Back in 2018, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered a speech to the World Economic Forum, where he explored the pace of change and its impact on the world. As part of his talk, he shared this thought,
“…the pace of change has never been this fast, yet it’ll never be this slow again. There’s enormous opportunity and enormous potential in that realisation.”
Fast-forward to today and that quote seems even more relevant for every one of us, when we think about the impacts of technology, shifting political landscapes and economic and society shifts. As well as the pace of change shifting rapidly, it feels like we’re all grappling with much more uncertainty too.
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But, if organisations and the leaders in them can embrace the idea that things are moving at speed and shift their approaches – and mindset - to change and how to deal with it, they will be the ones to survive and adapt. But how do we do that, especially when so much of our thinking and processes in business just aren’t structured that way?
A great place to start is for leaders to consider their own mindsets and how they could get more change-ready. Here are five ideas to consider…
Realising that this will take some work
Shifting our thinking and approach to change and uncertainty isn’t a quick fix. It’ll take some work, effort and time. But, recognising that being more change-ready and having a different, more agile mindset will have a really positive benefit on us and our teams, can help us to stay on track.
Flipping your thinking
Changing the way you talk to yourself is a great first start. Take a few minutes every day to listen to your thoughts and pay attention to what you’re hearing. You might be surprised how often you hear assumptions rather than facts running through your head. So, when you hear something like, “I can’t do that”, “that’ll never work” or “that’ll take too much time/be too hard”, stop and think about what you’re hearing.
When you hear phrases like that, try asking yourself instead, “what would it feel like if found the time to try this? ” or “what could we learn from having a go at this?“ and maybe “I can’t do that - yet”. This approach – termed as a ‘growth’ rather than ‘fixed’ mindset – can really help leaders and their teams to think differently and build their adaptability muscles.
Take a few minutes to reflect - and do it often
Reflection -taking the time to think about a process, experience or action in a more detailed way and learning from it - is key to helping us see where we’re making progress. It can help us build our confidence and boost our courage to try new things. It’s important for leaders to celebrate their own and their team’s success and draw and explore the learnings from things that have happened. Ask what could be done differently next time. It’s an essential part of learning.
Don’t be an island
The best ideas often don’t come from one person at one time. They’re usually a development from a thought or from conversations with others that offer another perspective and inspire different thinking. Working with others is key to sparking solutions and especially in helping solve problems when things are shifting rapidly.
Think about the smallest changes you can make
Changing behaviours in ourselves and others isn’t done successfully by making big, grand shifts. That’s where you can make things hard for yourself and your team. Think about Amazon’s recent directive to get their people back into the office five days a week; that will be a massive shift for many folk who’ve been working remotely or to a hybrid working model for years. Instead, a smaller step like increasing the number of days people go into the office and getting their feedback as they go, could get you a very different outcome.
These are just a few of the steps you can take to build agility and a change-ready mindset for yourself and your teams.
Recognising how and where to get started can often be the biggest hurdle in this work, so if a chat would be helpful, get in touch.