Based on The Opening Keynote at ICFConverge 2019 by #Frans Johansson #The Medici Group

“Today is the slowest day you’ll experience from now on”

During the Renaissance, some 500 years ago, in the time of the Medici and Leonardo da Vinci, humanity was able to create a true disruption from Dark Middle Age, that positively impacted the world and society, by integrating actively and consciently the diverse fields of knowledge, arts and science.

Before Covid19 the world was already said to be VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous). We were already living in a dynamic, hyper-connected environment, where technology was leading the way. Covid19 hit the world in a global scale like a meteorite (some analogy with Ice Age?!) and accelerated the sensation of Uncertainty and Unpredictability!

Like Darwin said more than one century ago, the ones who adapt better and quicker to change, survive, not the strongest, nor the most intelligent.

And what does it mean to adapt, if not to re-invent and to develop oneself, to learn new things and eventually to un-learn older habits and ideas.

If we think at Pos-Covid19, how will countries, organizations and leaders re-invent themselves and even families and individuals?

Keeping things simple, deep expertise and planning were the “motos” of last century. 10.000h practice, as a basis for success, doesn’t hold now and isn’t a guarantee for accomplishment. Most new “BIG” business from today, like Virgin, Uber or Netflix, didn’t start upon as a strong practice in market.

The rules of the world are changing, so it is an inevitability not to master all through expertise. Aspiring to solve these radically new challenges, using the same processes and solutions, even if optimized, and looking at reality through the same lenses, isn’t a guarantee of success.

It’s time to review and brake some paradigms on how to handle countries, businesses and people in times of extreme change. It’s time to question on our deepest beliefs about what is success. It is time to have the humility and courage to reflect on our own paradigms and give ourselves the right to leave our confort zone and learn everything new again.

In October 2019 I heard Frans Johansson make provocations on how to Handle Unpredictability. Now, more than ever, we cannot turn our backs to these provocations:

1. Always look for opportunities to change the rules of the game.To compete with what already exists, question assumptions and premisses of the business and market.
2. Look for inspiration and ideas from other fields and cultures other than your own.The probability of success will increase significantly when we intersect expertises from other areas or cultures, apparently without conection. Joining diferent perspectives, valuing and promoting diversity, expertises combine to create new business models and solutions.
3. Place more bets, test more ideas, while managing the risks.Do a lot of tries knowing that most will not work. When we are breaking new ground, uncertainty increases. We only hear about the winners, but we don’t know what it took them to get there. Start with a small step, but start! And keep going!
4. Rethink the value of experience and technical expertise. When you choose to build your team members, first understand the team as whole and then expand it by bringing consciently diversity in formation, expertise, experience, communication style, thinking and even physical aspect.
5. Include and activate the potential of the different.Make diversity be accepted sustainably, so that people do not hide their differences once hired. Coach the team on diversity and the new people to be “themselves”. Connect the profile of the people with their motivation to activate the individual value and contribution of each. Not only because it is moraly correct, but it is what will bring us sucess.

500 years ago the Portuguese sailed the seas in nutshell boats towards the Unknown. They faced Danger and Uncertainty and found New Lands! Let us now accept to lose sight of shore for sometime, embrace the moment and see what comes.

“The world is increasingly moving in unexpected ways …

… make sure you move with it!!