“Today more than ever, claiming powerlessness doesn’t fly. Excuses suck. There are people changing entire roles, departments, organizations.”
(courtesy of ondemandleadership.com)
“There are people starting companies because they couldn’t find one they wanted to work for. There are people changing careers, changing their lives, changing the perspectives of the people around them and earning the permission to do something new and different in even the most notoriously complex industries.” That’s a quote from Amber Naslund on her blog Brasstackthinking (read more of that post here).
She goes on – “Hell, people are reinventing industries right out from under the old models, and creating markets we’ve never seen.”
Are you still there, or already on your way to create something new and great?
So many self-development books speak about “finding ourselves”! Is that really true? Do we have an innate ourselves that we need to seek through some layers of junk accumulated throughout the years?
This is a wrong concept. Life is about creating ourselves. Life is about building something – us. Life is about growth, change, finding the synergy between ourselves and our environment.
Life is about the choice we can make to become what we want to be, how we want to behave. The choice to give out to the world the effect of some of our incredible talents.
And isn’t it much more enticing to consider that we can make our life a life of building something unique, great, rather than just trying to figure out how we were made? Stop looking to the past for innate talents. Look into the future and grow. It is worth every minute of it.
As I try new things outside what people would expect to be my normal occupation (as defined by my diplomas, certificates and list of positions), a question I often get is “Who are you to do this?.. do that?..”.
Do you need to be certified, chartered, PhD to teach effectively?
At first I was a bit disturbed by the question. I did not have the certificate to train! I did not have the diploma to facilitate! I am not a certified consultant (yes, certification programs also exist for consulting!). My answer now is: “I am a passionate human being”.
Of course there are some areas for which I needed to have additional education. I am a Certified Professional Coach because I needed a structured program to get the competencies it entails. But for many other activities I have no formal paper to certify my competency. Still I manage to develop my brand and I get more and more clients.
As soon as you’ll try new things outside what non-imaginative people expect from you, based on your standard Industrial Age profile, you’ll get the question: “Who are you to do this, to do that?”. Don’t feel threatened. Know that you do that because you bring value to others and to yourself.
Don’t hesitate. The new world will be created outside the certifications, diplomas, courses and standards. The people that changed the world did that outside the usual framework and values of their time.
Go for it. If you feel you are the one that can do it, do it. For yourself. For the others.
Our time-orientation (future, present or past) is somewhat part of our personality. To be effective, teams might need to be constituted by people that share similar time-orientation. In fact it might be one of the most important recruitment criteria.
How do your recruits fare on the Marshmallow test?
Present-oriented people tend to be hedonistic, and future oriented people tend to defer gratification (like in the famous marshmallow experiment: leave a child alone with a marshmallow for a few minutes explaining that if he/she does not eat the marshmallow he/she’ll get a second one – observe the reaction).
In “Strategy and the Fat Smoker: Doing What’s Obvious but not Easy“, David Maister argues that effective implementation of a strategy by a team can only happen if the team’s time-orientation is consistent. If the strategy is very much about making an effort or even a sacrifice to reach an improved condition, you’d better have around the table people that share the same preference for deferred gratification, i.e. that are strongly future-oriented.
I find increasingly that personal time-orientation is definitely a major criterion for hiring in particular for a startup – you want people that are ready to make the effort, forego gratification like time for themselves and with their families, to build something better in the future – you want future-oriented people.
In other occupations you might rather want present- or past-oriented people.
How do you know people’s time-orientation? Actually it is generally quite obvious from observing and listening to people. People that are present-oriented will need to spend a lot of time caring about themselves and will generally make sure they enjoy to the most their current situation. People that are future-oriented will live stoical lives and invest heavily for some distant future.
Look at your prospective hires’ time orientation to check it is fit with your preferences and what you want to achieve! I make it an ever increasing important criteria for recruiting fro my team!
One institution of the Late Industrial Age is university and, in general, education and training accreditation. National (governmental) or professional bodies decide what the education program should be and expect the university’s or the school’s program to be fully aligned.
Is your education accredited? By whom?
And behold those education institutions that would not fit in the mold! They take the risk of losing the right to use certain nationally and internationally recognized titles for their diplomas of achievements, and thus to lose the interest of prospective students.
Of course on one hand, accreditation guarantees a minimum quality. But on the other hand, what a formidable hurdle to educational experiments!
A university in Malaysia tried to implement a new, original education system with many advantages to prepare students to work life (as it included many work-related projects and close relationship with industry). Discussing with the university founder, he described how painful it had been to have to fit finally within a standard education framework determined by bureaucrats – for fear of losing the right to use the normal university grades and titles.
Accreditation is beneficial at the beginning when a profession first forms. Like any institution is soon impedes change and tries to defend itself against the external world. As everything becomes global, standardization of accreditation is another significant issue. The only remedy is to create a new education brand that will be stronger in terms of recognition than the conventional accredited grades and diplomas.
This new, strong brand of an education adapted to the Fourth Revolution will appear eventually. The format of delivery education will change, needs to change with the Fourth Revolution, online education, and the need to foster improved emotional intelligence in the new generations to come. Accreditation programs will slow this evolution – but like any institution will finally have to give way.
It is easy to be a successful leader in times of growth and economic bounty. What actually proves leaders is how they act and lead in times of crisis.
Winston Churchill, a leader proven by the WWII crisis
Real leaders prove themselves in the midst of uncertainty, when the world seems to collapse around them. It is in these situations that their determination, ruthless persistence, skillset proves itself. It is in these situations that they will lead the transformation.
A real leader is not proven until he/she is proven by a crisis. Behold to excessive adulation of leaders that seem successful just because they are lucky to be in an easy environment. They are not necessarily going to be the ones that will prove to be the leader you need in times of crisis. At the same time, many historical examples show that the leaders that prove themselves to be the one people follow in a crisis might not be the shiny leaders of an easier time. Many of them were barely noticed, struggled and were only discovered – and discovered themselves- upon the crisis.
In the Collaborative Age where discontinuities will happen more frequently, we need those leaders that will lead us through these transformations. We need avoid those easy-going leaders that will shrink at the sight of the first unknown difficulty.
Where can we find those leaders we need? How can we know if the current leader will fit the bill? There is not other alternative: throw them out in impossible situations and see whether they float or sink. Do that early enough when they are unknown. Give them the learning experience of harsh times.
Don’t rely on shiny leaders of easy times. Make sure you rely on those leaders that have seen it through successive crisis, that have mastered their inner game and know when and how to be persistent against all odds. Rely on leaders that failed hard and managed to make it through. Rely on leaders from discriminated communities that managed to elevate themselves against the odds.
The Collaborative Age will need tough and generous leaders that will lead us through the crisis. Be sure to choose the right leader.
I read a great book lately: “Mindset” by Carol Dweck. She is a renowned researcher in the field of motivation. She explains that there is a significant difference between achievers and others: it all depends whether you have a “fixed mindset” or a “growth mindset”.
Carol Dweck
“Fixed mindset” people consider that talent is innate and you can’t just change it. They tend to avoid any situation of failure and consider that their talent is limited by their endowment at birth. “Growth mindset” people on the contrary consider that intelligence and talent develop through hard work and that difficulties are challenges are just obstacles that need to be overcome.
This seems quite straightforward but the book is backed up by decades or research and stunning experiments about the consequence of one’s mindset. And people seem to have generally one or the other.
If you want to know if you have a growth or fixed mindset? Just take the simple mindset test on the book’s website.
Did you test positive to the “fixed mindset”? Read on, a new life will start for you soon! The great thing is, you can change your mindset from “fixed” to “growth”. Even short term! And also on the longer term with some practice. And that’s what happened to the author, by the way. All it takes is the realization – the mindset – that talent is not innate but the result of great work.
Still hesitant? Observe around you how the really talented people are the result of years or decades of work. Grow and learn. And you can also change the world!
Here’s again the link to the book on Amazon.com: “Mindset” by Carol Dweck.
As a follow-up of our post on Openness Alone Cannot Drive Change and the fantastic video by Margaret Heffernan, let’s reflect a bit about what this means for the leader in the Fourth Revolution context.
Not the leader we need!
Indeed, as Margaret Heffernan explains, leadership is dealing with Conflict. Dealing with the information that is available and contradicts our usual vision of the world, or requires us to review our world-view.
It is so amazing to see all the time those situations where people don’t stand up to situations. Because that is hard and risky.
It is difficult to give feedback to someone who is creating anxiousness by their behavior, or who just plainly behaves in a way that is negative for himself and his environment. It entails creating a bit of conflict for the sake of resolving a much larger issue.
Wouldn’t the right definition of leadership be: being able to stand up, be assertive and courageous to address conflict in a constructive way – or create the right amount of conflict at the right time ?
Not just addressing conflict in a destructive manner, but recognizing tensions and addressing them in a way that creates value. Addressing them in a way that cares and brings us to a better world.
Are you ready to look into the face of Conflict and lead us?
The title of this post is a quote from one of the most inspiring videos I have seen for a long time. Margaret Heffernan explains how having information available out in the open is not enough for people to notice and take action.
She explains how a scientist investigated the growing number of childhood cancers and had discovered the noxious effects of X-rays of pregnant women on children in the 1950’s – how all this information was published, out in the open – and how the medical establishment took decades to notice and do something about it.
I love one of the final quotes of Margaret’s speech: “Open information is fantastic, open networks are essential. But the truth won’t set us free until we develop the skills and the habit and the talent and the moral courage to use it. Openness isn’t the end. It’s the beginning.”
The availability of information thanks to the Fourth Revolution is only the beginning. Leadership is needed to make something out of it, to manage the conflict that open information does provoke.
Hat tip to Tim Berry who talked eloquently about the video on his blog.
There has been a scandalous affair recently at the New Yorker that has had shaken the web (and more). One of their staff writers had just written a best-selling book about creativity and was forced to resign after he could not demonstrate the origin of some quotes he was attributing to Bob Dylan. He finally admitted that he invented them.
Imagine… a book a bit too imaginative!
Funnily enough the book was about Imagination and Creativity. Don’t look for for it anywhere, it has been removed from all selling channels by the publisher (although more than 100,000 had been sold already).
This is a good reminder than even the best-run fact checking factories like the New Yorker can fail to identify writers that fake it. The best curated content is not 100% mistake and lie-proof.
The Fourth Revolution brings in the validation from the crowd. And the crowd it is that uncovered that incredible falsification. It is not the first time, it won’t be the last time; but it becomes harder to fake it with the always greater insights of the crowd. This time it took a person passionate about Bob Dylan, knowing all his interviews and quotes, to figure out that something was wrong. It only took a few weeks.
And so will the world increasingly question the content of even the most reputable curators. This constant challenge by people who are extremely knowledgeable in their niche area will create increasingly better content to the world.
Funnily enough I had bought the book – it is on my Kindle – and will now read it knowing that for a book about creativity it must be really good as it is at least partially the result of the imagination of the author!
And Hugh McLeod (subscribe for free to receive a daily Gapingvoid cartoon and thought) captures it fantastically as usual in this cartoon.
Yep, to be creative you need to be some kind of a lone wolf. And choose not to be sheep. Are you really ready for it? The point of Hugh McLeod is very well made – you need to choose one or the other.
At any time, in any society, only a few people are ready for being lone wolves. They will be lonely, sometimes hungry, but they will change the world.
Will you be the sheep of the wolf? Time to choose!
