Have you ever changed your mind?
I am not asking about a decision to buy something or picking a movie to go to.
I am looking for anything related to your world views.
It is that time of the year to reflect and retrospect.
I do not make any specific resolutions at the beginning of a calendar year.
My resolutions – or, I would prefer to call them some aspirational goals can happen anytime during the year and nowadays such goals are over a time horizon of at least a couple of years.
But, I do get into a quick reflection of the previous 6 months, twice every year.
This time, it was about how my own thoughts, perspectives and positions have changed over time.
The trigger for this were three books that I had read during 2024 made me think of similar changes in my own thoughts over the years.
All the three books were sequels from the same author(s ), but taking a divergent or changed view of their earlier theories shared in the previous books.
The first by Nir Eyal, author of ‘Hooked’ on how to build habit forming products had a rethink and took the perspective of a user of products built to be habit forming and has highlighted the need to stay focused and Indistractable.
and 
The second was a book Beyond Disruption that makes a case to look at creating new markets that could be net additive. This is at variance to their earlier position on exploring unchartered territories in the blue ocean strategy to disrupt markets.
and 
The third is by Malcom Gladwell – from his earlier book – The Tipping Point, his latest book is called the Revenge of the Tipping Point – where he says that the pandemic invalidated some of the elements of the tipping point and so, needed a new book and not just a appendix!
and 
Two of the topics where I have had a rethink or a U-turn in my own understanding and approach over the years, that have, I feel, made me more effective.
I used to think that the best way to operate was the old style, till it dawned on me that there were more effective ways to achieve the goals by taking an enabling approach.
Teaching to enabling learning
Being curious about technical details, I used to get into deep discussions with team members and suggest how something should be done, while explaining the rationale and how to do things. I realized that this was based more on my impatience to see the results.
Then I realized that this was an accidental diminisher trait.
The approach changed to enabling more curiosity and exploration in the teams through approaches such as the power of questions.
One side effect of this, during the transition was that I was labeled as the person with questions, when someone comes for answers!
The good thing was that when someone approached me, there would have been some prior thought and analysis.
This made the conversations a lot more productive and satisfying for both.
Getting things done to enabling to get things done
This was a major shift for me to adjust to a new role that I took up – of an enabler across the enterprise. Till then, I was comfortable handling delivery, leading multiple teams that were all part of my organizational unit.
I used to derive a lot of satisfaction from creating plans, budgets for the plans, getting frequent updates and refining plans, and reaching milestones.
This approach worked well as long as the scope of what I would take as responsibility was limited to my organizational unit.
To achieve outcomes at scale, I realized that I need to nurture a network – to use today’s terminology – of influencers who can stay more connected and nudge within their sphere of influence.
Such networks do not happen by accident. They need to be built intentionally.
Sharing a common purpose that every team member can relate to and be ready to own a piece of the action requires that everyone in the team trusts everyone else and is excited about the goals.
Post that, the members of this network also need support in terms of some collateral, tools and a platform to share their experiences and learn together – such as in a community of common interest.
All these made me realize that enabling the enablers can provide a multiplier – even exponential – impact.
A related trivia is that my MBTI profile before taking up this role and about a year after this enabling the enabler role, showed a shift from a thinking to feeling, indirectly indicating a slight increase in the EQ traits.
There are many more such U-turns or rethinks that have helped me be more responsive in situations. Possibly for some other day.
Do you have any such perspective shifts?
let us talk.
Bonus trivia:
After writing this piece, felt I had many ‘and’s .. and counted 25 [not including the instance in this sentence 
] in the article!
