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Innovation/Global Risk
Managers: You Are Missing Opportunities Daily! Unfreeze!
By Shlomo Maital
A common reaction to crisis, among ordinary people, is simply to freeze. Facing danger, risk or threat, many of us simply become incapable of doing anything.
Apparently, this is equally true of highly-paid executives. A new study by the global consulting firm McKinsey, published in the September 2011 issue of McKinsey Quarterly, * reveals that “executives are foregoing opportunities that, despite today’s volatility and uncertainty, are probably worthwhile”.
According to McKinsey’s global survey of CEO’s, two-thirds of the respondents believe that their companies are underinvesting in product development. This, despite the well-known finding that recession and its aftermath are the times when competitive rankings within industries change the most, with the ‘bottom feeders’ tending to rise, and the ‘top teams’ tending to fall. The firms that improve their market share and competitive position are those that seize opportunities inherent in global crises.
Last year, together with my colleague D.V.R. Seshadri, I published the book Global Risk/Global Opportunity, showing how talented managers and entrepreneurs can transform global risk into massive opportunities. Apparently, according to McKinsey, nobody read the book or is even interested. Like us ordinary people, those who lead global businesses seem to be reacting to global crisis, volatility and uncertainty simply by ‘freezing’ – by avoiding any risky investments or product development programs. In general, facing danger, ‘freezing’ is the worst thing we can do. And it is also the worst thing our business leaders can do. Nonetheless, that’s what they are doing. And so, incidentally, are our political leaders, especially in Europe.
I wonder how this damaging paralysis can be cured.
- “A bias against investment”, Sept. 2011
Innovation/Global Risk
If You’re Daydreaming, You’re In Trouble
By Shlomo Maital
TrackYourHappiness.org
Often, we associate creativity with ‘dreamers’. Dare to dream, we say. Dreaming is important. But new research shows that it both reflects, and causes, unhappiness.
Writing in Science magazine, Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert gathered 250,000 data points, using an iPhone app. The data points study subjects’ thoughts, feelings and actions as they go about their daily life. They are accurate because they are recorded as the events and emotions happen.
“A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” notes Killingsworth. Apparently, people spend half their time thinking about something other than what they’re doing, and this mind-wandering makes them unhappy.
“How often our minds leave the present and where they tend to go is a better predictor of our happiness,” Killingsworth claims, “than the activities in which we are engaged.” They found that less than 5 per cent of a person’s happiness, at a given moment in time, was attributable to the specific activity he or she was doing. (People, apparently, are happiest when making love, exercising, or conversing. They are least happy when resting, working, or using their computer).
“Our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable degree, by the non-present,” Killingsworth notes.
I think these results confirm another important aspect of creativity. We daydream when we are bored, irritated or displeased with what we are doing, with the reality as we experience it. A great deal of creativity arises out of such unhappiness. Many wonderful works of art and literature were created by unhappy individuals. Happiness by definition means living in a comfort zone, which rarely spawns creativity. So, dream on, innovators! But hey – don’t just dream, pick a few of those fantastic dreams and make them come true. That is the key.
If you want to join the study with the iPhone app, go to www.trackyourhappiness.org
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