Last September, I wrote about ‘10 Blue-Sky Beginnings For Fall 2021.’ This new post covers a variety of strategies that honor the even-tougher-than-expected times we are living through, especially compared to some of the hopes that were prevalent pre-Omicron.
Several strategies are based on articles I edited for Leader to Leader. I’ve included a couple of Peter Drucker-related strategies, and I also invite you to check out ‘The Peter Drucker Files,’ my new blog for Psychology Today.
My hope is that all ten of these strategies, taken together, can provide you with approaches for self-development and self-management of value inside and outside the workplace. And while these are evergreen approaches that should be applicable throughout the year, I will follow up several months from now with new ones for spring 2022.
- Learn to embrace chaos
My friend and fellow Berrett-Koehler author Bob Miglani is Founder of Embrace the Chaos, an Experiential Change Company. His latest book is Embrace the Chaos: How India Taught Me to Stop Overthinking and Start Living. In the introduction, he writes:
“Let’s stop overanalyzing, overplanning, or trying to predict what will happen tomorrow. We spend so much time thinking about the future, which we cannot control anyway, that we miss some of the best times of our lives, happening around us right now.”
- Gain perspective on what you take for granted
Lolly Daskal is founder of Lead from Within, a global leadership and consulting firm based in New York City, whose latest book is The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness. She also wrote a Leader to Leader article adapted from the book, “The Seven Archetypes of Leadership (And the Gaps That Get in the way of Greatness).” There is considerable bite-sized wisdom in her Inc.com post “32 Ways to Live a Happier Life (and It Doesn’t Cost a Penny),” especially the following quote:
“It’s not that happy people are thankful but the other way around–thankful people are happy. Remember that someone desperately wishes they had the things that you take for granted. Enjoy the richness of what you have.”
- Differentiate between looking and seeing
Jennifer L. Roberts is Harvard University Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities, and Chair of the Program in American Studies. In her November-December 2013 Harvard Magazine article “The Power of Patience: Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention,” she writes,
“In all of my art history courses, graduate and undergraduate, every student is expected to write an intensive research paper based on a single work of art of their own choosing. And the first thing I ask them to do in the research process is to spend a painfully long time looking at that object…What this exercise shows students is that just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness. Or, in slightly more general terms: access is not synonymous with learning. What turns access into learning is time and strategic patience.”
- View success through a different lens
J. Douglas Holladay is the founder and CEO of PathNorth, a former White House advisor, and a professor at Georgetown University. He’s also the author of the recent book Rethinking Success: Eight Essential Practices for Finding Meaning in Work and Life. In his Leader to Leader article “The Illusions of Success,” he writes,
“Define success and failure for yourself, rather than allowing your worth to be defined by others’ shifting and subjective standards. We often define success as a series of numbers or checkboxes. What if we viewed success through a different lens, one that included other measures such as deepening friendships, reconciling with others, giving back or learning to be better versions of ourselves?”
- Think long-term
Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant who teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and an expert on personal reinvention. Her new book is The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World. In her Leader to Leader article “Long-term thinking in a short-term world,” she writes,
“There’s great existential comfort in feeling that you know what to do. When we’re busy and focused on execution, there’s no time to ask questions that might have discomfiting answers. Is this the right path? What does success really mean? Am I living my life the way I want to? If you need to grow revenue by 25% but don’t know how, or need to reevaluate your career choices, or have to cope with industry disruption, it’s much easier to keep doing the same thing and insist you just don’t have time for a reappraisal of your business, or your life.”
- Prepare for long-life learning
Michelle R. Weise is a senior advisor to Imaginable Futures, a global philanthropic investment firm, and author of the wonderfully-titled recent book Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs That Don‘t Even Exist Yet. I interviewed her for a ‘From the Front Lines’ feature, “The Role of Education in the Future of Work,” in the special 100th issue of Leader to Leader.
According to Weise,
“Technology is changing how we work and what we do for work. At the same time, we‘re already staying in the workforce longer than we had anticipated. Some futurists and experts on longevity are even suggesting that the first people to live to be 150 years old have already been born. And it‘s really through this lens of human longevity that our future of work becomes inextricably tied to the future of learning. Long-life learning is about anticipating that we will all need to navigate maybe 20 or 30 job transitions in the future (early baby boomers are already experiencing 12 job changes by the time they retire).”
- Practice time affluence
Ashley Whillans is an assistant professor at Harvard Business School and a time and happiness research scholar. She is the author of the recent book Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life. In her Leader to Leader article “The Start of Time Smart Leadership,” she writes,
“Workplaces can help employees become time affluent by rewarding them with it. In the United States, one out of four private sector employees receive no paid vacation. Yet, my research suggests that employees who are offered and take all of their vacation time are more engaged, creative, and productive. They derive more meaning and satisfaction from their jobs. After taking their vacation, most employees report feeling less tired, more energetic, and they more readily savor their daily experiences.”
- Think and act holistically
I take any opportunity to return to Peter Drucker’s classic 1952 Fortune article “How to Be an Employee,” which is included in the book Peter F. Drucker on Management Essentials, part of ‘The Drucker Library,’ from Harvard Business Review Press:
“But there is an increasing demand for people who are able to take in a great area at one glance, people who perhaps do not know too much about any one field—though one should always have one area of real competence. There is, in other words, a demand for people who are capable of seeing the forest rather than the trees, of making over-all judgments.”
- Make unusual associations and connections
Hermann Simon is Founder and Honorary Chairman of Simon-Kucher & Partners, and author of the recent book Many Worlds, One Life: A Remarkable Journey from Farmhouse to the Global Stage. He was also a longtime friend of Peter Drucker’s, and an exceptionally perceptive commentator on Drucker’s work. I wrote about him and his connections to Drucker in my blog post “Hermann Simon, Peter Drucker, and Jorge Luis Borges: Men of Many Worlds.” In the book, Simon writes,
“Because Peter Drucker understood history as few others do, he could peer into the future in his own unique way. He repeatedly impressed me with his detailed and extensive knowledge, and how he cleverly made unusual associations…Drucker also possessed the skill of bi-sociation, the ability to make connections between seemingly disparate things. He transcended time and space and recognized relationships and analogies that escape the average person.”
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help
Wayne Baker’s latest book is All You Have to Do Is Ask: How to Master the Most Important Skill for Success. He is a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and faculty director of the Center for Positive Organizations. In his Leader to Leader article “The Leader’s CHS Role: Chief Help Seeker,” he writes:
“Many people subscribe to the principle of self-reliance. Self-reliance is a virtue, but it can be taken too far. Overreliance on self-reliance compels us to go it alone far longer than we should, when reaching out and asking for help could solve the problem much more quickly and effectively. Leaders often suffer from overreliance on self-reliance, what I call the sage syndrome. A sage is someone who is venerated for their wisdom, knowledge, and experience. Leaders with the sage syndrome think that are supposed to have all the answers. Leaders are leaders because they have talents, strengths, and experiences, but they don’t have all the answers; the best leaders know that they have to solicit help and resources from others to be effective.”