Sara is worried. She can feel a nasty headache coming on. Her entire body feels stiff from sitting for hours at her desk, working feverishly on the laptop. A successful lead in the marketing team, she is faced with a new challenge on her plate. For years she has been marketing the same products with a great degree of success. But today her boss has asked her to come up with a marketing strategy for a new product in a totally different therapeutic area and that too on a shoe string budget. Flummoxed, she knows that nothing she has done in the past is going to work here, creative and innovative ideas are the need of the hour. Having never failed on any project till date, Sara feels shaky and uncertain in this situation. “What if I fail?” is a thought that is repeatedly crossing her mind.
The reasons for Sara’s fears and lack of confidence when faced with a first-time situation of this nature are not tough to find out. They arise out of her dislike for taking risks, fear of failure and having been in a comfort zone for a long time. Till date her job did not require her to deal with very ambiguous situations or come up with very creative solutions. Sara likes to have everything just so and has a tendency to resist the new. A perfectionist, she likes to collect all the possible information before making any decision. This improves her confidence levels and helps her avoid criticism. In short, she is not an experimenter.
The current scenario, where change is the only constant, requires experimenters. This is an important dimension of change agility. People like Aman are experimenters. Aman is known to be an inveterate tinkerer who can never leave things alone for long. He takes on challenges and thrives on finding a new ways of doing things. Testing new ideas, products and services is something he enjoys doing and is known for his ability to come up with creative solutions. He is very comfortable trying something several times before finding the right solution. A risk taker, he remains unfazed by the failures that come along the way.
Do you find yourself falling back on old habits when faced with new situations? Do you expect different outcomes in a new situation although you continue to use the same ‘tried and true’ methods? As human beings we are creatures of habit and often find it difficult to adapt to changing situations. The good news is that we can train ourselves to become experimenters. Though research has shown that flexibility is largely innate, change agility is also partly an acquired capability.
Here’s how you can develop this capability.
Are you a perfectionist? Do you find it necessary to collect all the information before you make a decision? It is easy to make a good decision when you have 100 percent of the information but there are so many situations where you are expected to decide on the basis of limited information. And there are people who are able to make effective decisions in these scenarios. When you are in the process of trying to solve something, make a note of what you would do at different points along the way. Take a look at your notes each time you gain more information. Figure out at what point you would have made the same decision as you did with all or more information. You will find that you would have come up with the same solution long before you actually did. Many of us end up delaying decisions but ultimately our decision does not change.
Use failures and mistakes as an opportunity to learn. If you speak to any successful professionals, you will find that they report more failures and mistakes than the less successful do. You cannot learn from things you are not doing. So start by making small decisions, get instant feedback, make corrections and improve. It is unlikely that you would get it right the first time. Give yourself learning opportunities by trying three experiments.
Move away from your comfort zone. Stop relying on your favourite solutions. Doing this repeatedly comes in the way of your growth and change. Question yourself: “What am I most likely to do?” and then don’t do it. Spend time on talking to others, look for parallels in other organizations, speak to experts in other unrelated areas, spot some unusual or odd facts about the problem you are facing and see what they seem to indicate, or brainstorm with a one-time problem solving group. Don’t restrict your solution space.
Edison is known to have made 3000 attempts at making a light bulb before he succeeded. Yes, most innovations fail. Some of the most successful innovators do it by sheer quantity and learn from their failures. So go ahead and try out some low impact experiments to increase your chances of success. For instance, you may try five different ways of testing a product instead of one big carefully planned one. Look for that one common factor in the failure which is never present when you succeed. Let your plan evolve from the tests.
Feel free to challenge the status quo. To be creative you need to combine previously unconnected elements or change your perspective of viewing them. Start generating ideas without judging them. You will not get anything new by following the usual procedure of merely setting goals and schedules.
Start taking risks. Allow others in your team to take risks and experiment with new ideas. Start delegating more often. Review your progress on small and big projects, note what went well and what did not work out.
Do you think you are not bold enough? Are you tired of what you are currently doing? There is surely something for which you can drum up enthusiasm and be the champion. Try some initiatives and see if they succeed in spurring interest. Get an experimenter to collaborate with you. You may also get a heavy duty expert to join. You could plant new seeds of ideas at every possible opportunity.
Several part-time assignments can also help you to build the capabilities of an experimenter. You could volunteer to take on a touch and impossible project, one on which others have failed. Be willing to take on a task that you dislike and would usually avoid. Take on the responsibility of building a cross-functional team to find a solution to a common business challenge.
At the end of the day, it is the ability to continuously learn that will decide the extent to which you succeed in today’s turbulent times. You will always face new challenges, problems and issues. It is your willingness to experiment and try new things which will help you succeed where others fail.
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