With the Wind in our Sails: Teaching Businesses How to Adapt to New Winds
by Experience Partner, Heloise Ardley
Last night I attended our eldest son’s school parent information evening. The outstanding headteacher and her team talked about the school values, their approach to education, and their aspiration for the children.
To be secure: In themselves, in their body and in their minds, in their learning, in the safety of the group.
To be themselves: celebrating individuality, strengths and accepting differences
We talked about Growth mindset, teaching resilience and adaptability and how happiness matters most, more than numbers and rankings. Their motto is “With the Wind in our sails”, teaching children that whilst [you can’t change the direction of the wind, you can adjust your sails to reach your destination]
As I was listening to this, it occurred to me that most organisations are made of grown-ups kids who haven’t had the chance to go to my son’s school. Or indeed most people over 25 in the workplace today went to a school where they were taught about being first, having the best grades; where progress was measured, where you followed a curriculum, learned facts, had to repeat the same tasks over and over again (spelling test, times tables etc are a good examples of that). Because that’s how you became “Intelligent”.
But nobody taught us about vulnerability, agility, compassion, relationships…so no wonder so many of us have forgotten to learn or practice these skills, and for those who did, it’s generally something you show at home, in the safety of friends and family, but definitely not at work.
But if you’ve been reading any of Yuval Noah Harari’s work, you’ll have no doubt picked on his very accurate comments about the skills needed in the future. While his recent Medium post focussed on the children of today, I would argue that his recommendations also apply to adults and are particularly true in the context of business.
“To keep up with the world of 2050, you will need to do more than merely invent new ideas and products, but above all, reinvent yourself again and again.”
In reaction to the wind of Technology disruption many organisations are already changing their revenue model, their product line, their people…but true reinvention is extremely rare.
If we carry on feeding employees data and tasks, and assume that with a few new technologies, some agile processes and a wee bit of empowerment, these companies will survive and be fit for the future challenges the world and its citizens face, we are completely mistaken.
But to reinvent themselves, businesses need to show a much higher degree of “Consciousness”. And that translates into showing empathy for employees and customers, accepting –and encouraging — failure, questions, disruption, and building a purpose that is believable.
Because if robots are taking over, I strongly believe that they will only outsmart us, not out-feel us. We are conscious beings, with feelings and emotions; they are not. And THAT is our survival tool. Not smarter, but more conscious and ultimately more human.
Business leaders of today are running out of time to adapt and learn these skills they were never taught. If they carry on trying to build Business Intelligence at the expense of Business Consciousness, no innovation lab or transformation effort will save them. And so while we should encourage modern businesses to up-skill themselves and keep up with current trends particularly on hard technical skills, there are huge benefit in teaching them how to be a group of humans (pun intended).
“We have now run out of time. The decisions we will make in the next few decades will shape the future of life itself, and we can make these decisions based only on our present worldview. If this generation lacks a comprehensive view of the cosmos, the future of life will be decided at random.”
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