PEr Chronicles: Get unstuck
On the first day of 2019, LinkedIn published an article titled Why Creativity is the Most Important Skill in the World. Now, five years later, adaptability has been hailed the skill of the moment, according to LinkedIn's Most In-Demand Skills of 2024 report. You may be able to communicate and motivate effectively, have a clear vision, and be able to execute strategy; but if you fail to adapt, you and your organization will fall behind.
I like to simplify things in my own definition: adaptability is like trying to get along with your partner in an argument — change yourself, not them. In a sense, adapting is innovating yourself. And you have to innovate yourself first before you can innovate anything outside yourself.
This is why adaptable people make decisions 2.5 times faster and have half as many mental health problems. It’s why adaptable companies 70% better customer retention, 30% more success in innovation. Yet more than two-thirds of companies are low in adaptability. And a similar number of employees say they’re not adaptable. What’s going on here?
From a young age, many people are led to believe that humans can control the future. The messaging goes: Work hard and you’ll get a good job. Make plans that will go as expected. These instructions aren’t bad, but each one assumes a controllable world…. certainty is an illusion.
The mind is great at time travel. We reminisce about the past (waxing nostalgic, regretting a decision, or simply remembering what was) and seek to forecast the future of our dreams.
Of course I don’t mean that reflection and planning don’t matter. Remembering happy times can lift our spirits, and preparing for what’s next is both responsible and often essential.
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What I do mean is that all too often we get stuck in the past and future. The future is only a concept. True, history is an amazing teacher, yet we know that what got us here isn’t necessarily going to be what will ensure you, or I or anyone thrives in the future.
As children, we are often taught to look straight ahead and focus: on a goal, a destination or a specific achievement. Learn to excel at sports and extracurriculars and graduate at the top of your class. Every culture and every person is faced with this reality.
The Covid-19 crisis had forced people to rethink many things. Today, a lot of people – perhaps you too – are missing what is no longer. When massive change arrives, jolting us to the core, our wake-up reality hits hard. There is a void, an absence of what was and an unknowingness of what comes next.
A future without dreams feels uncomfortably close for too many people. Perhaps you had a job you loved and then you lost it. But you didn’t just lose a job: you lost a piece of your identity, your extended family of colleagues, and a key reason you woke up motivated every day.
When the world you’ve come to know suddenly melts, or flips upside down in ways you neither expected or desired, how do you keep your dreams alive?
You may struggle to imagine, much less see, a different future at all. We even stop seeing when there are better paths forward. The more you’re stuck in the old script, the less you can see. When life feels blurry or the future is uncertain, shift your focus from what’s visible to what’s invisible. Letting go of the future enables a better future to emerge.