Lawless Thinking brings you insights, tools and encouragement direct from our world of bold strategy delivery.

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When I am helping myself, or my children, to plan for and deliver a ‘hard new thing’ that we are not sure if we can achieve, we use the Four Dimensions of Change.

When my team and I design decision velocity and strategy implementation architecture alongside a client, we often teach the Four Dimensions of Change to their leaders.

I will only give an introduction to the Four Dimensions of Change today as this is part of our secret sauce. But since you are in my extended family, I’ll give you an insight that will be immediately beneficial for you.

The question to ask yourself, with brutal honesty, as you read is this: “Which of the Four Dimensions do I avoid?”. There is GREAT opportunity for you in the answer.

That will be where you have either a blind spot or a fear and discomfort spot. Overcoming either can rapidly accelerate your Results.

The Four Dimensions Of Change

To bring it alive, let’s imagine you want to become a Jockey in a year. I’ll use that as an example to work through. For the record, I had not created the four dimensions back then. My ignorance of one of them nearly derailed the entire plan.

Change Dimension One: Mindset

With a big change, we will have a ‘story’ about why we cannot do it. This is nature’s way of protecting us from uncertainty. It is a feature of the human OS and not a bug. Most people’s ambitions end there. The story kills it. They cannot imagine themselves moving past the block in the story.

The change cannot be delivered until the narrative shifts and the mindset is one of openness and curiosity. This was my initial block with riding. People like me are allowed to watch sporting events, we don’t take part. It is not possible for me to do it. I am not sporty. I can’t learn to ride a horse. I am too old to learn.

I needed to shift to curiosity and experimentation to see if I could do these things. Until you begin to imagine the change as possible, you cannot move.

In self-help books you’ve heard ‘you just have to believe’. Well, if you can do that, good for you! But I can’t find the belief, on day one, that I’m sure to succeed. I must start walking the path and making progress, curious to see if I can achieve it and managing my risk to an acceptable level as I navigate each ‘gate’ on the route ahead.

Change Dimension Two: Skillset

I couldn’t ride a horse. I couldn’t put tack on a horse. I couldn’t name the parts of the tack or even the parts of the horse and I certainly couldn’t understand the instructions being given by the trainer for the morning’s activity!

That was the skill gap I discovered on day one at a racing yard. Reasons to stop? No. Just skills to acquire.

For a big change, you will have to acquire skills. From books to YouTube videos to finding or hiring a mentor, to online courses, you no longer have to pass gatekeepers to learn skills. And then, of course, there are the formal learning routes as well. Never has learning been so accessible.

My tutor Gee, when she realised how unskilled I was, got to work on me. One Saturday morning she timed me against a stopwatch tacking up a racehorse perfectly. It was bad. But she already knew that; the trainer had complained to her about me holding up his string in the morning.

She left me to practice and got on with her day. An hour later, she returned and timed me again. Still rubbish. By 1pm, after ten plus reps of tacking and untacking an incredibly patient and kind horse, I could do the task perfectly in the required time and we went off for lunch together to celebrate. I never held the string up again.

Change Dimension Three: Relationships

This one can run deep.

You may need a teacher, a mentor, a coach. Don’t overlook this. Luke Skywalker needed Obi Wan. Moana needed Grandma. I needed Gee and Andrea and Brian and…

This is obvious. But it’s also hard to do. Approaches risk rejection and the more senior and accomplished you are, the harder that can feel. The relationship demands ‘master – pupil’ humility, and the more senior and accomplished you are…

And yet it is the way into the next room.

Unexpected to me, however, were the changes and negotiations in family relations and the outright hostility I attracted from soon-to-be-former ‘friends’ whom I was unwittingly and unintentionally threatening by trying to grow myself.

When you try to level up, it changes relationships. And to level up will often require new relationships to be initiated.

When you invite your people at work to step up in their ownership and accountability, to perform at a new level, do be aware that somebody at the coffee machine may be accusing them of ‘sucking up’ and ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ as they embark upon this third dimension of change with you, and they may be quietly managing that.

Change Dimension Four: Calendar

Well, if you know me, this one comes as no surprise.

Change Happens in Your Calendar. New Actions are required to deliver new Results. That means old, comfortable actions, that kept the client, boss and spouse content yesterday, will have to be jettisoned or re-negotiated (see above for the relationship aspect).

My calendar is the engineering tool I use most to create a future through uncertainty. And, of course, I DECIDE to modify the ACTIONS as I get RESULTS, EVALUATE those humbly and LOOP around to try again: The DARE Loop.

___________

 

So, which do you tend to avoid? Mindset, Skillset, Relationships or Calendar?

The one that is hardest for me is the Fourth Dimension: Calendar. That is the one that threatened to derail the racing project. Trying to excel today at the same time as delivering a new tomorrow.

That is the one that has slowed many transformation projects since. But cutting off yesterday (deleting activities that are currently working for you) to walk directly into uncertainty is courageous work indeed.

My Fortnight

Two keynotes this fortnight. One in Ulverston, Cumbria. Birthplace of Stan Laurel. The area is also the birthplace of high-tech manufacturing teams doing more complex work than SpaceX.  Next time I will, finally, manage the visit to the Laurel and Hardy Museum I promised myself many years ago.

But I did bring you a photo of the Ulverston statue commemorating that lovely pair of comedy legends.

Then to Munich to work with the mighty Allianz as they brought a global leadership team home to HQ to plan how to deliver an even brighter future alongside the customers they partner with.

Our global consultancy clients remain confidential at this stage and their partnership with my growing team as we install the architecture to deliver their strategies remains a complete delight.

Book of the Week

Did I mention we are rebranding to Lawless & Co and recruiting?

That work has brought me back to a book that I first read a decade ago and that helped me become confident to compete with ‘it’s complicated’ famous consultancies in front of complexity-admiring clients with the simple, elegant, human and effective models in our IP armoury.

Ken Segall worked with Jobs on the reinvention of Apple. He is the man behind ‘Think Different’ and ‘The Crazy Ones’.

His advice on retaining simplicity in a complex environment is as timeless as his stories of Steve ‘hitting us with the simple stick once again’ as Jobs relentlessly demanded more intuitive, simple products.

Write Your Story 🖋️

Jim

Lawless Thinking brings you insights, tools and encouragement direct from our world of bold strategy delivery.

If this edition was forwarded to you, you can sign up here to receive your own copy in the future.

Thought of the Week

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult”

 

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 104

TL;DR

Faced with the opportunity to own, perform and demand respect from the exec, most people I observe choose to: Hesitate, Escalate, Congregate, Placate to avoid exposure and vulnerability.

The stories that keep us in these responses are ubiquitous across the world in my workshops, and very convenient. They let us off the hook.

Many executive teams are spending a fortune trying to get their people to take the wheel. It is exhausting, and slow, being the main source of energy and permission in the system.

I will explain how to start standing out using the DARE Loop which differentiates you immediately.

The Four Moves To Stagnation

There’s an old routine I’ve seen motivational speakers use.

She holds up a £10 note. She asks the audience of 500 people who wants it. There is silence. Nobody wants to be exposed. She pockets her £10 note and begins the speech.

Every human being runs the same default loop when offered what they want, on the other side of a little exposure that they don’t. A self-protection Story creates Emotion creates a defensive Action and a mediocre Result. It is fast, automatic, and it feels like thinking.

If you cannot identify and interrupt this loop, it leads to four major frictions that you may recognise:

I hesitate. Wait for one more piece of data. Get one more view. Sleep on it, again, just in case.

I escalate. Send it up the line to join an overloaded bottleneck of things being sent up the line by extremely expensive executives.

I congregate. Loop in stakeholders. Set up a meeting when our calendars finally align.

I placate. Second-guess what you think the senior person will want. Serve the personality and not the purpose.

WHY? Because of ‘the story’.

I often address the ‘Top 100’, those who report to the exec team. In workshops after my keynote, I ask them to define the bold, stretch strategic result they want to achieve this year. Then I ask them to name the story they will have to delete in their own heads, that they habitually tell themselves, in order to actually deliver it when they get back to work.

The same lines come up every time, all over the world. The story I must delete to take ownership and ACT is:

“I’m not senior enough.”

“I need to wait for permission.”

“I mustn’t rock the boat.”

“I need to do it the way it’s always been done.”

“I’ll never get all the stakeholders aligned, so why bother?”

“I can’t change the bureaucracy.”

“I’m too busy.”

“The regulator.”

These are the most senior 100 people after the Exec. They all report to a member of the ultimate decision authority. They are the bureaucracy. They own ‘how it is done here’.

These stories are as convenient as they are ubiquitous. They let us feel comfortable. They let us blame another thing and feel wise as we criticise. They sound sensible and, because everybody is telling the story, they are almost impossible to argue with in the mirror.

But in a high-performing culture, these stories simply do not exist. The purpose is too strong to permit them in people’s thinking. A newcomer would quickly realise that speaking one of these excuses will alienate, not endear.

Another uncomfortable truth: most executive teams are spending a large amount of time, energy and money on getting their people to take ownership and get things done.

So the promotion you want may well be sitting on the table in front of you, waiting. You can do more than you think to help the exec team win. And they will see you.

Using the DARE Loop instead.

The DARE Loop is the alternative. It demands action, ownership and ‘first-principles’ thinking as opposed to ‘story-based’ thinking.

What is the RESULT you want to create?

What are the ACTIONS required of you to deliver it?

Will you DECIDE and commit to those ACTIONS? Will you humbly EVALUATE what you created, learn, improve and iterate: the LOOP part.

So far, so easy. But when you are sitting in a meeting thinking ‘this is a waste of my time, I should be talking to a customer’, will you tell one of the blame stories above and stay comfortable? Or politely excuse yourself and become vulnerable and different in order to perform and deliver?

So what is the story you need to delete in order to perform, stand out, be what AI can never be and enjoy deep satisfaction and also secure that promotion?

What would be a better story to use as your guide when you feel the risk of exposure heading towards you?

After all, did anybody at your organisation ever actually get fired for taking a decision in line with the strategy and values and getting vital stuff done faster?

Most people add drag (hesitation, escalation, congregation) into the system to feel safe. What could you do to turbocharge it instead?

Your exec team pay people like me to join them onstage and help them encourage everybody to be courageous and leave the comfort zone. It’s what they want. It’s what the company and the customer need.

Why don’t you have some fun with that, and maybe secure yourself that promotion along the way?

My Fortnight

I am excited to announce that Symmetry is to be renamed Lawless & Co. and we have begun recruiting Senior Associates who are seeking an exciting firm with a clear career path to partnership.

We architect strategy execution and AI adoption in global organisations. We will build upon your expertise, supporting you to become truly world-class in walking beside our clients to execute and implement the strategy once the consultants have left the slide deck behind.

We are also looking for a disciplined marketing strategist capable of designing, building and operating a foundational AI-enabled CRM, supporting our content and who is looking for a career-defining challenge.

Meanwhile, I was delighted to deliver keynote addresses for fascinating and fabulous clients at the iconic Odeon, Leicester Square (pictured), at the Belfry, in Barrow-in-Furness (where the Defence Investment Plan was, finally, being carefully perused), and in Paris, all alongside our exec team advisory projects.

Book of the Week

If you want to take the wheel, I recommend Taming Tigers by me. It’s precisely why I wrote it. It contains case studies on deploying a ‘take control’ approach from the inspirational CEO asked by the UK Government to turn Northern Rock around after the crash, a US Naval officer faced with an underperforming team on an aircraft carrier and more. It also sets out the Ten Rules for overcoming your ‘Tiger’, picking up your pen and writing your story.

If you are a leader wanting to see your people take the wheel more, I’ll offer you Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet. A US Navy submarine captain takes command of the worst-performing boat in the fleet and, within a year, has the best. But how?

His method is elegantly simple. He stops giving orders and trains every officer to bring him intent rather than requests for permission. “Captain, I intend to…” If you read one book on how to give the wheel to your people, read this one.

Write Your Story 🖋️

Jim

Lawless Thinking brings you insights, tools and encouragement direct from my world of bold C-suite strategy delivery.

If this edition was forwarded to you, you can sign up here to receive your own copy in the future.

Thought of the Week

“I’ve never been in there with him. But I believe the world is round and they all believe the world is flat. Maybe I’ll fall off the world at the horizon but I believe the world is round.”

 

Muhammad Ali

(I found this moving comment in David Remnick’s autobiography of Ali. It was made in a hotel room before the Sonny Liston contest in 1964. It is in stark contrast to his press conference statements.)

If you read Lawless Thinking, you leave the harbour and enter the choppy waters of uncertainty. That guarantees you’ll have moments when your confidence wavers.

The switch that can flick between ‘It’ll be ok’ and ‘You can’t do this thing’ in a heartbeat is mysterious. That’s why sports people, and maybe you too, have a pair of lucky pants.

So, I sat down in my garden and searched for moments when my confidence deserted me.

And like Alice on the riverbank, my mind swiftly began tumbling down the rabbit holes. Moments when my feelings of inadequacy to the task tried to overwhelm my mind and biochemistry.

I’m sitting in my car waiting to start the engine and go to a racing yard. It’s December. Dark and cold at 5.45am. I got bolted with the last three mornings. The other riders aren’t talking to me anymore. It’s raining hard on the windscreen. Time to go, but I can’t bring myself to start the engine. What do I do?

I am in the front row at a low-key event about to speak. The carefully chosen words my partner sent me to work with, again, have destroyed me. I don’t feel worthy to walk out there. Who on earth do you think you are to go talk to them? What do I do?

It’s 3am and I’m wide awake. Day one did not go as planned. I’m halfway through a two-day high-performance design with an executive team that simply won’t fire, and nothing in my toolkit has cracked them. In five hours I’m back in that room, and we have to land a result by the end of the day. There’s no day three. What do I do?

I think that ‘confidence’ is the thoughts we have about ourselves and our upcoming challenges after drinking a volatile cocktail of skills acquired, specific preparation, ‘self-worth’ (including the comments of others) and our emotional state at that moment.

If we don’t like the taste, our emotional state shifts to fear. The cocktail becomes more bitter. A cycle can begin. It can spiral into dangerous levels of anxiety that will prevent performance. We must be able to manage the situation.

But if we are going to leave the harbour and sail the seas of life, we need to be able to manage things when the cocktail our minds serves up is bitter.

1. When the challenge seems too big.

My riding mentor, Gee, only got angry with me once. She asked why I never seemed afraid, learning to ride one-ton animals in the dark and cold, getting bolted with or thrown several times a week.

I told her I was often afraid. Her tone changed. “How can I help you if I don’t know what’s going on?”

She wasn’t angry that I was scared. She knew that every brave jockey can get scared (I did not yet know this). Courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s doing the thing anyway. She was angry that my need to show up perfect was damaging our coaching and putting the goal we’d both committed to — the racetrack in a year — at risk.

We tore up the next day’s plan. Instead, she let me talk. I let her in. She gave me tools. We cancelled riding out and went to the gallops together instead, in daylight, and she taught me things to try, there and then, on horseback.

When the challenge feels too big, my first recommendation is vulnerability.

Not a performative confessional in front of the team, they may not need to see your full frailty until the thing is delivered, but a quiet conversation with someone you trust. Open up. Let someone in.

My second is to ask for help. Find the person who’s sat on more racehorses, been in the room more often, stood on the stage, led the team. They can help you. They will also understand the fear and how to move past it. High performers empathise because they have done it. The friend in the bar may not.

2. Finding your self-belief when the pressure is on.

Most of us carry some shame, and it loves to ambush us at the moments that matter most. What you need then is a tool, not someone to blame. This is where therapy can sometimes leave you stranded. My tool of choice is boundaries.

Not the Instagram kind: the one-sided proclamations of what you “will not tolerate.” Real boundaries work inward. They’re the filter that decides what you let in from others and what you keep out. And they run the other way too: knowing when to stay quiet, because it isn’t always your place to speak and offer another human your view of them.

When your self-worth vanishes because of the comments of others, or your own demons coming out to play, first put up the boundary. This is not reality. You do not have to pay it any attention.

Then go to the evidence. You’re not in that room because they needed a warm body and you happened to be there.

You’re there because you’re the right person. Others saw it clearly, even when you can’t feel it. So remember why you’re there, how you earned the right, how you prepared. Remember why you are unique – and you are, in some special way that matters for this moment – perhaps because of those very demons and how they help you to think: then deliver.

And if you haven’t done the work? There’s no honest trick I can offer. Pretending to be ready when you’re not isn’t confidence, it’s acting. That’s a different topic.

Secondly, there are tools that can help you feel stronger here. I heard this week that the England football team’s striker coach tells them there is no goalkeeper. Don’t even see him. He cannot get to a well struck ball in time. He is an irrelevance. Just shoot at the empty goal before you!

I use music in my hotel room or headphones before a big presentation. And I always know what I am going to say in the first 30 seconds and where I will stand on stage. That occupies my mind and gives me a solid start I can control.

So, it could be music, a controllable foundation, a thought pattern cue like the England strikers – but finding something to focus on other than ‘can I do it?’ can be extremely helpful in a clutch situation where you cannot afford your confidence to dip.

3. The 3am Self-Doubt Club.

Your situation may be different. But I suspect you’ve found the late night confidence attack when you discover you are not up to the task – in your imagination.

First, let’s name what 3am actually is. Your brain in the dark is a catastrophe machine — it strips out every resource and shows you only the cliff. Nothing you “decide” now is real, so decide nothing. This isn’t the situation; it’s the 3am version of it.

Then put the weight where it belongs. The result here was never mine alone to force. There’s a room full of capable people, and a breakthrough is a shared job, not a solo rescue. You can’t control whether they fire-up. You can control your preparation, your presence, and your first move at nine. Control the controllables; release the rest.

And trust the evidence. Your process has worked before, with rooms that looked just as stuck. If yesterday’s approach didn’t land, that’s data for today’s -not proof I’m finished!

Whatever your version of the confidence attack at 3am may be, log it, close the chapter, and let it go until morning. The work is done. You’ll figure it out. Now focus on breathing deeply, relaxing your major muscle groups and enjoying that you get to do exciting work and take on exciting challenges!

Sleep is part of the preparation, not a betrayal of it.

It’s going to be ok. Let’s enjoy the ride while we can!

My Fortnight

Presentations have taken me and the DARE Loop from 1500 people in Munich at a large, celebratory EMEA sales jamboree to an intimate conference room in the UK where the newly merged finance leadership teams of two great organisations were working in detail on the Decisions and Actions required to delivering their ambitious and stretching strategy to become one.

I have welcomed a new exec team advisory client to the fold which is very exciting and brings me close to capacity for 2026.

My Symmetry team are working hard on re-launching our training for team leaders across the organisation who need to generate ownership, accountability, clarity and performance at speed: INSPIRE.

Book of the Week

Are you too busy? Is everything important and urgent – and being done badly whilst good people ‘burn out’?

A strategy is a set of clear choices to deliver a prize. ‘Pre-made decisions’ that guide us under pressure and in moments of almost unbearable opportunity cost temptation to ‘do more’.

But most enterprise strategies are a committee/trend driven Vision, Mission and Values statement with a long list of goals attached.

“Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests. Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does. Bad strategy is long on goals and short on policy or action.”

This is where I operate with my advisory clients. Then we build the Second Strategy: how we’ll deliver the enterprise strategy through our people.

One of the books that I often gift to clients is Rumelt’s Good Strategy / Bad Strategy.

It is an easy read providing solid principles and a clear guide to how to spot a good, and a bad, strategy and the difference between them.

Write Your Story 🖋️

Jim

Lawless Thinking brings you insights, tools and encouragement direct from my world of bold C-suite strategy delivery.

If this edition was forwarded to you, you can sign up here to receive your own copy in the future.

Thought of the Week

“The problem you’re solving isn’t ‘change’.

The problem is generating in others the courage required to enter uncertainty, and the effort and energy required to stay there until we all reach the other side.

It’s a leadership problem”

Jim Lawless

This week I was invited by my friends at PepTalk to deliver a webinar:

Strategy Into Action — Leading Through Uncertainty.

I’ve spent over 20 years helping leaders and organisations deliver ambitious, high-stakes goals and navigate the uncertainty, disruption, and change that come with them.

In the webinar, I took the audience behind the scenes of that work and placed two of the practical frameworks I use with leadership teams, the Second Strategy and the DARE Loop, into their wider context as tools of strategic execution at scale.

We ran out of time before I could get to all the questions. So, this week, I’m turning the newsletter over to the ones that didn’t get answered. I hope they’re useful for you.

Theo — If you had to achieve a big goal in one year’s time, what would you do in the first two weeks?

I would spend the first two weeks using the DARE Loop, understanding the Actions required to deliver the Result in one year. Almost immediately, I would discover that I don’t know all of them — and that I need help. So, inevitably, I would also be building some sort of team or network. AI would certainly be in that network.

Having sought advice on what those actions are, and what new habits need to enter my schedule to deliver the goal, I would then do the thing most people avoid: I would change my calendar. This makes everybody’s Tiger roar because we like to please people and avoid conflict. So it is unpopular. Meaning the Actions cannot be done and the goal fails.

Change happens across four dimensions — mindset, skillset, relationships, and calendar.

There will almost certainly be elements across all four that need to shift for me before the goal becomes a genuine possibility. I need to identify the work on all four elements.

Change happens in your calendar. These two weeks are the time to design the future: through action in your calendar.

What are my most effective actions? Can I do these things excellently within my current workload? What will block me from success if I don’t deal with it now?

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Alexander — Many leaders are facing constant uncertainty around AI, geopolitics, and economic conditions. How does the DARE Loop apply when the future is genuinely unclear?

The DARE Loop is designed specifically for environmental volatility and uncertainty – and also to demonstrate to us when we need to enter uncertainty voluntarily.  

So whether you need to change course because the Strait of Hormuz just closed or you need to personally commit to the uncertainty of trying to bring in a different kind of client you’ve not attracted before to double your salary: you can use the DARE Loop

Uncertainty means there is no right answer. So you can either take a best guess and go hard – or act as a rabbit in the headlights and hope.

The DARE Loop demands that you identify your Result – so you cannot be a rabbit.  You identify the Result you want to achieve. (That may be research for greater certainty – it may be a clear commercial outcome). 

To achieve a Result you need to consider the potential Actions that may get you there – or consciously not Act (wait for events to unfold).  So now you need to gather evidence and take a Decision.

As there is no right answer, you are testing your thinking, you must not relax and settle upon the course you adopted. It may well be catastrophic. So you seek data, continue scanning the horizon, and iterate fast – you Evaluate and Loop as fast as data (greater certainty) becomes available. 

BUT, for this you need a culture where you can say out loud that there is no correct answer. We spend thousands on ‘uncertainty’ speakers to tell us that geopolitics is a a volatile set of unknown unknowns. And then we still punish people internally for saying there is not ‘correct’ course of action.

And a culture where you can spot a catastrophic decision and change course whilst ALSO congratulating the decision maker for taking calculated decisions and actions in uncertainty – instead of congratulating the rabbit in the headlights. Now we are moving into the Second Strategy.

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Martin — What is the one team challenge you see come up over and over again?

Critical parent and compliant (in the room), or rebellious (outside the room), child.

When a team leader retains control, requires decisions to be taken by them, and in doing so trains the team that they are not to be trusted and should not use their brains to work, but to predict how to please the boss.

Change happens at the speed of trust. In this scenario, it needs to be built from the ground up before we can perform.

The initial cost is speed. The second cost is performance. The third cost is intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is central to the knowledge economy. You cannot carrot and stick somebody to think harder.

Intrinsic motivation dies when autonomy is killed off. Now you enter an extrinsic motivation, carrot-and-stick situation. Now the boss complains of overwhelm of course, because they are taking every decision and are, by their own design, overwhelmed.

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James — How should leaders respond when they’re being asked to lead change they don’t yet fully believe in?

With positive intent, courageous challenge and intelligent questions.

The word “cascade” needs to be removed from our change vocabulary (other than for processes). If a leader has change cascaded upon them and must cascade it in turn, we have already failed.

Each leader needs to understand, and desire, the change deeply enough to define it for their area — to own it and lead it with their team, rather than ‘cascading the deck’.

If a leader doesn’t believe in the change, they have a responsibility to go find out what it is all about. They are being paid to lead, after all.

If that is genuinely too high risk for the leader, we may have a much bigger problem to address than the change plan.

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David — What is the main takeaway from your first marathon?

That everybody who tells you “if you can run a half, you can run a full” is telling fibs!

I could run a half — and did so reasonably well. It turned out that running a full requires considerably more training.

My other takeaways were that the London crowds are extraordinary and that the amount raised for good causes by the people running that race is astronomical.

Supporting Together for Short Lives was a tremendous honour, and we raised a lot of money together.

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Jill — If I want to step outside my comfort zone, what would you recommend as the first step?

Know why. What’s in it for you? Not in a mercenary sense, but in the deepest sense. What does crossing that line mean to you?

Then find either a good friend or a professional in the field, if you need tuition, to stand alongside you: give you confidence when you feel wobbly; hold you to account when your unwillingness to say ‘no’ to your old comfort zone calendar commitments means you are becoming flakey.

Take baby steps. You do not have to terrify yourself on day one. By the time I was diving to 100 metres, it was no further outside of my comfort zone than my first dive to five metres had been. The increments are what make the extraordinary feel, eventually, manageable and possible.

And remember: discomfort is not a sign that something is wrong. It is often a sign that something important is happening.

We are conditioned to believe that a good life is one in which we avoid fear, uncertainty and awkwardness. Yet almost everything worthwhile sits on the other side of those feelings. The goal is not to eliminate discomfort; it is to become willing to move forward despite it.

That’s all for this week. It’s quite long enough without hearing about my fortnight or book recommendation. But to those who drop me a lovely line about what is going on: some fabulous half term family fun was had along with some stimulating work adventures with highly fascinating people delivering complex projects.

Thank you to everyone who submitted questions — and to PepTalk for the invitation to deliver the session.

If any of this has landed and you’d like to explore what it might mean for your team or organisation, you know where to find me!

Write your story 🖋️

Jim

Lawless Thinking brings you insights, tools and encouragement direct from my world of bold C-suite strategy delivery.

If this edition was forwarded to you, you can sign up here to receive your own copy in the future.

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?

1. 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.

2. 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

Lawless Thinking brings you insights, tools and encouragement direct from my world of bold C-suite strategy delivery.

If this edition was forwarded to you, you can sign up here to receive your own copy in the future.

Thought of the Week

“Nothing is as easy to sell as a victim narrative”

Jim Lawless

TL;DR

• Our school’s parental WhatsApp group lit up this week: phones, AI and the ‘Anxious Generation’.

• Underneath the concern sat a trending dysfunction: performative blame and public self-righteousness instead of serious adult agency and accountability over a parenting challenge.

• The same dysfunction shows up at work. Our role as leaders, in the boardroom and at the kitchen table, is the same: ‘create’ adults who take their own Decisions and their own Actions to deliver their own Results within clear boundaries.

• Social media personalities such as Jonathan Haidt have become standard bearers for that dysfunction. He is right that something has gone wrong. But he allocates responsibility based on correlation rather than cause and he is wrong about whose job it is to protect our children. The popularity of his outsourced parenting message is worrying.

• The problem is serious, damaging for our children and our economy, so I won’t be bowing to fashion in addressing it.

The Group Chat

Our daughter’s school’s parental WhatsApp group lit up last week. Phones. Social media. AI. Phones = mental health crises (not communication between friends or augmented thinking). The “Anxious Generation” guy says …

People seemed keener to be on message and to blame-on-trend than to share strategies – Decisions and Actions – to bring about the Result of protecting our daughters and preparing them for the real world they will (they already do) inhabit.

Capable, accomplished and often very senior people had arranged themselves in an extremely fashionable, virtuous circle of complaint about the school; the algorithm; the tech bro billionaires; the Government.

This victim narrative is encouraged by authors, social media personalities, mainstream media and the government. It’s big business. It wins advertising eyes and ears, political votes and audience ratings.

What Is A Parent’s Primary Job?

I’ve been reading and reflecting on that question for 29 years of parenting (so far, my youngest is twelve). I certainly do not propose my view is ‘correct’.

But my personal compass bearing is: To love, nurture, role model and teach my children to become adults who can function fully and happily in society: without me.

What’s yours?

(I’d be happy if they lived with me forever. I adore their company. But live with me whilst being able to function fully without me – or I have failed them, in my opinion.)

And who is responsible for parenting our children? School? Tech bros? Regulators? the Prime Minister? Of course not.

Parents are responsible, hopefully with ‘a village’ in support.

I take the increase in anxiety amongst young people extremely seriously. The viciousness of both the ‘femisphere’ and ‘manosphere’ are surely just symptoms of a terrible pain and isolation.

I have a duty to help my daughters navigate the world as it is presented. Not as I wish it to be. That world presents very real dangers therefore my job is to consciously parent her to navigate these.

I can’t support my daughters to live healthy and anxiety-free lives in a world of social media, AI and smartphones by demanding others to change the world to my preference.

That is lobbying; and it is legitimate work. But it is not parenting.

What Is The Job Of A Leader?

In a world of increasing pace, increasing investment in intellectual capital and increasing demands for adaptability and managing uncertainty:

A leader must surely be aiming for happy, fully functioning, independent adults who can operate without them to deliver the strategic outcomes the leaders have clearly set.

Ironically, despite the comparison to parenting, this is about moving away from ‘parent-child’ to ‘adult-adult’ accountability within boundaries.

A Word On Haidt

Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation is a carefully constructed social media phenomenon and also a book. It is an easy flag for broadcasters to gather around: and gather they do in their droves. It removes accountability from us as parents and gives us all pitchforks to wave at the castle. There is nothing as easy to sell as a victim narrative.

Let me be fair to him before I disagree. He has shown that adolescent mental health, particularly for girls, deteriorated sharply across the Western world from around 2010, and he is right to refuse to look away from this terrible suffering.

His central claim, however, is causal. The evidence is correlational, and at population level the numbers are vanishingly small. The same window also covers the financial crisis, the collapse of youth services, youth clubs and libraries, rising academic pressure, reducing job opportunities (that are not yet due to AI) a (statistically largely unjustified) terror of letting children out unaccompanied, and a long decline in unstructured childhood time alone and with peers that began well before the iPhone.

Well used, the smart phone is a vital way for our young people to connect with friends, overcome homework worries or have an expert ‘teacher’ explain a tricky maths problem to them step by step.

But this takes intentional parenting, just as the workplace requires intentional leadership.

We need to ‘get us on their side’. Not ‘get them on our side’ if we want our messages to land.

I have a different candidate for the more causal relationship between screen and childhood mental distress.

The first relationship a child has with a screen is mediated by their relationship with the adult holding one. What an enormous number of children have learned, before they have ever held a phone of their own, is that the device in their parent’s hand is more interesting than they are.

That seems as plausibly causal to me than the smartphone in the hands of the child, but it is a hard sell compared to the case Haidt makes for governments and billionaires to be blamed.

But my deepest objection is structural. Haidt’s framing positions children as objects of policy, acted upon by algorithms and rescued by regulators.

The parent is almost absent. The child is passive throughout. Tech bros and regulators run the show.

The lesson she learns is that the rules of her life are written by powerful adults elsewhere, and her job is to wait for the adults to write better ones.

Which is, arguably, the same lesson that has appealed to the adults on the WhatsApp group demanding that somebody must do something to parent their child.

Subjects, Not Objects

There is a phrase I keep coming back to. It was told to me by the legendary acting teacher Ian Ricketts of Guildford School of Acting when I studied under him in the late 90’s.

“Children are not preparing for life. They are living their lives.”

The twelve-year-old in our house is not in a holding pattern waiting for the adult version of herself to begin. She is, right now, an active human being making decisions about who she is and what she does, in real time, with real consequences and immediate feedback.

Our job is not to delay her use of tecnology until we have removed the influence of the tech bros.

Our job is to give her the tools to live the life she is already living and to fly the nest successfully, in the technological landscape she inhabits.

That is a parenting agenda. It happens to also be a leadership agenda.

…At The Speed Of Trust

Change happens at the speed of trust.

Not the speed of policy, not the speed of legislation, not the speed of the next bestselling author on the “podcast for Instagram algorithm soundbites” circuit. Trust.

A child who trusts you will tell you what she saw online. A child who does not, will not.

A direct report who trusts you will tell you he lost a tool on the deck of an aircraft carrier. One who does not will hide that dangerous error.

Get you on their side. Show up consistently. Manage your emotions.

Trust is a pattern. It is built by being consistent, present, interested, and by handling well the things people tell you. Lose your temper once when she confesses something difficult and you have taught a lesson no legislation can unteach, which is do not bring this home.

My Fortnight

I’ve been to two athletics meets with my youngest daughter this fortnight. Many phones on view. Mainly being used by friends to find friends around the track and by youth athletes (who train their disciplined hearts out) to calculate target split times for their parents to shout from the sidelines at strategic positions!

I’ve also delivered a virtual presentation for a global pharma company, a day of detailed moonshot design for a most fantastic consultancy and a trip to Paris to present to a tech conference amongst preparing for an exciting Executive Team high performing team design workshop next week.

And then there was a marathon! 

Heartfelt thanks to everybody who supported Together for Short Lives and me.  You’re amazing and every single penny makes a difference.

It turns out that when they say “if you can do a half you can do a full” they lied. A ‘race’ of two halves with a half marathon on target and a cramped hobble home from docklands. 

But it was done. I have NEVER received so much support as was screamed out by the spectators across the route and – if you have been meaning to support Together for Short Lives and the families they serve in the most awful of times – now is your chance.

Book of the Fortnight

How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims.

Lythcott-Haims spent a decade as Dean of Freshmen at Stanford watching capable, accomplished, well-meaning parents quietly disable their own children. The work of parenting is the deliberate, patient transfer of agency to the human in your house, and the substitutes we have invented for that work, however well intentioned, are not working.

Read it with a notebook. The chapter on what she calls checklisted childhood may sting in places, and that is rather the point.

A Book for the Children

You Are Awesome by Matthew Syed.

Syed wrote this for nine to twelve year olds, distilling the growth-mindset thinking from his adult books Bounce and Black Box Thinking into something a child can pick up and use. Capability is built, not given, and the person doing the building is the child themselves.

It’s more on growth mindset than agency and power – but then the foundation of a growth mindset is an empowering: “Perhaps I can!”

Write Your Story 🖋️

Jim

Lawless Thinking brings you insights, tools and encouragement direct from my world of bold C-suite strategy delivery.

If this edition was forwarded to you, you can sign up here to receive your own copy in the future.

Thought of the Week

“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when it is clearly Ocean.”

Arthur C. Clarke

TL;DR

• There is a point at which trying harder makes progress slower. A new key must be found. But letting go of the illusion of safety is hard.

• If you are leading speed at scale: what old approach do you need to let go of? What can you no longer monitor and control? What error rate can/must you and the business tolerate and how will you manage that emotionally and structurally?

• The DARE Loop invites constant iteration and reflection on how to change thinking and behaviour to deliver the Result: faster.

• As you read this, I am running the London Marathon for Together for Short Lives — undertrained, the wrong shape, and without a plan for what happens after mile 20.

The Barrier That Effort Built

-50m was the limit of the ‘old way’ and I could not get deeper for weeks. I showed up, ‘tried harder’ and applied everything that had worked for me so far in my life: drive, discipline, will, the accumulated force of not accepting no.

But I stayed at -50 metres. Below me, a white line descended into the black, impossible, slightly terrifying, abyss of my target: -101m. 

The DARE Loop requires constant Evaluation of the Decisions and Actions taken and of the Results they have achieved. Followed by a Loop of iterations: try again.

“Fail better”, as Samuel Beckett wrote. “Solve it from a different consciousness to the one that created it” to misquote Albert.

So, counterintuitively, I stopped pushing harder. Instead, I looped faster and tried new ways through. 

I eventually trusted music. My constant friend in all troubles. An ancient Sanskrit mantra I discovered in a kundalini yoga studio in Camden, sung by Deva Premal: ‘Aad Guray Nameh’, got me past -50 metres and unlocked a new physical and mental state which was the key to -101m.

Leading for Execution at Speed and Scale

High performance isn’t pedalling faster (you are at max RPM, right?). High performance is changing gears: moving to the next level.

On my bike, I can push a button to change gears.

But for an exec team, running a complex business at the max, changing gears means letting go of many of the behaviours that got you there and then trying out a new approach that is, hopefully, appropriate for the task ahead.

It’s a leap of faith and it is extremely emotionally challenging.

You have massive influence as a leader. But you cannot change human nature. Like the ocean, you have to work with it.

Speed means giving others the safety, belief, power and purpose to move faster than feels safe to them.

You cannot do this by getting more into the weeds with them and managing their work. By controlling. By ‘mastering the brief’.

You will need to find a new way through: at the very time that the stakes are rising, at the very moment you want to ‘grab the wheel’ and bark orders.

This involves preparation and care, planning and communication. But then it always requires a leap. And some errors.

Earth or Ocean?

I was optimised for hard work and control. But the ocean does not grade on effort and has no concept of control. I had to operate on her terms.

Shareholders don’t grade on effort either. But more importantly: nor does the living, breathing and often fearful organism that you are leading beyond its historic limits.

The organisation grades on purpose and safety to try, on a solid skills base, on clear decision making architecture, on leadership consistency and support, and on culture. In short: on emotion.

Mile 20: Today’s sticking point

As you read this on Sunday morning, I am running the London Marathon. If you have the app you can track me!

I am running for Together for Short Lives. A charity supporting babies and children with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions and their families.

It’s a charity I have supported since my own family’s experience of a seriously ill child (who made a full recovery). They support people facing and managing the thing I fear the most in life.

And I am running for my friend Danny Bouckley, and for his son Michael who is living his life whilst undergoing treatment for cancer, and for their lovely family.

I am not a marathon runner. I am the wrong shape. I started running very late in life. But worse, I’ve really struggled to prioritise the training with my family and client commitments!  I have not run beyond 30 kilometres. I do not know what happens to me after mile 20, because I have never been there. I will have to trust in finding another gear.

But I will find a way to put one foot in front of another for them. Perhaps music will help.

Could you find a moment (and perhaps £20?) to support families who are in terrible pain this morning?

PLEASE SUPPORT MY MARATHON FOR TOGETHER FOR SHORT LIVES HERE

My Fortnight

I have largely been engaged on confidential boardroom advisory work in the defence sector this fortnight which has been extremely successful and very stimulating.

I also had a very successful trip to work in Alicante, Spain and ventured to London to Zoom HQ for a live, and fascinating, ‘fireside chat’ with Benedetto Conversano. Benedetto is the executive advisor to Zoom’s EMEA Customer Council, to whom our chat on ‘Structural Velocity’ was broadcast: via Zoom!

Book of the Fortnight

The book of the week is a mantra for change. I am not religious, so I will not call it a prayer. Of course, you may choose to if you wish.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference.

What do you have to accept that you cannot change? What are the limits of your powers? Can you find the courage to change the things you can?

Write Your Story 🖋️

Jim

Sponsor my London Marathon run for Together for Short Lives

Lawless Thinking brings you insights, tools and encouragement direct from my world of bold C-suite strategy delivery.

If this edition was forwarded to you, you can sign up here to receive your own copy in the future.

Thought of the Week

“When the person who serves the purpose is silenced by the person who is serving the personality: strategy execution loses.”

Jim Lawless

TL;DR

When people serve the personality of their leader rather than the purpose of the organisation, strategy execution dies — quietly, politely, and with excellent meeting notes.

The Titanic sank, in part, because a radio operator was serving his wealthiest passengers and his employer, NOT the primary purpose his vessel existed to fulfil.

Our Symmetry.inc Hourglass places the executive team in the middle of the hourglass — not at the top (or bottom) of the pyramid. They are there to create and serve the purpose and strategy that supports them, and those they lead, to deliver Results.

The DARE Loop only works if the Result people are optimising for is the right one. In ‘personality-serving’ cultures, it isn’t.

Lawless Thinking brings you insights, tools and encouragement direct from my world of bold C-suite strategy delivery.

If this edition was forwarded to you, you can sign up here to receive your own copy in the future.

Thought of the Week

“The decision that saves you at depth was taken long before you entered the water”

Jim Lawless

TL;DR

• At -100m with no air, if trouble comes, the factor determining your success is your ability to maintain total stillness and execute the plan.

• The challenge facing a freediver at depth is the same challenge facing an executive team guiding the organisation through genuine uncertainty to deliver the strategy.

• The deepest divers are not the bravest. They are the most still and prepared. That insight changes everything about how we lead under pressure.

• The question for you and your Executive Team: when your people hit the dark water and ‘wobble’: what have you actually trained them for? Stillness and execution? Or Escalation, Meetings and Hesitation?