Like Surprises

I'm posting this week on Working in Uncertainty. Once you’ve started before you’re ready and in motion, exciting things will happen. There will be unexpected, unknown and uncertain. Yes more uncertain.

You may think starting wasn’t a good idea, but you're in motion and have momentum - that's going to make you more able to respond than being at a standstill.

Welcome spontaneity into your world instead of being all control-freak on things. Spontaneity is a natural tendency or impulse of being unconstrained and unplanned. Our daily actions can't follow a script. A guide or to-do list or a structure, yes, but we can't know totally what someone else is going to say, how they'll react and what will happen when all these differences collide.

We need the capability to improvise and the first thing is to welcome surprises, unexpected things. Stay open and wondering. You'll be easier to work with, more open about what to do next, and able to find other possibilities and solutions.

Q : So, are you a bit of a control freak or willing to welcome surprises? Let me know below. 

4 more ideas on adaptability

9 - Ingenuity

The Institute for the Future's 2020 skills included novel and adaptive thinking. We’ve got to find ways to be more resourceful and clever to get more of the right things done. This means hacking ourselves, hacking our systems and processes, and quite possibly, hacking other people too!

10 - Empathy

To understand and feel what others are experiencing is a power shift to make; from caring less to caring more. Trust goes deeper, quicker, and it’s not about you, it’s about them.

11 - Creativity

The subtle art of making things up is a human capability we’re born with - ranking highly on the list of the World Economic Forum's future work skills. Creativity creeps up higher in the rankings each year! The cry of ‘I’m not creative’ is done. Time to change that script!

12 - Curiosity

Our childlike wonder has been replaced with compliance, following rules and systems without knowing why. Don't jump to solutions, deny or discount; wonder more.

There you have 12 ideas about adaptability; it's THE capability of today.

New ways of working: let's 'ideate' and come up with ideas

New ways of working: let's 'ideate' and come up with ideas. Creativity is a must, a survival skill says the World Economic Forum, the Institute for the Future and other predictors of skills for the brutal future.

Celebrate this skill of human ingenuity we have, to make up stuff that solves tricky problems. Our customers need us to do this.

We gained insights from the INVOLVE stage (see yesterday's post) so it's time to come up with ideas about the insights. Ideas happen when you form a mental image of something that isn’t present or isn’t yet real. That's a concept or plan, a program or suggestion, a whim or a hunch ... or something more detailed.

Rod Judkins in the book 'Ideas are your only currency', says that ideas are our only currency! 😆

In a world where Netflix-ing, Uber-ing and Spotify-ing are an everyday thing, remember these are the result of ideas. Ideas that someone had, they created and put them into the world.

New ways of working need us to stop this 'I'm not creative' sh*t (it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, by the way) and bring ingenious solutions to tricky customer problems.

You're clever and your customers need that.

Don't be bored will you

Some days are filled with so many activities, commitments and appointments back-to-back there’s no time for anything else. No deliberate anything, not even lunch on some days. (Boo!)

As a child, I frequently said to my mum, ‘I’m bored!’ and she’d list off a few things I could do to counter the boredom. I had a creative mind and was always looking for something to work on, play with, experiment or try.

In the modern workplace, lurching from meeting to meeting, screen to screen, racing through the day, something big about this isn’t right.

It’s not sustainable and it’s not smart.

Are we allowing, creating or letting ourselves be a little bored? Even for a few minutes? Great creativity, ingenuity and insightful thinking comes when you let yourself be bored.

Your brain goes to work providing you with potential solutions to the problems you’ve been endlessly giving it. If there’s no break, there’s no space.

Rather than automatically reaching for your device to fill the space, have a go and let yourself be bored. Notice things and people; think ... whatever comes to mind. This allows us to make sharper connections when we really need them.

How could you let yourself be boredf?

Flogging a dead idea...

Seth Godin says 'ideas that spread win'. If your ideas aren’t spreading as you’d like, well... maybe they’re dead.

Are you flogging a dead idea?

Leaders bringing change to their teams; I wonder, how much is old stuff, old information or old ideas repackaged? Did the ’Save as’ button get a workout when you changed the date from last year or 5 years ago, and put the same information out there? Sam Trattles, an expert in negotiation gave me A+ advice for a high value gig: a goal of the process was to not repeat any of my information. Sam says people tune out, they’re done with it, they’ve heard it before and don’t hear it again.

We must find new ways to communicate, ways that re-connect, re-inspire, re-engage, not just revisit or reuse. As a consultant or expert, are you still trying to sell the same thing?

A colleague recently said if she just got more customers everything would improve for her. But this isn’t the only way to growth.

Getting more customers to know about your dead idea won’t do much for you. Our ideas need to evolve and adapt, as do we, or we’re just flogging a dead idea. How are you adapting your ideas?

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