The Modern Manager 176: Make Your Team Disruption-Proof with Brant Cooper
Between technology, globalization, and a pandemic, it’s no wonder that businesses are experiencing disruption faster than ever. Regardless of industry or location, teams and organizations need to develop the skills to navigate regularly changing environments and increasing ambiguity.
Today’s guest is Brant Cooper. Brant is the CEO of Moves the Needle and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Entrepreneur and his new book Disruption Proof: Empower People. Create Value. Drive Change. Brant has a unique take on disrupting our current way of thinking in order to be closer to customers, move faster, and act bolder. With over two decades of expertise helping companies bring innovative products to market, he blends agile, design thinking, and lean methodologies to ignite entrepreneurial action within large organizations.
Brant and I talk about the 5 E’s of becoming disruption proof and what you and your team can do to make better decisions and be prepared for whatever the future brings.
Get a downloadable reference of the 5-E’s which you can print and display in your office to help you remember to embrace Empathy, Exploration, Evidence, Equilibrium and Ethics in your work. Get it when you join the Modern Manager community.
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Read the related blog article: How To Prepare Your Team To Weather Any Storm
KEEP UP WITH BRANT
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brantcooper/
Twitter: @brantcooper
Website: https://brantcooper.com/
Book: https://brantcooper.com/disruption-proof/
Key Takeaways:
- Disruption-proof teams learn to navigate the uncertainty and changes of business life. They are able to thrive within unstable conditions.
- You can’t execute through a crisis. It requires innovation and experimentation.
- The five E’s to disruption-proof teams are Empathy, Exploration, Evidence, Equilibrium, and Ethics.
- Teams need to listen to what their clients want. This is best done by observing real life, with the person interacting with the tool or experience rather than from surveys or interviews. People are terrible at predicting their future behaviors.
- Teams and managers must shift from being knowers/experts to learning/exploring. Challenge assumptions and explore possibilities.
- Cut through biases and opinions by relying on evidence gathered from data.
- Create equilibrium by shifting between execution mode and innovation mode. While it may seem efficient to separate teams that focus oninnovation from those that focus on execution, all teams need both.
- Carve out time for your team to innovate every week or month.Toencourage more exploration time, show your boss the results of these creative ideas and experiments.
- Staying grounded in your corporate and personal ethics is critical, especially with new technology and data. Make ethics front and center for your team.