Embrace uncertainty
The following has been contributed by international bestselling author and founder of Good Life Project® and The 108 — Conscious Business Collective, Jonathan Fields. For more about Jonathan, go to www.jonathanfields.com.
WHETHER YOU’RE A STARTUP FOUNDER OR an established brand with a global presence, the time for illusion, smoke and mirrors is over. Not so much because you want it to be, but because there’s nowhere to hide anymore. Expectations are changing in a pretty profound way. People expect a certain amount of honesty and transparency and if you don’t provide it, they’ll find a path to it on their own. That’s upsetting and frustrating, it’s causing a lot of pain in more traditionally-oriented organizations that are used to a higher-level of control over information flow and brand control. To thrive in today’s world, you need to know how to tell a brand story in a way that doesn’t sound like a whole bunch of pre-packaged BS. You must master the art of getting real.
How? Take a step back and get clear on your values and beliefs. Do the work to better understand what matters to you, then develop solutions and culture, and tell the story from that place. Become more agile, more adaptive. Consider bringing end users into the process of creation and conversation, much earlier than ever before. Know, too, that the feedback they offer will help you better understand their wants, needs and expectations, but it is still your job to know the limitations of feedback and radically shift gears, lead, disrupt and create what people don’t yet know they need or want, then own the outcome. Co-creation does not subjugate leadership.
One of the concerns when considering bringing outsiders into the process of creation and conversation is who gets ‘credit’ for the value of the product, service or outcome when the ‘big idea’ came out of a shared experience. The truth is, it’s a bit of a moot question. Because outcomes are never about the idea in a vacuum; they’re about implementation of the idea.
At any given moment in time there are 100 other people who are coming up with nearly-identical ideas. Five of them will implement and do well, one of them will hit a home run. Most will never go past the idea stage, because implementation, especially in a disruptive environment, requires a willingness to step into a place of uncertainty when everybody else is locked into the need to be secure.
For me, when you just parse it all down the answer is stay open and focus and implement like nobody has implemented before and don’t worry about the credit. You deliver astonishing outcomes time after time and it’s coming out of your team, or your division. It doesn’t matter, people aren’t even going to know. Be a difference-maker and a servant-leader and your value will become known through the outcomes that ripple from your efforts.
In the end, companies that are doing great work are driven by meaning. You see this evermore clearly in the emergence of the B Corp status. The B Corporation’s charter creates room to allow for decision-making and action-taking that arises out of something beyond just about maximising revenue for shareholders. It’s also about human impact. Triple-bottom-line. This gives you permission to consider a bigger experience of meaning and impact outside of revenue. This trend, along with a higher demand for honesty and transparency, is only going to increase because when you lead from a place of meaning, impact and service, good stuff follows.