Stop, Ask, Explore

Learn to Navigate Change in Times of Uncertainty

Joan P. Ball

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781398605619
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Interruptions and disruptions are a threshold to uncharted territory. You can learn to navigate uncertain transitions - and to flourish in times of unrelenting change. This book offers readers a practical framework for navigating life's inevitable turning points, thresholds and transitions - at work, at home and in between. Drawing upon more than a decade of research and work with established and emerging leaders across the globe, leadership consultant, Joan P. Ball invites you to reimagine your relationship with uncertainty and recognize the creative potential that exists in the messy middle between life's inevitable What Now? Moments and what comes next. Stop, Ask, Explore is a lively and eye-opening book that will allow you to more effectively engage interruptions and disruptions and develop the experimental mindset needed to flourish in an era of unrelenting and exponential change. Discover the power of curiosity, wayfinding, and discernment to make sense of uncharted territory and learn to thrive in times of uncertainty.

Part One

Stop

A note to the reader as you begin ‘Stop’

If you are skeptical of stopping in the face of change and uncertainty, then you are entering into this section of the book with just the right attitude. For a variety of conscious and unconscious reasons, pausing in the face of uncertainty and change can feel counterintuitive—even dangerous. In this section I invite you to explore the relationship that you and those you engage with professionally and personally have with uncertainty, transitions and change. These What Now? Moments are inevitable, so understanding who we are and where we hope to go at points of inflection is a practice we need to cultivate in ourselves and others in times of persistent change. I hope you will take advantage of the prompts, mark up the book, and engage with the work in a way that allows you to be challenged and to challenge back. This is your journey—and I’m honored to be part of it.

Here’s to a healthy pause,

CHAPTER TWO

Don’t follow your passion

Dispassionate curiosity and active resilience

Imagine you’re sitting on this beach.” I’m standing beneath a floor-to-ceiling video screen projecting a loop of an empty beach and the blue sky on a beautiful sunny day. The sound of waves lapping on clean white sand fills the room where a group of social enterprise leaders are gathered for a workshop at the Centre for Social Innovation in New York City. I offer a series of prompts—pausing briefly between each to make space for the participants to imagine themselves in the scenario.

“What do you see?” I ask them.

“Is anyone there with you?”

“How do you feel?”

Whether it’s due to the calming sound of the waves, the clear blue sky on the horizon, or their desire to place themselves in the relaxing scene, the responses start slowly and gradually pick up steam. Some participants imagine beaches filled with colorful umbrellas, cool drinks and island music. Others a quiet place where they can enjoy some solitude. As the stories become more detailed and personal, people loosen up and begin to have a little fun with it. They smile and laugh together, comparing notes about hanging out with friends and family or much-needed rest and relaxation. Despite being strangers only minutes earlier, momentum builds, and ideas start to flow effortlessly. Individuals come together to combine experiences and weave stories of larger beach parties.

I give them some time to enjoy each other and their faux beach vacations before I change the image on the screen. The horizon is the same, but in the second scenario a nearly capsized sailboat can be seen at the center of the image. The sea is calm, and the boat appears to be recently abandoned. “Now,” I say. “Imagine you’re sitting on the same beach, but you just survived a boating accident. You’re soaking wet, full of sand and feeling winded after swimming to shore. What Now?”

I’ve run this exercise with hundreds of people—from students to leaders and their teams—and the results are remarkably similar. The transition from playful imagining to hard-nosed problem solving happens in an instant. People who were laughing together a moment earlier shift their tone and body language to postures that say, “Let’s get down to business.”

Unlike the generative, upbeat conversations that tend to bubble up from the first beach fantasy prompt, the shipwreck conversations generally provoke the creation of small subgroups who develop concrete plans with surprising speed. Some even take on a mildly combative tone as they debate which approach to take in the face of a fictional What Now? Moment.

Without any guidance beyond the initial prompts, two primary groups tend to emerge in the shipwreck scenario. I call them the rescuers and the survivalists. The rescuers favor taking immediate steps to get off the island. “We should draw a big SOS in the sand or swim out to the boat to see if there are flares, or start a signal fire,” they say, as they consider how best to connect with a passing ship or plane passing overhead. “No, no,” the survivalists tell them. “We need to build a shelter and find food and water before the sun goes down.” The more time I allow for this part of the exercise, the more assured the two factions become that their approach is the right one and the more animated they are in their defense of their chosen position. As individual and group confidence grows, the sense that the others simply don’t see the (completely fictional) situation clearly tends to emerge.

As the debate continues, a third, less cohesive, group of people emerges organically—the disengaged. These people quietly pick up their phones, excuse themselves to go to the bathroom, or otherwise pull out of the exercise. Some chat together, while others sit alone doing other work or watching the scene unfold from across the room. I walk around and ask them individually or in small groups how they would respond to the scenario. Most say that they’d wait to see how things played out and follow the group decision. Others say they would have already left the beach by themselves or with a small group to explore the rest of the island. Eventually, I break into the debate between the rescuers and survivalists to ask a clarifying question:

“What if there’s a resort on the other side of the island?”

The humble pause that follows is simply delightful. People who were certain of their view of the situation a moment before smile sheepishly as they look around at one another. Most are quick to admit that in their haste they jumped to solution-finding before thinking through the problem (although, a few always blame the scenario and my “unclear instructions”). The disengaged crowd finally speaks up—often glibly—saying they would have already found the resort and been on the deck with a cool drink waiting for the others to figure it out.

QUESTION FOR REFLECTION

What was your first thought about the best response to the beach scenario?

The point of the exercise becomes clear as the larger groups admit that they jumped the gun. Most smile and say I “got” them. Wherever they land, the group is now primed to discuss the potential perils of reacting to disruption quickly, without thinking. We discuss how we often perceive What Now? Moments as a threat that can prompt a fight (take steps to survive), flight (seek rescue) or freeze (opt out) reaction. The “stop” in stop, ask, explore prompts us to acknowledge that initial reaction, and points to the value of developing a practice that helps to create space between our first, often emotional, reaction to threat and a response that is informed by both our emotions AND our circumstances—even when time is of the essence.

Of course, that can be easier said than done.

Practicing stop in a world that wants go

• “I don’t have time to stop!”
• “I don’t need to stop!”
• “I’m already stuck and you’re asking me to stop—I need to figure out how to get going!”

These are three of the most common reactions I observe when I invite people to consider intentionally stopping at the point of impact of a What Now? Moment. The exclamation points are not for effect. The call to stop is alarming for many people. It sparks reactions that lead people to wonder if I’m either naive or delusional by even hinting at the suggestion. How could I possibly think that to stop could be the right option for their situation? Implied (and sometimes stated) in this response is that I have no idea what I’m talking about or what they are going through. If I did, they tell me, I wouldn’t dare to think they have the option, interest, or necessity to stop.

You may be thinking the same thing yourself as you read this.

Neuroscientists, psychologists, and others who plumb the depths of the human brain to understand how we tick are making remarkable strides in learning about what happens in our minds and bodies when we face a perceived threat. We know more than ever about the brain: which parts are active, what responses lead to more or less activity, the involvement of the nervous system, and the ways our bodies drive our thoughts, and our thoughts drive our bodies (Hartley et al, 2010). Yet, this emerging understanding of the physiology and psychology of perceived threat does little to help us with the practical matter of acknowledging that, when we’re presented with uncertain circumstances, even the most experienced and well-trained among us can default to knee-jerk reactions.

These instinctive reactions can be helpful sometimes. Like when we pull our hand away when it gets too close to a hot stove, or we rush a child to the hospital when they break their arm playing on the playground. It makes sense to take these actions because we know that burns are worth avoiding and that broken bones need to be set. But what happens when our past experiences don’t fully inform our understanding of future challenges and we need to adapt to an uncertain environment? How can we act quickly to bring both our past experience and the emerging reality of a changing situation to bear in a way that moves from reaction to response? Let’s consider these questions through the lens of our firefighter example.

Through intense scenario planning and hard-lived experience, firefighters develop a deep understanding of how fires work. They know what makes them spread and how changing temperatures and different fuel sources influence smoke and potential for backdrafts and explosions. They are trained to determine the best time of day or night to hand off from one team to another without losing ground on a rapidly spreading blaze. There are few individuals or teams who are more time-compressed than firefighters. Yet, despite all of their individual and collective talent and experience—and in spite of all of that time pressure—no firefighter rolls onto the scene, jumps out of the truck and immediately starts fighting the fire.

Even with lives and property on the line, first responders and others who work in high-threat environments know that they need to ground themselves and gain an understanding of the situation before deciding how best to respond. They know that each scene has nuances that inform how best to approach the emergency. They are trained to know that their bodies and minds are operating in high alert and recognize that they need to draw on a balance of confidence in their own abilities and the humility to understand that, while they know about fire, they do not know the particulars about this fire. A gas fire is not the same as a forest fire which is not the same as an oil fire. Every scene is different, so learning to stop and assess the contours of an emerging situation is fundamental to an effective response to a fire emergency.

While not every What Now? Moment is a house on fire, there is a lot we can learn from emergency responders about dealing with change and uncertain transitions. Each one is different, so learning to stop and assess the contours of an emerging professional or personal disruption or interruption is fundamental to an effective response. We need to consider a combination of expertise and prior understanding and ground it in the humility to accept that our experience and expertise may be more or less relevant to inform our actions in the new environment. Getting there requires us to bust a few myths about change that are repeated so often that it’s easy to believe they are true.

Change Myth #1: Change and uncertainty are scary

From the moment you open your ...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• 01 What Now? Moments and navigating uncharted territory
• Part One Stop
• 02 Don’t follow your passion: Dispassionate curiosity and active resilience
• 03 Don’t pivot: Active waiting and minding our metaphors
• 04 Lost in transition: Creating learning space to get your bearings
• Part Two Ask
• 05 Zoom in: Rigorous self-awareness and making sense of new terrain
• 06 Zoom out: Wayfinding from the outside in
• 07 What’s possible? Identify possibilities and put everything on the altar
• Part Three Explore
• 08 Learn by doing: The art and science of experimentation
• 09 Now pivot! From exploration to execution
• 10 Now follow your passion!
• 11 What Now? Moments and life in uncharted territory
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• A Emotion regulation
• B Resilience
• C Conceptual metaphor
• D Transformative learning and threshold concepts
• E Sensemaking
• F Wayfinding and navigation
• G Participatory action research
• H Stop, ask and further exploration
• References
• Acknowledgments
• About the author
• Disclosures
• Index