In many organisations the emerging bud often gets very little energy, protection, budget or runway, in fact, many budding attempts are stillborn and never see the springtime.
“Managers who don’t bet the farm on their first idea, who leave room to try, […]
Are you drowned in paperwork as an innovator?
This Thursday Thought holds lessons for us in a business and personal context. To navigate change, we must grip our transient advantages loosely. Today, as we close out the Covid-19 pandemic under the threat of war, uncertainty is a certain ingredient of our life experience. We must be make peace with uncertainty and let go of control. The only control we can exercise is over our preparation, in doing so we prepare our response to unavoidable disorder and chaos.
Financial measurement alone can suggest an organization is well, while the underlying culture is often sick (as well as many of those people working there). When it comes to deciduous organizations, they pay no attention to the devastating impact on families, the psychological impact on individuals and society when they chose profits over people. One caveat is that not all companies have behaved in this way, some organizations – big and small – displayed heroic acts of loyalty to their people during seasonal stress, but they are in the minority. Is it any wonder that employees are less loyal today than they have been decades ago?
The main point of this Thursday Thought is that many people in a similar position to me, believe(d) that, “It is better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission.” We also subscribe to what Picasso said, “The first act of creation is one of destruction.” However, I understand now that this approach is useful in certain situations, but when it comes to legacy organization transformation efforts, it will fail. Unless you are going to gut the organization like a Black Dinner or Red Wedding, you will not change mindsets in a positive sense and you will turn most of the organisation against you, even if they know you mean well. If you consider yourself a pioneer, you will definitely take some arrows.
“The world is divided into people who do things – and people who get the […]
Too often, when leaders realize they need to reinvent, it is too late. Organizations reluctantly reinvent in times of crisis because of some market turbulence or an upstart competitor is eating into their P&L sheet. When they do this in desperation or as a last resort, they rarely reinvent effectively and they rarely survive. In their book, “Stall Points”, Matthew S. Olson and Derek van Bever revealed that once an organization experiences a major stall in its growth, it has less than a 10% chance of ever enjoying its previous levels of success.
In such cases, the eye “narrows in” on the potential opportunity or threat and we become blinkered. Huberman shares the visual example of a person looking into a forest when the pupil is dilated. You can see in the image below when a stressed (dilated) eye looks into a forest, it only sees the tree in the forest, everything else blurs into the background.
I once worked in a large bureaucratic organisation. I was struck by many aspects of the toxic culture, but one aspect of the experience remains with me to this day. Many people in the organisation appeared visibly much older than the age they actually were. It didn’t take long to figure out why and it had nothing to do with genetics or environmental pollution, but everything to do with caged lifeforce. It led to an effect I call the “Reverse Dorian Gray” effect. Before I explain what this is, a very quick recap of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray may help (skip if you know it already).