Fearlessness vs Risk Management — guess what shapes future-ready organizations?

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During a conversation with the innovative CEO of a very successful future ready company, Second Muse , Carrie Freeman shared one of her insights around the future of work: “today’s younger generations have no fear. They don’t worry about being without a job for a while despite their student loan hanging over their heads. They are happy to wait a year or two in experience-mode before committing to their next, meaningful, job.”

What a contrast with the current senior leadership of companies whose main investment is instead in risk-management.

Now before I judge these older “fearful” individuals let’s be fair to them: their future was clear, the next steps were apparently daring but actually quite linear and likely to succeed. It was easier to imagine or predict what would happen next, or even five years down the line.

Now instead, what might happen next month is put in question. Uncertainty reigns. It is the most natural reaction to have, to want to cling of the few certainties, or even more common to build them or better said to have the illusion of building the certainty they need. This leads very naturally to building dams, protecting against the wave of uncertainty, and opting for risk-management.

But you must admit that it is fairly, let’s say, illogical to invest time and resources protecting yourself from a future when you have no idea what it might look like. Silly, useless and of course … human.

Being future fearing, conservative in your innovation doing more of the same only bigger is a common trend. John Sanei shared with me in a recent conversation the case of Gillette. They kept adding an extra blade to their razors (I think there are now five or six blades?) making more of something good until they price themselves out of the market. In comes the one dollar shave club where they will change your old blade every month for one dollar: a new fear-less, disruptive business model that kills the old fearful, conservative one.

So there you have this new fear-less attitude, well not so new, as also Facebook, Instagram, Zoom, Tesla, Uber, Heura Foods etc etc are all very successful companies who decided not to lose time with useless risk management and instead embrace or actually create the future with a worry-less open attitude.

In this article by Kate Morgan (and many other articles) we see this year a record number of people leaving their jobs, either for a pause and rethink or for better fitting more purposeful jobs. It shows that worry about the future is less of a priority in making good decisions, specially amongst younger and it seems wiser people who decide to improve their quality of life. (and that really does not sound like a bad idea at all!)

Great then let’s go and all be fearless!

Well not so easy.

We are human after all and just switching to fearlessness, regardless of how millions of younger generations might already be there is not so straightforward.

So how can we move to that necessary and much better mindset?

I would really be curious to read your own comments on how you think we can create more fearless organizations. Here is what I have found out so far, also using common sense, never a tool to be underestimated.

• You reduce fear, when you don’t worry about the future.
• When you are working in a purpose-driven, values-based culture that permeates all you do: objectives, decision making, relationships, communication, co-creation…
• When you feel that you are in a trusting environment.
• When you have confidence that the people around you (and yourself included) are in the best position to take the best possible actions … and that they will not be the perfect solution, but a very good one.
• Where everyone is encouraged to be and accompanied to be the best version of their selves creating the conditions that will make them thrive.
• You are less fearful when you are in control, at the very least of your attitude and decisions.
• When you feel that those around you will not be judging you.
• Where the question “What if” is asked more often than the statement “This is why it won’t work” is made.

I often mention what happened to the mood and motivation of a very good friend of mine who works at Microsoft in Milan. He was always stressed out and complaining of the pressure of the “Steve Ballmer” atmosphere at work and recently I met him again and he was brimming with a smile when answering my question “how’s work these days?” That is because of the new push to make mistakes that Satya Nadella has now introduced at Microsoft. The logic being that if no one is making mistakes, then no one is pushing boundaries, no one is innovating and Microsoft with become flat and old and out of business soon. So people are encouraged to make mistakes AND to learn from them.

That has revolutionised the mood there and in my friend’s eagerness to go to work every day and try new cool (and a couple of crazy) things out from time to time.

Moving from reductive (and useless) risk management to less fearful, future-enabling, future-ready organizations is something I am part of in the communities where I operate.

This is important, this is what will decide our futures.

This is why I would love to learn from you about all that will accelerate this thriving future that is in our hands to create. Can you help me / us?