Podcasts

Episode 48- Decoding AQ with Ross Thornley Feat. Charlene Li - Thriving with Disruption

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Intro

Hi, and welcome to Decoding AQ, helping you to learn the tools mindsets and actions to thrive in an ever-changing world.

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Ross  

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Decoding AQ. I have with me today Charlene Li. So welcome.

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Charlene  

Thank you for having me.

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Ross  

And Charlene, she described herself as a digital transformation and disruptive leadership expert. And for me, this is going to be a fascinating conversation. And for the past two decades, you've been helping leaders and organizations see the future as that'll be interesting to dive into because I, as a futurist love to try and envisage what the future looks like, but then also thrive with disruption. And you've been doing that as an author, as a speaker advisor and as a coach. In fact, such a prolific writer, I think is it half a dozen books now that you've either written or co-written?

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Charlene

Six books, yeah.

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Ross 

Six books, that's tough. That’s, congratulations on that. And your latest one which is the Disruption Mindset, why some organizations transform, why others fail? So we're gonna be diving into that too, as well. So tell us a little bit more about you, why did you write your first book, maybe start there?

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Charlene  

Oh, I wrote this book back in 2008. And I was an analyst at Forrester. And I had started covering social technologies, so to speak, back in about 2002, sort of blogging in 2004. And the more and more I worked with that study that worked with companies on it, the more my felt, we were on the cusp of a revolution. And yet, no one around me could see it. So that I literally had this beast in my belly, I needed to get out there, and writing reports just wasn't going to cut it, it needed to be a book, there was a bigger story here. And books give you the breadth and the width to be able to tell the stories about the impact that social was happening. So got permission to write the book, had a wonderful co-author, Josh Bernoff working with me. And it was a fantastic experience. It was because Josh and I have worked together for eight years before this, we got it all out of our system. So it was a great experience. Loved it

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Ross  

And was that Groundswell? Or was that a different book that you started with?

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Charlene  

And that was Groundswell, yeah.

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Ross  

And I think, when we see things, as you said, you were in this world, and you were seeing something that perhaps others weren't. You see social technologies that are transforming the environment that we live in, and what the future might hold for us. And I've met many people who say, “Oh, yeah, everyone's got a book inside them.’ It's still it's not easy yet you described it as a very joyful experience, perhaps with the co-author that you'd worked with. But I also felt like it was a joyful experience in the way you described it. And how did you make it like that? Because not every experience we have is either good or bad. We choose to make it certain way. So what were the things that you did that still brings you that smile of going through something that for those who haven't done it? It's damn hard work.

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Charlene  

Well, that's the reason why I loved it. It is hard, hard work. And it gave me, and I was exhausted from thinking about it, I was so challenged. And that's what I love about writing. It takes so much of my energy to get to the table to actually write because it is such a cathartic engrossing. I mean, basically, my family said, after I wrote that first, like, “Please don't write another book for a while we like to have you back.” Because I go, I would disappear into my cave of my mind and not come out. And I know you talk to authors, we all like to say we like to have said we have written a book. The writing of the book itself is really hard. But that's what makes it so wonderful too at the same time. This moment, this short amount of time when you're so engrossed in something you're putting, you're pouring out your soul, getting that piece out of your belly really, really hard. It is not as hard as childbirth. I'll tell you that. But it's hard.

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Ross  

I wouldn't know although I have to share with you, I experienced at the weekend, for the first time I was admitted to hospital in my life. I had a bit of an accident on Friday, and they gave me some gas and air. And of course they will this in a normally you have it when you're having childbirth, right? And to give you sort of context, I've never smoked, don't drink, tea total, I'm a clean vegan guy. And my wife was with me and I was on this gas and air. And it was just a really strange experience. And I'd broken my elbow as it turns out, broke my elbow and a few ribs. So I've got, I'm on pain meds, and I've got in a cast where they've, put me back together with not as they first thought, some wires and pins, but some kevlar. So I've got some kevlar accessories, in the elbow, which is interesting.

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But yeah that, when you experience certain things that are new, there's obviously this mix of fear and excitement. And we have had brought up for a long time, certain things, certain sayings that might stick, no pain, no gain, we have to work hard in order to get somewhere. And this sense of transition, I'm interested in your thoughts, particularly at this moment in time around disruption, it's the focus of your latest book. And you've particularly talked about it in a way of introducing mindset to this subject and topic. So tell me a little bit about why you've thought of Disruption Mindset. And a little bit of how that giving birth getting, that beast out of your belly has come about.

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Charlene 

Right, I have said that for the longest time, my purpose is to help leaders thrive with disruption. And then one day a leader came up to me about five years ago, five, six years ago, and he said, “Okay, got it, got it. So how do I actually do this?” And I realized I didn't have a good answer. And when I don't have the good answer to something I get very curious and like so how do you actually systematically develop being a disrupter, be destructive, have a disruption mindset is what it came out to be, is that disruptors think about the world in a very different way. So what is it? Can we actually dissect it? And I did a lot of research, review, interviews and surveys to figure that out. And there is a different way of seeing the world. And the one thing they do differently is they look into the future. They literally try to see the future, they make it part of their every day. And they're talking about how can I change the world today to make that future come true?

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Ross  

It's interesting, isn't it? Because disruption, we have these various words that seem to come into vogue. And then these seem to morph and take on many meanings because we try and apply “Oh, that's what this means or that's what this means.” And we apply it in business, or we apply it in our lives. And disruption as a work and have kind of two connotations, one where it might be positive if you're the disrupter and one negative if you're being disrupted. And sometimes that can be one in the same, right?

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If we get this right is how that we can be our own disrupter. And the shift to maybe from some of the negatives of the consequences of that to transformation. And the disruption as a level of change that so transformative, it affects many and exists as you describe of this new world that someone's envisaging, that's making it up going from mind into real. And give me some idea as to what you uncovered in those conversations in that research on what makes a disruption mindset and a disruptive mindset and specifically for leaders?

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Charlene  

Right. Well, let me give you one very interesting statistic as that has come out of the pandemic. Again, we all universally experienced this pandemic, in a very similar way. We were going about our normal everyday lives. And then very quickly, within the space of a week, bam, it was completely changed. All of us went back into our homes and into quarantine. So we all had this universal experience. It was fascinating to see how people dealt with it. Some people just said, “Well, I'm here now. I'm just going to wait it out. This is terrible. I'm going to try to make the best of it, but we'll muddle through.” Other people said, “Okay, wait, what's really going on the world has fundamentally changed. How will I be in this world? Where the needs that have been now created, my old world is gone. How do I think about myself in this new world now? How do I interact with it?”

And so when all the pieces are torn apart, are you hiding and ducking trying not to get hit by those pieces, or are you jumping up as high as you can, grabbing those pieces and putting them back together again into the reality that you want to see. That is what leadership is. Leadership has nothing, nothing to do with the title. It has everything to do with your mindset that says, “I see a change that needs to happen. And I will lead it.” And leadership is fundamentally a relationship between those who aspire to create that change and the people who are inspired to follow them. So you don't need a title to do that. You just need to be able to see the future. 

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Ross  

Yeah, you just need almost, to give yourself permission to do that. And one of the challenges that I've observed, I'm sure you have is that change, yes, it's part of life. And we experience it at different levels. It might be a level 11 on the Marshall amps level when it was a pandemic, if you were in this type of environmental role. For someone else, it might have been a level four. It could be that all of the things that happen through our lives, that might be an environmental shift that we then decide, who do we want to be? How do I want to show up? What does that new environment need? To my environments the same, but I don't like who I am in it, I want to shift myself. To I want to change the environment.

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And so all of these levels of change that we experience, it can be exhausting. Change requires for the majority an exchange of energy that's depleting. For a very few that I've met, change actually adds to the energy. But for many of us, at some point that change is a drain. So this sort of, as you've talked about it in some of your work, this sort of change fatigue, this reality that going through it so often, so quickly, so much, so intensely, how do we actually re-energize? How do we get ourselves in our teams or organizations into a space where we can actually enjoy that dance? Enjoy that time? What's your thoughts about that, when it's so perpetual, it's so ever-present, that we can actually not just also come to it and say, “I'm out. I'm checking out.”

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Charlene  

This is the most interesting, counterintuitive thing I found in my research. Disruptive organizations don't get tired. They're the energizer bunny of disruption. They just keep going and going and going and like, how do you do this. And the thing is, they actually have a lot of structure, a lot of processes and policies and rituals even around change. So what they do is they systematically build this really strong foundation, so that it's very clear how change is going to happen. So they don't spend any energy trying to figure out how to change, they just focus 100% of their energy on the change itself.

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So this is the problem is that you get changed fatigue, when the change itself, you're like, “Who do I talk to? It was so much friction, how do we make decisions? Who needs to be in the room? Can we get a meeting, oh we have to wait three weeks? What do we do until then?” So that doesn't happen in these disruptive organizations. They come into the room, they're very clear about what decisions need to be made, they're very clear about the timeline, who's going to be involved, how the resource is going to be budgeted, what's going to be taken off the table, all of that is already written into their structure and into their culture.

So when you do, again, like we were talking about earlier with the book, when you can get rid of all that friction, my co-author and I could just sit down, and we already knew how to work with each other. The writing of the book was the focus. And when you get that work done, when you're actually creating that change, when you're creating that in itself is highly energizing.

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Ross  

I had visions of a roller coaster in my head, as you were talking there in terms of if the roller coaster had no principles of what it was operating in, understand gravity, understands friction, where does it need to have certain things of its processes and its methods and structure. It can then operate and it can operate where it's hard work when it's going up. But it can operate very easily when the carriages are going down and one brings energy one takes energy. And we might even when we understand some of these principles, be able to empower that energy back into our ability to go again.

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It's a bit like regenerative braking in electric cars is that “Ah we can use that power later, use that energy later.” So that's what was going in my mind is this visualization of organizations that have understood the principles of their environment of change. They've rewired the operating system to understand this is constant perpetual, and it's speeding up. So they can then just enjoy it, they can get into that place.

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And just before we hit record, you were introducing me to a phraseology that I've not heard before. And this was about liminal space. And this is the moments, as I understand it correctly, in between change in between transformations. And I'd love to explore that a little bit more about what does this liminal space really mean? How might that be a practical thing that we can set up for ourselves, for our teams and organizations to, as you said, answer this question of, how do I do change better? And maybe there's some little glimpses inside this concept of liminal space?

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Charlene  

Right, because what you were just talking about the roller coaster, it's really often things about change in order, change and constantness as two different things, two different states. And yes, they are, but you actually need both. You need to bring change to order because if order doesn't actually evolve, and change then is this going to become just static, and ossified. Whereas, if you're trying to create change, if it doesn't have order, it'll fly off those tracks of the roller coaster. So you need order and change together to live in harmony with each other, and liminal space. Liminal means threshold, it means that you're going from one place to another,one state to another, and we have been creating liminal spaces in our lives all the time, we have rituals like graduations or marriages, to denote this is a time of moving from one place to another, and you linger in it.

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And there is structure to this, that we all recognize and can hold that space to create that liminal space now. And liminal spaces can be unsettling a little bit because makes you take the time to slow down, to create this sacred space to then contemplate. It was also a time of tremendous creativity, if you'd become open and curious about the future state, and also filled with gratitude and appreciation for where you're coming from, that tends to reduce that change fatigue, that change anxiety that happens. And we can move that change quite well. I find we do this in our personal lives and yet, when it comes to work, we think of change as something we need to move through as quickly as possible to get over with, it's not a good thing to be doing lots of change, or just want to get it off our desk and go back to a state of constant state of normal. 

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Instead, I think we should revel in it. We should take the opportunity to create liminal spaces, and they require structure and they require something like a master of ceremonies, somebody who you can look to, when things get kind of wiggly in that liminal space, or somebody saying, “This is the way, come this way.” I think it's a precious space that we can look to create for ourselves and our organizations to say, ‘Let's take some time, understand that we are going through this change, recognize it.” And that in itself will help so much with that change fatigue.

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Ross  

And I think it is this reordering of our mindsets and understanding, even just using the word change, what might happen to someone's body, what might happen to their heart rate or their breathing or various things because of past experiences. And I think one of the challenges is how powerful our language is, what are we choosing to use here. And things like certainty or uncertainty when you were talking about order or chaos, all of these spaces that need to exist together, rather than ‘Ah frictions no good, we need to remove friction.”

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Well, I had another visual of a hammock. And, I love laying in a hammock because I can relax. But actually, the hammock needs tension in order to provide me an area to relax. So in an organization, having these spaces in order to understand change, to create those spaces of safety, with gratitude, with all of these things that can allow us to just be in that moment, not to “Ah I've got to get to the next bit,” as you said, go through it as quickly as possible because we're so focused on outputs and outcomes as we upgrade, from now it's not about outputs, it's about outcomes, and we need to get these sorts of things and what are the KPI’s? What are the OKR’s, all of these things.

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But just to experience the human moments, as you said on thresholds and give ourselves the opportunity of creativity. When we're in there, it means brave leadership to give that cocoon to say, “Hey, this is a space we're going to hold. And we're going to hold it in this way to allow ourselves to be creative.” Rather than “No, the output needs to be a creative output.” No, we're going to just create the space and allow that to be unlocked. It exists there, we're just going to allow it to spark from.

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Charlene  

I’d like to build on one thing though, because I think this concept of space is so important, because we always, we oftentimes think about space as expanding our narrow view. But space, you also use this wonderful term holding the space, it also means defining it. So how are we going to be creative, and what areas to bound that then makes it safe. Because I know that anywhere inside of this sphere of that I've just created is safe. Don't worry about it and I'm holding it here. That's why that Master of Ceremonies is so important, that's why the structure is so important. Because if you're going to go and explore these unknown areas, really make yourself vulnerable, then you need to have somebody literally holding the space for you. And leaders don't do this enough. We say “Go off, be free, takes risk, go for it.” And we're like, “no way, no way. We're not going out there it’s dangerous.”

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Ross  

It reminds me a lot actually, as you talk about holding this space and the power of framing in order to unlock creativity. So when there are no frames, when there's no anchor points, when there's no things of boundaries, creativity is bloody hard, really hard. Yet we're thinking maybe as leaders, we're giving complete freedom because we've put no definition. What I've experienced from a couple of decades of managing creativity, which was kind of version Ross 1.0 was a brand and strategy guy of dealing with creativity was, I found it when those spaces were created that understood the framing and boundaries that then that allowed such creativity to happen when those weren't there, it was almost unable to solve the problems because there was no real definition of a problem, there is no correct framing.

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So I agree with you this holding the space, but we also need that assistant, that guide, that leader, that Sherpa, that person who can pose great questions, who can give ourselves to the agreements of the boundaries, and to allow us then to uncover what might be possible. And I remember, I'm a big fan of Peter Diamandis and go to his A360 conferences and various things. And I read a quote, actually by someone who I met there who made a reference to you actually Charlene and it was Beth Comstock, and she talked and mentioned, you help teams dance with disruption. And I just love that concept of being able to dance with this thing. Rather than “Oh, it's a thing I need to create.”

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It reminded me as well about the great TED Talk of the lady who wrote Eat, Pray Love talking about genius. It's not, you are a genius. No, it's another thing and you just allow it to be in flow through you. And so if disruption then is something that happens and it flows through us, right? If it's a mindset that allows us to channel it. And this liminal space is a way in which we can maybe even just foster the propensity for that to exert itself. What are maybe some organizations that have been doing this well? You mentioned just a few moments ago, some organizations aren't fatigued by it, they're actually energized. What are they doing differently? What is it that they have in place? Is it all of these things? Is there a few other things that you could share with us from your research that what they're doing really well?

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Charlene  

Sure. I talked to one insurance company and insurance right, not exactly known for being disruptive or fast moving or technological, had made huge investments in technology, because I mean, what is insurance but data. And it's to ease it, make it easier for their constituents and their members to be able to buy insurance get qualified and quoted very quickly, much faster than the past. And this required a huge amount of change in the back and they put in a structure to manage a transformation all the way from the very top of the CEO's office, to the various divisions and down into the various departments in those divisions.

So there's somebody on there who is responsible for driving transformation, that is 100% of their job. And it's expected that the presidents and leaders spent 25% of their time on this. And here was the key thing that they did, anytime a transformation initiative was put onto their desk, they were required to take something off of it. It wasn't piling on yet another thing, because the idea was that when you do this transformation, some things were happening now and other things will no longer be needed, you decide what needs to come off.

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Ross  

Let's just let that land a minute. What an amazing environment it must be to work in a place that when something lands on the inbox desk, the prerequisite of that landing means something else has to be removed, that idea of multiplication by subtraction, that the endless capacity that more with less, keep shoveling it in to realize that we can stop doing something in order to start doing something else and that trade off and peace, that maybe there's a space of that loss, having a ceremony in that transformation of okay, what are you deciding to say thank you, and goodbye, and accepting in the next, I really liked that idea.

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And maybe there's a bit, there was something you said in one of your videos that I watched, and it was referencing about leadership. And you had a sentence and it really made me think Charlene and it was give up control in order to be in command. And for many of us this balance of certainty and uncertainty, adapting, going through change unlearning things. There's points at which we willingly give up control and other points where we don't.

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Take the pandemic, many of us didn't choose to give up that control of where we might work, or how we could go about our social friendships, where we go and be. So when these sorts of things happen, when we either give up or control is put aside off of maybe one desk, and moved, how do people really go through that? When it's easy to hear, oh they have to decide what to give up. How can people do that well? Because it's often maybe a harder thing is to say no, and to give up something that it is to say yes, and to take something on. So help me do that. Because I want some help in what I can say no to better.

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Charlene  

Oh, I do believe that the art of focus is the art of saying no. And strategy, you've heard this saying, strategy says what we will do, what we won’t do, because we can do anything, but we can't do everything. So if we're going to go on this journey, if we're going to go on this road to the future, we have to know this is where we're going to go. We're not going to go in these other directions, we're going to go in this direction. And as leaders of teams, when you see people walk in the same direction, but somebody else is going, they're going over there like “Wait a minute, why are you going over there? Do you see something interesting? Do you see a detour? A way for us to get to our objective faster? Oh, no, you're not? Oh, you need to get back on the road.”

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So the focus, I think, is to be absolutely clear about where you want to be headed. And then you'd look at everything that you're doing “Oh is it helping me get there?” And it's a simple calculation in some ways, but you really have to be honest with yourself. If everything that I'm doing is it really helping me get onto my objective? Jeff Wiener had this. He was a CEO, now chairman of LinkedIn, he had this habit of constantly saying to people, “This is LinkedIn,” you do this all the time, again, every single meeting. “This is Mission. This is the mission of LinkedIn to connect the world's professionals.” And depending on the meeting, he would pull out one of their values or one of those strategic initiatives. So just remind people, this is what it was. And people got so tired of hearing him say this that they asked, “When are you going to stop doing this?” And he said, “I will stop doing this when people stop looking surprised.”

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We forget where we are going to, we forget why we're doing things. I'm sitting here doing some fun things just because it feels good. I'm checking things off my list. And I'm like, “Wait a minute, is this really helping me achieve my objective and I realize no, it's not.” Can I delegate or can I just even not do this? Saying no is really hard. And my trick here is if I am committed to something in the future, would I do this thing right now? If I had to drop everything, would I do this right now? So, Ross, you asked me to go on your podcast I get asked to go on podcasts all the time. And I really have to ask myself given the subject, given the person, would I do this right now? And I said, Yes, I would love to sit in a podcast with you, Ross. For the vast majority of them's like, “Hey, we've got a podcast for plumbers.” I'm like, “No, I wouldn't do that right now.” So I say no to that.

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Ross  

Is that power, isn't it? That as you said, focus can give us incredible power. And then that's this, harmony between order and chaos, if we have order about, okay, what's the focus? What's the goal? We can maybe be open to a whole variety of ways of getting there, the how, right? We can go off and we orientate ourselves by checking in and saying, “Does it help us get to there? Is it aligned with this?” And I think, for the majority, that's absolutely a valuable piece, right? That's almost like level 101 of we need the Northstar, we need this. And every time we go off because, “Oh, there's a shiny object, or this is something that's giving me a bit of joy,” is to just have our LinkedIn, but coming back and saying, “Is it serving the mission?”

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And I think there's an incredible still journey, we've got to go on to get that right. But where I think there's a unique opportunity right now, is the fact of that endpoint, that goal, that focus, we decide that based on the assessment of what we know, today. And we're figuring out and we're constantly committed to that mission. Now, some missions are going to outlive many generations, other missions actually might be achieved or might be surpassed by a mission that what we thought was important is actually just a symptom of a deeper mission and a deeper challenge to what the root cause of a problem may be. And by allowing ourselves to shift and be open to that could unlock entirely new collaborations, entirely new disruptions, or transformations on all of these things.

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And so I think there's this almost very strange situation we're living in where, for a number of decades, a lot of the work was about “Oh we need alignment, we need continuity.” In politics, it was, just when with at the edge of getting sick of that message might meet the outer rims of the people we're trying that message to be heard by. So internally, we've got to be so sick of it, before it might even just touch the outer rim of the external.

That reminded me when you're talking about LinkedIn, is maybe there's the odd moment in those liminal spaces, that just might allow us to peek at a different horizon, that might allow us to just maybe I could tweak the mission or not. Is it the right mission for me? Is it the right mission for the organization? Because too much of that is continual chaos, bright objects, shiny object, off we go, we need some direction. But I think and I'd be interested in your, especially in a disruption mindset, is there a glimmer where we can just “I didn't even see that mountain because it was so foggy, and I wasn't there yet. But that's now where I want to go.” So I'm just interested in your thoughts about my ramblings there?

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Charlene  

Such a great point, because you can get stuck in your ways, you can get stubbornly stuck. Like this is the path, I’m on the path, don't distract me from the path. But there was a hubris in that versus having a humility to say, “I don't know, always, is this the right path?” And to take those moments to say, and to question this to say, “Are we still on the right path?” Let me get off from driving the road and look at the map a little bit, look at the landscape and say, “How has it changed? How has the world evolved?” And, again, I encourage people to take moments away. So I'm going on a retreat in a few weeks. Going away for a week, putting away my phone and computer, stick it in the box and keep it away from me for the week. Just to give myself time to think, to feel, to evolve, take stock. We all need those points, the timing it could be different.

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But I also believe in when it comes to your company, strategic planning on an annual basis is insane. I mean, why do we think that the world is ordered on an annual basis just because the calendar turns that way? If you're truly doing disruption and transformation, you need to take stock of your strategy every three months, because you'll have been moving and actually making waves if you're doing this right. So what are the repercussions of those waves? What are the echoes coming back and how are they transforming the road ahead of you? If the road is constantly changing, you may have to take a detour. But you won't know unless you look. We don't look nearly enough.

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Ross  

It’s that zoom in and zoom out, isn’t it?

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Charlene  

Yeah but to do it in a very structured way again. What are the bounds of within reach or overlook? And that is the hard part. Are we looking too big, too far? And you'll know within a quarter or two, whether that scope was right because you'll see things coming out of left field that you never saw before, like wait a matter how was I blind to this disruption? How do I not see that coming? And may have to expand my scope to understand all of these forces, or I didn't take it seriously enough, I was sitting here right in plain sight and I didn't see it. This is why seeing the future, and I talked about seeing the future, it's not the future that I see. It's the future I’ve enabled people to see for themselves. It does no good if they see my future, they have to be able to see their future.

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And you do it by looking for it all the time, they have that radar up to spend significant time. If as a leader, the more you go up in the organization, the more time you should be spending on looking at the future because no one else will. But if you're the CEO, you're not spending 25 to 50% of your time looking into the future, who else is doing that?

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Ross  

Yeah, it's really important, isn't it? And as we're living in an exponential world, that concertina of time. A year in the 90’s of strategic planning is very different to a year in 2021 of planning, which will be very different to strategic planning for a year's lens in 2030. So this crescendo of speeding up to slow down or slow down to speed up, all of these challenges that we're facing, we have to almost think about a playbook that is shifting. An old playbook of how we would have traditional calendar terms, let's go and do our annual retreat to look at the strategy, that we have balance to continually look at landscape that we give a space for that to happen.

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But also people I can't emphasize this enough, and you mentioned it a few times is that we need help from the outside. When we're inside, it's so hard to see things, it can be in plain sight but where just invisible for us. We have sunk cost fallacy, we have all of these different things that are wedded to how things were, and wired to protect, to mitigate risks, to manage risk, not to exploit it, not to go off and explore. And the best ordering chaos in the harmony between those things is to have pockets within an organization and team, that that's part of their mandate to do it.

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And to finish up, I want to ask you a question. Which has started to become a little something for me. And it's a personal passion, where I'm constantly looking for things that I do for the first time. So when we're children everything's the first time as we're growing up, and we slowly work our way in, “Oh that's not for me, that's not my identity, that's not who I am. Or I've experienced many things,” to I get actually almost drowned or turned off from what new things there are. And so with my family, with my grandchildren, all sorts of things.

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Part of our ritual is in the last week, what have you done for the first time? And when I work with companies and clients and leaders and ask them that, and sometimes they don't know. And they can't think of the last time they did something for the first time. So I want to offer that question for you, Charlene, of when was the last time something that you can share publicly obviously, the last time you did something for the first time and what was it?

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Charlene  

Well, something really big is I went skydiving because I'd always wanted to but I made a promise to my husband that I would not do it until my kids were grown. So I did that finally, in the fall of 2019. I recently just took my son skydiving too as well on a vacation. Something that I would change out a little bit because it's not necessarily doing something new as it is doing things that are different.

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Ross  

Different. Yeah. So it could be something that you were always doing this way, but you've now put a new approach or a new thought to it or a new perspective. So you're approaching it for a brand new way. Absolutely.

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Charlene  

And I try to do that every single day. I work it through my schedules, I work it into the things that I'm doing every day. So that like “Oh, this is your friend.” And if nothing else, I'll just do things with my left hand instead of my right hand. I'm very right hand dominant. So I'll just do things with my left hand just because it's a challenge and it makes me look at the world differently. So I was experimenting with if I were left-handed yesterday, how would I open a can because a can opener is for right handed people. And I'm like, “How would I, I can't,” I would have to use my non-dominant hand to open, to literally cook everything in my kitchen, because everything is so right hand dominant.

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Ross

I love that.

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Charlene

So it’s little things like this, that just make you shift your perspective, create empathy for other people. But I find wonder and adventure in even going to the grocery store. I was pumping up my tires yesterday, could not figure out what was going on and this gentleman who was also waiting for the tire goes “You got to push the button to turn the thing on.” I'm like, ‘Oh, okay, got it.” But it's little things like that, appreciating that moment of challenge of change. Really looking at that, that could have been an everyday hassle to think about it as a gift to say, “How do I look at the world differently?” How do I look at this person who I was a little bit nervous, he pulls up to me next in the dark and parking lot, like who is this person and like, “I'm going to be open to this, to who this person could be and what they could bring,” and the experience was wonderful. He held the hose for me to make sure it didn't scratch my car. I mean, it was a great experience. So when we look at those opportunities as opportunities to change and to grow then you can work it in every single part of your day.

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Ross  

Super valuable. And to think of this as a muscle, right? Is that the more things that we can just have fun with ourselves, whether it's using different hands. You made me smile because at the moment I'm having to do everything one-handed, three days had no feeling in the fingers or anything and just figuring out everyday tasks. That can be a challenge or something to experience enjoying gives you a different perspective, being open to different people reading things from a different source than we might like. The art of holding our mental flexibility for an area where we believe something, what if we took the opposing view and looked at those things and the sources of it that generally, we just poo-poo because it doesn't fall into our beliefs. That I think is a great way to help us deal with and thrive in disruptive times because it becomes less of a shock, and more of the norm, and a way in which to tolerate but not just tolerate, to leverage and harness the opportunities from those.

Charlene  

I would say thrive. When we're thriving with change and thriving with disruption. It puts you in a completely different space. I love how Beth talks about dancing with disruption. How do we lighten this? How do we revel in it? How do we look forward to it? Not because we're afraid but because it's going to bring us opportunities.

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Ross  

And as you picked mindset, the power of mindset is the choice to do those things to look that it's your view about thriving, not that it is going to give you that, you see the opportunities, you seek the opportunities. I'm incredibly grateful for our time together. It's been fascinating. And as I've said on a few of my podcasts, I do this because I genuinely want to learn. And I'm curious to meet amazing minds. And as Daniel Pink talked about one of the finest business minds and I think thank you for your work, for focus and sharing your research and thoughts and the way you think about the world is helping many people create the worlds they want and to thrive. So thank you for your time. Enjoy your retreat that you've got coming up, and I look forward to maybe more conversations and collaborating in the future. Thank you.

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Voiceover  

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Outro

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