Adaptability is the new competitive advantage

The pandemic has disrupted businesses in a way they’ve not been disrupted before. For the brave and nimble it has presented opportunity, and those who’ve adapted to change have emerged winners. As businesses continue to recover from the pandemic, adaptability will continue to be the key differentiator.

Having the skills to anticipate, adapt to and capitalise on change is what we’ve been helping people with since we started running the Magnetic Innovation Starter Kit (ISK). Having met people from different backgrounds and from a cross range of industries — it has been fascinating to hear how their roles and industries have shifted in a post pandemic world. Here’s 7 things I’ve learnt from every course:

1. Change is testing but necessary. All businesses and their people have had their fair share of challenges since the beginning of the pandemic. Most people who we speak to have gone through some really testing times. At the same time they have come to the understanding that it is more important than ever to look into new problem solving methods to stay competitive and innovative.
2. People are the tools companies need to navigate change. The Pandemic continues to accelerate the need to understand ever changing customer needs, wants and challenges. Change happens when mindsets shift, businesses move quickly and the people within them drive this change. According to Linkdin, in the last year there’s been an increase in roles popping up within businesses to manage and drive innovation and transformation. Companies are looking for ways to be quicker and more agile in adapting to change. We believe all people within a business are the tools they need — they just need a helping hand in developing with the right skills to do this.
3. Design thinking — it builds capability. Most people who take the ISK course have heard about design thinking and how it might help in solving problems. My mission is to spread this awareness. Design thinking is an iterative and creative problem-solving approach that helps to identify problems, imagine potential solutions and test, learn and iterate. The ISK aims to be as practical as possible to give everyone the skills and tools to apply what they have learned right away. That means they know what design thinking is, AND how to apply it.
4. Light bulb moments give me joy. In Innovation it’s our job to navigate through uncertainty and design thinking helps us to turn uncertainty into confidence through evidence. It might not always be clear why having diversity of thought is important to the idea process or why we test assumptions and not ideas. Talking it through and going through the design process step by step, using well established tools and methods, helps this process. We love to see when participants go ‘aha, now I get it’. Trust the process and it will all come together sooner or later.
5. Everyone get’s different things out of it. It’s always interesting to hear and learn from other industries. I enjoy the cross function and industry mix of people as everyone brings different views and skill sets. Some know a great deal about design thinking and some are very new to the topic. It has been great to see that no matter what the background or experience, participants value different elements of the course. Some might want an overall refresher, where others are interested in getting a better understanding in designing experiments or how to pitch their ideas.
6. There’s always an interesting problem to solve. We’re practitioners (not trainers) and with every cohort we’re aiming to solve an interesting problem. Our participants love stories around real problems with real clients. As a practitioner you can bring in your experience and examples from the real world so when asked ‘how does it work in the real world?’ — we usually have a good story up our sleeves.
7. Learning in small groups allows everyone to get the attention they deserve. We have made a conscious decision to keep the ISK small and intimate. Small groups allow us to make sure we can respond to individual needs. Collaboration is crucial in innovation and we want to make sure everyone feels they can contribute and they are being part of a working group.

Author: Jan Koerting

Magnetic is a design and innovation company that helps design better futures. We’ve worked with global businesses to build capabilities, products, services and transform organisations. If you’d like to find out more about our capability building drop us a line.