The Passion of the Explorer

Intensifying competition, accelerating change, extreme disruptive events. A combination of these elements are leading to a global shift to living in constant fear and uncertainty. 

But John Hagel says you can cultivate emotions that motivate you to move beyond this fear. John is a leading strategy thinker who has worked at McKinsey, and was most recently at Deloitte where he founded and is now emeritus chair of The Center for the Edge.

In addition to his very generous blog posts, John is also the author of many, many books, including The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion, The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends On Productive Friction And Dynamic Specialization and his most recent and most personal book The Journey Beyond Fear: Leverage the Three Pillars of Positivity to Build Your Success.

John joins Greg to discuss the evolution of his insights, fear and uncertainty, personal narratives, and cultivating passionate explorers.

Episode Quotes:

What are some reasons for the “big shift”:

One of the key elements of this big shift is what I described as mounting performance pressure on all of us. As individuals and as institutions. The pressure takes many different forms. Some of it is intensifying competition on a global scale. Competitions intensifying, not just for companies, but for individuals. I mean, more and more people I talk to are worried that their jobs are going to be taken by robots. They're competing with technology, or they're competing with people from lower income countries who could do their job. So there's a lot of intensifying competition. 

What are the damaging effects of this fear?:

One impact of fear is it shrinks our time horizon. If we're really afraid, all we can do is focus on the moment. We can't spend time looking ahead, that's a distraction. If we just shrink our time horizons, we end up in a win/lose view of the world. If it's just about today, the resources are a given.

The only question is who's going to get them, me or you, win/lose. There's no win-win here. And it leads to erosion of trust. Because you may seem like a nice person, but at the end of the day I know only one of us is going to get these resources so I can't afford to trust you. And you become more risk averse.

How can we use personal narratives to grow?:

When you talk to psychologists about personal narratives, what they mean is what's the story of your life? Look back, and how did you get to where you are today? And it stops with today.

My view of personal narratives is that it's about the future, not about the past. When you look ahead, what is really the biggest motivator for you? Is it a threat or an opportunity? And if it's one or the other, what kind of threat or what kind of opportunity? And then step back and reflect is this really what's gonna motivate me to accomplish as much as I could. And so it's looking ahead and articulating, expressing that narrative.

Show Links:

Guest Profile:

• John Hagel’s Website
• John Hagel on Twitter
• John Hangel on Linkedin
• John Hagel on TEDxWestlake
• John Hagel Speaker’s Profile

His work:

• The Journey Beyond Fear: Leverage the Three Pillars of Positivity to Build Your Success 
• The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion
• The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends On Productive Friction And Dynamic Specialization
• Out of The Box: Strategies for Achieving Profits Today and Growth Tomorrow Through Web Services

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