Adventures In Thinking
This article is part of our Mentor-Coach Reading List series. Join the mailing list to receive this and more.
Adventures In Thinking is the focus of this reading list selection, exploring collective thinking and the creative mindset, design paradigm and ideas-informed society needed to face the future including the coming wave of powerful technologies.
SETTING THE SCENE
The discipline of foresight is considerate, nuanced and deeply reflective. It's also been shaped by a deep exploration of what our futures could be. By avoiding thinking about the future you hand over the future, as a prisoner, to the ... unthinking. Futures studies seek to subvert such status quo. They help to keep options open in an institutionally closed world.- Professor Ashis Nandy
An empowered organisation is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organisational success.- Stephen Covey
Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.- Henry R. Luce
Questions to consider
What is collective thinking?
What are the stories we tell?
How can we utilise a design thinking paradigm?
How should we think about the coming wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies?
What mindset is need for creative and innovation cultures?
What is needed to face the future?
Will an ideas informed society deliver the path forward?
Happy reading and stay curious!
Here is more information about the Series 22 selection of books.
Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking (Text Publishing, October 2023) by Tyson Yunkaporta. It describes how our relationship with land is inseparable from how we relate to each other. This book is a sequence of thought experiments, which are, as Yunkaporta writes, 'crowd-sourced narratives where everybody's contribution to the story, no matter how contradictory, is honoured and included...the closest thing I can find in the world to the Aboriginal collective process of what we call "yarning".' He argues, story is at the heart of everything. But what is right or wrong story? This book explores how we teach and learn, and how we can talk to each other to shape forms of collective thinking that are aligned with land and creation.
Design Thinking and Innovation Metrics: Powerful Tools to Manage Creativity, OKRs, Product, and Business Success (Wiley, April 2023) by Michael Lewrick. This is a simple and straightforward playbook to manage and measure innovation. It covers how to utilise the design thinking paradigm for innovation success and how successful leaders manage Explore and Exploit portfolios to create impact. Part of the Design Thinking Series it looks at how to employ data analytics, artificial intelligence, and neurodesign to drive innovation and business results and set Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma (Jonathan Cape, September 2023 ) by Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar. As cofounder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the center of this revolution, one poised to become the single greatest accelerant of progress in history. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies. Driven by overwhelming strategic and commercial incentives, these tools will help address our global challenges and create vast wealth-but also upheaval on a once unimaginable scale. Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia?
Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition): Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (Random House , June 2023) by Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace. The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixars singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing and systemic.
Facing Our Futures: How foresight, futures design and strategy creates prosperity and growth (Bloomsbury Business, July 2023) by Nikolas Badminton. A fascinating insight into how professionals and businesses can develop their foresight and strategy to ensure that they are prepared for an unpredictable future. Businesses, organisations and society-at-large are all subject to unforeseeable events and incidents that often have a dramatic impact upon prosperity and profit. Due to their unpredictable nature, business leaders and executive teams are unable to prepare for these specific events. But, through innovation, strategising and an open-minded approach, they can restructure their organisation and practices in order to mitigate (or even take advantage of) the impact of such events.
The Ideas-Informed Society: Why We Need It and How to Make It Happen (Emerald Publishing Limited, September 2023) by Chris Brown and Graham Handscomb. Democratic societies thrive when citizens actively and critically engage with new ideas, developments and claims to truth. Not only can such practices result in more effective choice-making, but they can also lead to widespread support for progressive beliefs, such as social justice. With Western societies in the midst of environmental, social and political crises, it seems more pertinent than ever that citizens become 'ideas-informed'. Presenting concepts from academia, industry, and practice, The Ideas-Informed Society closes the gap between the ideal and the current reality, what it means and the benefits for both individuals and society.
OTHER ArticleS
Change Leadership - How do leaders bring about and cope with systemic change in a more thoughtful way? The accelerators and reversals; opportunities and challenges - for businesses, their teams and themselves?
Mindsets In The Boardroom Matter - Executives aiming for the boardroom will need to hone more than executive skills and a technical specialty. The real transition requires a shift of mind-set.
OTHER RELATED READING SERIES
Gaining Insights - Curious about gaining insight, idea flow and management effectiveness? Ask the right questions, see what others don’t, develop new ways of thinking, learn from indigenous thinking and find better ways to meet challenges.
Flux, Failure and Risk - We face flux, change and difficult situations all the time. We may succeed or we may fail. It helps to both fail well and to learn from our success - to understand how we make decisions and our reasoning abilities. We can also learn from ‘risk-takers’ about why they do what they do, how they prepare, and how they’ve handled things going wrong.
Disruption and Transformation - What is the relationship between growth and transformation? Why are some of the world’s most successful companies adopting and implementing innovative strategies, while others struggle? How do smart companies involve each and every stakeholder? What mindset is needed for perpetual innovation and relentless experimentation?
Questions and Inquiry - Great questions make for better solutions and good conversation. Staying open to possibilities, intellectual curiosity and a ‘coach-not-tell’ style are key aspects of leading at the next level.
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