What's Holding You Back? 2040's Ideas and Innovations, Issue 81
What’s Holding You Back?
Issue 81, Nov 10, 2022
An important part of 2040’s practice with our clients is to use an open mind in applying intelligence and solutions from one sector to another. The concept of systems thinking is to look at the world holistically and find the intersections of new ideas and trends that paint a larger picture of an organizational landscape.
By habit, we often become so focused on the day-to-day and keeping our nose to the grindstone that we don’t notice what’s around us. At 2040, we stress the importance of looking outside-in, a reverse perspective from being mired in the day-to-day hot mess of our lives trapped in our own version of reality that typically reflects institutional/legacy knowledge.
Taking the outside-in approach opens the window to consider how others perceive an organization and its offerings, which may be significantly different than what those inside the organization might believe.
Looking at the world holistically is an outside-in perspective and integral to systems thinking. The world and organizations operate on several types of systems. In our book, The Truth About Transformation, we explain how systems thinking clarifies the interdependent systems of the Macro (world, region, country, locality), Meso (the organization), and the Micro (individual workers, customers and stakeholders). We offer examples and advice on how to operate informed by a larger picture, which is so valuable to change, transformation, leadership, and management.
So, when we learned about a new study by Western Governors University of students returning to complete their education, we quickly saw the parallels between their barriers to continuing education with the barriers to personal and professional growth in organizations. The nine barriers identified by the study are often overlooked by management, with the unfortunate outcome of repressing change, transformation, and success. We cover more about the challenge of barriers and how to and overcome them in our book, The Truth About Transformation. Explore a free preview on Amazon.
The barriers and ways to overcome them may sound very familiar, both personally and to teams, which leads us to believe that the barriers to success are pretty much universal although understanding them is often situational or worse, we are completely unaware of them.
Continue to the full article and see what barriers may be holding you back>