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.
We welcome friend of the Innovation Show and author of yet another fantastic book, Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company, Whitney Johnson.
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.
Our guest is the author of “Behemoth, Amazon Rising Power and Seduction in the Age of Amazon”, Robin Gaster
He explores plenty of questions:
Where did Amazon come from?
How did it grow so big so fast?
What can we learn from the history?
Can we distill key lessons about objectives, strategy, tactics, and especially corporate culture?
Where is Amazon going?
What will it look like ten years from now?
What should we – the collective we – do about it?
Is Amazon a threat? Should we simply applaud?
Are there characteristics to worry about?
And if so, what should we do?
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.
The Uncertainty Mindset with Vaughn Tan changes how organizations hire, set goals, and motivate team members and leads organizations to work in highly unconventional ways.
Nonetheless, it takes a lot of courage to go against the grain, to paddle one’s own canoe, to resist conformity. The irony is that the progress of humankind depends on those people who resist conformity who embrace what Rollo May called creative courage.
Our guest is Greg Orme. His book The Human Edge, how curiosity and creativity are your superpowers in the digital economy won Business Book of the year in 2020. He explores the skills you need to survive and thrive in a world of smartphones and AI.
The title of Aristotle’s “Politics” literally means “the things concerning the city”. It is the origin of the modern English word politics. In the book, he tells the story of a 7th century BC tyrant named Thrasybulus. Thrasybulus asked his fellow oppressor, Periander of Corinth for advice on how he should govern his people. Without uttering a word, Periander walked over to a grove of poppies and lopped off their flowering heads. The message was clear “do away with eminent citizens” and “don’t let them grow above their station.” This is (one of) the origins of the term Tall Poppy Syndrome. Tall Poppy Syndrome refers to the mindset where those people who stick their head above the parapet are resented, criticized, and cut down.
Disagreement is painful. Burns’ work suggests that not only are our brains not wired for truly independent thought, but it takes a huge amount of effort to overcome the fear of standing up for one’s own beliefs and speaking out. Those people who speak up with the intention to course correct the business before a calamity should be welcomed, but they are often ostracised and outcast.