Andermatt, Switzerland / March, 2023
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Hello,
Welcome to Connecting Dots the newsletter that helps you lead innovation more successfully.
This month I share a live example of how leaders work with fear activated by technology.
Onwards,
BM
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LDR-GPT
Two weeks ago I participated in a Listening Post day with over 100 organizational psychology peers at INSEAD the global business school in Fontainebleau France. The goal of a Listening Post is to share, hear and reflect upon what is in the collective mind. It starts with the simple question of what is confusing people or giving them enthusiasm in life.
As this event was at a business school it was of course about leadership and the interwoven experience of work and life. Participants came from a wide range of countries, industries and personal situations.
The goal of a Listening Post is to see what collective themes emerge intellectually and what reactions they trigger experientially. It starts by asking what is on people’s minds about work, life, society and beyond to identify themes.
As the day went on I was not surprised that next-generation artificial intelligence was on the minds of many people. Both from long-term practitioners working with artificial intelligence and those new to the topic with the popularization of ChatGPT or GPT4.
However, I was surprised by the intensity of the reactions. There was profound anxiety and distress evident in how people were thinking about, perceiving and experiencing these innovative technologies. The best word to summarize the reaction was annihilation.
An intense emotion, annihilation is the total destruction of something caused by an external force. The negative projections on the technology shook me. It was not the tech itself but the idealization and demonization of what it means and the fantasies of what it might cause at deeply personal levels:
Annihilation of job
Annihilation of competence
Annihilation of identity
Annihilation of control
Annihilation of safety
Annihilation of family
Annihilation of community
What struck me is that these people are the ones in charge. Many are advanced technical experts with deep applied experiences working with the technology. Yet the techno-anxiety was profound. Being responsible for the benefits and costs of new technology and its innovative applications was overwhelming.
I share this vignette as an illustration of the reactions activated by innovation. It’s what leaders need to negotiate and navigate within themselves and with others in their teams, their organizations and society at large.
Individually and collectively innovation activates fear. Often people blame fear as the reason for innovation underachievement. But that overlooks the reality that fear is a normal reaction to any potential perceived loss. This is a logical reaction given innovation’s creative destruction must destroy something for someone.
The sophisticated leader engages with fear, and the unsophisticated ignore fear or have delusional dreams of eliminating fear. Yet there is a big difference between being aware of fear to work with it and being consumed by fear to be disconnected from reality by it.
The goal isn’t to eliminate but separate hot emotions from cold reactions. A lot of innovation arguably moves too fast or is too pushy. It doesn’t allow people to see possibilities, process implications, integrate into programs and work through to make something new a reality.
Neurotic impatience is a defence against taking responsibility for the work and working through the emotional responses of others. Let’s look at someone exceptional at delivering innovative change in the face of fear—Raymond Loewy.
Loewy was one of America’s most innovative business leaders between the first and second world Wars. He coined the phrase MAYA—Most Advanced Yet Acceptable.
In that phrase, he accepted technical progress outstrips our capacity to make sense of it and that we need to respect it. The task of leadership is stress testing to discover what’s possible and what is the most advanced possibility society, an organization or a team can accept.
It is the innovation protagonist’s job to observe and sense what are the most advanced yet acceptable ideas you can progress. Also, to be very sensitive and respectful to how confronting technical progress can be, even for highly innovative and enthusiastic professionals.
During the day of the listening post, because there wasn’t a compression of time, as participants worked through their fears related to technology the benefits and creative mitigation of risk emerged. It became generative, optimistic and inspiring.
It was like a smouldering fireplace filling the air with smoke in the morning. By expelling the smoky fears we didn’t run from the room but rather opened windows to let them dissipate. As fresh air entered the space it vitalized the group and enabled the leaders to move from anxious fear to constructive optimism.
The point is, as a leader to expect and work with the fears that emerged from new possibilities brought about by innovation. The fear isn’t “bad” but part of the normal process of people working through what it means, what they can do and how they can drive constructive change.
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Leadership Gym
As a leader, receiving and working with other people's projections is challenging. Especially when they are negative and amplified by fear. To work with these hot reactions start by working with your own responses.
The feel-think-act triangle is a helpful tool to do so. If you just feel and act, you are just as consumed by fear as others. If you interject think between feel and act you can better process for yourself so you can act rather than react. It can happen in fractions of a second so you can deduce if what you feel and what you think are reconciled or if one is overwhelming the other.
Intellectually the feel-think-act triangle concept is easy to grasp. In practice, you “sharpen the blade” by applying the triangle in highly emotional situations where you sense and help the team work out what is Most Advanced Yet Acceptable.
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Learn more about how to develop more innovative leaders.
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