Next Phase thinking

I recently hosted a boardroom lunch with some of my clients and professional colleagues. It was an intimidating gathering of experience, talent and wisdom and I had no hope of controlling the conversation. Which is just as well, as I gained some great insights into what is going on in the world, and how people are handling new challenges.

I’m sharing some reflections – and the actions that arise from them – in this series of posts.

1. Next phase thinking is hard

There were many different perspectives around the room about what ‘next phase thinking’ even means, but it’s clear we share concerns about current global issues as well as the many different forces that affect our client organisations.

I've used the term 'next phase thinking' as I've been rethinking my own future following the death of my parents and a feeling that there is another phase of life calling for my attention over the next decade. I've also worked a lot with people entering a new career phase and I'm familiar with the turbulent feelings change and transition produce. Even when the 'next phase' could be exciting, it's hard to think one's way into it. Some common themes arose from this seed idea:   

• A current level of uncertainty that derails strategic thinking
• Exploration and discovery as essential to survival
• Courage to face the future with initiative
• Global issues with local effect – even personal impact
• Intergenerational perspectives that both challenge our perspective and offer hope
• Wisdom and caring are important to sustain ourselves and our best work

Each person in the room - whether a leader in a large organisation or consulting to leaders - has experienced all of these issues and has been adept at dealing with them both personally and professionally. But there is something intrinsically 'extra' about life today. Technology is only one part of it. How people engage with each other, or not, is also changing so fundamentally that every assumption in every strategy needs unpicking. Global abstract issues, from climate to geopolitics, are also local and personal, but in ways we can’t control or predict.

So what strategies make sense?

In the face of uncertainty and complexity, as helpers, we’re used to staying with the problem. That means helping clients pull back from reflex responses. These reflexes (and I’m certainly not immune from them) include being a recluse, closing in and focussing only on a small controllable patch of life. This works until what you’re ignoring overwhelms your patch.

Another reflex is the opposite – to fantasise that you know the answers to our most complex issues. This results in spurious simplicity, glib answers that soothe one’s need for control and significance, without securing either.

To avoid a reflex response requires tough work. Face the genuine complexity and mess, letting it roll out over the table, swallow your fear and attack the complexity with fruitful questions. The great innovator guides can help with this. Great boards do this. A leadership team that values its differences can hold not only the fruitful (disturbing) questions but can embrace the conflicting, highly expert answers they come up with. From this they generate new synergies and resilient answers.

This takes time. I know my own big career and personal shifts have sometimes taken years to evolve into a ‘new phase’. It’s hard work. As boards and leadership teams discover, moving into a new phase to match new realities usually entails letting go of something precious, such as a core product, an entire office or some close colleagues.

How are you approaching your next phase in life or career? Do you have the words to describe how you’re going to deal afresh with a changed world? Are you pursuing the technology path, using AI wisely, the community path, reaching out to more like-minded people, or the money path, making sure you have 'enough' to be safe?