Try something DIFFERENT....It's not that Scary

I find myself more often than not sitting and staring out a window and wondering what on earth are other people thinking!! Rubber stamp, rubber stamp, rubber stamp etc – why is there an aversion to trying DIFFERENT?

We as a species seem to highly value and in fact provide bucket loads of funding for research, development and academic endeavors that we promptly use to educate our people – and then completely disregard, undervalue and simply forget that we even knew about it in the first place. We invest in institutions that we summarily ignore and then can’t quite recall why we funded them in the first place and then wonder when things go horribly wrong and say “how did that happen”, “didn’t see that coming’’, "now what do we do’’.

The COVID pandemic is a great example. If you talk to the science and medical researchers, they might likely tell you they saw it coming, could pretty much predict when it was going to happen and had some idea of the consequence/impact to society. It isn't a black swan event, they had seen it before (they have evidence) and they could predict the conditions for it to happen again..... So not by any definition a black swan event.

So… what did we do? We defunded them as a matter of policy and did very little with the information they provided to avert the disaster or use the information to put in place management strategies (no doubt most strategies were likely developed from scratch, madness). Warren Black provides some excellent analysis in his Risk 4.0 Video Blog that is well worth listening to based on the data. I’d contend that we collectively knew what the consequences would be and we did very little to avert them. Although we have spent quite a lot of time, energy and resources trying to find someone else to blame……

Major capital investment failures provide more great examples, search Oxford University Professor Bent Flyvbjerg | LinkedIn and you will find a myriad of complex/mega project failures that all could have been avoided or minimised, by the application of well researched and understood methods and behaviours. Instead of us changing how we behave and the tools we use, for some insane reason we continue to rely on behaviours that create adversarial relationships and use tools that are not fit for purpose or we refuse to use any tools at all. Then we instigate independent reviews that reveal these specific faults, and what do we do with that expert information……… well we ignore it and keep doing what we have always done – shear madness.

LinkedIn is full of ‘new’ stuff that is ‘designed’ to help us do our jobs better, some of it is useful, some of it is ‘Facebook’ worthy and some of it is downright dangerous. Some of us rely heavily on the information available, others not so much.

So what is the solution?

Well now I’m not too sure. I’ve written before that I feared it would take probably 2 generations to get the leaders in place to be able to do things differently, if we can get the generation that they learn from to change, that now seems further and further away.

The solution, again written multiple times by multiple people around the world is all about leadership, we say it over and over again. It is true the leadership sector is teaching and saying all the right things about the right leadership behaviours: Listen to your people/stakeholders; be empathetic; build trust; act with humility; be creative; be courageous; be respectful; be diverse (in thinking, people, education, culture, gender etc); be in touch with your spirit animal (really it’s a thing!); look at things from different perspectives; be open; be honest; be transparent; know what ticks you off; know what ticks your people off; know what ticks your boss off; be all knowing; be authentic; value others; value yourself; cut yourself some slack; be soft; be strong; be just right; be you; be whoever the situation needs at any point in time; be vulnerable; don’t be vulnerable; be structured; be organic; be all of the above and finally be happy! (note this is not an exhaustive list and I unreservedly apologise to any characteristic that I have inadvertently left off the list I certainly don’t undervalue you nor was it my intention to exclude you and I’ll adjust my behavior according to ensure I include you in all future correspondence as soon as I become aware of you, ping me and I’ll edit the article immediately!).

Leaders need to do things differently! So why aren’t they? Some will say we have to link their actual performance to their incentives to make them change…….. well I’d argue that this thinking has existed for at least the last 50 years … no change. Some will say it’s the fault of organisations, they aren’t structured correctly…… agreed.. now what?

I hear all the time, my boss, my bosses’ boss and his/her boss don’t understand and won’t agree to do anything differently……. And herein lies the problem.

Why aren’t our bosses and their bosses all the way to the Ministers or CEOs office expecting DIFFERENT when the work and the outcomes that are necessary for their success demand DIFFERENT. I surmise it’s because they don’t know what DIFFERENT looks like.

DIFFERENT doesn’t equate to high risk nor does it mean super creative to the point where we no longer recognize what we are looking at (interpretive dance, plasticine models, abstract art or strategy through whale songs as an example). Different can sometimes just be letting go of the ‘way we have always done it’ mindset, shed the constraints of existing processes and look at the problem as if it’s the first time you have ever seen it. Here’s a thought – let our unencumbered logical brain tell us the best way to approach the problem, run with that and see what happens. We will likely find that if we start at this position we can fit a solution within existing frameworks. It not always the frameworks that stop us doing what is needed, it’s the way we use the frameworks that applies the hand brake.

The more we try it, the more normal it becomes and the more comfortable the seniors become, so why not give it try!

Share your experiences with others, be brave.