• 18
    Aug 26
  • 0

A Tribute to Jean Houston, the Midwife of Souls

Category:Collaboration,Community,Emotions,Exploration,Fear,Growth,Learning,Loss,Movements,Narratives,Opportunity,Passion,Potential,Transformation

Three months ago, Jean Houston’s body left this world, but her spirit will remain with us forever. She was an awesome human being who inspired so many people (including me) throughout her life. I am very grateful that she was a mentor and friend who played a significant role in deepening my passion for exploration.

She encouraged me to pursue my journey and wrote a tribute to my most recent book, The Journey Beyond Fear: “John Hagel has done it again! From the depths and breadth of his own experience, he gives us keys to a psychology that activates needed growth in self and society. This book is on the frontier of a conceptual evolution that brooks no whiney nay saying, but creates the ground for a dynamic transition into a Renaissance in thought and enterprise.” I am grateful that she also volunteered to serve on the Board of Advisors of my new Center for Growth because she was excited by its mission.

Exploring Jean Houston’s impact

There are so many dimensions of Jean’s impact. She was a pioneer of the human potential movement back in the 1960’s and pursued this with passion throughout the rest of her life. She wrote 30 books, including The Possible Human, and engaged with a vast array of people throughout her life, driven by her mission of helping all of us to become excited about pursuing far more of our potential. She had the passion of the explorer until the very end, when she engaged with her hospice workers to inspire them to pursue more of their potential.

At one level, her focus was on inspiring and helping individuals to look within and discover how much potential was waiting to be drawn out, so that they could have even more impact that would be meaningful to them and to those around them. In this context, she would encourage people to explore three different layers within all of us – mind, heart and soul. It definitely resonated with me, as you can see in my blog posts here and here. We need to move beyond mindset and understand the much deeper roles that our heartset and spiritset play in shaping our mindset.

Our spirit has infinite potential that is waiting to be discovered and drawn out. As Jean Houston wrote: “we all contain ‘so much more’ than we think we do.” It’s one of the reasons that Jean described herself as the “midwife of souls.” She would use powerful tools of imagination to help others achieve a much deeper understanding of themselves.

Although she never used the term herself, Jean exemplified the power of the passion of the explorer. She was excited about the opportunity to discover new ways to help people to dive deeper into themselves and see what they had never seen before – the spirit that was waiting to be drawn out and energize people to have even more impact that was meaningful to them. She had the passion of the explorer, and she believed we all have the potential and need to cultivate that passion.

Broadening our exploration

But Jean wasn’t just encouraging us to explore inward. She was passionate about the need for all of us to explore outward as well, so that we could see how deeply connected everything is, not just on earth, but in the universe. She just believed that we need to start by making ourselves better if we want to make the world better. If we understand the richness of the world around us, we will see the potential to have even more impact by connecting more deeply with others and with everything that surrounds us.

Building a movement

At another level, Jean was also excited about becoming a catalyst for a movement. She didn’t just want people to come up with new ideas and insights. She wanted all of us to come together to take action and have much greater impact in ways that would inspire others to join as well.

She assumed many roles throughout her long life, including serving as founder of The Foundation for Mind Research, Chancellor of Meridian University, an activist with the United Nations Development Program, and Chairman of the United Palace of Spiritual Arts in New York City. One of the things that she deeply understood is that successful movements need to be guided by an opportunity-based narrative that can inspire people to come together and take action, rather than focusing on all the threats that exist in the world.

Her inspiration, mentorship and passion were a key catalyst in motivating me to write my book, The Journey Beyond Fear, which focused on the role that emotions play in shaping our choices and actions. The three pillars of the journey beyond fear – narratives, passion and platforms – were very much aligned with how she viewed the world and the potential for change. I have launched the Center for Growth which offers programs based on my book and designed to support people in making the journey beyond fear.

Bottom line

Jean Houston’s body has passed away, but her energy lives on through the ideas, passion and inspiration that she spread throughout her life. She has been a catalyst for awakening so many of us. The best way to honor her is to cultivate the higher power within us and to take action and help motivate others to discover and pursue more of their potential.

  • 04
    Jul 26
  • 0

Celebrating Our Past and Shaping Our Future

Category:Collaboration,Community,Future,Growth,Independence,Learning,Movements,Narratives,Opportunity,Potential

This is an amazing day – celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in America! We need to celebrate history, but we also need to avoid being consumed by the past. We need to learn from history so that we can shape an even more promising future. What action can we take today to ensure that we will achieve far more of our potential in the years ahead?

What can we learn from 250 years ago?

Amazing things can be accomplished when people come together, driven by an inspiring opportunity. We need to remember that Britain was a growing global empire back in 1776. The American colonies had 2.5 million people at that time, which was a small fraction (about 1/3) of the population of Great Britain.

But the colonists were driven by the opportunity to expand their freedom and pursue their interests in a way that would help them to build a society with growing prosperity. There were lots of disagreements among these patriots regarding approaches to government, but they were brought together by the exciting opportunity to create a nation driven by liberty.

I have written a lot about opportunity-based narratives. These are very different from stories because they focus on an opportunity out in the future that is not yet achieved and they provide a call to action, emphasizing that this opportunity will not emerge without effort. In my research, opportunity-based narratives have been a key pillar for the most successful movements for social change throughout history.

It is worth noting that the opportunity for freedom that inspired the American colonists in 1776 was an opportunity for a relatively modest portion of the population. It did not yet fully include women, African American slaves, LGBTQ people or indigenous people who occupied America long before the colonists arrived. Nevertheless, the opportunity-based narrative continues to inspire the expansion of rights and opportunity for growing segments of the population, many decades and even centuries later. It also inspired people in many other countries in the world to seek their freedom. 45 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote “. . . the flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776 have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism.”

In this context, another key lesson from the American Revolution is that addressing opportunities requires action, not just speeches and writing. The Declaration of Independence was a written document, but it was a call to action that had been inspired by many actions already taken by the colonists, including the famous Boston Tea Party which occurred a few years earlier to protest British taxation and trade policies. The broad emphasis on action is reflected in a quote from Thomas Jefferson: “Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”

What is the opportunity ahead?

So, is this all about history? What about our future? We have a need for an inspiring opportunity-based narrative that can bring us together to drive change so that we can prosper even more in a rapidly changing world. Let’s not get consumed by history – let’s use it as a catalyst to evolve a much more promising future.

Let’s start by abandoning the threat-based narratives that are dominating our world and dividing us, rather than uniting us. As I’ve written, these threat-based narratives are a key driver of the emotion of fear that is becoming increasingly prevalent.

We live in a world of exponentially expanding opportunity, but we all need to come together in much deeper ways to cultivate and address those opportunities. If we do that, we can create far more value, far more quickly and with far less resources than would have been possible several decades ago.

One dimension of this opportunity is the opportunity to learn faster, especially learning in the form of creating new knowledge, rather than just focusing on learning in the form of sharing existing knowledge. This is becoming more valuable and necessary in a rapidly changing world. No matter how smart and talented we are as individuals, this form of learning will occur much faster if we come together with others who share our excitement about addressing specific opportunities.

We can help everyone achieve more of their potential by helping them to overcome fear and come together to pursue opportunities that excite them. While independence and liberty are foundational, we also need to cultivate interdependence – ways of coming together so that we can accomplish a lot more than if we are isolated.

This will require us to shift our focus from top-down approaches to progress to bottom-up approaches where individuals come together on their own initiative to support each other. The most valuable support is in finding ways to help each other to achieve more of their potential and to achieve more impact that is meaningful to them.

At a high level, the opportunity is for all of us to flourish by learning faster and achieving more of our potential. Humans have unlimited potential, but we need to create environments that will encourage and support us in our efforts to come together to achieve more of that potential.

And it’s not just flourishing for humans. The opportunity ahead is for all living things to flourish as we focus on the importance of our ecosystems and find ways to evolve environments in ways that nourish all living things, not just humans.

This opportunity has many different dimensions, but the highest level framing of the opportunity might be: “flourish together.”

Bottom line

The Declaration of Independence can be an inspiration for all of us (and not just Americans) to look into the future to identify and pursue an even bigger opportunity that builds on the foundation established by revolutionaries 250 years ago. There’s so much more to be achieved, but we need to be inspired by a really big opportunity that can bring us all together. Let’s focus on framing an opportunity-based narrative and a call to action that can move us from ideas to impact.

We can celebrate the past, but let’s be inspired by the opportunity ahead. The past is inspiring, but the future can be even more inspiring when supported by stories from the past.

  • 24
    Nov 25
  • 5

Inspiration from the Dalai Lama

Category:Uncategorized Tags : 

I recently returned from a trip to Dharamshala, India where I had the honor to meet with the Dalai Lama. It was an amazing and inspiring trip on so many levels.

The Tibetan Buddhist community in Dharamshala

The Dalai Lama is 90 years old, but he remains full of energy. He has a wonderful sense of humor and is almost always smiling. He wants to connect with the people around him, because it fulfills him.

The most inspiring thing about the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Buddhist community that has settled in Dharamshala, India is their relentless focus on opportunity. As most of you know, the Dalai Lama and a large number of Tibetan Buddhists (around 150,000) escaped from Tibet in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s as they faced increased repression from the Chinese. The emigration continued, but it has slowed down to a trickle as the Chinese have made it increasingly challenging to try to cross the national boundary to India.

The Tibetan Buddhists had faced terrible conditions in Tibet and many of their friends and relatives had been killed. It would have been easy to be consumed by the sadness and regret for the lives that had been lost. But, instead, the Tibetan Buddhists have been driven by the excitement of creating a thriving community in their new-found home in Dharamshala, India.

The results are impressive. Dharamshala is a thriving community with a growing number of institutions that are dedicated to supporting the Tibetan Buddhist emigrants as they seek to rebuild their lives in a different country. The Tibetan Buddhists have come together to support each other, inspired by the opportunity they see.

As many of you are aware, I have written a book called The Journey Beyond Fear that focuses on the power of opportunity-based narratives as a way to overcome fear. I definitely felt that the Tibetan Buddhist experience in Dharamshala illustrates the power of opportunity-based narratives. It can motivate people to come together to accomplish amazing things.

The connection between compassion and passion

During my visit, I was struck by the emphasis that the Dalai Lama puts on feeling compassion for others. By this, he means being aware of the suffering of others around us and being motivated to provide help and reduce the suffering. He wasn’t focused on the suffering – he was focused on the ability to help others and the opportunity to help them create more meaningful lives.

As I reflected on this, I explored the connection between the two words -“compassion” and “passion.” During several decades of research, I have become very focused on the power of a very specific form of passion – I call it “the passion of the explorer.” It turns out, compassion and passion are deeply related in their origins, since they both emerged from Latin words for “suffering.”

What a paradox! A word that started with the meaning of suffering has evolved into a word that focuses on excitement. Similarly, compassion, a word that appears to focus on seeing the suffering of others, also seeks to cultivate excitement about the opportunity to help others to achieve more.

In my work on the passion of the explorer, I have found that people who have cultivated this passion are excited about achieving increasing impact in a specific domain – it could be anything from gardening to nuclear physics. But the interesting thing about these people is that they are explorers, deeply aware of their surroundings, and very much driven to connect with others in ways that help everyone to achieve more impact in the areas that matter to them.

Now, there are many different forms of passion (I developed a taxonomy of passion in my book The Journey Beyond Fear) and I would certainly not claim that all forms of passion also exhibit this form of compassion. However, my visit to Dharamshala gave me insight into how deeply connected the passion of the explorer is with compassion.

My Bhutan experience

I should also mention that my trip included a visit to Bhutan, which has been at the top of my bucket list of countries that I have not yet visited, but wanted to see. It, too, was a very inspiring experience. The setting in the mountains was marvelous. But what really inspired me was the focus of the King of Bhutan on cultivating deep happiness among all the people in this remote country.

The country has created a Gross National Happiness index that it uses to measure progress, rather than Gross Domestic Product. While I found this very inspiring, I also was hopeful that this might evolve into a Gross National Passion index. While happiness is certainly something we should all strive for, I believe that deep happiness will only come when we discover and cultivate the passion of the explorer that I believe is waiting in all of us to be drawn out.

Bottom line

We are facing significant challenges around the world. It is easy to become consumed by the challenges and prisoners of the emotion of fear that naturally emerges if we focus on the challenges. Nevertheless, I am a strong believer that our primary focus should be on the extraordinary opportunities that we all can address to make our lives and communities much more fulfilling.

  • 01
    Jun 25
  • 1

Strategy and Emotions

Category:Connections,Emotions,Fear,Leadership,Opportunity,Strategy

Strategy and emotions? Those are generally considered as two separate domains with little, if any, intersection. I’ve come to believe that they need to be tightly integrated, especially in a rapidly changing world.

Strategy

Strategy in the business world has long been defined by the five-year plan. Develop a detailed plan for each of the five years and you have a winning strategy. In developing this plan, the advice is to focus on your competitors and how you are going to prevent them from gaining ground in your markets.

I have been fortunate to work with some of the most successful tech companies in Silicon Valley. I discovered that they have a very different approach to strategy which they pursue instinctively. I call this approach to strategy Zoom Out/Zoom In, which I have written about extensively here.

This approach to strategy focuses on two time horizons. The first time horizon, Zoom Out, focuses on 10-20 years. On that horizon, the key question is: what really significant opportunity is emerging where we could create exponentially more value than we do today?

The second time horizon, Zoom In, focuses on 6-12 months. On that horizon, there are several key questions. First, what 2-3 initiatives (no more) could we pursue in the next 6-12 months that would have the greatest potential to accelerate our progress in addressing the longer-term significant opportunity that we have identified? Second, have we committed a critical mass of resources to those 2-3 initiatives in the next 6-12 months? Third, what are the metrics we could use to assess our progress as these initiatives unfold?

This approach to strategy can be very powerful within the organization, but it can also provide the foundation for framing an opportunity-based narrative. This narrative can inspire and motivate customers and other stakeholders outside the organization. In a future post, I will explore this untapped potential.

Emotions

OK, so what does this approach to strategy have to do with emotions? I’ve found it has a profound effect on emotions. If we look ahead into the future and can identify a really large and inspiring opportunity that we can address, it helps participants to overcome fear and cultivate excitement about addressing the opportunity.

Of course, many people driven by fear will tend to dismiss descriptions of long-term opportunities as a fantasy. They will want to focus on the present and not be distracted by the future. But if you can show significant, tangible progress over the next 6-12 months in addressing this opportunity, the skepticism will tend to diminish and be replaced by excitement.

Why does this matter?

We live in a world where people are increasingly consumed by the emotion of fear. I have written about this extensively in my most recent book, The Journey Beyond Fear. While the emotion of fear is very understandable in a world of mounting performance pressure, it is also a very limiting emotion and tends to drive people into a doom loop.

In the book, based on extensive research I have done, I outline a journey that can move people beyond fear and cultivate emotions that will help people to achieve much greater impact that is meaningful to them and to others. Leaders of large organizations around the world need to recognize how the emotion of fear is holding participants in their organizations back and find ways to help participants to overcome their fear.

They need to recognize that strategy and emotions are tightly connected. If they focus on five-year plans that emphasize the need to address the threat from competitors, that will tend to intensify the fear. Leaders often seek to drive change by adopting the “burning platform” metaphor – we’re on a burning platform that is about to collapse so we need to move quickly to preserve our platform. That certainly helps to feed the fear.

On the other hand, if they adopt a Zoom Out/Zoom In approach to strategy, they will unleash some powerful forces to move people beyond fear. This approach will help participants to build excitement about the exponentially expanding opportunities that exist in the future. In my book, I discuss the untapped potential of a very specific form of passion – the passion of the explorer. I believe that this exists within all of us, but few of us have made an effort to find it, much less pursue it. Strategy, properly framed and executed, can help all of us to find and pursue the passion of the explorer.

Is that all?

So far, I’ve been talking about strategy in an organizational context. But there’s so much more. We can all embrace the Zoom Out/Zoom In approach to strategy at a personal level. What’s the really big emerging opportunity that each of us could address over the next 10-20 years that would help us to achieve much more impact that is meaningful to us and to others? What specific actions can we take in the next 6-12 months to make progress in addressing this really big opportunity?

This approach could help all of us to overcome our fear. As individuals, more and more people are focused on how threatening the future is and this intensifies our fear. If we can shift our view of the future from threat to opportunity and start to make real progress in addressing that opportunity, we will overcome our fear and draw out the passion of the explorer that can provide the fuel to move forward in a much more positive and fulfilling way.

Bottom line

Let’s break down the silos. Strategy and emotions are intimately connected. We need to embrace approaches to strategy that can help us to overcome fear and cultivate the passion of the explorer. This has so much potential, both at an organizational and individual level.

  • 03
    Feb 25
  • 0

AI Needs Help

Category:Collaboration,Community,Connections,Creation Spaces,Decentralization,Emotions,Fear,Future,Growth

Everyone is talking about AI these days. AI is consuming our attention as we explore what the technology can do, while at the same time many are feeling feeling fear that the technology may be used to our detriment.

But the conversation is all about AI. There’s very little discussion about how we will need to change our society and economy to unleash the full potential of AI. This is a big white space that contains enormous opportunity, but only if we are ready to pursue the fundamental changes required.

There’s no doubt about it – AI is a powerful technology, but its full power will only manifest if we understand and are committed to pursue fundamental changes in our society and economy. What kinds of changes? I’ll briefly address three here:

  • New ways of learning
  • New ways of organizing and operating our institutions
  • New ways of governing our societies

New ways of learning

AI is a powerful tool for learning, but only if we embrace new ways of learning. Of course, AI can be helpful in traditional classrooms and training rooms, but these focus on transferring existing knowledge.

As I’ve recently written, the most powerful and necessary form of learning is learning in the form of creating new knowledge. More fundamentally, this requires a new way of learning that embraces play that is highly situated, cultivates networked imagination among groups of participants and draws out rapid iterations of action and reflection. This new way of learning cultivates a sense of agency and collaboration that is missing from traditional forms of learning.

Here’s the challenge. This form of learning is very different from the learning we are most familiar with, and we can be very afraid of venturing out into unknown and untried territory. Even more challenging, our existing institutions are wedded to the traditional form of learning and often turn hostile to this new form of learning – those in charge lose control as participants develop a deeper sense of their own agency and venture out into unexplored territories.

However, if we don’t embrace this new form of learning, we’ll never unleash the full potential of AI. This technology provides a powerful set of tools to support this new form of learning. And, to be clear, I’m not just talking about learning in schools or training programs, this is a form of learning that can help all of us to achieve more of our potential in all aspects of our lives.

New ways of organizing and operating our institutions

I’ve done a lot of research on the institutional model that governs all large institutions around the world – companies, schools, NGOs, and governments. I call this institutional model “scalable efficiency” – the way we organize and operate our institutions is driven by a goal of doing things faster and cheaper.

This institutional model defines work as tightly specified, highly standardized tasks that are performed reliably and efficiently throughout the organization. In order to define and execute these tasks, scalable efficiency mandates a hierarchical organization with roles and responsibilities clearly defined at all levels.

To unleash the full potential of AI, we’ll need to shift to a fundamentally different institutional model – scalable learning. This institutional model seeks to draw out the emotion of the passion of the explorer and cultivate a powerful set of human capabilities – curiosity, imagination, collaboration, creativity and reflection. Work is no longer defined as tightly specified, routine tasks – those will be done by machines. Humans will focus on identifying and addressing opportunities to create far more value for stakeholders. To do this, they will come together in a cellular structure of small groups – impact groups – that bring participants together who share a passion for increasing impact in specific domains.

AI will help these impact groups to create far more value by providing participants with tools to cultivate their human capabilities. The challenge is that the current scalable efficiency model is deeply hostile to the procedures and practices required for scalable learning, and the immune system and antibodies of these large institutions will quickly mobilize to crush any effort to shift to the scalable learning model.

New ways of organizing our societies

Over several centuries, we have seen our societies become more and more centralized. Highly centralized societies tend to diminish the potential for grassroots innovation and initiatives. People tend to become more passive.

We have also seen a continuing erosion of social venues that bring people together so they can form deeper and broader relationships. We are becoming more isolated and our trust in those who govern us is eroding.

To help cultivate a sense of agency among everyone, we need to shift towards more decentralized forms of social organization. We also need cultivate social venues that will help people build deeper and broader relationships with each other so that they can come together and scale their initiatives as they seek to take action.

But, once again, we need to recognize that our centralized societies are going to resist decentralization. This will not be an easy transition.

Bottom line

We need a powerful narrative to inspire people to take action and drive the changes that will be required to unleash the full potential of AI. As I have written in my study of narratives, this narrative needs to inspire people about the significant opportunity to be addressed, but it also must be clear about the barriers and obstacles that need to be overcome in order to address the opportunity. This leads to a call to action that will motivate people to come together and find ways to move beyond the barriers and obstacles.

AI can be a catalyst for enormous opportunities to restore our humanity and help us all to create far more value that is meaningful to all of us. But this won’t manifest on its own. We need to recognize that fundamental changes will be required in all aspects of our economy and society. Let’s come together to drive these changes and unleash to true potential of AI.

  • 28
    Nov 24
  • 0

Gratitude Within

Category:Collaboration,Community,Connections,Emotions,Exploration,Growth,Learning,Opportunity,Poem,Potential

Gratitude is nourishing.

It helps us to connect

More deeply

With those

Who have helped us

In so many ways.

We should always be grateful

For those around us

And all they have done

To help us.

But there’s another level of gratitude

That’s even more nourishing.

It comes from

Looking within.

We need to see and appreciate

The insight, emotions and energy

That we have all been given

As human beings.

They help us to achieve

So much that is meaningful

To us

And to others.

Let’s never forget

To be grateful

For what’s inside

All of us

And waiting patiently

To be drawn out.

And one more thing.

Let the gratitude

Become a catalyst

For action

And making a difference

That will be so meaningful

To others,

  • 06
    Aug 24
  • 0

From Curiosity to Exploration

Category:Connections,Edges,Emotions,Exploration,Fear,Growth,Learning,Opportunity,Passion,Potential,Transformation

I’ve written a lot about the growing importance of curiosity in the Big Shift world that is evolving around us. While curiosity is an essential core capability that we all need to cultivate, it is far from enough. Today, I want to move one step forward and make the case that curiosity without exploration is far from sufficient.

The role of curiosity

In a rapidly changing world, curiosity becomes more and more essential. Curiosity has many different dimensions, but it essentially involves asking a lot of questions as we become intrigued by what we do not know.

The strong desire to ask more questions can be a valuable way to launch us on our journey to learn more, but it is hardly sufficient.

The need for exploration

Exploration is about action, action beyond questions. How do we learn from the questions that we ask? Well, here we need to make a key distinction that has become central to a lot of my work.

There are two forms of learning – learning in the form of sharing existing knowledge and practices and learning in the form of creating new knowledge and practices.

If we’re focused on learning in the form of sharing existing knowledge and practices, there are many ways we can learn from the questions that we ask. We can do a lot of reading. We can attend classes and take careful notes. We can follow instructions to practice in ways that will help us develop important skills that other people already have. Those actions can be very useful when we are learning in the form of sharing existing knowledge and practices.

But, what about learning in the form of creating new knowledge and practices? In a rapidly changing world, existing knowledge and practices are becoming obsolete at an accelerating rate. Success in the Big Shift world hinges on shifting our focus to learning in the form of creating new knowledge and practices. That requires a very different set of actions. Now, we are venturing out into unknown territory.

This is where exploration becomes central to success. To learn in an unknown territory, we need to travel through the territory that no one has seen before and carefully inspect, search, experiment and analyze what we encounter. This is a very different form of action compared to learning in the form of sharing existing knowledge and practices.

Exploration becomes even more successful if we come together with others who share our curiosity about unknown territories. No matter how smart or intelligent we are, we will learn a lot more from exploration if we can connect with others who bring different perspectives and experiences to help assess what we are encountering.

Without exploration, curiosity becomes a dead-end. We have so many questions, but no answers.

But there’s more

This is where the passion of the explorer becomes key to unlocking the value of curiosity. I’ve done a lot of research on this very specific form of passion and written about it extensively, including in my most recent book, The Journey Beyond Fear.

In brief, people with this form of passion are excited about a long-term commitment to achieving increasing impact in a specific domain. They are excited when confronted with unexpected challenges and their first instinct when confronted with an unexpected challenge is to find ways to connect with others who can help them come up with better answers faster.

The passion of the explorer helps to focus us on the domains that are the most exciting to us. Those domains differ, depending on who we are – they could be anything from gardening to space exploration. Whatever the domain is, people with the passion of the explorer will be driven to find the edges of the domain that have not yet been explored because that is where the greatest impact can be achieved by learning in the form of creating new knowledge and practices.

We all have the passion of the explorer within us, waiting to be discovered, but very few of us have found this passion, much less pursued it. We unfortunately live in societies and cultures where this form of passion is deeply suspect and often discouraged. Our schools, families and institutions encourage us to focus on pursuing careers that will pay a good income and to not let passion distract us.

The focus that we achieve with the passion of the explorer is essential to accelerating learning in the form of creating new knowledge and practices. Without this passion, curiosity and exploration can be overwhelming. There’s so much that we don’t know and could explore that we are very much at risk of spreading ourselves way too thinly across too many domains. That would significantly limit our ability to learn faster. But, if we are excited and focused, we will be driven to learn faster and achieve more and more impact in the domains that matter to us.

The bottom line

Curiosity is a critical capability that we all need to develop in a rapidly changing world, but it is of little value, and can become a distraction, if we don’t combine it with action through exploration that is focused by our passion of the explorer. The passion of the explorer is fundamental – if we find and cultivate that passion, we will be driven to cultivate curiosity and pursue exploration with the goal of achieving more and more impact that is meaningful to us and to others.

  • 02
    Jun 24
  • 0

Exploring Curiosity

Category:Collaboration,Community,Connections,Emotions,Exploration,Fear,Growth,Institutional Innovation,Learning,Opportunity,Passion,Potential,Serendipity,Trust

How many questions do you have? A few questions are OK, but if you have too many, you will start to encounter resistance and rejection. Too many questions are suspect. Don’t you know what you’re supposed to be doing?

Curiosity is an incredibly powerful capability, yet fewer and fewer people have invested the effort to cultivate this capability. As a result, we are missing significant opportunities.

Curiosity is a strong desire to learn something. It is triggered by the realization that there is a lot we do not know, no matter how smart or well-educated we might be. It also is driven by the belief that our lives will be even more fulfilling if we learn more. Curiosity unleashes many questions in our quest to learn more. Rather than seeking to become experts, we seek to remain explorers.

Why is curiosity so important?

We live in a world that is being transformed by the Big Shift. These long-term trends are accelerating the pace of change. Existing knowledge is becoming obsolete at an accelerating rate while new knowledge is expanding.

In the Big Shift world, continuous learning becomes a key to achieving more impact that is meaningful. Let me emphasize also that this learning is not in the form of sharing existing knowledge, as occurs in classes or training programs. The learning that is most valuable and necessary in the Big Shift world is learning in the form of creating new knowledge and practices. That does not occur in a classroom or training room; it occurs out in the world as we encounter new situations that have never been encountered before.

People with curiosity are constantly searching for new situations that can become catalysts for learning. When finding these new situations, they are filled with questions that will help them to seek answers.

What makes curiosity so powerful?

Curiosity has many benefits. People with curiosity are constantly asking questions that can help to accelerate learning.

These questions can become catalysts for serendipity. Answers can come from unexpected sources that the curious person did not even know about. These unexpected encounters can lead to significant new insight.

Asking questions can also build trust. Curious people are acknowledging through questions that they do not know something and asking for help. This expression of vulnerability builds trust and motivates people to share information and knowledge that they might be reluctant to share in a less trusting environment.

Questions can also be a catalyst for building new relationships. Other curious people who are intrigued by the questions being asked by the curious person will often seek out the person asking the questions and offer to collaborate in searching for answers that can help all parties to learn faster.

Curiosity is also powerful because it can become a foundation for several other capabilities that are essential to accelerate learning. A lot has been written about capabilities like imagination, creativity, collaboration, and reflection. These are certainly very valuable and increasingly necessary, but all these capabilities are significantly strengthened by curiosity. If we are not driven to ask questions and explore new territories, we will be a lot less effective in cultivating and pursuing these other capabilities.

What are the barriers to curiosity?

While curiosity as a capability is very powerful and increasingly necessary in a rapidly changing world, many barriers are preventing people from cultivating this capability.

At the level of the individual, the emotion of fear can be a significant barrier. People with fear tend to view acquiring new knowledge as very risky and worry that, if they ask too many questions, they will be viewed as ignorant or incompetent. They avoid questions and try to reassure themselves that they know enough to be successful.

At the level of the institution, there are even more significant barriers to curiosity. As I’ve written elsewhere, large, traditional institutions have embraced an institutional model of scalable efficiency. In these institutions, the focus is on how to become more efficient at scale. Leaders have become convinced that efficiency requires tightly specified tasks that are highly standardized across the entire organization. In these institutions, curiosity is deeply suspect – it prompts people to ask too many questions that distract people from their assigned tasks and those questions are unnecessary if the person has carefully read the process manual.

What is required to overcome those barriers?

Curiosity is such a powerful and necessary capability that we need to find ways to overcome these barriers so that we can unleash the potential that curiosity offers.

The most promising way to do this is to find and draw out the passion of the explorer that resides within all of us. My research suggests that this very specific form of passion is a powerful driver of sustained extreme performance improvement in an increasingly challenging world. People with the passion of the explorer are excited about achieving increasing impact over time in a specific domain, they are excited when confronted with new challenges, and they actively seek out help from others in addressing those challenges.

People with the passion of the explorer are constantly asking questions about the domain that excites them because they are driven to have more and more impact in that domain. The passion of the explorer helps to focus curiosity – rather than just asking questions about anything and everything, and becoming overwhelmed with how much there is to learn, people with the passion of the explorer are excited about a specific domain – it could be anything from gardening to outer space – that focuses their questions.

So, how does one find and cultivate this passion of the explorer? I have come to believe that we all have this passion lurking within us and that we need to make the effort to draw it out. I ended up writing a book – The Journey Beyond Fear – that shares my research into the approaches that can help all of us to find and cultivate this passion.

The bottom line

In a world of accelerating change, we all need to cultivate curiosity as a core capability. This is not only an opportunity but an imperative, even though there are significant barriers that stand in our way. The most promising way to overcome these barriers is to draw out an emotion – the passion of the explorer – that will excite us about the opportunity ahead. By finding and pursuing the passion of the explorer, we will rapidly cultivate curiosity and that, in turn, will help us to cultivate other important capabilities – imagination, creativity, collaboration and reflection – that are essential to accelerate learning in the form of creating new knowledge that can help all of us to unleash exponentially expanding opportunities. So, what are the questions that really excite you?

  • 17
    Mar 24
  • 1

Diving Deeper Into Digital Transformation

Category:Collaboration,Community,Context,Edges,Emotions,Exploration,Fear,Future,Growth,Institutional Innovation,Leadership,Learning,Opportunity,Passion,Potential,Small moves,Strategy,Transformation

Digital transformation has become a business buzzword. Everyone is talking about it, but there is a significant missed opportunity. To understand the missed opportunity, we first need to understand the context of the world we live in.

The Big Shift

Long-term forces are re-shaping our global economy and society in profound ways. I have done a lot of research on the Big Shift. It has many dimensions – one of them is the creation of exponentially expanding opportunities. We can create far more value with far less resources and far more quickly than would have been imaginable a few decades. But to do this, we will need to embrace broad business transformation.

From digital transformation to business transformation

Here’s the first problem. Virtually every large, traditional organization has a digital transformation program, but when you probe into what the program is doing, it turns out that virtually all of these programs are focused on applying digital technology so that the organization can do what it has always done, but just faster and cheaper.

Increased business efficiency may be helpful, but it is not business transformation. Business transformation starts with asking the most basic question of all – what fundamentally different business should we be seeking to become?

To answer this question, I strongly recommend that leaders adopt a very different approach to strategy, something I call the Zoom Out/Zoom In approach to strategy. This approach has many benefits, but one of them is that it takes leadership out of their comfort zone, and forces them to look for small moves, smartly made that they can pursue in the short-term to begin their journey to much more profound business transformation.

If we’re serious about pursuing exponentially expanding opportunities, everything in the business will need to change. We’ll need to shift from an institutional model of scalable efficiency to scalable learning. We’ll need to redefine work for everyone in the organization so that people are no longer performing tightly specified, highly standardized tasks and instead are focused on addressing unseen opportunities and problems to create more value. We’ll need to redesign our work environments so that they can support this new form of work. We’ll need to adopt different approaches to growth – rather than focusing on make versus buy as the two key growth options, we’ll need to embrace leveraged growth where the focus is on connecting our customers with a broader range of third parties that can help to address their unmet needs.

That’s profound change in all aspects of our current businesses. What are the barriers and obstacles to overcome? Based on my experience in helping leaders to pursue business transformation, I have only one piece of advice – never, ever under-estimate the power of the immune system and antibodies that exist in every large, traditional organization and which will mobilize at the slightest indication of change to resist that change.

These people are not evil people. They are very well-intentioned, but they are driven by the emotion of fear. They have become very risk averse and believe that the best way to succeed is to continue doing what has always been done to create value.

From business transformation to emotional transformation

To address this barrier and obstacle to business transformation, we need to dive deeper into another level of transformation – emotional transformation. How do we move beyond the emotion of fear to cultivate other emotions that will help us to have more impact that is meaningful to us? That’s the focus of my latest book – The Journey Beyond Fear. I wrote the book because I saw fear becoming more and more prevalent as an emotion around the world.

A key reason for the spread of fear is mounting performance pressure that is also generated by the Big Shift – competition intensifying on a global scale, pace of change accelerating and extreme, disruptive events emerging more frequently. While understandable, this emotion is also very limiting – people who are driven by fear can’t even see the exponential opportunities emerging in the future, much less have the motivation to pursue them.

How do we overcome this fear? We need to find and draw out a very specific form of passion – the passion of the explorer – that resides within all of us and is waiting to be drawn out.

It turns out that the Zoom Out/Zoom In approach to strategy can be very powerful in moving us beyond fear. It focuses people on a really big and inspiring opportunity 10-20 years from now and quickly provides evidence of progress towards that opportunity in the next 6-12 months to help overcome skepticism.

To make the journey beyond fear we also need to cultivate new leadership models – shifting from an expert model where the leader has the answer to all the questions to the explorer model where the leader is focused on sharing inspiring questions and asking for help in coming up with answers.

We also need to adopt different approaches to transformation. Rather than pursuing top down, big bang approaches that draw out the immune system, we should focus on scaling an edge that can become the new core of the business and will embrace all the changes required to pursue exponential opportunities.

Bottom line

Digital technology is a significant catalyst for the need for transformation, but we need to avoid becoming focused too narrowly on digital transformation. Instead, we need to dive deeper into business transformation and then recognize that will require an even deeper dive to a third level – emotional transformation.

This is a huge opportunity. It can help us to move from mounting performance pressure to exponentially expanding opportunity. It’s not just an opportunity – it’s an imperative given the rapidly changing world around us.

I am an optimist. I believe that we can and will move beyond the caterpillars that we are today, focused on just finding ways to move faster. Instead, we will all become butterflies in a thriving world.

  • 03
    Feb 24
  • 1

Where to Look

Category:Collaboration,Connections,Context,Emotions,Exploration,Fear,Future,Learning,Opportunity,Passion

Ambergris Cay Island, Turks and Caicos Islands

We live in a world of accelerating change. There’s so much going on around us that we are understandably becoming overwhelmed.

And the advice we get can be very confusing. Many are saying to stay focused on the present. Others tell us to look ahead and focus on the future. And then there are those who insist we should stay focused on the past because we can learn from the past.

So, what is it? My advice is that we need to do all three, but in a very specific sequence, otherwise it will certainly be overwhelming.

Start with the future

We need to start by looking ahead. We need to search for really big opportunities that can inspire us to come together and act with others. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, the Big Shift that we are experiencing on a global scale is creating exponentially expanding opportunities – we can create far more value, far more quickly and with far less resources than would have ever been required in the past.

But those opportunities will not emerge on their own. We need to look for them and actively pursue them. And we need to keep searching until we find a really big opportunity that excites us – let’s not be distracted by an overwhelming range of possibilities in the future.

And, yes, the future is uncertain – to some degree. We need to focus on the long-term trends that are already playing out and that are reasonably predictable.

Starting with the search for big, future opportunities is also important because many of us have adopted a view of the future that focuses on imminent threats. As I’ve discussed in my book, The Journey Beyond Fear, that view of the future is feeding the emotion of fear that more and more of us are experiencing, and that is holding us back from even seeing, much less pursuing, the opportunities ahead.

Focusing on a really exciting opportunity in the future can help us to overcome the fear that we are experiencing today. It can become a catalyst for drawing out the passion of the explorer that will motivate us to act now and pursue the opportunity.

Equally importantly, finding a really exciting opportunity in the future will help us to maintain focus as we deal with the infinite demands on our attention in the present.

Then shift to the present

Once we have a really exciting opportunity in the future that can maintain our focus, we can then shift to exploring the present. That exploration will be driven by three questions:

  • What are resources and capabilities that can help me to address opportunity
  • Who else can I collaborate with to amplify these resources and capabilities?
  • What are major barriers that need to be overcome to achieve opportunity?

There’s a lot to be learned from the present, and that will put us in a better position to learn from the past.

Learn from the past

Once we have a clear focus on the exciting opportunity ahead and the resources and barriers of the present, we’re in a much better position to look into the past and learn from the past.

We’ll now be much more focused on what can be learned from previous initiatives that will help us to achieve even more impact today. Again, the need is to stay focused on what can be learned to achieve greater impact in pursuing the opportunity that excites us the most. There’s so much in the past that can distract us unless we have a clear view of what we are trying to learn.

These lessons from the past can then help us to evolve our initiatives in the present so that we can have even greater impact and accelerate our progress towards the exciting opportunity in the future.

Return to the present and the future

We’re now in a much better position to pursue high impact initiatives in the present. We’ll need to stay focused on the present and continually reflect on the impact that we’re achieving as we pursue our initiatives. What is achieving greater impact than we expected? What is falling short in terms of impact? How can we evolve our initiatives so that we can achieve even greater impact?

As we pursue these initiatives in the present, we will also achieve much greater insight into the opportunity that we are pursuing in the future. It will become much clearer and even more compelling as we learn more about the details of the opportunity and the value that it can create.

Bottom line

Sequence matters. The key is to focus and cultivate the motivation to act and learn.

In the past, the emphasis was focusing on the past because we lived in a more stable world where the past could provide us with valuable lessons about the opportunities in the future. Today, we need to emphasize looking ahead into the future as a launchpad for impact that matters because the world is changing at a rapid rate, and new opportunities are emerging that could never have been addressed in the past.

In the end, we need to focus on action and learning from that action so that we can truly address exponentially expanding opportunities.

NEW BOOK

(if you've read the book, click here)

My new book, The Journey Beyond Fear, starts with the observation that fear is becoming the dominant emotion for people around the world. While understandable, fear is also very limiting.

LEARN MORE
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The book explores a variety of approaches we can pursue to cultivate emotions of hope and excitement that will help us to move forward despite fear and achieve more of our potential. You can order the book at Amazon.

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