found that even the most hard-nosed, hard asses can be coached to collaborate if they are desperate for success. Better results create a mind shift that changes cultures. And a creative, SMART Power culture is the only way to constantly ignite innovation and deliver on promises that matter in our wild new world.

Who knows… had Volkswagen harnessed the soft power of their women’s CORE talent there might actually be genuinely clean diesel engines.

The International Children’s Peace Prize is awarded to a child who strives courageously to establish children’s rights. The winner will be announced during the award ceremony on Monday 9 November in the Hague, the Netherlands. Archbishop Desmond Tutu is proud to announce that the final three nominees for the International Children’s Peace Prize 2015 are;

Abraham Keita (17 years old, Liberia) is nominated for his struggle for justice for children who are victims of violence. He became a member of the Liberian Children’s Parliament when he was only nine years old and has ever since undertaken action when the rights of children were being violated. Keita organised several peaceful marches and wrote petitions to plead with the Liberian government to respect the rights of children. In his pursuit of justice for children, Keita has demonstrated his ability to identify children’s rights’ violations, take action on the accountability of the perpetrators, and above all, to do so in a peaceful and powerful manner.

Aziza Rahim Zada (14 years old, Afghanistan) is nominated for inspiring refugee children, and girls especially, to voice their opinions. She stands up for children living in appalling conditions in Afghan refugee camps and has encouraged hundreds of other children to talk about their problems and claim their rights. In her own calm and convincing way she is able to build a bridge between a conservative society and a society which allows more progressive and effective approaches to girls’ and children’s rights. She organizes activities for children to discuss and document their problems, raises awareness and engages with parliament members and other opinion makers.

Jeanesha Bou (17 years old, Puerto Rico) is nominated for her struggle against human trafficking. Her ultimate goal is to eradicate modern-day slavery, a crime against humanity to which many people who are trafficked fall victim. Her message and advocacy have turned Jeanesha into an example for those dedicated to eliminating the human trafficking of children and youths. Jeanesha continues to speak out and expand her activities to reach more children.

In his message today, Tutu said that he has high hopes for these brave and young nominees: “The International Children’s Peace Prize gives a voice to the voiceless and shows that children can change the world.”

About the International Children’s Peace Prize

The International Children’s Peace Prize is awarded annually to a child who strives courageously to establish children’s rights. Each year’s winner has in his or her own way demonstrated tremendous commitment to eliminating the problems that children face. Every year the message of the new young winner has enormous impact and demonstrates to millions of people globally that change is possible.

The International Children’s Peace Prize is an initiative of Marc Dullaert, founder of the KidsRights Foundation.The prize was launched in 2005 during the Nobel Peace Laureates’ Summit in Rome, chaired by Mikhail Gorbachev. The expert committee of the prize each year receives nominations from countries from all over the world. Very remarkable but often unknown brave children have been discovered through the annual nomination process.

This year, the International Children’s Peace Prize will be awarded for the 11^th consecutive year. Ten brave and inspiring children have so far received the prize for their efforts in promoting children’s rights, including Nkosi Johnson who fought for the rights of children with aids and Malala Yousafzai, who won the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2013 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

This year’s prize had a total of 77 submissions, comprising 38 boys and 39 girls from 39 countries.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a patron of the International Children’s Peace Prize and has presented the prize three times. Each year the prize is presented by a Nobel Peace Laureate.

This year the prize will be presented by Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus. The winner receives the statuette ‘Nkosi’, which portrays a child setting the world in motion, as well as a study grant and a world-wide platform to promote his or her ideals and causes for the benefit of children’s rights. Furthermore, KidsRights invests a project fund of €100,000 in projects in the winner’s home country which are closely connected to his or her area of work.

“Long-term sustainable change happens if people discover their own power.”

Vision: Democracy depends on a citizenry that is highly informed and deeply engaged in the issues that affect their lives. Action: First Look’s insistence on editorial independence has already attracted some of the most fiercely independent journalists around. Omidyar seeks to improve society through journalism and technology, and to hold those in power accountable. www.FirstLook.org

“If you want me to do something tell me it’s not allowed for girls and then I definitely, absolutely would do it, whatever it is.”

Vision: To make science, technology, engineering and math accessible to diverse groups. Action: Klawe is closing the computer science (CS) gender gap and having stunning success in getting more women involved. She’s not concerned with filling quotas or being nice either. Content is designed around problems women can relate to. Female majors in CS have increased by 300 percent. www.HMC.edu

“The global economy creates a global ignorance, in which producers and consumer cannot know or care about one another. The degradation of products, places, producers and consumers is inevitable.”

Vision: To convince everybody they have a vested interest in fighting for the environment – however disenfranchised they feel. Action: Creator of the Observer Ethical Awards, Siegle thinks the circular economy has enormous potential to create positive change. @lucysiegle

“We need to break up the corruption schemes and prevent them from being created.”

Vision: A corruption-free Ukraine. Action: Appointed head of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Committee in 2014, she resigned after five months saying there was no political will in Ukraine to carry out a large- scale war against corruption. Her investigative journalism resulted in an attack in 2013 that many believe was ordered by the Ukrainian president for her investigation into his new luxury palace.

“I don’t remember feeling anger, but I did feel determined to take this as an opportunity to let it be known that I did not want to be treated in that manner.”

Vision: A society free of prejudice. Action: Parks refused to give up her seat to a white commuter on a bus in 1955. She became an icon of the modern Civil Rights Movement and a symbol of peaceful resistance to racial segregation. Her small, quiet and lone protest was to have a huge influence on the self-worth of an entire nation, one that still inspires many today. www.RosaParksFacts.com