Your ‘Mindsets’: The Bridge To The Next Decade
A version of this article was published on Forbes.com on April 16th, 20201
Like it or not, our competitive world is different. It is faster and more temporary. Most of the success recipes we have developed over the years will no longer result in sustainable wins.
All elements of business, from innovation to production, are accelerated and in a state of constant flux. Customer and employee expectations are evolving almost every day. The pandemic has accelerated adoption of change and has forced people and businesses to break significant resistance lines, or the mental obstacles that prevented us from embracing work from home, telemedicine, online grocery shopping, online learning, videoconferencing and more.
To win in the next decade and beyond, you need to reexamine your convictions and shift your mindset. This is where success begins. The following four fundamental factors will impact how you win and the scope of your victory.
1. Admit And Embrace
If you are waiting to get back to normal or even to get to a new normal that resembles the past, stop.
Imagine the world before cars, planes, the internet and cellphones. Imagine the world before the industrial revolution, 9/11 and Hiroshima devastation. After every one of these discoveries and major events, the world was different and never the same again.
The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) is such a life-changing event. You can stay afraid of it, discount its impact or push back against it, but AI and the more advanced uses of technology are here to stay and here to influence our lives, businesses, jobs and social norms. Technology and AI are now intertwined with every facet of life and business. A significant portion of jobs lost in 2020 will not come back in the same form, not because we will have the pandemic forever, but because the way we work and consume has changed forever.
The skillset needs for the decades to come will be fundamentally different as likely more than 800 million jobs are at risk due to AI. The education system will have to adjust to more micro-courses to quickly get workers skilled and ready for new jobs. In parallel, people’s expectation of quality, speed to innovation and service delivery experience is changing continuously.
To thrive, or even just to survive, admit the implications and embrace technology.
2. Dispute And Change
Dispute yourself in order to discover your addictions to sameness. Alter your frame of reference to see more, to do more and to be more. Realize that change is your most valuable asset. It creates choices.
Every organization — and every person, for that matter — operates in a reinforcement circle of biases. These are biases that influence how we make decisions, strategize or build systems. They influence how we define and measure success and are anchored in our outdated orthodoxies, past successes and failures, and insecurities.
Orthodoxies are a version of truth an organization chooses to continue to believe in. To eliminate bias, start by deconstructing orthodoxies — yours and your organizations. Dispute yourself in order to see new advantages. Your biases create a massive force against change and against staying relevant.
At times, the very principles that fueled your successful past become accepted norms that block innovation and the discovery of your next competitive advantages; they stop you from staying relevant to markets and customers. No doubt, your experience is hugely valuable. But moving forward, it won’t be enough because the future is not a simple extension of the past, a reality recognized by innovators.
Stay relevant by breaking your orthodoxies, disputing yourself, altering your frame of reference constantly and not only embracing but also triggering change.
3. Balance And Harmonize
Growth at any cost, models that have fueled the Silicon Valley unicorns, will no longer guarantee success. Old fashion cost-cutting and efficiency-seeking models will not get you to sustainability either. And risk, the balancing point between growth and efficiency, must be viewed in a different light.
It will be riskier to stay the course of “business as usual” than embracing change and transformation. It is time to focus on relevance to all stakeholders (employees, partners, investors, society, and of course, customers). To win in a temporary world that is moving at an unprecedented speed, you must balance risk, growth and efficiency constantly and stand ready for a short-cycled transformation. Be ready to change and evolve in order to stay relevant.
It is time to navigate risk not by protecting sameness but by breaking traditions and charting new frontiers. It’s time to stop faking transformation (and you know what I mean!). To win, you must move from seeking a sustainable competitive advantage to shaping sustainable organizations that harmonize capabilities with expectations. Be an organization that is multidimensional and able to transform and refocus not once in a while but all the time.
Win by dynamically balancing growth, risk and efficiency and harmonizing stakeholder expectations at every level over and over again.
4. Evolve And Thrive
To stay relevant, rediscover and reactivate your entrepreneurial mindset. You have to exchange what you have and your situation with something better. According to one study (registration required), humans developed the “to go” and “to discover” gene about 500,000 years ago. This is the genetic ability to seek choices and not just to survive but to thrive and evolve. You also possess this gene, or the talent to exchange your condition by making choices and staying relevant to your environment and challenges. It’s the entrepreneur’s job to exchange a situation with something better, knowing that choosing always involves risk and failure.
Success begins with your mindset and your willingness to apply your entrepreneurial talent. Demise awaits the slow and the inflexible. Choose to exchange, evolve and avoid extinction because success awaits those who shift their mindset and choose not to leave change to chance.
