Passion – John Hagel

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.

10
Aug 23
6

From Expert to Explorer

Category:Exploration,Growth,Institutional Innovation,Leadership,Learning,Opportunity,Passion,Trust,Uncategorized

We are in a Big Shift from experts to explorers. What do I mean by this? We live in societies around the world where “experts” run the show. Given the profound changes that are unfolding in our global economies and societies, we need to shift to explorers who can help us craft new pathways that can create far more value for all of us. Let me explore this in more detail.

Our heritage

Over the past century, we have witnessed the growth of large institutions around the world that have been driven by a “scalable efficiency” model. In this model, the key to success is to do what we have always done, faster and cheaper, at scale.

This model worked very well in a more stable world. The large institutions that run our economies and societies have embraced this model and were able to scale at a rapid rate globally.

In the scalable efficiency model, leadership is awarded to “experts.” These are people who have relevant academic degrees and experience in running similar institutions. Evaluating experts requires a deep dive into their past to ensure they have acquired the knowledge required to manage tightly specified processes and demonstrated the ability to squeeze harder so that all relevant activities can be done faster and cheaper.

Experts have ambition. They are driven to accumulate more credentials and experience that will help them to achieve even greater influence and power than they currently have. But they’re not excited about the unknown – if anything, they are in denial or resisting the unknown.

In a Big Shift world with mounting performance pressure, we trusted leaders who had the relevant expertise – it was all about credentials. These were leaders who claimed to have the answers to all the relevant questions and these claims were credible because they had the relevant credentials.

These leaders embraced the “command and control” approach that governs all scalable efficiency institutions. People needed to obey their commands because the leaders were the experts with all the answers. If they deviated from the scripts and process manuals that were provided to them, they were likely to be fired. Experts pursued a push-based model of resource allocation, pushing the right people and resources into the right places to meet their forecasts of demand.

Our future

We are in the early stages of a profound transformation of our global economy and society. To navigate successfully through these changes, we will need to embrace a very different leadership model. We will need to seek out and nurture explorers, rather than experts.

What do I mean by explorers? I am talking about people who have found and are pursuing a very specific form of passion – I call it the “passion of the explorer.” These people are excited about opportunities to have more and more impact in domains that matter to them. They are constantly seeking new challenges that can help them to learn faster by creating new knowledge that never existed before. They also are actively seeking help from others in addressing these new challenges – they freely acknowledge that they don’t know the answers and that they need help in finding the answers.

As you can see, explorers are very different from experts. They are looking ahead to anticipate emerging opportunities and recognize that existing knowledge is becoming obsolete at an accelerating rate. As leaders, they are framing powerful and inspiring questions that can pull more and more people to them in an effort to explore and discover answers that can create far more impact that is meaningful.

I don’t want to suggest that experts cannot become explorers. Experts – those with significant credentials and experience – can also be driven by the passion of the explorer. But then they become explorers – they are excited about the questions that don’t yet have answers and the opportunities ahead that have not yet been addressed.

Rather than motivating people with fear, explorers seek to draw out the passion of the explorer in others, so that more and more people are excited about venturing out into new territories and addressing emerging opportunities. Explorers create work environments that support exploration and accelerate learning by drawing people together and focusing them on emerging opportunities. Rather than organizing into hierarchical command and control structures, explorers focus on becoming a catalyst for bringing people together into small impact groups that are focused on action and impact and then expanding impact by organizing larger and larger networks of impact groups.

Explorers generate a very different form of trust compared with experts. Rather than focusing on credentials and past experience, explorers demonstrate a commitment to addressing unmet needs that are meaningful to people. They are constantly seeking out new unmet needs and make it clear they are determined overcome whatever obstacles and barriers that stand in their way as they address those needs. People trust explorers because they see that determination and excitement that will let nothing stand in their way.

While experts tend to be inward looking, focused on how to do existing activities faster and cheaper, explorers are outward looking. They are constantly searching for new unmet needs of stakeholders that can help them to create far more value.

I’ve become a strong proponent of the explorer leadership model in part because of more than 40 years of experience in Silicon Valley. I’ve seen the extraordinary value that explorers can create in startups. Unfortunately, once these startups achieve some scale, investors begin to pressure the explorers to hire “adult supervision.” That means they want the explorers to hire experts who can implement more traditional ways of doing business at scale. As a result, many of these companies becoming captives of the experts.

Why is the explorer leadership model so important? Organizations that continue to pursue the expert model will experience diminishing returns at best – the more efficient one becomes, the long and harder they will need to work to get the next increment of efficiency. In contrast, organizations embracing the explorer model are able to unleash exponentially expanding value. The paradox of the Big Shift is that, at the same time that it creates mounting performance pressure for all of us, it is also creating exponentially expanding opportunities – we can create far more value, far more quickly, and with far less resources than ever before. Explorers are driven to find and address those opportunities.

Bottom line

We’re on the cusp of a profound shift in leadership models. The expert model that served us so well over the past century is now proving less and less useful. We need to embrace a very different model – the explorer model. This model will help us to unleash the exponential value creation opportunities generated by the Big Shift and help all of us to achieve more and more of our potential. This isn’t just an opportunity – it’s an imperative, given our rapidly changing world. The best is yet to come.

10
May 23
0

Cultivating and Connecting Capabilities

Category:Collaboration,Connections,Edges,Exploration,Growth,Institutional Innovation,Learning,Opportunity,Passion,Transformation

I’ve long been a contrarian regarding our current view of learning in our work environments. I’ve come to believe that it is a growing barrier to progress. If we’re going to prosper and flourish, we need to embrace a very different approach to learning, one that is much more consistent with our humanity.

Skills versus capabilities

When I talk to leaders about learning, their focus is on learning “new” skills. They are concerned that, in a rapidly changing world, many skills are becoming obsolete. If workers are going to continue to be productive, they need to learn “new” skills. These skills aren’t really new, they’re just skills that most workers haven’t yet acquired. They need to be taught the skills.

Here’s where I start to be a contrarian. I challenge our narrow focus on skills and believe we need to expand our focus in learning to include capabilities. What’s the distinction? Skills are very valuable in a specific context – for example, how to operate a machine or how to use certain applications on a computer. Capabilities, in contrast, are valuable in all contexts – examples include curiosity, imagination and creativity. I’ve written extensively about this distinction here (pdf).

Connecting capabilities to support a new form of learning

Of course, some leaders are beginning to pay attention to capabilities, but they tend to approach them in isolation. We’ve all seen creativity workshops or imagination exercises. What’s missing is the need to connect capabilities. While each capability has some value on its own, the real potential comes when capabilities are combined.

Think about it. Curiosity is about exploration, venturing out into areas that have yet to be understood. But curiosity alone has only limited value. We need to cultivate connection and empathy so that we can form deeper and broader relationships with others. Exploring in isolation is much less rewarding than exploration with others. As we explore, we need imagination to come up with new ideas regarding how to create more value from the areas we are exploring. And ideas alone are not that helpful. We need creativity to help us develop and deploy approaches to help us to actually create the value that our imagination suggested we could pursue.

Done right, connecting these capabilities can unleash a virtuous cycle of learning. As we develop and deploy approaches to creating value with our creativity, our curiosity will gain come into play as we explore the impact that we have achieved. We can come together to imagine even more promising approaches and create even more value.

But this learning is very different from the learning that consumes the attention of most leaders today. When leaders talk about learning, they almost without exception are talking about learning in the form of sharing existing knowledge. This learning occurs in training rooms or through online video courses.

While not dismissing that form of learning, I again want to be a contrarian and suggest there’s a very different form of learning that is becoming much more necessary and valuable. It’s learning in the form of creating entirely new knowledge that never existed before. That form of learning occurs in the workplace, pursued by people who come together and take action as they cultivate the capabilities just described and address previously unseen opportunities to create more value.

While most leaders would acknowledge that this form of learning is important, they tend to confine it to small parts of the organization – research departments and/or innovation centers.

Cultivating capabilities

So, if capabilities are so important, how do we cultivate them? Here’s the good news. These capabilities are all innate within us. You don’t believe me? Let’s go to a playground and look at children 5 or 6 years old. Show me one that doesn’t have these capabilities as they play.

Unfortunately, our schools and our work environments have sought to crush these capabilities. We are taught to simply follow detailed instructions, reliably and efficiently, without asking too many questions or deviating from the assigned tasks. This is the key to success in the scalable efficiency institutions that dominate our world today.

Those capabilities may be hidden for many of us, but they are still there, waiting to be drawn out. How can we draw them out? It will be challenging because it will require very different work environments. We need work environments that will cultivate a very specific form of passion – the passion of the explorer (pdf).

The passion of the explorer has three components. People with this passion are committed to, and excited about, achieving more and more impact that is meaningful in a specific domain. When confronted with unexpected challenges, they become excited about the opportunity to achieve even greater impact. Finally, their first instinct when confronted with an unexpected challenge is how to connect with others who can help them get to a better answer faster.

People with this passion are driven to draw out and cultivate the capabilities I discussed earlier. They are excited about the opportunity to learn in the form of creating new knowledge. Curiosity, connection, imagination and creativity are essential for this kind of learning and they deeply value all these capabilities. They understand that these capabilities are deeply connected and should not be viewed in isolation.

But, here’s the problem. Our work environments today are deeply suspicious of people with the passion of the explorer. These people ask too many questions, they take too many risks, and they deviate from the process manual. That’s why, based on my research (pdf), only about 14% of US workers have this form of passion in their work.

Unleashing passion and capabilities

So, how do we change this? It won’t be easy. It will require us to transform the institutional models that shape all large institutions around the world. As I’ve written about here (pdf), the prevailing institutional model is scalable efficiency where the key to success to do things faster and cheaper at scale. This model has driven the growth of large institutions over the past century but, in the Big Shift, the paradox is that scalable efficiency is becoming less and less efficient because it has a hard time dealing with the accelerating pace of change.

We need to make a shift from the institutional model of scalable efficiency to a model of scalable learning. As already discussed, the focus of this new institutional model is on learning in the form of creating new knowledge by mobilizing people throughout an organization to come together and address unseen problems and opportunities to create more value. These models can scale even further by building networks of relationships among people that extend far beyond a single institution.

The scalable learning model focuses on cultivating the capabilities already discussed and recognizes that the passion of the explorer is the most powerful motivator for people to draw out and exercise these capabilities. It encourages everyone to find and pursue their passion of the explorer.

The scalable learning model challenges virtually all the beliefs and practices that prevail in our existing scalable efficiency models. For this reason, it will be very challenging for existing large institutions to make the transition. As I’ve written about here (pdf), the most effective way for large institutions to transition will be to scale the edge, rather than pursuing “big bang” top-down change programs that seek transform the core of the institution.

As challenging as it might be, the transition will be deeply rewarding. At its best, the scalable efficiency model is a diminishing returns model – the more efficient we become, the longer and harder we have to work to achieve the next increment of efficiency. In contrast, the scalable learning model is an increasing returns model where value can grow exponentially as learning expands its horizons and accelerates.

Bottom line

We live in a rapidly changing world where the most valuable and necessary learning for everyone is learning in the form of creating new knowledge. This form of learning requires a combination of uniquely human capabilities – curiosity, connection, imagination and creativity. People who find and pursue the passion of the explorer are powerfully motivated to develop these capabilities. If we all are going to embrace the passion of the explorer, we need to transform our institutions. It won’t be easy, but the rewards will be enormous. Let’s get started.

01
Jan 23
2

The Old Becomes the New

Category:Exploration,Growth,Opportunity,Paradox,Passion,Poem,Potential

As we enter the New Year,

Let’s not become consumed

By the newness.

It’s an opportunity

To look within

And to see

What’s always been there,

Waiting to be discovered

And drawn out.

It’s not new.

It’s been there

From the beginning.

What’s new

Is our willingness to see more of it

And pursue more of it.

And it’s not just within

One of us.

It’s within all of us.

What is it?

It’s our spirit

That wants to make a difference

That is more and more meaningful

To us

And to others.

We’ve all been in touch

With our spirit,

But we’ve only experienced

A small part of it.

There’s so much more

To be discovered

And nurtured.

In this New Year,

Let’s make the effort

To nurture

What is already there,

So that we can all thrive.

24
Nov 22
0

Reflections on Gratitude

Category:Exploration,Passion,Poem,Potential

On Thanksgiving

We have an opportunity

To reflect on gratitude.

What should we be

Most grateful for?

My advice:

Don’t look outside,

Look within.

We all have a passion within –

The passion of the explorer.

Some of us have found it

And we’re pursuing it.

But most of us

Have not yet found it.

Many of us are not even

Looking for it.

But it’s there,

Waiting to be found

And pursued.

When we find it

And pursue it,

We will make a difference

That grows over time

And that is more and more meaningful

To us,

And to others.

We all seek meaning,

But we need to look within,

In order to manifest it

Outside.

Let’s be grateful

For the passion

That will spawn

Expanding meaning

For all of us.

20
Nov 22
1

The Metapsychology of the Metaverse

Category:Collaboration,Community,Connections,Context,Emotions,Exploration,Fear,Future,Learning,Narratives,Opportunity,Passion,Potential,Uncategorized

The metaverse is consuming conversations about technology these days. But, what is it? And, is it something we should welcome?

What is the metaverse?

I can’t pretend to offer a definitive definition of the metaverse – I certainly haven’t been able to find one. It’s one of my concerns in all this talk about the metaverse – many different definitions seem to be floating around so it’s not clear what we are talking about.

My best guess about what most people mean when they talk about the metaverse is that it is an immersive and persistent three-dimensional virtual realm, shared with many users, that brings together virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. It integrates many different technologies, including augmented reality, the Internet of things, virtual reality, and blockchain. Blockchain provides an opportunity to use cryptocurrencies and NFT’s to create a fully functional virtual economy in the metaverse where you can buy and sell any virtual asset.

The metaverse can have a significant game component, where participants compete to achieve certain goals and win prizes for their efforts. In fact, I would suggest that the video game world is rapidly evolving into the metaverse and may lead the way for other metaverse initiatives. However, the metaverse can be much more than a game.

The term “Metaverse” was first coined by the great science fiction author, Neal Stephenson in his book, Snow Crash, published 30 years ago. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. In this book, Stephenson basically presents the metaverse as a virtual reality-based Internet populated by user-controlled avatars.

So, if this is what the metaverse is, is it good or evil? Well, the answer is – it depends. Like most technology, it’s not good or evil in itself. It all depends on how we use it.

The evil side of the metaverse

In a world that’s increasingly dominated by fear (see my book, The Journey Beyond Fear), there’s a significant risk that the metaverse will evolve in ways that limit our potential as humans, rather than expand it. What do I mean by that?

The metaverse is an artificial world that can provide an escape for those who are finding the real world very scary or limiting. If we’re driven by fear, it can draw us out of the real world and offer us a place to hide. If we’re consumed by boredom, it can provide us with an irresistible opportunity for excitement.

Temporary relief may be OK, but the metaverse can be designed to be addictive. Participants will find themselves spending more and more time in the metaverse, leaving the real world behind. Of course, for many metaverse designers, that’s what they’re seeking – make the metaverse an all-consuming experience.

The good side of the metaverse

While understandable, that misses the real opportunity of the metaverse. The metaverse can become a launchpad for all of us to achieve much more of our potential in the real world, but that will require a very different design of the virtual worlds we’re creating.

It requires a fundamental shift in focus in how to measure success. If the metaverse is designed to be an escape, the measure of success is how much time participants spend in the metaverse. If it’s a launchpad for impact in the real world, the measure of success is how participants are increasing their impact in the real world as a result of participating in the metaverse.

How could the metaverse help participants to increase their impact in the real world? It could begin by embodying the core elements of what I describe as opportunity-based narratives – a really big and inspiring opportunity out in the future and a call to action to address the opportunity. While the metaverse can present the opportunity in the virtual world, it would need to be clear that the opportunity exists in the real world as well, and help to motivate participants to pursue that opportunity there. Similarly, while the metaverse could provide an environment for action to pursue the opportunity in the virtual world, participants would need to understand that the real potential for impact is in the real world.

To help people address these opportunities, the metaverse could provide ways for people who are inspired by these opportunities to come together and discuss approaches that would have the greatest potential for impact in addressing these opportunities. These groups might even become what I call “impact groups.”

But it wouldn’t be just about discussion. In the metaverse, participants would be encouraged to take action. Initially, that action might be in the virtual world of the metaverse where it could be pursued perhaps more quickly and with less risk and more rapid feedback than in the real world. But, once again, participants would need to understand that this is simply a vehicle for learning how to have more impact in pursuing the opportunity in the real world. Designed appropriately, the metaverse could become a powerful learning platform that helps participants to learn faster through action together.

In short, the metaverse could become a vehicle for helping participants to overcome fear and boredom that they may be experiencing in the real world. It could do this by providing participants with the tools and connections that can help them address some very large and inspiring opportunities in the real world. Rather than providing an escape from the real world, the metaverse could motivate participants to return to the real world, excited about the potential to have much greater impact that is meaningful to them. Of course, they would regularly return to the metaverse to connect with more people and find ways to have even greater impact.

Metapsychology

So, why did I include metapsychology in the title of this blog? Of course, one reason was that it blended so well with metaverse. I may be using the term inappropriately, but it struck me that there’s an opportunity to explore the relationship between psychology and the metaverse.

In particular, it highlights the importance of understanding much more deeply how different design approaches to the metaverse could shape or influence the psychology of its participants. It’s also important to explore the relationship between the psychology of participants in the real world and in virtual worlds.

My view of the untapped opportunity is how the metaverse can help more and more people on the journey beyond fear and boredom. It can help to draw out hope and excitement in the real world that will motivate all of us to achieve much more of our potential.

Of course, we need to be careful about manipulation of emotions. From my perspective, manipulation occurs when we create environments or contexts that draw out certain emotions that are not in the best interest of the participants, but serve the interests of those who are creating the environments. In contrast, I am focusing on creating environments that will draw out emotions that we all as human beings have a hunger for – hope and excitement about an opportunity to have more impact in the real world that is meaningful to us and to others.

That’s ultimately where the money is. Many organizations seek to manipulate the emotions of others in order to serve their own interests. That may work in the short-term, but the key to generating long-term revenue and benefit comes from cultivating emotions that help us to achieve more of our potential.

Bottom line.

Like all technology, the metaverse can be used for good or evil. It’s up to us. As an optimist, I see the opportunity for enormous positive impact from the metaverse, but I’m concerned that there are strong incentives for metaverse designers to provide escape vehicles for participants and reduce the potential for positive growth in the real world. Once again, it’s up to us. How can we create more incentives for metaverse designers to provide us with launchpads in addressing very large opportunities in the real world?

05
Sep 22
0

Shaping Serendipity with Narratives

Category:Collaboration,Community,Connections,Emotions,Fear,Future,Learning,Narratives,Opportunity,Passion,Potential,Serendipity,Trust

I have long challenged our conventional view of serendipity. I believe that those who master the art of serendipity will ultimately achieve much more of their potential and create value that is meaningful to them and others. But it won’t be easy. It will require us to move beyond our comfort zone and embrace new approaches.

Shaping serendipity

Most of us believe that serendipity is something that just happens and that all we can do is be prepared for it when it does happen. I devoted an entire chapter in my book on The Power of Pull to the opportunity that we have to shape serendipity – we can, through our actions, significantly increase the probability of it happening.

What are some examples? If you live in a small village, the likelihood of serendipity is much lower than if you move to a large city. If you’re booked from early morning to late in the evening with meetings with people that you already know, you’re much less likely to run into someone that you didn’t know and who could provide real insight into an issue you are addressing. The choices we make on a daily basis can significantly alter the probability of those unexpected encounters.

I can’t resist tying this to my new book – The Journey Beyond Fear. In that book, I discuss how fear is becoming the dominant emotion among people around the world. If we’re driven by fear, we tend to isolate or hang out with people we already know – we’re very reluctant to meet people we don’t know.

Serendipity matters

So why does this matter? Well, it turns out that serendipity is becoming more and more essential for success. As I’ve discussed in my research on the Big Shift, we live in a world of accelerating change and intensifying competition.

In this Big Shift world, we need to accelerate our learning, especially learning in the form of creating new knowledge, as we confront situations that have never been encountered before. One of the best ways to pursue this form of learning is to seek serendipity – encountering people who can provide unexpected insight into some of the challenges we are confronting.

Narratives as a catalyst for serendipity

So, how do we do that? There are many ways, as I discussed in my book on The Power of Pull. In this post, I’m going to focus on an approach that I have come to believe is particularly powerful and yet rarely used. It involves the use of narratives which I discuss in more detail in my new book, The Journey Beyond Fear.

Most people view stories and narratives as meaning the same thing. I make an important distinction. For me, stories are self-contained. They have a beginning, a middle and an end – the end, the story is over. And stories are about the story-teller or some people, real or imagined. They’re not about you.

In contrast, for me, narratives are open-ended – there is no resolution yet. There is some kind of big threat or opportunity out in the future. It’s not clear whether it will materialize or not. And the resolution of the narrative hinges on you – it’s a call to action to those who are hearing the narrative. Their choice and actions will help to determine how the narrative plays out.

Opportunity-based narratives can be powerful catalysts for serendipity on two levels. First, they focus on a really, big inspiring opportunity that can help people more beyond fear and cultivate the passion that will take them beyond their comfort zone as they seek to address the opportunity. Second, these narratives have a call to action that motivates people to take action, including seeking out and connecting with others who share their excitement about the opportunity to be addressed. These are often people they have never met before.

Personal narratives

In The Journey Beyond Fear, I explore how narratives can be crafted at multiple levels – personal, institutional, geographical and movements. Let’s start with personal narratives. We all have a personal narrative that is shaping our choices and actions. Unfortunately, more and more of us are consumed by threat-based narratives, viewing the future as very threatening and feeding the emotion of fear. As a result, we often do not have a call to action to others – with fear, we tend to lose trust in others and isolate ourselves.

Imagine what we could accomplish if we found a way to craft an opportunity-based personal narrative – a narrative is shaped by some really big and inspiring opportunity in the future that could help us to achieve much greater impact that is meaningful to us. That opportunity could help us overcome our fear and realize that the opportunity is not just for us – it’s an opportunity that many could share. It would motivate us to spread the word about the opportunity and seek help from others in addressing the opportunity. As word spreads, the likelihood of serendipity increases. People we never knew will seek us out, excited about the ability to come together and pursue a shared opportunity.

Geographical narratives

(I’ll leave institutional narratives and movement narratives for another time.) I believe that geographies – cities, regions and countries – can craft inspiring opportunity-based narratives that will increase serendipity. What’s the evidence for that? Well, cities like Athens, Florence and Vienna have harnessed that potential (see more in The Journey Beyond Fear). For now, let me focus on where I live.

I’ve been in Silicon Valley for many decades and people often ask me how to explain the continued success of Silicon Valley. Others would focus on things like the universities and venture capital firms. I believe the success of Silicon Valley has ultimately been driven by a powerful opportunity-based narrative. At a high level, it focuses on the opportunity to change the world by harnessing the exponential potential of digital technology, but the call to action is that you need to come to Silicon Valley to help address this opportunity. It’s the reason why the majority of successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley were not even born in the US, much less Silicon Valley. They were drawn from all over the world by the inspiring opportunity-based narrative.

Once they came here, serendipity was unleashed. These people were continually running into other people at gatherings and on the street that they never knew before. And because they were so passionate about the opportunity that drew them here, they would quickly begin discussing a challenge that they did not yet know how to address and asking for help and advice. Serendipity sizzles in Silicon Valley. And it can sizzle in any geography that inspires people to come together to address a really big opportunity.

Unleashing the power of narratives

Narratives have enormous potential but we only unleash that potential if we craft our narratives in certain ways. As I’ve already indicated, we need to shift from threat-based to opportunity-based narratives that can help all of us to overcome our fears and our tendency to isolate as we lose trust in others. The opportunities need to be really big opportunities that will take some time to achieve and that will require the effort of many people who can share in the opportunity (ideally, the opportunity will become even bigger as more people come together).

We also need to make an effort to spread the word about the opportunity and encourage people to come together to address the opportunity. We need to find ways to reach people that we don’t know. Word of mouth can help, but writing and speaking about the opportunity to large groups of people can be even more helpful in attracting people we don’t know (dare I mention social media as one important avenue?).

Bottom line

In a rapidly changing world, serendipity becomes more and more central to success, given its power to generate new insight that we would have never had on our own. We have the ability to significantly improve the likelihood of serendipity. One powerful (and largely untapped) approach that can help in this quest for serendipity is the crafting of inspiring opportunity-based narratives with a call to action to a broad audience.

If we get this right, we can turn the mounting performance pressure of the Big Shift into exponentially expanding opportunity. We are now able to create far more value with far less resources and far more quickly than ever before. Let’s get started!

11
Aug 22
0

Shaping Markets and Shaping Psychology

Category:Collaboration,Emotions,Fear,Future,Leadership,Opportunity,Paradox,Passion,Strategy,Transformation,Trust

Dee Hock, the founder of Visa, recently passed away. It’s been a catalyst for me to reflect on the role he played in expanding my horizon beyond strategy to explore the role of psychology in shaping our impact. This post will take one of my approaches to strategy – shaping strategy – and focus on its ability to shape our psychology.

Shaping strategies

I’ve written extensively about the untapped potential of shaping strategies, including here and here. In a world of accelerating change, business leaders have been embracing approaches like agility that focus on rapidly and flexibly responding to the events of the moment. The goal is to react to whatever is happening at the moment.

As a contrarian, I have challenged that view. In times of accelerating change and increasing uncertainty, we have more degrees of freedom to shape the markets and environments around us to create more value for ourselves and for other participants. But we have to see that opportunity and pursue it. And, to do that, we need to escape the reactive mindset that shrinks our time horizons.

Three elements of shaping strategies

Shaping strategies focus on addressing this opportunity. They rely on three elements: a shaping view, a shaping platform, and shaping actions and assets. The shaping view is the foundation of these strategies – it looks ahead and describes how a future market or industry might be structured in a very different way to create and capture much more value for its participants. Shaping platforms then provide a way for more and more participants to join in the effort – they help to reduce the effort and cost of participation while bringing quicker and larger returns. Finally, shaping actions and assets are ways that the shaper can overcome skepticism of potential participants that the shaping opportunity is achievable.

Even though we are in a world where shaping strategies are becoming more and more viable, very few companies or other institutions have pursued these strategies. Some of the most successful shapers have been Dee Hock (Visa), Malcolm McLean (containerized shipping), Victor Fung (Li & Fung), Bill Gates (Microsoft), and Marc Benioff (Salesforce.com). I discuss their approaches and the lessons that can be learned in my book, The Power of Pull.

Shaping psychology

So, how does this shaping strategy approach connect with shaping psychology? All three elements of a shaping strategy can be very effective in shaping the emotions of the participants.

Let’s start with the shaping view. When I developed this approach to strategy, I focused on the role of shaping views in framing an opportunity that would increase our perception of rewards and reduce our perception of risk. When I was talking with Dee Hock about this, he interrupted me and said “you’ve got it all wrong. It’s not about risk and reward, it’s about fear and hope. That’s ultimately what motivates people to act.”

That was a wake-up call to me. I had been thinking in narrow business terms, when the real need was to focus on the emotions that shape our actions. I began to realize that the most effective shaping views seek to overcome the fear holding back many participants and cultivate hope and excitement about an opportunity that could be achieved if they all came together. After all, it’s fear that is holding us back from seeing big opportunities in the future and focusing us on simply reacting to whatever is going on at the moment.

Shaping platforms also help to shape the emotions of participants. By reducing the effort required to participate and creating more rewards for participation, these platforms make it easier to participate, even if participants still have some fear. They also help participants to overcome fear and build hope when they see more rapid rewards and connect with others who are enjoying similar rewards. These platforms would be even more effective if they were explicitly designed to address these emotions and help participants to make the journey beyond fear.

Shaping actions and assets provide a way for the shapers to demonstrate their commitment to the shaping opportunity. This can be a powerful way to overcome the lack of trust that comes with fear. For example, the shaper could make a large investment that would be viewed as a “bet the company” investment to demonstrate its commitment. If it is a smaller, entrepreneurial company, the shaper could also develop some early partnerships with larger and more influential companies that would increase the perception that the shaping strategy will succeed. These actions and assets help to strengthen hope and excitement that the shaping opportunity is real and will be accomplished.

Bottom line

I have written before about the paradox that we confront in the Big Shift that is transforming our global economy and society. On the one side, the Big Shift is creating mounting performance pressure – global competition is intensifying, the pace of change is accelerating and extreme, disruptive events come in out of nowhere. At the same time, the Big Shift is creating exponentially expanding opportunity – we can create far more value, far more quickly with far less resource than would have been imaginable a couple of decades ago. Shaping strategies are a powerful approach to help many of us to move from giving in to the mounting performance pressure and instead seeing and addressing the exponentially expanding opportunities.

27
Jun 22
0

Connectivity and Decentralization

Category:Collaboration,Connections,Context,Decentralization,Edges,Future,Learning,Opportunity,Paradox,Passion,Potential,Trust,Workgroups

We’re in the early stages of a Big Shift that is transforming our global economy and society. The Big Shift produces many paradoxes, but here’s one that I haven’t written about: it is rapidly creating global connectivity while at the same time generating a growing desire for decentralization. How can we reconcile the two?

I’ve written about the Big Shift for a long time, including here. A key driver of the Big Shift is the ability to connect more quickly and cheaply with anyone or anything around the world. Certainly, this includes our ability to send a message to anyone in the world, but it also includes our ability to monitor in real time physical goods with Internet of Things technology. And it’s not just about communicating and monitoring, but also controlling and directing activities from a distance.

So, with all these connecting capabilities, we might anticipate more and more centralization where activities are controlled and monitored by fewer and fewer large, centralized global entities (e.g., governments and corporations).

Certainly, we are already seeing some of that. But, at the same time, I anticipate that we’re going to see more and more efforts to decentralize our activities – distributing or delegating activities, especially planning and decision-making, away from a central location or group. Why is that?

Accelerating pace of change

Growing connectivity accelerates the pace of change and makes the specific changes more and more challenging to anticipate. In a more rapidly changing and unpredictable world, we need to find ways to respond more quickly to unexpected developments. The conventional approach of tightly specifying business processes in advance from a central location is becoming less and less effective. Those who are in the best position to confront the unanticipated changes quickly are those who are on the front lines, not those who are sitting in some command center, even when supported by more and more powerful computers.

Context matters

Changes don’t occur in isolation. They occur in a specific context that shapes the change and the impact that it will have. Context is complex – it can’t be reduced to numbers or images. Those who are in the best position to “read” context are those who are living in it in the moment. If we want to address change effectively, we need to rely on those who are deeply embedded in the context. Context is becoming more and more important for value creation, as I have written about here.

Learning is an imperative

In a rapidly changing world, learning becomes essential. To be clear, this isn’t about learning in the form of sharing existing knowledge which is the focus of most learning today. Existing knowledge is becoming obsolete at an accelerating rate. The learning we all need to pursue is learning in the form of creating new knowledge and that is best pursued by coming together with others and learning through action, not just conversation.

When I say “coming together with others,” I mean coming together in small groups – I call them “impact groups” – which I have written about extensively, including here and here. These groups range between 3 to15 participants. They stay small because the need is to build deep, trust-based relationships among the participants so that they can support and challenge each other in a continuing quest to pursue increasing impact in a specific domain.

Passion is the best motivation for learning

Learning in the form of creating new knowledge through action can be very challenging and involves taking a lot of risk. What’s the motivation to do that? Based on my research, the most powerful motivation is a very specific form of passion – the passion of the explorer – which I have written about here and here. People with this kind of passion naturally come together into the impact groups that I mentioned earlier and they seek environments where they can pursue their passion without constraints. They want to be free to take initiatives that have never been done before and to rapidly iterate on those initiatives when they gain insight on how more impact can be achieved.

Customers are gaining more power

Because of all the connectivity globally, customers are becoming more and more powerful and demanding. They have more access to information about more options and the ability to quickly switch from one product or service to another. In this kind of environment, they are less and less willing to settle for mass-market, standardized products and services. Instead, they are seeking products and services tailored to their specific needs and that will evolve rapidly as their needs evolve.

Erosion of trust in large, centralized institutions

Around the world, trust is eroding in all the large, centralized institutions – companies, governments, media, universities, etc. – that are so prominent in our economy and society. There are many reasons for this, but they are driven by a growing realization that these institutions are not addressing our evolving needs and are increasingly unsuited for the rapidly changing world around us.

Tying it all together

Decentralization will be driven by the intersection of many different needs and desires. If I had to summarize, I’d say that the two key forces are our growing need as providers to learn faster and our growing desire as customers to have products and services tailored to our needs. If we’re going to learn faster, we need to come together in small groups, driven by a passion to achieve increasing impact and we need to be able to act more quickly in ways that are tailored to our local context. On the other side, as customers, we are seeking providers we can trust who will address our unique and rapidly evolving needs.

The paradox is that both of these forces are being driven by growing global connectivity. The more connected we become, the faster everything will evolve and the more rapidly we will all need to learn in the form of creating new knowledge. And the more connected we become, the more ability we will have to pick and choose the products and services that meet our specific needs.

What will emerge?

What shape will decentralization take? Of course, that’s hard to predict in detail. But, as someone who enjoys exploring the edge, I am drawn to early indicators of how this decentralization might evolve.

From a corporate (and broader) institutional point of view, I’ve written about the “unbundling of the corporation.” Without going into too much detail, we’re already starting to see fragmentation of businesses in the digital space – everything from software to music and video. That fragmentation is beginning to spill over into physical products like craft beer and chocolate. I believe that’s just the beginning – we’re going to see more and more small, but very profitable, businesses emerging to address small segments of customers.

We’re also starting to see the growth of decentralized, autonomous organizations (DAO’s) that are focusing on decentralizing decision-making within organizations. There’s also a variety of initiatives to organize front-line workers into small pods or workgroups that are given more freedom to take initiative on their own. In China, the Rendanheyi model being championed by Haier with “micro-enterprises” operating within a much large company is beginning to attract more attention from around the world.

Of course, I have to mention blockchain as a major initiative in the technology space that embraces decentralization as a key organizing principle. While there’s been a lot of speculation and “boom/bust” initiatives in the early days of blockchain, blockchain reflects a strong desire for decentralization and is likely to provide a foundation for many initiatives seeking to decentralize Internet activity.

More generally, we’re seeing the spread of initiatives within the “human potential” movement that are organized around small groups of people who share a commitment to achieving more of their potential. Social change movements are increasingly focusing on “bottom up” approaches to change that embrace a cellular structure of small, local groups rather than pursuing a top-down centralized approach to change. In facing the challenges of the pandemic, we’ve seen the growth of mutual aid groups in local neighborhoods and communities.

Admittedly, these are all still early indicators of a trend towards decentralization, but they merit attention because the forces that I described earlier are going to drive significant growth of these kinds of initiatives.

Connectivity and decentralization

To be clear, I’m suggesting that connectivity and decentralization will unfold together. I’m not suggesting that decentralization will lead to increasing isolation of small groups. On the contrary, the proliferation of small groups will become increasingly connected into broader networks that can scale their learning and impact. Decentralization will actually drive a need for greater connectivity in the same way that connectivity is driving a growing need for decentralization. That’s the paradox.

Bottom line

We are in the very early stages of a paradoxical Big Shift. Growing connectivity will foster a growing need for decentralization and decentralization will increase the need for even more connectivity. This will have profound implications for how we organize and create impact in a rapidly changing global economy and society.

Those who are consumed by the connectivity trends are likely to get blindsided as decentralization begins to gain momentum. Decentralization will create enormous opportunities for value creation and will disrupt many of our large, centralized institutions around the world. We need to evolve a profoundly different set of institutions that will embrace the twin gifts of connectivity and decentralization.

Category Archives: Passion

Mar 24

1

Diving Deeper Into Digital Transformation

Feb 24

1

Where to Look

Aug 23

6

From Expert to Explorer

May 23

0

Cultivating and Connecting Capabilities

Jan 23

2

The Old Becomes the New

Nov 22

0

Reflections on Gratitude

Nov 22

1

The Metapsychology of the Metaverse

Sep 22

0

Shaping Serendipity with Narratives

Aug 22

0

Shaping Markets and Shaping Psychology

Jun 22

0

Connectivity and Decentralization

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