DT Leadership

Today, I’m grateful to mark another milestone - completed a personal education checkpoint; a Certified Chief Innovation Officer (CCIO) from Global Innovation Management Institute - GIM Institute

But I see the certification less as a starting point, and more as the cherry on top of a journey that has been unfolding for more than a decade.

When I founded DT Leadership in 2013, a hot shop with a simple focus: helping people learn Design Thinking. Over the years, the work evolved.

Training became bootcamp then innovation project then coaching & mentoring. Workshops became capability building with the complexities.

And today, we operate as a rapid learning studio on innovation leadership, working alongside organisations to strengthen their innovation capability; from people and leadership to ex*****on and culture.

Along the way, our clients became some of our greatest classrooms. Every engagement reminded me that innovation is never a subject you finally “master.” The context changes. Technology changes. Organisations change. People change.

And therefore, we must keep learning too.

So this globally recognized certification is meaningful, but it is not the destination. If anything, it reinforces the responsibility to remain curious, useful and willing to unlearn what worked yesterday (and willingness to take hard corners!)

And one conviction has become stronger along the way:

"If we want innovation to grow exponentially, we have to grow the people leaders behind it. Tools, technology and methodologies matter. But sustainable innovation requires deliberate people & leaders capability development. It's the 10x multiplier!

Building the confidence to experiment, the judgement to make decisions under uncertainty, the leadership to mobilise others, and the discipline to turn ideas into value."

The learning agility continues!

Thank you for the generous guidance and ideas exchanged Hitendra Patel Erila Haska Viola Xhafa



DM to discuss and insights with Khairul Anwar

The Beauty of Governance

1. Governance is beautiful when people have the courage to use it.

Committees, policies and oversight mean little when those with authority can see the red flags but choose silence, convenience or “Nahhh…we’ve done our job.”

2. Governance is not about preventing every bad outcome. It is about making bad behaviour harder to hide.

When obvious risks repeatedly bypass scrutiny, calling everything a “poor investment decision” may miss the deeper question: Did governance actually have teeth?

3. The real design of governance is duty, not aesthetic or theatre

Awareness must become commitment, and commitment must become empowerment - especially for people entrusted with duties, responsibilities and authority.

The highest form of intelligence, according to some researchers, isn't logic, speed, or memory.

It's metacognition, the ability to think about your own thinking.

Metacognition is the brain watching itself. When you "notice yourself thinking," the spotlight turns inward.
You stop being inside the thought. You start examining it.

Neuroscientists have found that during this kind of self-observation, a region in the anterior prefrontal cortex becomes more active.

In plain terms: you have a neural system specifically designed for self-observation. Your brain can study its own code in real time.

A practical example: simple emotion labeling. Saying "I'm anxious" or "I'm angry" changes what the brain is doing. Not metaphorically. Literally.

Research from UCLA suggests that labeling an emotion engages regulatory regions in the prefrontal cortex and dampens activity in the amygdala, the brain's alarm system.

Naming your inner state shifts brain activity.
Awareness itself can alter the pattern.

While metacognition is the ability to think about your own thinking, memory reconsolidation is the ability to recall and edit your own memories.

When you recall an event, the memory becomes temporarily malleable.
For a short window, new context or emotional meaning can be added.
You're not erasing the past.
You're updating how it's stored and remembered.

That is metacognition applied to past experiences.

This is the exact reason reason why some forms of therapy work.
It changes the meaning attached to remembered experience.
The memory stays. The grip it has on you loosens.

Put it together and the picture is striking:
→ You can observe your own thinking.
→ Naming a feeling shifts your brain.
→ Recalling a memory makes it editable.

You are not stuck with your default reactions. You have leverage on them, if you notice them.

So the next time you catch yourself saying:
"Wait, why did I react like that?"
That moment is not trivial.
It's metacognition at work.
And it's often the first step in rewriting what you do next.

We spend our lives inside our thoughts. That single move, noticing instead of reacting, is the difference between living on autopilot and living on purpose.

Your brain is already equipped for it. All you have to do is use it.

Fleming, S. M., & Dolan, R. J. (2012). The neural basis of metacognitive ability. *Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1594), 1338-1349.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3318765/

Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli, 421-428.
https://sanlab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2015/05/Lieberman_AL-2007.pdf

Nader, K., Schafe, G. E., & LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Fear memories require protein synthesis in the amygdala for reconsolidation after retrieval. (6797), 722-726.
https://www.nature.com/articles/35021052