Exploration – Page 3

15
Mar 21
1

The Untapped Potential of Personal Narrative

Category:Collaboration,Emotions,Exploration,Learning,Narratives,Opportunity,Potential

We all have a personal narrative. For some of us, it is liberating and energizing, but for most of us, it is limiting and draining. The good news is that we all have ability to evolve our personal narrative to make it more fulfilling, if we choose to make the effort.

I’ve written about personal narrative before, including here and here, and it is a key theme in my new book, The Journey Beyond Fear, that will be coming out in a couple of months. For those who have not been following me, I should clarify that I have a very different view of personal narrative than most psychologists.

For psychologists, personal narrative involves looking back over our lives and crafting a story of the choices we made that brought us to where we are today. For me, personal narratives have two key components: our view of the future and our call to action to others.

When we look out into the future, are we focusing more on threat or opportunity? That view of the future will play a key role in shaping our emotions and actions today. Also, as we seek to address the threat or opportunity out in the future, are we asking for help from others or are we trying to go it alone?

We all have a personal narrative that’s driving us forward, but few of us have made the effort to make that personal narrative explicit, much less reflect on how well it might be serving our needs and potential for impact. That effort can be very rewarding, especially if we use it as a catalyst to evolve our narrative so that we are motivated to have much greater impact that is meaningful to us and can motivate others to join us in that effort.

Opportunities for evolution

Our personal narratives can evolve on multiple dimensions. Let’s start with our view of the future. In a world of mounting performance pressure, more and more of us have adopted a dystopian view of the future where threats are everywhere. The world is coming to an end, our societies our crumbling and our personal lives are more and more vulnerable to disruption.

While certainly understandable, that view of the future feeds our fear and makes us more risk averse and we become even more vulnerable to mounting performance pressure.

But there is an alternative view of the future. The same forces that are creating mounting performance pressure are also creating exponentially expanding opportunity – we can have far more impact, with far less resources and far more quickly than ever before. We need to make the effort to see those opportunities and to search for the opportunity that excites us the most.

If our view of the future is shaped by a really inspiring opportunity, we will begin to draw out emotions of hope and excitement that will motivate us to move boldly forward. We’ll find ourselves having much more meaningful impact and we’ll be driven to learn how to have even more impact in addressing this opportunity over time.

But there’s more. If we can focus on an opportunity in the future that really excites us, it increases our desire and ability to motivate others to join us in the quest to address this opportunity. Truth be told, most of us are pursuing personal narratives today that don’t provide a call to action for others to join us. Personal narratives that focus on a threat in the future tend to isolate us. As fear takes hold, we find it harder to trust others and we are more inclined to try to move forward on our own. That sense of isolation further intensifies the fear.

On the other hand, if we’ve found a really exciting opportunity out in the future, we can become very motivated to ask for help from others and, if the opportunity is appropriately framed, it can motivate many to invest time and effort in addressing the opportunity. This helps us to get significant leverage and have far more impact than if we try to do it all by ourselves. If it’s a big opportunity that will take years to achieve, it can also help us to build long-term, trust-based relationships that will play a significant role in overcoming our fear.

Challenges of evolution

When I talk about evolution of personal narrative, many people interpret this as writing up a new, and more fulfilling, narrative based on reflection of their existing narrative. I wish it were that easy. In my experience, personal narratives can’t evolve just by thinking and writing. They need to evolve through action – and it’s not just a one-time evolution, but a continual process of evolution shaped by actions taken and reflection on the impact achieved through action.

As we begin to focus on an opportunity in the future, we need to test and refine that opportunity through action now. We need to identify and pursue actions in the short-term (ideally weeks or a few months) that have potential to address that opportunity. As we pursue these actions, we need to reflect on whether those actions are generating the level of excitement we anticipated and whether they are helping us to make progress towards achieving the opportunity. If not, we need to either evolve our view of the opportunity that would be most exciting to us or our view of the actions that would have the greatest impact in making progress.

We also need to start reaching out to those we think could be most helpful with a call for them to join us in our quest to address the opportunity we’ve identified. Are they really investing the time and effort required to address the opportunity? Are they achieving real impact from their efforts?

If not, we need to further evolve our personal narrative. Is the opportunity we’ve identified big enough to motivate others to participate? Have we identified the right people to address the opportunity ahead? Can we frame the call to action in a way that would help them (and us) to achieve greater impact?

Our personal narratives are capable of, and require, continual evolution if we are going to achieve the impact that is most meaningful to us. There is always the potential to achieve more. In fact, if we’re truly excited about the opportunity we are identifying, we will be constantly seeking ways to have greater impact.

Effective personal narratives will trigger a learning mindset. We’ll be excited by the opportunity to have more and more impact over time. And we’ll realize that the most effective way to learn is through action, not just sitting in a chair and thinking about it.

And, it’s not just learning through action – it’s learning through action together with others. No matter how smart we are as individuals, we’ll learn a lot faster if we can come together with others who share our excitement about the opportunity we’ve identified. That’s why it’s so important to have a call to action to others that excites and motivates others to come together and constantly seek to increase impact.

Bottom line

Our personal narratives have untapped potential, no matter how well framed they are today. If we’re going to unleash more and more of that potential, we need to commit to continually evolve our personal narratives by acting together with others in ways that help us to learn faster.

24
Aug 20
1

A Deep Dive Into the Passion of the Explorer

Category:Collaboration,Crisis,Emotions,Exploration,Learning,Passion,Potential

During the current pandemic, I’m struck by the number of people who have told me that this crisis has been a catalyst for them to reflect on what’s really important to them. Through reflection, they’ve come to realize that most of their time has been spent on activities that have little, if any, meaning for them.

As an optimist, I’d like to believe that is one positive outcome of the pandemic – it will be a catalyst for us to reflect on what really matters to us – what are we really passionate about? The challenge is that most of us have not yet found the passion that can provide us with a living. In fact, a survey that I recently completed of the US workforce indicates that, at most, only about 14% of US workers are passionate about the work they are doing.

There are many reasons for this. In part, we live in a society that tells us from an early age to focus on a career that will pay us well and that passion is something to be pursued after hours, as a hobby. We also work in institutions that are deeply suspicious of passion – passionate people tend to take risks and often deviate from their assigned tasks.

But the paradox is that we live in a world of mounting performance pressure where passion becomes the key to turning pressure into opportunity. To be clear, I’m talking about a very specific form of passion – the passion of the explorer – that emerged from my research into arenas where participants deliver sustained extreme performance improvement. This form of passion has three components:

A long-term commitment to achieving increasing impact in a specific domain
A questing disposition that seeks out new challenges
A connecting disposition that seeks to connect with others when addressing new challenges to achieve greater impact

People with this form of passion are motivated to learn faster and will be the most successful in a rapidly changing world. If you’re not passionate about the work you’re doing, you’ll fall further and further behind as you compete with people who are passionate. And, of course, you won’t find much meaning in your work to give you a sense of fulfillment.

I’m hopeful that this pandemic will drive more and more of us to embark on a quest to find and nurture our passion, and to find a way to make a living by pursuing our passion. In the new book that I’m writing, I focus on the lessons that I’ve learned on my journey to uncover my passion and integrate it with my profession.

On the side, I’ve been collaborating with Tracey Grose, who is putting together a program where I can share some of these lessons with others who are on a similar journey. Those who participate in this program will get a preview, and a deeper dive, into some of the approaches that I will be covering in this new book.

In this program, Catalyzing Impact, we’ll start by explaining why the passion of the explorer is becoming more and more central to success. It will help to reinforce the growing awareness that passion is not just a “nice to have,” but a “must have” if we are going to thrive in an increasingly challenging world.

But the bulk of the program will focus on the approaches that can help us to find and cultivate our passion of the explorer and then integrate it with our work. I will challenge everyone to find this passion within themselves, driven by a belief that we all, as human beings, have a capacity for, and hunger for, the passion of the explorer.

Part of this involves reflection on our past, but it also requires us to look ahead and reflect on what our view of the future is and how it shapes our actions today. It also will involve looking around and looking for patterns in people who inspire us and who give us energy.

We will also look at the work that consumes much of our lives and focus on the activities, if any, that generate excitement within us. While many of us will not find ways to cultivate passion in the work that we are currently pursuing, there are sometimes opportunities to evolve our current work in ways that are more aligned with the passion of the explorer that we are uncovering.

More likely than not, we’ll find many elements that could be indicators of the passion that resides within us. Part of our effort will be to weave these elements together as we begin to see underlying patterns that connect what at first appear to be diverse elements. While some will be struck with a sudden revelation of the passion within themselves, for many this will be the beginning of a longer journey of exploration.

Part of the program will be designed to help participants pursue their exploration beyond the program. In this context, I will highlight the role that impact groups can play in our journey. My experience is that journeys become a lot more enriching and enlightening when made together with others.

I’ve become a strong proponent of participation in small impact groups – they typically involve 3-15 people. The participants in these impact groups share a commitment to a quest – in this case, it is the effort to find and cultivate a passion of the explorer. They meet on a regular basis – usually weekly, if not more frequently – and they build deep, trust-based relationships with each other as they pursue their journey together. They challenge each other to make more progress, but they also encourage and support each other when they run into unexpected obstacles or challenges.

This program will help participants to understand the value of these impact groups. It will provide guidance on how to bring these impact groups together and how to manage these impact groups so that participants can get the most value from their interactions.

The intent is for the program to be a catalyst for discovery and to motivate people to pursue a journey that is designed to help them discover and cultivate their passion of the explorer and to find ways to integrate that passion with their work so that they can increase their impact in a meaningful way in all dimensions of their lives. I hope you will be able to join Tracey and me in this program – please sign up here.

20
Aug 20
23

Beyond Our Edge

Category:Collaboration,Creation Spaces,Edges,Emotions,Exploration,Institutional Innovation,Learning,Movements,Narratives,Opportunity,Passion,Potential,Trust

I’ve got some exciting news. I’ve opened up a new company – Beyond Our Edge, LLC. Its goal is to motivate more and more people to come together and move beyond our edge so that we can achieve more of our potential together. Many of us are already drawn to our edge, but we’ll be much more likely to move beyond our edge if we come together on the journey. I’ve always been inspired by the African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.”

This move has been made possible by my retirement from Deloitte, even though I have no intention of “retiring.” I’m now free to venture beyond my edge and I’ll want to connect with others who share my passion for exploration and driving meaningful change.

My next book

In that context, my first priority is to finish writing my next book – its working title is “From Pressure to Passion.” Two triggers motivated me to write this book. First, even though my business career has been largely focused on business strategy, I’ve come to believe that achieving impact depends less on strategy and more on psychology – if we don’t see and understand the emotions that are driving our choices and actions, we’ll never achieve what we really need and want. Second, as I’ve traveled around the world over the past several years (well before the current pandemic), the dominant emotion that I encountered everywhere is fear – at the highest levels of organizations, on the front lines and out in the community.

While that fear is understandable – there are many reasons to be afraid – it’s also potentially very dysfunctional. We need to acknowledge the fear but, equally importantly, we need to find ways to cultivate hope and excitement that will motivate us to move forward in spite of our fear. My new book is partly about my personal journey from fear to hope and excitement, but it draws on that experience to outline approaches that we all can use to make that journey.

While my book focuses on helping people to make this personal journey, it also highlights the need to drive fundamental change in the environments that we live in. We’re in a world that’s rapidly evolving. It’s a paradoxical world – it provides exponentially expanding opportunity as well as mounting performance pressure.

Bringing movements together

Right now, most of us are experiencing mounting performance pressure, in part because all our institutions were designed for an earlier, more stable world. The institutions that provided stability in the past are increasingly proving ill-equipped for the rapidly changing world around us. We all see this. It’s a key reason that trust in all our institutions is eroding around the world. It’s also feeding our fear – the institutions that we thought we could rely on are increasingly failing us.

Our institutions have become significant barriers to our efforts to harness the exponentially expanding opportunity that’s now becoming available to us. So, even if we find ways to overcome our fear and take more bold moves to pursue opportunities, we’ll find our existing institutions standing in our way and limiting our potential for impact.

That’s why we need to drive change on two fronts – individual change and institutional change. For decades, we’ve had two movements proceeding in parallel – the human potential movement and social change movements. The challenge is that there’s very little interaction between these two movements – it’s either all about helping individuals to overcome their internal obstacles or driving change in the broader society or economy. Unless we can drive change on both fronts, we’ll never create the conditions that will enable all of us to achieve much more of our potential by harnessing exponentially expanding opportunity. We need to find ways to bring these two movements together.

Impact groups inspired by narratives

It will come as no surprise to those who’ve been following me to hear that I believe the key to bringing these two movements together is to focus on organizing small impact groups that can then connect and scale their efforts through broader networks and platforms.

Let me be clear – to harness exponentially expanding opportunities, we need to come together. If we act alone, we’ll only achieve a small fraction of the potential available to us. By coming together, we’ll be much more likely to overcome our fear and find the courage to move beyond our edges and achieve much more of our potential.

What will it take to bring us together? I’ve become a strong proponent of opportunity-based narratives that frame really big, inspiring opportunities in the future and that represent a call to action to all of us today, emphasizing that those opportunities will not be achieved unless we act together. Imagine what amazing things we could accomplish if we all came together?

Understanding edges

As we come together, we need to find ways to help each other move beyond our edge. In this context, edges have many meanings. At one level, edges are defined by areas of expertise – for example, marketing, economics or equipment maintenance. At another level, edges are defined by our comfort zones – where do we start to become uncomfortable when confronted with new experiences?

For many of us, edges create the image of a cliff where we need to be very careful or we’ll slip and slide into oblivion. I prefer to view edges as walls – they’re the boundaries that limit our ability to explore and discover more of our potential. And we can’t just look beyond the walls, we need to climb over the walls and explore the territory that’s been hidden from us.

Sure, venturing beyond these walls can be scary and make us very uncomfortable because we’re venturing into unknown territory, but we’re much more likely to make the journey if we’re joined by others whom we trust and who will provide us with support and encouragement. We’re also likely to learn more if we go together, rather than heading out alone. No matter how smart any of us are, we’ll learn a lot faster if we’re sharing experiences with others and learning through action together.

Bottom line

I’m hoping that my new book will become a catalyst to motivate more of us to venture beyond our edge together. Over the next several months, I’ll be looking to connect with others who share my conviction that there’s exponentially expanding opportunity available to all of us if we choose to address the root causes that are holding us back – the emotion of fear within all of us and the institutions that are increasingly serving as barriers to progress. It’s an unprecedented opportunity, but we need to act now, together, and venture beyond our edge.

Category Archives: Exploration

Mar 21

1

The Untapped Potential of Personal Narrative

Aug 20

1

A Deep Dive Into the Passion of the Explorer

Aug 20

23

Beyond Our Edge

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