September 27, 2021

Episode 7:1 Well-known Management Strategist and Author John Hagel Discusses Overcoming Fear

27 minutes

After 40 years in Silicon Valley writing and consulting on innovation and technology, John Hagel undertakes the most dominant emotion on the planet in his book Journey Beyond Fear. Learn how senior living operators can tap into endless opportunities by pushing past the limitations of fear to change and innovate.

About John

John is a management consultant, entrepreneur, speaker, and author. He is driven by a desire to help individuals and institutions around the world increase their impact in a rapidly changing world. After recently retiring from Deloitte as a partner, he founded a new company, Beyond Our Edge, LLC, that works with companies and people who are seeking to anticipate the future and magnify their impact.

While at Deloitte, John was the founder and chairman of the Silicon Valley-based Deloitte Center for the Edge, focusing on identifying emerging business opportunities that are not yet on the CEO’s agenda. Before joining Deloitte, John was an independent consultant and writer and prior to that was a principal at McKinsey & Company and a leader of their Strategy Practice as well as the founder of their E-Commerce Practice. John has served as senior vice president of strategy at Atari, Inc., and is the founder of two Silicon Valley startups.

John is also a faculty member at Singularity University where he gives frequent talks on the mounting performance pressure created by digital technology and promising approaches to help traditional companies make the transition from a linear to an exponential world. He is also on the Board of Trustees at the Santa Fe Institute, an organization that conducts leading edge research on complex adaptive systems. He has also led a number of initiatives regarding business transformation with the World Economic Forum.

Key Takeaways

The emotion of fear is completely understandable given the paradox of the Big Shift. Exponentially expanding opportunity creates mounting performance pressure as it intensifies competition and accelerates the pace of change.

The three pillars of overcoming fear are narrative, passion, and platforms:

Stories and narratives are different. Stories are self-contained, have a beginning, middle and end, and are not about you. A narrative is open-ended; there is no resolution. A personal narrative is a catalyst in the journey beyond fear.

Passion is a common element in extreme performance improvement—The Passion of The Explorer is fuel.

Learning platforms require action and people acting together.

Hagel’s “zoom in zoom out” approach overcomes fear by focusing on short-term action that accelerates movement for longer-term opportunity.

Find an edge to your existing business rather than changing the existing core and scale to the point where it could become the new core of your business.

Moving beyond the limitations of fear is less about strategy and more about psychology because the “antibodies” that exists in large institutions are resistant to change.

There is an opportunity for senior living operators to become trusted advisors. Greater value leads to greater access.

...more

View all episodes

By Nancy Griffin

1111 ratings