Innovation and Change

Navigating uncertainty and ambiguity is going to be the most difficult for those who have had the most experience successfully navigating the Old Economy. This is not because we lack the aptitude or attitude, but because our internal navigation system is so attuned to expect certainty and predictability that we are now hardwired to be confused, conflicted and bewildered by uncertainty.

Consider the implications of a life where 90% of the time, success was linked to avoiding and sidestepping challenges, barriers or problems as quickly as possible while incurring the least amount of errors. This has been the business and educational orientation for those who are currently in professional management positions and have spent their whole career being rewarded for hitting the numbers and reducing waste in the pursuit of profit via perfection. Let’s call that way of orienting, Optimization.

By way of contrast, consider the implications of a life in the New Economy where 90% of the time, you experience problems, surprises and challenges and success is linked to your ability to deal head-on with those challenges by scrambling, adapting and innovating on the fly. Let’s call that way of orienting, Transformation.

To thrive in uncertainty, volatility and ambiguity one needs to shift from a focus on Optimization to Transformation. This means that success is going to be a function of our ability to shift back and forth from being a disciplined operator to an intuitive explorer and back again, depending on the circumstance, to credit Scott Anthony, the author of “The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times”.

Half the battle is accepting that big change, such as the change that every professional manager is going to have to master, is usually accompanied by a starvation of resources, pressure and a perspective change. The good news is that the other half of the battle, the starvation of resources along with the implications of pressure, are usually enough to prompt us to rewire our internal navigation system.

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