What’s your move?
The Change Question: What's your signature move?
There are two sides to your hard-won experience.
No doubt, you’ve collected some scars from transformation projects of the past. As they say, “Wisdom enters through the wound.”
Inevitably, those “lessons learned” have firmed up your understanding of what does and doesn’t work. If you’re up on your cognitive biases, you’ll know it’s “survivor bias” with a dash of “illusion of explanatory depth” … and maybe (for others at least 🙂) a little of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The danger lies not in what you know, but in having that inform and become your default response.
So what’s the change challenge for you right now?
This absolutely might be the time to deploy that signature move.
Show us your best stuff.
It might also be the time to come up with something new, and stop relying on your old tricks.
Pod Wisdom: Katy Milkman on Imaging the Future
Katy Milkman, from the Change Signal episode "The High School Secret to Org Change":
“One of the first things I'd suggest doing is what's called a premortem.
We all know about postmortems: something goes badly or dies, and you try to evaluate what went wrong after the fact. A premortem is really the same thing, except it's before death.
Before launch, sit down and imagine we're a year out from this launch, and we realize it's been a massive failure. What are the most likely reasons that it was a massive failure? Can we imagine what would have caused that?
By anticipating those possible weaknesses in our strategy, we're starting to understand those are the obstacles that are in our way, and we can dodge them because of the premortem we've done with strategic thinking. Do that premortem in order to be able to tailor your strategy and better understand what are the risks that you face and how you can overcome them.”
Listen to my full conversation with Katy now
Professor Katy Milkman is the author of How to Change and host of the delightful Choiceology podcast.
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The Last Word: Rainer Maria Rilke
“Where something becomes extremely difficult and unbearable, there we also stand already quite near its transformation.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke