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Sheila, VP – HR of a large IT company reached out to me feeling nervous and anxious. She was stressed because in one of the meetings, the CEO had told her that she was not strategic and her team needs to be innovative for the company to be more resilient. Moreover the learning management system what the company had heavily invested in was not getting the anticipated traction. She was asked to come up with innovative ideas to get employees on board. She was afraid she might lose her job.

Sheila was a very driven, ambitious lady and delivered most of her projects on time and budget. Her results oriented approach got her many awards but now she was feeling stuck. She did not know what to do? Where to start? How to get the team to innovate? How to build resilience?

Senior leaders often want to know how to disrupt, how to thrive especially in uncertainty? It is more critical now than ever to help your organization increase resilience.

In his fantastic book, ‘The Invincible Company’, Alex Osterwalder talks about the Explore-Exploit Continuum. He says business activities live on an uncertainty continuum. Creating new growth engines and managing existing business(es) are on opposite ends of this continuum. In their research, they found that companies who are successful and able to survive disruption are excellent at simultaneously managing the entire continuum from exploring new businesses to exploiting existing ones.

The same principle applies for individuals. To be world-class, we need to be executing and exploring both; oscillating on the Explore-Execute spectrum. Only execution leaves us unprepared for the future and only exploration leaves us with untested ideas. I have seen many leaders optimizing for efficiency and growth ignoring the creative and exploratory side.

To be at your best you need both, the rational and creative side of your brain to be active. When you are able to operate using both the modes, you become more adapt to embracing uncertainty, you are able to zoom out on the big picture and zoom in to get into the details. Your strategic thinking improves. You are able to identify the signal from noise. You are able to make better decisions.

Here are 3 simple steps to activate your creative genius:

1. Intent – Set an intention to be open and curious.
2. Explore – Devote time to explore a new territory in your personal or professional realm.
3. Reflect – Reflect and recognize your own patterns of thinking and behavior.

When regular practice, you can strengthen your neural pathway of exploration. When you are able to skillfully juggle between exploration and execution, you are in a better position to connect the dots between past, present and future. You strengthen your resilience muscle as an individual and organization.

For Sheila, her exploratory side was dormant. We worked with Sheila on ways to activate her exploratory side of the brain and tap into her creative potential. It began with her setting an intention to experiment being exploratory and curious. She is now practicing new ways of being with her team. She has also set up an idea generation meeting with her team to explore new ideas without judging one another. I am already noticing a shift in her thinking style and her team is appreciating her new outlook which is great.

Where are you on the Explore-Execute spectrum?

What do you default to?

What shifts you need to make?