What we learned in our business, to help you with yours
Each year, our boutique consultancy does a wide variety of work around the world.
We’ve given keynotes about the nature of courage. Helped companies attract, develop and retain talent by improving culture. Guided the creation of purpose and values. And executed large rebranding and product launch initiatives.
We spent 2022 training and working with the brightest leaders in dozens of Fortune 500 companies in a plethora of industries, from software to fashion to large medical service organizations. In this way, we get a unique view of business trends around the world.
Towards the end of each year, we reflect on what our clients’ needs have been to help us identify what the future may look like.
Research helps us shape not only our business but us as humans.
In fact, we love research-backed knowledge so much, we recently launched the world’s biggest academic study on the psychological nature of courage in the workplace (take our 5-min study here!)
Questions we ask every year
After being down in the trees in conference rooms around the world, research helps us climb up to the top of the tallest tree to look down at the entire forest.
From this viewpoint, we can see patterns and trends to make solid predictions for next year in the world of innovation, creativity and impact.
We ask questions like:
- What did we learn from all our projects this year?
- What did we think would happen, but didn’t?
- What didn’t we think would happen, but did?
- What did our experiences teach us to be a better company and better humans?
Think - Plan - Do - Review
We see research as a critical component in a virtuous business cycle, where leaders can use data to:
Think
Research helps uncover new information to think about the future and goals differently.
Ask:
“Based on the research, how should we now think about (the customer’s needs, the marketplace, … )?”
Plan
Reflecting on the research, write down what the year taught you and look at where those learnings seem to be pointing the ship.
Think from the perspective of your future company rather than the present one. How is the future telling you to solve today’s problems or needs and visions?
Write your plan in a semi-permanent marker, remembering the need to stay agile as situations change constantly.
Do
Courage your energy, grab the right people on your team and dig in to get to work on your action plan!
Review
And the circle continues! Gather real-time learnings along the way.
Ask: “What are the ‘points of light’ that seem to illuminate your way forward?”
And start to think differently all over again!
2022 in a nutshell
Courageous Learnings
- People are aware of the rate and quantity of change, but many don’t know what to do about it.
- Creativity is inseparable from uncertainty.
- Necessity is the mother of all invention.
- Sometimes leaning into an argument is the best way to get a breakthrough.
- Don’t expect agreement from your team, but expect acceptance.
- There can’t be a committed yes, if people don’t have the ability to say no.
- Put the humans you’re working with above the task at hand (relational versus transactional).
- A healthy company, team and mindset climate is not automatic.
Be Courageous Year-in-Review Stats
Such as social media, mining, fashion, automotive, tech, gaming, insurance, financial services, oil distribution, transportation, agriculture, chemicals, education, drone transportation, retail, non-governmental Organizations (NGO), Fast Foods sector
Overall Themes
This past year was all about coming (back) together to face the future. 2022 was about exposing and overcoming fragilities as businesses decided what next thing was most important and how to take action. It was about creative problem-solving, and making space to heal our culture post-pandemic.
FUTURE-READY
Getting leaders ready for an uncertain tomorrow
COURAGE
How to reach and activate what’s inside all of us
ANTIFRAGILE
Fortifying the core and looking for future options
AGILE / DESIGN THINKING
Creative problem solving and concept prototyping
ESSENTIALISM
Identifying and focusing on what is truly necessary
OVERCOMING TRAUMAS
Healing the wounded workforce post-pandemic
BUILDING NETWORKS AND ECOSYSTEMS
Culture transformation
How our insights that will lead us into 2023
- In seeing a bubbling up in the interest of essentialism, we have built programs to make sure to fulfill this need even more next year.
- In recognizing the importance of a post-pandemic climate, facilitation is a superpower that leaders need to create healthy conditions to have creative and conflicted conversations within a team.
- 2023 will be – needs to be – the year of intuition and empathy.
Themes by Service
Much of our “Experiences” work this past year was mindset, connections, and team alignment-oriented.
Companies needed help getting their teams back on the same page, both interpersonally and with setting goals after the pandemic. People around the world experienced enormous isolation and loss, leading to the focus of 2022 being establishing connections within teams again and planning for the future.
Our Experiences helped teams build bridges to understand how to lead in a future that is speeding our way. We showed leaders how to predict the future (as best as possible) andhow to lead with confidence into the unknown by showing all the different types of courage they have within themselves to draw from.
Predictions for 2023:
Alignment and action will likely be focus areas. People are wanting to know this:
Now that I know what I want to do – either professionally with my business or team and in my own life, how do I make it happen?
A large focus this past year has surrounded creating and installing culture change and transformation within organizations, as well as consulting on how people can be better leaders for a better world (impact and sustainability).
More consulting themes included:
- Purpose and brand platform work
- Setting strong strategic goals
- Planting a stake in the future
- Activation plans
- Turning “wanted behaviors” within companies into “habits”
- Rolling out agile leadership
- Customer journey mapping
- Culture transformation
- Road maps and timelines for accountability and meaningful action
Exponential changes (like technology advancements) happening around us are resulting in monumental changes in human behavior. People within companies and their consumers’ needs and wants in the world are different now than the way they were. Old systems will no longer work.
Predictions for 2023:
We expect we’ll be asked to help teams adapt their systems or create new ones for the future. For example, instituting a healthy version of hybrid working, creating new reward structures for future-ready leadership, and helping teams develop a climate that allows people to express themselves more openly. The war on talent will continue, so we will help teams up-skill the future, unlearn old methods, and learn new ones.
Whether coaching one-on-one or in a group, in 2022 we helped people elevate, planting seeds to help shift towards their goal. We loved being an accountability partner in reaching those goals.
Every executive we coached needed help with managing their inbound versus outbound productivity. (Inbound productivity being all the demands others put on you, and outbound being working on what’s important to you.)
All had visions they wanted to work toward, and we helped them structure their lives to keep their bodies and minds at an optimal state, and reminding them that someone else’s bad planning should not become their emergency.
Predictions for 2023:
We predict mental health continues to be at the top of the list on what is most important within work teams. All the evidence we gathered in 2022 showed us that the old way of working isn’t healthy. We expect to help executives evaluate and act on the question, “Is this where I want to be?”
In our training programs, we noticed group leaders in the last year wanting major mindset shifts within their teams for more creative, courageous collaboration. Themes have included:
- How to get an entire organization to care about company goals?
- How do we go from friction to flow?
- How to create healthier, positive behavioral habits within an organization?
- How do we increase creative problem-solving, risk-taking and collaboration?
Predictions for 2023:
We foresee the need for strong facilitation skills within groups to be in even more demand. We expect to help teams figure out where friction points are, highlighting their core strengths and help them gather all the superpowers they have to get over obstacles on the customer journey map. We also expect to start training leaders how to better facilitate their teams in meetings, for the best possible outcomes.
Can you tell how much we love research, and how it can translate into more solid decisions? In the last year, we’ve worked with large companies to study their company cultures. The goal of this work was to uncover opportunities to create more cohesive teams which lead to bigger innovation, higher productivity, and employee loyalty.
We gave over 3,000 surveys, and these were the biggest pain points employees had with management and company culture.
- Empathy:
Management is so focused on getting stuff done, they’re forgetting to ask, “How are you doing?” - Boundary-setting:
Employees are bothered by the lack of boundaries between work and home, being contacted at all hours, with very little structure on what they feel they can say no to or ignore until the next day. - Candor:
Teams feel like they aren’t able to express what they were feeling, such as, “That’s overwhelming, I can’t take that on right now.” There’s a fear that if they can’t manage the pressure, they could lose their job. - Clarity:
As leaders navigate resetting the future direction and systems of their companies in a post-pandemic world, employees at all levels within the organization struggle with a lack of clarity and direction and desire more transparency and inclusion in the creation of the future.
Predictions for 2023:
We predict we’ll continue helping companies discover what opportunities there are for better working conditions, lower turnover, and more collaborative teams who trust each other – a necessary environment for courageous thinking! We’ll continue to hold interviews, surveys and share themes and insights in informative, evaluative, and measurement decision-making.
COURAGEOUS CONTENT
In 2022 we launched our first monthly newsletter, The Bridge, for a whole year of themed courageous insights and content. In reviewing our highest trafficked blogs and most clicked on articles, we saw people engage most with the tools they could use to help them develop their’s and their team’s purpose, mindset, and heal from traumas experienced during the pandemic.
TOP VIEWED ARTICLES:
MOST POPULAR NEWSLETTER THEMES:
Mission, Mindset, and Energy
Next year, we plan to build out content and create more tools that speak to those needs as well as help activate the growth people achieved this year and put it to action. 2023 will be the year of up-skilling and action!
Heading into 2023: Your State of the Union interview tool
In creating the future you want for yourself and your team, think about the future state you’re trying to achieve. Use research to understand where some of the most glaring holes can be turned into opportunities.
Run your team through the questions in our free State of the Union Interview Guide.
With this knowledge, you’ll be able to ascertain the possible consistencies and inconsistencies in your team’s thinking. Learn from your teams’ minds and hearts. Increasing your empathic accuracy and gleaning these insights will get you set up for the year to come and get your team aligned into action!
Need help in any of these areas? Reach out!
