APPENDIX A

Leading Transformation in Your Own Life

Could the ideas from behavioral transformation be applied to transform an individual life? Consider one poignant case study.

Seeing Possibilities That Lie in Plain Sight

David Whyte, a best-selling author, describes the moment when he realized he could change from an unfulfilling career in marine biology to his current vocation. Originally he had been attracted to marine biology while watching Jacques Cousteau films as a boy. But after many years of university study, he found himself working long hours at a desk writing repetitive educational modules, far from the ocean. For a time, the work had been satisfying because of the greater educational purpose. But slowly, the repetition and distance from the adventure of the ocean began to grind him down.

One day, a man asked him to lunch, explaining that he wanted to get to know Whyte and ask his advice about a tidal floodgate. Whyte describes his frustration that the man assumed he could so casually interrupt Whyte’s work to ask for free advice. But he also felt curiosity, which led him to accept the invitation. When they did eventually sit down to lunch, the man described how a tidal gate, installed several decades earlier in the sound, had interrupted the salmon migration pattern that was tens of thousands of years old. The man asked if Whyte had any ideas what they could do about it. Whyte had no answers but promised to think about it.

But that night, as Whyte reflected, he found himself thinking about the salmon, trapped in the tidal inlet, held back from a migration pattern they had known from centuries. Suddenly, reflecting on this image, he found himself doing something unusual. He started to write a poem. The poem opened with these lines:

For too many days now I have not written of the sea,

nor the rivers, nor the shifting currents

we find between the islands.¹

In the poem, Whyte asks himself why he isn’t paying attention to the deeper currents in his own life, the currents of what he really wants to do in his life.

Today, looking back on this poem, Whyte describes it as a pivotal moment, when he realized he needed to shift from his career in marine biology. The poem (which is in itself a form of story), and the reflection, gave him permission to ask a more powerful question about another possible future—an adjacent possibility—that he found more inspiring. It also gave him the roughest of maps about what to do about it. Today, Whyte is one of the best-known modern poets. He works not just with readers and writers, but also regularly with corporations to help them see their work in a new way.

By the way, Whyte did help restore the natural tidal opening to the stream, and the salmon returned to their ancient migratory path after decades of absence. He also helped create community awareness about the impact on the salmon and worked with local farmers to shift their practices to lessen their negative impact on the salmon. Today the salmon are an integral part of the local community. And the poem that Whyte composed back then ends with these lines:

But now I have spoken of that great sea,

The ocean of longing shifts through me

The blessed inner star of navigation

Moves in the dark sky above

And I am ready like the young salmon

To leave his river, blessed with hunger,

For a great journey on the drawing tide.²

In many ways, his poem reflects what we have been trying to say all along about strategic narrative for organizations.

Which Possibilities Aren’t We Seeing?

If science fiction can help large organizations see new possibilities and a poem could help Whyte find an alternate career, why can’t the tools we described help individuals see new possibilities and take action? The behavioral challenges at the individual level are very similar to those at the organizational level. Incremental search, habit, and fear hold back individuals just as much as they hold back organizations. Behavioral transformation tools can help us see new possibilities we aren’t now seeing; the tools can give us the courage to break free of our habits to do something meaningful about it.

We have begun to experiment with a process to effect a behavioral transformation at the individual level. We borrow some of the same tools simply because they are strong counteragents to the behavioral biases we identified. At the individual level, you start the process by using narratives to imagine a different future. As an individual, it may be difficult to access science fiction writers to imagine a new story about yourself (and you would need to provide them a good deal of source material). So instead, consider starting to gather inspirational stories from different sources: those written by yourself and those written by others.

For the latter, we recommend reaching out to several people whom know you well (the more the better) and ask them, “Using what you know about me (who I am, what makes me happy, what I am good at), could you write two or three short stories (one or two paragraphs) about what my life could look like in five years?” Ask them to write about the adjacent possible, that is, alternative futures that they imagine could make you happy. Tell them, “The goal is to stretch the imagination and really visualize what could be possible. So if two of your stories could really push the boundaries of what might make me happy, I would appreciate it.” Give people a short time frame (one or two weeks). If you have a significant other, ask for at least two or three stories.

Then sit down by yourself and work on writing stories about what your life could look like. Try to create a visual setting that describes what you do, how you do it, where you do it, and when you do it. The goal of the stories is to explore different possibilities, not to be all-inclusive. You aren’t trying to write a single story in which you live on a yacht and a publisher helicopters in to give you book offers, or whatever your dream is. Instead, you are trying to explore, in detail, single specific alternative futures. For example, when we do this exercise for ourselves, we create different life scenarios, such as life as a university professor, a pathbreaking neuroscientist, an independent author, a CEO, and a social-change agent. We also play with the forms. Nathan prefers short paragraphs or bullet points. Kyle prefers to write next year’s Christmas card, but he writes it in January and imagines what could have happened by the end of the year.

To get started on your own stories, you might try a series of prompts. For example, in your different stories, ask yourself questions like these: What would be my ideal future in five years (future view)? What would be an ideal daily-life work pattern (daily-life view)? What would be my ideal relationship (relationship view)? What outcomes would I like to have achieved in five years (outcomes view)? What would be the worst-case scenario for my life in five years (opposite view)?

If these prompts feel too generic, then try asking yourself more-specific questions, like these: Where do I live, and where could I live part-time? What do I want to learn? What hobbies do I have? If I could choose any job or craft, what would it be? What do I want my evenings to look like? Mornings? If I could make up a new daily routine, what would it be? How could I create a nonroutine? What would the most alive version of me do? The most playful version? What would I never do if I could avoid it?

In writing these stories, recall that it is easy to see your current work as the enemy and that the grass is always greener on the other side. Not everyone needs to move out of a career in marine biology and go into poetry. Most of us will probably stay in our current careers, partly to earn a living or support those we love, but we could stay in our careers a different way. For this reason, many of your questions should ask about seeing or doing your work in a different way or doing different work where you are. To see these things differently, you may find it helpful to identity a handful of heroes and explore how they work. What traits do you admire about how they live or think? Integrate these ideas into your narrative of how you work.

Accumulate these stories, both your own and those from friends who know you well, and pay attention to what resonates with you. Hopefully there are lots of offbeat details and complete fantasies. This is a good thing. You are trying to push the boundaries of your thinking beyond the everyday routine that you are executing. Then try to synthesize these stories into a single master narrative. The synthesis can be difficult; you can leave a few loose threads in the story. But over a modest period, try to answer for yourself which story describes the future you want to create in five years. Then write a story that describes this vision, your inner star. You will return to this story in the future, and you may revise it. But ultimately, the story should help you both see, and believe in, what is possible.

As you consolidate and synthesize your story, next lay out the artifact trail to get there. Draw on the steps we described earlier in the book. The trail should have specific, achievable small wins that you could accomplish in a week or a few weeks, followed by other, more aggressive, but measurable and achievable objectives, leading up to your eventual end goal.

So, for example, if you, like David Whyte, wanted to become an author, your artifact trail should not simply be to quit your job tomorrow (unless you have serious financial freedom to do so). It should contain the small action steps to get there. For example, every Saturday morning, you are going to commit to write for two hours the first thing in the morning. Two days a week, you will go into work a bit late or wake up a little earlier to write. Each month, in the evenings, you will read one book that either represents beautiful writing or talks about writing. These would be your early artifacts. Artifacts can be events or outcomes (e.g., I registered for a course), or they can be microhabits just as we described (e.g., on Saturday morning, I’m going to get up early and write). Later artifacts on your artifact trail would be to share your writing with others, to submit your writing to be published, and so forth. But whatever the specific content of your artifact trail, as we discussed earlier, it needs to be specific enough to allow you to overcome the key behavioral limitations—the routines that keep you doing the same thing every day.

Be sure to apply the right tools to counteract the fear of uncertainty. When leading a transformation, we proposed using experimental design and applied neuroscience as data-based indicators of the best direction for an innovation. These indicators provide positive feedback and signposts when you are pioneering new territory; they help you overcome the fear that often leads to retreat or retrenchment. The question then becomes what tools at the individual level you can use to counteract the fear that you will encounter.

It would be hard to use applied neuroscience to measure your own brain reactions. Instead, you may want to start by very clearly stating your premises (or reasons for making a transformative change), the obstacles that will create fear, and your plan for addressing them when the time comes. You might also create a personal real-options strategy (real options is a term borrowed from finance and strategy where you create multiple options to explore the future). For example, when we interviewed Ben Feringa, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, he shared a piece of wisdom we’ve heard echoed by many others who navigate uncertainty to do great things. Feringa tells his students, “You always want two feet to stand on—a safe project and a risky project. That way, if the risky project fails, you have a safe project to go back to. And if you don’t have a safe project, you will chase a failing risky project way too far down the road before calling it quits.”³ What are your own personal real options?

Finally, you may simply need to let go of the mindset that life is about eliminating risks and optimizing outcomes—a worldview that comes too easily to many of us—and recognize that uncertainty comes as a by-product of pursuing new possibilities. Discomfort with the uncertainty is normal, but try to play with the possibilities rather than control them. In other words, apply a bit of negative capability to see what the future may bring.