4
An Alternative Option

In The Game Changer, I share an alternative philosophy for work — that is, to recognise that work is a game. A game that can be tweaked and changed, in order to unlock inherent motivation and greater progress.

This perspective was inspired by philosopher James Carse's brilliant book Finite and Infinite Games: A vision of life as play and possibility. In this work, Carse argues that life consists of at least two kinds of games: one finite, the other infinite. Finite games have a start and an end point, and are played for the purpose of winning. Infinite games, on the other hand, are played for the purpose of continuing the play. In a business context, you can think of this in terms of maintaining value and relevance.

Many conventional leadership books treat business as though it were a finite game, in which the sole focus is winning. For example, in the popular book Playing to Win: How strategy really works, AG Lafley and Roger Martin argue that ‘the heart of strategy is the answer to two fundamental questions: where will you play, and how will you win there?'

Such a philosophy has a certain old-school charm to it. It's comfortingly simple and familiar, and a raft of historical evidence supports it.^[1] And it might work for 80 per cent of the work — it surely works for defined playing fields, in which the rules are set and the metrics for winning are clear.

But I'm not sure how such an approach translates in today's world — let alone the future we are moving into. Technology is catalysing change faster than ever before, which means no fixed playing fields exist. Lafley and Martin argue that ‘winning is what matters — and it is the ultimate criterion of a successful strategy' … but I'd suggest that such an approach is dangerous.

Not everything needs to be viewed through the lens of competition.^[2] And, in today's game, we never really ‘win'. By the time you master one playing field, the game has changed. Victory is never declared — because the business landscape is always shifting. To say you have ‘won' implies that the game has finished — that things have been brought to a conclusion — but all finite games sit within the context of an infinite game. There's always the opportunity to create more value.

Taking a more infinite perspective is more valuable — one focusing on progress, rather than success. As Carse explains, ‘Finite players play within boundaries, infinite players play with boundaries.'

In order to lead pioneering progress, you must explore opportunities that live outside the boundaries of existing, conventional playing fields. For busy leaders, this means carving out time for thorough thinking — the disciplined exploration of alternative options, both individually and within a diverse teams. Sophisticated, thorough thinking that takes us beyond the safe and warm embrace of default thinking and quick, shallow wins.

This kind of thinking requires leaders to explore the intersection of science and art, and heed the call to adventure.

A CALL TO ADVENTURE

According to the computational knowledge engine WolframAlpha, the word adventure means ‘to take a risk in the hope of a favourable outcome'. This type of risk-taking also happens to be a significant element in Joseph Campbell's ‘hero's journey'. Campbell's The Hero of a Thousand Faces, published in 1949, identified what he calls the ‘monomyth' — a broad concept in narratology that highlights a common structure to many enduring heroic mythologies.

Campbell identified seventeen stages in the structure of the hero's journey. This structure has since been summarised by some clever folks into as few as eight steps. But now, for the sake of brevity, I'm going to summarise it even further:

1. A hero exists in the ordinary, default world surrounded by ordinary, default people doing ordinary, default things. (A similar world to the one we explored in chapter 1.)
2. There is a ‘call to adventure' — an opportunity to obtain a great boon for the ordinary world — but the hero refuses the call. Besides: it's perilous, and they're already quite busy^[3] (refer to chapters 2 and 3).
3. A catalyst or mentor arrives, challenging the hero to take up the call to adventure. Maybe the hero has just attended a conference, or read an insightful book. Or maybe, this catalyst is the accumulation of several mentors and catalysing experiences — enough for the hero to declare, ‘Enough! Something must be done. We must find a better way!'^[4] (See chapters 4 to 6 for more.)
4. And so the hero embarks upon a quest, leaving the world of default thinking to pursue new and as-yet-unrealised opportunities. Inner demons (self-sabotage, assumptions and biases) are confronted, and dragons (friction) are slain. The journey is fraught with failure — it's really challenging. But the hero demonstrates a level of adaptive tenacity, and eventually gains powerful new knowledge and magical insight. (You don't want to skim this part of the story — check out chapters 7 to 12.)
5. The hero returns to the ordinary, default world, in which their newly obtained special insight and magic is a great boon that can be used to make a difference — namely, to inform and progress pioneering strategy and growth. (This is where the real magic happens — see chapters 13 to 21.)

And thus, we have the hero's journey (as it applies in this book).

Of course, I have done a crude job of summarising Campbell's fine work. If it interests you, I suggest you look it up — his ideas are incredibly intriguing, and you'll see the template playing out in many popular stories and films. One thing to note: the hero's journey is typically depicted as a male thing — which is, of course, ridiculous. Anyone can be a hero and embark upon a quest, regardless of gender.

In the context of business (and this book), the hero's journey is a challenging one, involving lots of work (which may not work out), and it can be a lonely journey. The rest of the book helps you with this journey, but the thing to note at this point is this — most refuse the call to adventure. Oh sure, we talk about how important it is to think differently, and to embrace fresh ideas. And not a corporate event goes by without some senior executive pointing out that innovation is of critical importance.

But what's often lacking is threefold:

• A progressive strategy that goes beyond the default, and builds for future opportunities.
• An enterprise culture that values learning and thrives on change.
• Leadership that values new thinking, can handle ambiguity and aspires to make a difference.

All three of these components work together to influence progress — but it's the leadership component that makes the most immediate and direct difference. And it's the leadership component that'll see us circumvent the Inevitable Kraken of Doom.

CIRCUMVENTING THE KRAKEN

Q: How does one escape the Inevitable Kraken of Doom?

A: By finding new rainbows and growth arcs to pursue.

Yes, we can outfox the Kraken.^[5]

But to do so requires the exploration of opportunities that lie tangential to the default growth arc.

Recall the rainbow of growth and despair from chapter 3. The typical growth arc is littered with default thinking and ruled by the Curse of Efficiency.

But! If some leaders heed the call to adventure, and lean into the challenge of pioneering through doubt and uncertainty, it's possible to unlock new, tangential growth arcs (see figure 4.1, overleaf).

In this scenario, an enterprise stays relevant by exploring new rainbows to maintain growth and avoid despair. This ‘growth' may not necessarily take the form of company size or market share, but, rather, relate to relevance, value and significance.

Note the arrowhead in figure 4.1 — it consists of strategy, leadership and culture. These three elements influence the direction in which an enterprise moves: towards enduring relevance or towards decline.

In the next chapter, we'll unpack the crux of this book — a model for Quest-Augmented Strategy. This approach ensures that strategy is fed by more than just default thinking, and that leaders have a viable set of alternative options to inform their decisions. Later chapters further illuminate how startups can be created within large enterprises — to identify, explore and pursue new rainbows of growth.

But, of course, even when these alternative options are identified, they'll still carry inherent risk. And they'll still be shrouded in a level of uncertainty.^[6]

Pioneering leadership is what we need. That, and a willingness to embrace paradox.

PIONEERING THROUGH PARADOX

The word ‘pioneer' means a heap of wonderful things, including:

• to open up a new area, or prepare a way
• to take the lead or initiative in
• to participate in the development of something new.

Pioneering leadership means leaning into the challenge of progressing through new and uncharted territory. This form of leadership enables the exploration, development, learning and progress through uncertainty and doubt.

I use the terms ‘pioneering leadership', ‘frontier leadership' and ‘opportunity-driven leadership' fairly interchangeably. I'm not trying to create new buzzwords here — rather, I'm seeking to refresh the appreciation for the significant role of pioneering leadership. It is one of the biggest missing components in large organisations today.^[7]

It's thanks to pioneering leadership that businesses stay relevant and grow. However, for organisations enjoying the fruits of success in the growth phase, or shrinking margins in the decline, it's easy to default to operationally driven leadership and maximise efficiencies where possible.

Operationally driven leaders may believe they are protecting a company's ability to grow. But their bias towards efficiency and predictability, combined with a low tolerance for uncertainty and risk, means that they'll very likely choose not to capitalise on anything but the default. And so, dutifully they'll persist along the default growth arc — ignoring tangential rainbows along the way — right into the disturbingly moist embrace of the Kraken.^[8]

Embracing pioneering leadership means embracing several paradoxical notions. These may seem to be absurd and seemingly contradictory propositions — but, as you'll find through this book, they harbour practical and progressive wisdom.

To gain certainty, we must embrace fuzziness.

Where the operationally driven leader manufactures an artificial sense of certainty — often in the form of clear targets and goals — the pioneering leader feels no such need. As such a leader, you're comfortable making progress while only having a fuzzy sense of the potential destination. You don't wait for clarity or perfect plans before acting. Rather, you progress into uncertainty with adaptability and risk-mastery, learning along the way.

TO BUILD CONVICTION, WE MUST EMBRACE DOUBT.

German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said that ‘doubt grows with knowledge'. And Aristotle is said to have once quipped, ‘the more you know, the more you know you don't know'. Whereas some might claim to have all of the right answers, pioneering leaders instead value asking the right questions (which, in turn, makes them less ignorant of their own ignorance).

TO MAKE PROGRESS, WE MUST AVOID SUCCESS.

It's tempting to declare victory, and to feel as though we have ‘made it'. But pioneering leaders know this is an infinite game we're playing — one with no finish line. You always have more opportunities to learn, grow and develop to stay relevant. Sure — you'll have small wins along the way. But constructive discontent is a constant companion.

Now, you might be nodding along to this, because you're the one reading this book. But what about the other folk you work with?

Don't worry, we'll get to them.

NEW SUPERPOWERS AND THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT

The old leadership superpowers favour certainty, decisiveness, self-belief and unwavering conviction. They celebrate an ability to stay firm in the face of change, and pursue goals with tenacity and rigour. Such superpowers are still valid today — particularly for formulaic work with predictable outcomes. They allow us to implement and execute on strategy. These are largely convergent superpowers. They narrow our options so that we can focus on the work that needs to get done. They are ideal in the wake of strategic development.

But they don't serve us at the frontier. To effectively lead progress through uncertainty, pioneering leaders need to call upon a new family of superpowers — divergent superpowers that open new pathways and avenues to explore.

I like to think of the superpowers as a family. Just as there are the four riders of the apocalypse (death, war, conquest and famine), there are four much nicer superpowers for a pioneering leader. Those powers are imagination, curiosity, doubt and wonder.

It's getting tricky to trust quotes from famous dead people these days^[9], but I'm reasonably confident that Einstein once said that imagination was ‘more important than knowledge'. But in this family of superpowers, ‘wonder' is probably the champion. Wonder exists in the undivided mind, within the overlaps of both art and science. When we wonder, we feel curious and experience the desire to know something.

But, let's not forget ‘doubt'. Doubt is like the black sheep of the family — often regarded with less esteem than imagination, curiosity and wonder. And yet doubt is one of our most stalwart companions to any quest.

The three hidden benefits of doubt

One of the best books I encountered in 2014 was Oliver Burkeman's The Antidote: Happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking. In this book, Burkeman challenges many of the conventional ‘positive thinking' approaches to happiness, instead advocating what he calls ‘the negative path' to happiness.

Burkeman argues that, through positive thinking (and related approaches), we seek the safety of certainty. We seek to know of a time in the future in which we'll never need to fear negative emotions again — we'd be ceaselessly happy. But in chasing all that, Burkeman says, ‘we close down the very faculties that permit the happiness we crave.'

Instead of trying to actively pursue happiness (while trying to avoid negative emotions), Burkeman suggests we go the other way: look toward negative experiences, and embrace the learning inherent within them.

A similar approach can be applied to the concepts of clarity and conviction. If you want these things, you could set forth a crystal clear goal. You can make it rock solid, and temper it with unwavering persistence and conviction.

Or, you could take a counterintuitive approach, and turn toward the hidden benefits of doubt.

Let's look at a few of these.

Doubt makes ideas stronger

Doubt is fundamental to all discovery, learning and growth. It's an inherent element of the scientific method, and the precursor to all great questions and breakthroughs. Doubt births wisdom. It's what we unpack when we do slow thinking, and it's deeply linked to quality ideas.

We'll explore this further in part III.

Doubt makes leaders better

Have you ever felt that, sooner or later, your colleagues and everyone around you will realise that you're not as smart as people think you are? That you are not really qualified for the position you hold? And that one day you'll be found out. People will point at you and shout impostor! — exposing you for the fraud that you are.

I get that feeling all the time. It's called the impostor syndrome, and it emerges when we constantly compare ourselves to our talented peers. Or, more specifically, when we compare our own doubt-ridden internal perceptions with the confident facade that others project.

We feel that a big discrepancy exists between the two — but for all we know, they could be full of self-doubt too. In fact, if they're any good, they probably are.

This sense of ‘impostorism' could be seen as a natural symptom of gaining experience. ‘Move up the ranks and, if your field's even vaguely meritocratic, you'll encounter more talented people to compare yourself negatively against', writes Burkeman. Some research suggests that the syndrome actually gets worse as you get better.

So, the good news: if you're full of self-doubt, you're probably doing great!^[10]

Besides, it's much better to feel like an impostor than to suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect — a scenario whereby people harbour inaccurate illusions of superiority. Unburdened by self-doubt, these people don't realise how inept they are. The fools.

Now, plenty of standard advice is available for managing the impostor syndrome (stop comparing yourself, accept that you're successful, focus on providing value, yawn). Most of this advice is about reassuring yourself.

But you could take a different tack, and embrace the doubt.

In my world, I know that sooner or later someone will challenge me on my work. And that's great — I will be prepared for that battle. Or maybe I won't.

Either way, we'll learn something. And in the meantime, I use my awareness of the impostor syndrome to stay ahead of the game. I publish books like this, work with increasingly influential leaders and share world-class research in keynotes. I never settle, and never fall into the delusion that I've ‘made it'.

You might like to take this approach, too. Accept that the doubt is there, and use it to do more and be better. This is exactly the quality we want in leaders — the ability to question ourselves, to think deeper and accept that no-one and no thing is perfect, but we can learn.

Much better that than a leader unburdened by doubt.

Doubt makes life more wonderful

We often think about things in binary mode — in terms of what's right and what's wrong. This places us in a near-constant state of judgement — of ourselves, and of others. To be right, someone must be wrong.

Marshall Rosenberg, wielder of daggy puppets and pioneer in non-violent communication, argues that this type of thinking is the very thing that brings us closer to violence. Binary right/wrong thinking certainly doesn't enable self-compassion, nor compassion or empathy for others.

‘Instead of playing the game of ‘Making Life Wonderful', we often play the game called “Who's Right”,' Marshall Rosenberg says. ‘Do you know that game? It's a game where everybody loses.'

We can play a different game — a game with no clear right and wrong, where nothing is conclusive. A game that always has room for wonder, and win–win scenarios are wonderful.

We see this in science all the time. Theories that were thought to be right and ‘true' are dismantled in light of new evidence. Everything is always open to further questioning.

‘Let go of certainty,' says author and journalist Tony Schwartz. ‘The opposite isn't uncertainty. It's openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides.'

Want more wonder in your life? Relinquish the need to be right, and instead embrace doubt and the opportunity to learn.

This approach is not always wonderful. In fact, carrying doubt is often uncomfortable. But, all growth occurs just outside of our comfort zone. To willingly step into this space requires courage and vulnerability — the type of qualities pioneering leaders ought to seek to demonstrate.

Beware conclusions

‘We can't do this' is an unhelpful and potentially premature conclusion. ‘I'm not sure we can do this' is a bit better. Because there's only one way to find out — try. And then if that doesn't work, you could fall back to the conclusion that you, in fact, cannot do said thing. Or maybe you can keep the doubt alive — maybe it was an issue with your methodology, or some other factor?

The best kind of doubt ends in a question mark

‘Can we do this?' Ah. I don't know. Let's find out.

A parting note …

We can easily become lost in the world of divergent thinking. Imagination, curiosity, doubt and wonder are all wonderful — but they need to translate into meaningful progress. This is where operational leadership serves to support pioneering leadership.

In the next chapter, we'll unpack a model for Quest-Augmented Strategy that balances both divergent and convergent thinking, to make meaningful progress happen.

AHOY THE INTRAPRENEUR!

‘News team, assemble!' says Ron Burgundy, after blowing into a shell horn in Anchorman. If only such a horn existed for the intrapreneurs within organisations.^[11]

The term intrapreneur is a relatively new one — I had to teach it to my word processor — but it's a concept business leaders are beginning to see the value of.

As distinct from an entrepreneur (who seeks to build their own business around the creation of new value), an intrapreneur is someone who seeks to create new value within a larger organisation. This isn't an employee simply looking to do better in their existing role, aspiring to climb the corporate ladder^[12] — this is someone wanting to create something new that doesn't exist yet.

Intrapreneurs are frequently my favourite clients. These pioneering leaders may not carry a senior leadership title within an organisation, but with the right superpowers and savvy, they can make extraordinary things happen.

Gaining these results often means fighting uphill battles, against the grain of conventional thinking. It also means persevering through doubt and uncertainty. Without the support of the organisation, it can be a very lonely and tiring journey. At any point, these emerging pioneers can either succumb to default thinking, or leave the organisation.^[13]

But some companies nurture their intrapreneurs, and provide them a safe space to create. Companies like Google, Facebook, Deloitte and Accenture have formal programs to support employees in creating and pursuing their own projects within the organisation.^[14] Given that many startups fail, intrapreneurship can become a very viable alternative to entrepreneurship.^[15]

Fostering intrapreneurship is a critical element of pioneering leadership. The way it's fostered doesn't have to be rigid and formal, but it does need to be authentic and real.

By providing support for the exploration of meaningful projects, and by empowering people to improve the business (with autonomy), leaders enhance the diversity of thinking and the likelihood of meaningful growth. An enterprise that values intrapreneurs will usually have an effective internal communications platform^[16] and rituals to share learning and celebrate achievements.^[17]

When confronted with new challenges, the leaders of traditional organisations call together the VPs and directors of business units to brainstorm a solution. But then, it's always the same people trying to find a solution — and they're all influenced by the same constraints of default thinking. A pioneering enterprise that supports intrapreneurship, on the other hand, has a whole raft of diverse thinking to draw upon, from people passionate about contributing to the company. They're able to tap into the full potential of their organisation.

If you play the role of a senior leader within your organisation, know this: you have the ability to pioneer, and build for the future of work.^[18] An immediate priority for you is to foster an environment that supports intrapreneurship. In part III and part VII, I'll give you some insight as to how you can do this.

If you consider yourself an intrapreneur — or an intrapreneur in waiting — the time is now. Don't wait for the senior leaders to make this happen. Finish this book, and get to making clever happen.^[19]