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Change

Organizations Built for the Future

Late last year I was able to check off a bucket list item of mine: to do a TED talk. I spoke about the need to shift our worldview from one of striving for stability to one of dealing effectively with continual change, in a talk entitled, “Is Stability What We Should Strive For?”

At the end, I describe some of the characteristics of emerging organizations that are thriving (rather than thrashing) in our global, networked, connected, hyper-fast, technologically driven world. It is an interesting list – and I wonder how your organization stacks up to it.

Challenges

Ambiguity Abounds – A Simple Model to Deal with it

There are bucket-loads of reasons we are faced with more ambiguity than ever before. Here is a short list:

Change is accelerating. What is new is ambiguous by its nature.
How to work effectively across cultures has no clear answer.
New knowledge. Information is doubling every few years in technical fields.
Startups, shutdowns, mergers and new partnerships. And with it the accompanying strategic, cultural and leadership upheavals.

Add to that the more mundane causes of ambiguity, such as lack of clear direction from the top, changing priorities, and difficult and complex situations – and your natural tendency may be to do one of these things:

Wait for direction
Stall and hope clarity emerges
Complain a bit
Carry on as usual

I hate to break it to you – but all four approaches are doomed. Which leaves us in a bit of a conundrum: we need to DO something, but WHAT? The EAA process (my term – named after the vocal sounds I tend to make when challenged with ambiguity) may help you sort things out.

Leadership

10 Ways to Flex and Grow Your Innovation Potential

Are you an innovator? Chances are, you’ll reply NO quickly and emphatically. Innovators, you think, invent complicated things – like iPhones or driverless cars or drones. Or they toil for years to find that next big breakthrough in science, finding that previously unknown virus or a cure for a disease. Or you think innovation is about inventing things – rather than ideas, processes, and social advancement. And you probably think big: Madame Curie, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Jeff Bezos, and the like.

But I think each of us, as a member of the human species, has the potential to innovate. To find novel solutions to current problems. To find new ways to skin a cat (although I have no earthly idea why anyone would want to skin a cat).

Intention

Can you Spot the Differences… and Should You?

What bonds might be created, what dialogs might open if we sought to find what is similar between ourselves and others – especially those others who we paint in colors that are different than ours? What compassion might flow? What relationships might emerge? What might we do differently if we looked for similarities rather than opposites?

Evergreen Leadership

My Gift to You

Two gifts for you this holiday season:

GIFT NUMBER ONE – A big discount on big ideas!

GIFT NUMBER TWO – A fun and a powerful idea!

Leadership

5 Things You Can Do to Become a More Agile Learner

Learning and learning fast is imperative today. Your ability to push past your comfort zone, acquire new skills, explore different ways of thinking – a willingness to learn from the old and move on to the new will define your success.

But how does one do that? Today I’ll share five strategies you can use to increase your learning agility.

Change

The way you were taught to learn may not work anymore

Make no doubt about it – the need to learn new things and learn them quickly has never been greater. As of a year ago, close to 90% of the North American population was connected to the internet. Globally the number is 40%. Growing at a pace of 676% – it will not be long until most of the world is able to connect, communicate, create, collaborate and innovate. Add to that the increase in computing power (doubling every 18 months), the ability to transmit that data faster and faster (doubling every 9 months) and a dramatic decline in the cost to store massive data – we are experiencing more information, more innovation, more new knowledge and more diversity than imaginable – even 10 years ago.

Yet, it is compelling to note that class valedictorians and acing the SAT are not indicators of successful learners in today’s business world. I’ll talk about what are.

Leadership

Learning Agility

In my past three posts, I explored organizational agility and sustainability. Today’s post turns that exploration inward, to something each and every one of us can do. In fact, I would say needs to do. Which is to learn. Learn quickly. Learn all the time. To never stop learning.

Another View on Sustainable Business

In my final post in this series exploring the question of sustainability – of our organizations and the larger world in which those organizations exist – I’ll examine the notion of “constructive capitalism”, a way in which companies can create enduring, meaningful and sustainable advantage that also benefits society.

Creating Agile Organizations

Continuing my series of posts exploring the topic of sustainability – of our organizations and the larger world in which those organizations exist, today’s post examines the internal factors that enable an organization to be sustainable over time. Something that, over the last ten years, over 50% of the companies on the Fortune 500 list have failed to do.

Evergreen Leadership Blog

Organizations Built for the Future

Ambiguity Abounds – A Simple Model to Deal with it

10 Ways to Flex and Grow Your Innovation Potential

Can you Spot the Differences… and Should You?

My Gift to You

5 Things You Can Do to Become a More Agile Learner

The way you were taught to learn may not work anymore

Learning Agility

Another View on Sustainable Business

Creating Agile Organizations

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