Weigh Anchor!
Things change. We all know this from personal experience, never mind the copious quips and quotes from ancients, contemporaries and all points in-between on the subject. However, this only becomes truly interesting, and relevant, when we remember our tendency to forget that things change. Only knowing that things change does not seem to help decision-makers, nor do attempts to pinpoint what will change or how it will do so.
In business, a source of uncertainty has been the changes associated with converging technologies and economies (and the related cultures). The information and entertainment businesses have been in turmoil over the past five to ten years as technology, and end-users, redefine how value is delivered and extracted. The same goes for telecommunications and personal computers. Not a single industry has escaped some level of redefinition due to technology. The convergence of cultures, via globalization, in the last ten to twenty years has also expedited uncertainty. Increased economic interdependence among diverse geographies and shifting global economic flows are examples of changing pressures that are full of cultural uncertainty.
De-anchoring can provide the foundation when confronting the uncertainty associated with current business, political, cultural and political change. This is a distinct move away from relying on experience. It is no longer a question of what you know and what you did, but what can you learn and what you could do. This entails resisting the temptation to make decisions on fixed perceptions, models or "conventional wisdom" (AKA, what-everyone-else-does). De-anchoring demands flexibility in both thought and action, accepting the notion that there is no absolute answer.
Commit to a goal or a strategy. In doing so remember there are multiple paths forward that can lead to success. The multiple paths, between now and fulfillment, are unblazed and are unique to the time, space and participants. Right now, there is more than one future. Some futures contain a committed goal or strategy and some do not. It is not possible to choose a specific determined linear path towards success. It is possible to make choices that influence the distribution of the multiple paths forward that lead towards success.
Below are actions that promote de-anchoring
- Choose a goal or strategy that has multiple paths forward and where resulting achievements and successes can be directly influenced. Avoid goals or strategies that require anchoring and absoluteness or ones that require a static, linear mindset.
- Gather information, data and insight from outside the operating paradigm, focusing on the present and future. Seek information, data and insight that could prevent achievement or success, i.e. the routes to falsification.
- Keep asking, "What are the decisions and actions that directly influence achievement or success, which can be made now?"
- When change comes, release the ego from yesterday's decisions.
- Become very interested in something that is deemed irrelevant or impossible to change (asymmetry) by industry establishment or convention. Distinguish between what works today and what will excel tomorrow.
CALEB MCCANN
Orginally publsihed April 15, 2008