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.Â
“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.Â
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).
Just as an organization should explore new business models, a bee population explores new hive locations. My point in sharing this analogy is both to emphasise how there is always a small percentage who search for alternatives but also to highlight how the scout bee communicates and sells her idea.Â
Life’s animating force compels us to evolve, but unlike the crab and the caterpillar, many of us ignore that inner calling to change. We often hear the whispers in moments of silence: a walk in the wilderness, a moment in the shower, a vacant stare in the distance. We silence the internal voice with busyness, to-do lists, important-but-not-urgent tasks, entertainment, the contents of the fridge, anything but unearthing our destiny. Instead of changing, we cling to the familiar, even though we are compelled to evolve.
It is critical to realise that our schemas, these mental shortcuts, while beneficial can produce biases and prejudices that often obscure the truth. As our recent guest on the Innovation Show, Elliot Aronson told us, “Unless we recognize our cognitive limitations we will be enslaved by them.”
leaders are time-strapped, but a major part of transformation efforts includes leaders making time to provide the extrinsic motivation necessary to kindle the intrinsic motivation that may have extinguished inside your people.
Just as innovation-focused restaurants have realised it is better to structure reinvention in a different way to repetition, established companies must empower different teams to manage and conduct reinvention efforts within their organisations. Once they have stumbled upon a successful product, then they can transfer it to an execution team to perfect, refine and replicate. These are different modes of being, thinking and measuring.