Lawless Thinking brings you insights, tools and encouragement direct from my world of bold C-suite strategy delivery.
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Thought of the Week
“No human is limited”
Eliud Kipchoge
A quiet shift is well underway in the world of work, and only some leaders have begun to build for it.
The machines are getting better at the things we used to get paid for. The analysis. The report. The first draft. A great deal of what once filled a week is now produced in seconds by something that does not rest.
This is not a piece about AI.
This is a piece about what is left when it is no longer viable to pay humans to do the foundational, average-competent tasks in our roles. And the huge opportunity presented to you if you understand the ramifications.
What is left is you.
Your judgement. Your willingness to put a view into a room and stand behind it; to analyse the report and advise your leader – to carry the weight, not to forward a document. Your decision to innovate.
Your willingness to be seen. Your decisive action before all the evidence is available (innovation has left the building when others have provided the certainty).
And all of this requires a new level of courage. And courage, from this point forward, is a commercial and career imperative worthy of your attention.
I want to be precise about what I mean by courage. It is not machismo or bravado. It is not the absence of fear and careful thought. It is the willingness to own a position, to act on it, to be judged for it, to create something that did not exist before this morning.
Courage to own. Courage to act. Courage to try. Courage to be judged. Courage to feel – and to call it based on the feel. Courage to create. Courage to loudly ask for help from those in other fields. Courage to enter into uncertainty and test yourself. Courage to seek data (feedback) to evaluate your performance. Courage to admit to yourself that you were wrong and to go again.
Read that list again. Which of those will a machine will do for you? None of them. Those are the things only you bring. And those are the things the market is about to pay for, because much of what lies beneath them will be free in 18-24 months.
That is why the DARE Loop is here.
DARE is Decision, Action, Result, Evaluate – Loop around again. It gently guides you to where you can be courageous.
We define and commit to the Result. That takes great courage.
We commit to the clear and conscious Actions required to deliver the clear Result. (See above how Acting to own and deliver a Result can ask us to be brave).
Then we honestly Evaluate how we did, seeking hard truths and data, which sets up the next, better, Decision.
Without courage, you cannot run the loop. You run something else instead.
What you see people run instead is SEAR. Story, Emotion, Action, Result. It feels like thinking but it is autopilot. Watch out for it in meetings.
A Story arrives, formed by yesterday’s reality. It drives an Emotional response. An Action follows, designed mostly to keep you safe according to that Story. A Result lands, often reinforcing the Story as your ‘reality’.
Do you want to know how to spot somebody running on SEAR and not DARE?
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They can predict the future when presented with uncertainty. They will tell you the bad things that will happen if you try something new. They will act to avoid their (imagined) predicted outcome at all costs.
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They allocate blame. External forces ‘prevent’ them. But they will never challenge those ‘forces’. ‘The CEO would never allow…’. The prediction, the blame.
But the CEO is never asked and the meeting is closed without progress.
Which is wonderful news. We can all find courage; and it also provides the fuel for our spiritual growth.
A practical invitation for the week ahead:
Find one moment where you are about to run SEAR: “they won’t take me seriously in the meeting”, “X will attack anything like that”, “We aren’t innovative here”, “Our meetings always overrun and I never get heard”.
Don’t predict. Don’t blame. Run DARE instead.
What is the ACTION YOU would have to take to be taken seriously in that meeting?
What ACTION would YOU take to communicate and position with X so that she doesn’t attack? What ACTION must YOU take to begin to generate one (strategically relevant) innovation for your CEO?
What ACTION must YOU take
Is your Tiger roaring now and will it take courage to move?
If it goes wrong, will you have the courage to ask for data, Evaluate and go again?
Courage is the career.
My Fortnight
When I get asked how to present well, my boring answer is: painstaking preparation. This usually has to happen in many early mornings and some late nights. It’s won or lost before you get onstage. I did even more preparing than usual this week, because I had rashly agreed to deliver a new presentation to a very discerning audience!
Vladimír Fitchner, founder of Fichtner Wealth, the Czech Republic’s premier HNWI advisory practice had offered me the challenge. Our audience were Fichtner’s highly successful clients (50 – 75) AND their children (17-35). It was an extremely successful day.
From Prague to Tenerife, to work with a longstanding friend and client, Adrian Gregory. Adrian is President of EMEA at solutions integrator Insight. His work is fascinating and his approach inspiring. Courage was evident in both the ambitious strategy and the high performing leaders in the room and the presentations I was privileged to hear inspired this week’s newsletter.
The week before was spent with a genuinely extraordinary executive team who deliver an (almost) incomprehensibly complex outcome. Yet they are seeking to Evaluate and DARE again.
We designed a High Performing Team Contract setting out the precise behaviours they are committing to, to engineer the precise outcome they seek.
Now we begin the hard work together: a one-year journey to deliver a highly ambitious change in results through the exec and across the entire organisation.
Book of the Week
My book of the week this week is a podcast. Many of you have heard me tell the story of Eliud Kipchoge’s secret to becoming the greatest marathon runner in history. Vitamin N (for ‘saying No’ to distractions).
Saying ‘No’ takes enormous courage. Here is the podcast, hosted by Doctor Rangan Chatterjee. Runner or not, we can all learn from the best there has ever been in their field.
Write Your Story 🖋️
Jim
