Surviving the 2020’s

What is the secret to building thriving lives and businesses that last?  How should we face the challenges of the year 2020 and the impact on the rest of the decade?

According to Bill Taylor, the co-founder of Fast Company, and former editor of The Harvard Business Review, the answer is:

Strategy and mindfulness.

Taylor delivered this mindful message in his keynote speech to Media Leaders in early 2020. He warned us 20 years ago that “business as usual is a bust.”  Now, in his new book “Simply Brilliant,” Taylor writes:

“In a time of wrenching disruptions and exhilarating advances, of unrelenting turmoil and unlimited promise … the thrill of breakthrough creativity and breakaway performance … can be summoned … if leaders can reimagine what’s possible.” 

That message was pre-COVID. The situation has just gotten more & more complex.  Lives and businesses are facing near-insurmountable challenges.  Yet we MUST develop strategy for creativity and performance that leads us up and out of this global hole we’re in.

Easier said than done

If it were easy to break through and to break away, then everyone would be doing it.

Why aren’t they?

Innovation and agility are higher functions of the mind that only work when the Higher Brain is activated. But higher functions are easily and continuously hijacked by lower survival functions.

“Fight-or-flight” has already become a cliche.  Being mindful of “fight-or-flight” is the booby prize of innovation and performance.  We call it out, but we do nothing about it.

What can we do about “fight-or-flight?” 

“McMindfulness” doesn’t work

According to Christian Greiser, the Managing Director and Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group, mindfulness is “making conscious decisions, without judgement, and acting consciously versus acting reflexive from ingrained patterns.”

This solution — making conscious decisions and acting consciously — is also easier said than done.

Mindfulness is not a real solution, especially when mindfulness practices (1) have a low rate of success and (2) take months or years to see appreciable results. Just ask Ronald Purser, Professor of Management at San Francisco State University, and author of the book “McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality” who said:

“Mindfulness has become a banal form of capitalist spirituality that mindlessly avoids social and political transformation, reinforcing the neoliberal status quo”

Furthermore, doing business requires quick accurate judgements in the moment. Leaders need to be accurately judgmental and quick to discriminate, because the pace of innovation is getting exponentially faster every day.

How can we be agile and make the right decisions, in the moment, more often, in life and in business?

Intuition and insight

which are beyond, but include, rational judgment and discrimination. Next level strategies must outthink the competition. The next level of thought is intuition and insight.

“Fight-or-flight” responses are lower survival brain functions. Insight and intuition are higher thriving brain functions. They’re quick and accurate. The key to survival in the 2020s is a Higher Brain and a higher mind.