Business Longevity and Career Longevity, both demand Beginner’s mind. Do you have one?
Being Intentional Beginners: How Founders and Entrepreneurs can unlearn, elements of the Expert’s mind and practice being Intentional Beginners.
Learning from the past decades and Notes for the 2020’s decade.
Life-spans of companies are rapidly shrinking. The unpredictability of their standing in the stock markets not-withstanding, the fleeting market-positions, tell a more grim story. The loss of jobs, the erosion of wealth, plummeting of confidence and the emotional heartaches go under-reported. Even well-known giants like Intel, Cisco, Nokia, Sony are either toast, or are no longer in the reckoning. In such a rapidly churning marketplace, how can business leaders find business longevity and how can professionals, find career longevity? Let’s explore this in the next few minutes.
A great track-record of success, brand equity, strong balance sheet and happy customers are touted as ideals for business longevity. However, these are not facts, these may be necessary, but they are insufficient protection, against volatile-and-unpredictable markets. In fact, as I watched Ruchir Sharma and Prannoy Roy a few days back, it became clear, that this depressing story of limited business longevity, is neither specific to geography, industry or eras.
I could notice only Microsoft reinventing itself to stay on the leaderboard over the past 30 years. The withering away of industry giants is incontrovertible proof, that there needs to be a different approach. What is that approach?
Indian Business Ecosystem Builders also corroborate this pattern of churn.
I recently met with Rajan, Sharad and Avinash, who were with me as members of the Fellow’s council in 2016–2017 as part of iSPIRT, and who continue to be good friends. Even in those conversations, 1 theme seemed to resonate, Longevity. In the Indian startup ecosystem, longevity is an even bigger concern and churn is more acute. Flipkart founders and owners for example, had a 12–13 year stay, in the company they themselves had founded. So even the greatest success story of India in the past 2 decades, had a business-and-career longevity of only 12–13 years, so I presume the state of other Indian business, must be a clear case of debilitating morbidity. Rajan, has written a blog-article of the lessons of the past decade, and asserts that organizational-longevity, even for eco-system building initiatives like Mobile-monday, NPC, Product Nation, Startup-bridge underwent pivot and churn. I have personally written about this, in the blog post called “Product Business models are long broken”. So what is at the root-cause of such widespread perishability and are there any protection-mechanisms or antidotes available? How has Microsoft managed to stay relevant? How has Amazon, which never gave any dividends to its share-holders for close to 15 years, today managed to become the darling of the Stock Market? Is there a secret sauce? I think there is. Its called cleansing/uninstalling the Expert’s mind and reinstalling the Beginner’s mind.
Expert’s mind and its shortcomings.
An expert’s mind operates as a custodian or keeper, of the professional and organization’s mastery. However, this keeper-mindset of experts is really that of the past era. Bookkeeping (Accountants), Shopkeeping (Store Managers), Record-keeping (IT/Software), SafeKeeping (Banks), etc, etc are all based on keeper mindsets. And an over-glamorization of this expert mindset is that of Directors. A Director is somebody who gives direction to the company, because he is an expert. Most companies automatically and compulsively have Managing Directors, Executive Directors, Engineering Directors, and so on, isn’t it. Paradoxically, however, a Director is also one of the organization’s greatest vulnerabilities, because as an expert, his/her expertise is predicated on, previous exposure to the problem. So, they are giving directions, which may be old, a stale-route they had previously taken, or even leading to dead-ends. Sadly, this Keeper Flywheel has gotten so strong in the Expert’s mind, both in Business Organizations, as well as in the entrenched minds of professionals, that they have become counter-productive, in the new era of agile and adaptive solutions. Due to these Keeper-flywheels, Experts tend to have rigid minds, strong opinions and unhealthy conclusions, which are actually causing havoc to the longevity of their own careers, as well as the longevity-of-ventures they are part of. Experts must quickly weaken and completely unlearn the Keeper-flywheel and reset back to the Beginner’s mind.
Beginner’s mind and its blessings.
Beginner’s mind is always a fertile ground for receptivity and learning. Beginners are not prejudiced by past experiences, and hence they have very little friction in engaging with the world, as-it-is. Being that womb, that incubator, for birthing new creations is a hallmark of the beginner mind. It is a space for new-making, and is powered by the Maker’s flywheels, whether you are a phone-maker, software-maker, law-maker or king-maker, etc. Its uncorrupted by past beliefs, rigid conditioning or set-minds. This gives the Beginner’s mind, the super-power to do whatever it takes, and hence its highly receptive to all suggestions/feedbacks or explorations in general. Like a driver is able to receive-and-execute a turn-by-turn navigation from a navigator (automated or human), when driving through uncharted terrain, the Beginner’s mind is highly agile. Maintaining a beginner’s mind however is very hard. Every experience corrupts us with the its content. How we manage to assimilate/integrate from every experience, then clean and purge the old/dead knowledge, is not taught in any school. While New-Learning, Insights and newer-experiences are abundant everywhere, ability to hold a beginner’s mind is vital for success. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos religiously practices this, and in fact has instituted it as a culture, in the company. Beginner’s mind in Amazon is called “Always Day 1”.
Further Exploration — Ambivert — Being a Beginner and an Expert at the same time.
What we need today honestly, are ambiverts. Ambiverts are people who can be both Beginners and Experts at the same time. An expert is invaluable when the company wants to milk its current offering, dominate the market in a routine, repetitive and exploitative manner. Similarly the Beginner’s mind, is indispensable when you are experimenting with new markets, creating new demand and launching new products into the market in an exploratory manner. The tension of the Expert’s mind and Beginner’s mind is the tension between exploration and exploitation. Being an Expert, only comes by practice, and becoming a beginner at will, consumes Intent. So, Being an Intentional Beginner is both a practice as well as an exploration. Being able to switch between these 2 mindsets, will render you right, most of the time. This is corroborated and again proven, by another one of Jeff Bezos’s practices, of being able to switch your minds often.
Business and Career Longevity
Agile and Adaptive responses to the wicked churn as seen on NDTV stats image, as well as to the complex problems for relentless self renewal especially in prevailing VUCA conditions, are the keys to demarcating the quick from the dead. Quickness, clearly is built on momentum of practices, isn’t it? I said in my previous post, that momentum is everything, and I reiterate again, that to be an Intentional Beginner, you need to consciously strive to seek and suss out groups-and-communities which help in such practices. Most Tech and Startup Events today boast of round-tables, and un-conferences and insight-laden seminars. Don’t get me wrong, insights are necessary, but without execution they don’t cure anything. What we need are practices, not just insights. Longevity is predicated, on the speed and practice of human inner-agility for transformation as well as outer-adaptability. Maker’s practice is one such community, where it places equal emphasis on inner-agility and outer-adaptability to provide longevity.
Register and attend the next upcoming Maker’s Practice experiential and practical workshop, called Shubh-Labh, and be an Intentional Beginner.
Maker’s Practice is a life-practice, for helping you to continuously be, an Intentional Beginner. It’s also a community, which places equal emphasis on inner-agility and outer-adaptability. Shubh-Labh is an experiential workshop, based on Maker’s Practice tenets of experiential coupling, and fuses both the Expert’s mind and Beginner’s mind. Shubh-lab immerses you in experiential practices, spanning over 3-days and 8 sessions, to experientially unlearn your Expert’s mind and then relearn Beginner’s mind, preparing you for your business and career longevity.
Gain membership to a community of intentional-beginners and unlearning practitioners, and be a part of a network of lasting fellowships. The next Shubh-Labh workshop is around 7th, Feb 2020. Please register for the Shubh-Labh workshop by clicking on this and hurry, limited seats available!
