Mind-Shi(f)t.
Mid-Journey 6.0
“When the facts change, I change my mind-what do you do sir”
- Attributed to John Maynard Keynes
“My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment. The result has been that I have grown from truth to truth.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
“A sign of intellect is the ability to change your mind in the face of new facts. A mark of wisdom is refusing to let the fear of admitting you were wrong stop you from getting it right. The joy of learning something new eventually exceeds the pain of unlearning something old.”
- Adam Grant
A combination of four shifts 1) technological shifts driven by the twin and inter connected forces of AI and Bio-technology, 2) demographic shifts of declining populations ( outside of Africa), and aging populations, 3) power shifts from scale to small (outside of a few cases), management to labor and west to east and 4) boundary shifts in a world where work has become distributed and media and customer behavior have become omni-channel and funnel fusing, individuals and businesses who can shape shift are likely to succeed.
The challenge we will all face is to a) be open to other points of view, b) to be informed by facts, data, reality, and trusted sources and c) how to emphasize quality over quantity, complexity versus caricature and nuance over screed.
These challenges are being turbo-charged by AI, social media like Tik-Tok which is the source for “news” for under 34 year olds, and algorithms optimized to re-enforce our viewpoints and perspectives.
All of this further accelerated by the heat of a 2024 election season in a polarized landscape.
How can we be open to mind-shifts if we are on the receiving end of rivers of mind-shit?
How to to have the wisdom and the calm of the sage and not find our-selves locked into cages of rage?
It is the failure to change our minds and our way of being that lead to defeat.
Self-Defeat.
A case can be made that most successful individuals, institutions and nations are rarely defeated by others but find ways to defeat or weaken themselves to enable their own withering and dissolving.
In almost every case the same four indicators have been flashing for a while, but no one was paying attention.
The four symptoms of SDD (Self-Defeating Disease) are:
Incestuous thinking: A smaller and smaller group of decision makers with similar backgrounds and long tenure in the same place.
Cult replacing Culture: A cult either around a leader, a “way”, a fashionable financial market meme (“everything as a service”, “data driven everything”, “streaming is the only way”, or some other weird dogmas parroted and echoed by a fawning press chasing page views, trending stories and personalities).
Fear: Fear of speaking up, fear of change, fear of opposing the leader or “the way”!
Overreach: Letting recent success and fawning make one lose perspective that much success is driven by luck and trends that can turn and therefore overreaching too far or moving too soon. They tend to defeat them-selves though some combination of complacency, over-reach and haughtiness.
Surrounded by supplicants, sycophants, synchronous thinkers with handlers, gate-keepers, people who powder puff their noses they often have a belief it is they versus the position they inhabit is the source of power.
They are incapable of mind-shifts.
How to ensure Mind-Shift.
Diversity of Thinking: Diversity of backgrounds and thinking particularly in leadership teams are critical. If everybody thinks the same way, it can be dangerous. Disagreement and challenging points of view is what boards, external perspectives and independently successful people bring to a company or to a person.
Building a case for the opposite: Whenever a key decision needs to be made a team or individual should be charged with building a case for the exact opposite of what you as an individual, a leader or board are considering. This provides two benefits. First it allows one to make sure that group think does not disconnect us from reality since there is a reminder that we may be wrong. Second it helps us correct gaps in the thinking of our original recommendation. It is like stress testing our proposition.
A blank piece of paper approach: Many times, individuals and companies find themselves in self-defeating positions because of a way of doing, a historic momentum, legacy costs, or structures and fixating on current category dynamics. What if one was to launch a company or initiative with a blank sheet of paper with only three constraints. A legal one (whatever one does has to be legal), technological (it must be possible today) and economic (some breakeven or other financial constraint) what would one do to anticipate or meet a customer need?
The future comes from the slime and not the heavens: There are many benefits of being a leader, working at a very successful company and being on the top of the world. Everybody wants to meet with you or think you are cool because of the fame and reputation of your company. The press fawns and friends’ gush. It gives us all a great rush. Important that we do not get too high on our fumes and begin to believe our flatulence smells like Chanel 5.
Pay attention to those who may not have title and those over whom you might not have power but who bring thoughts that startle, question and provoke a certain uneasiness.