Lessons from Microsoft and Other Corporations on Partnering with Startups with Shameen Prashantham
When we work hard, sometimes we put our mental health on the backburner. Stress, a lack of sleep and other factors can quickly lead to burnout. How can we balance our goals with a peaceful lifestyle? Replace stress, burnout and surviving with resilience, energy optimisation and thriving.
We welcome the author of Finding Inner Safety: The Key to Healing, Thriving, and Overcoming Burnout, Dr Nerina Ramlakhan
The question remains, “is the more impressive leader the person who pre-empts a possible iceberg coming and avoids potential impact or the leader who takes action after impact when the damage is done? I think Dee Hock, (who wrote a magnificent foreword for my book “Undisruptable”), understood the subtleties of such a question challenge when he said,
Red Team: How to Succeed by Thinking Like the Enemy with Micah Zenko
“The system will always be defended by those countless people who have enough intellect to […]
The Exponential Era: Strategies to Stay Ahead of the Curve in an Era of Chaotic Changes and Disruptive Forces with David Espindola
“Managers who don’t bet the farm on their first idea, who leave room to try, […]
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.
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.
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.