Miscellaneous

What my Mother Taught Me About Resiliency and Perseverance

Pamela Meyer

and 6 Ways to Build Your Learning Agility

 

This is the 4th installment of Pamela’s Summer of Learning Series.

Witnessing my mother’s resilience shortly after my father left was one of the biggest influences in my life.

Note My Mother Wrote to Inspire Herself

My brother and I were both teenagers and my mother, knowing she had many productive years ahead of her made a radical choice for the time. 

Her prospects were limited because she had been out of the workforce for most of her adult life.

Rather than react out of fear and take the first job she could get, she chose to do something for which she had no role model. 

At a time of incredible financial stress, and in an era when it was rare for adults to return to college, my mom dove into the uncharted waters of graduate school. 

I watched as she carried her books back and forth to the library, pre-internet, and set up shop each night on the kitchen table with her Underwood manual typewriter. 

On the home stretch, as she researched and wrote her graduate thesis, she posted a note on the bulletin board above the kitchen table to cheer her on, “Three pages a day!” it read.

The number was substantial and yet manageable. 

I watched each night as she set herself up and clack clack clacked out those three pages. 

And, when she finished, I cheered the loudest as she crossed the stage to accept her diploma and continue to a thriving professional career, that demanded two major geographic moves in midlife.

My Mom, Thriving After Grad School, and Me

Years later, after she passed, I came across the “Three Pages a Day!” note again when packing up her house. 

 

I’m sure she never imagined that it and her example would cheer me on to be resilient and persevere in my own learning and writing, three advanced degrees and five books later.

Perhaps not by coincidence, I have spent many years working with clients across industries, and mentoring adult graduate students as they chart their course through scary and rewarding new beginnings.

Whether or not you were lucky enough to have someone model learning agility, you can learn to make it a habit today.

Whether it is committing to your own “Three Pages a Day!” or any other seemingly small steps toward building your agility capability, trust they will add up to a big impact for yourself and those who share a stake in your success.

6 Ways to Build Your Learning Agility Habit

Learning and adapting in unfamiliar circumstances is the very definition of learning agility. It may seem counterintuitive to make a habit of learning agility, a capability we tap in the midst of the unexpected. However, as learning becomes a habit, your confidence in your ability to continue learning as conditions change will grow, too.

The manual Underwood typewriter model my mother used

Whether or not you were lucky enough to have someone model disciplined learning, you can be that person for yourself today. Here are a few lessons I learned:

 

1. Name and Claim Your “Why?” 

Our ability to name and claim our purpose as humans guides us through our most challenging times and can keep us motivated through disruptions large and small. 

When your commitment to your learning flags, pause to reengage with your reason for doing it in the first place. Your initial reason could be pure survival (as it was for my mother when she returned to graduate school). And it may also evolve, as I have seen happen for countless agile learners as they continue their educational and professional journey, who discover that the intrinsic joy of learning motivates them to keep going. 

 2. Make it a Priority

It’s as simple as that. I interviewed masters athletes to find out how they stayed healthy and fit enough to continue to compete long past the time their peers had retreated to the couch. The answer was simple and consistent: “I make it a priority.”

 3. Focus on Manageable Chunks

For example, Three Pages a Day was a small enough number to be manageable for my mom while writing her thesis, and yet they quickly added up. Determine what is manageable for you. Is it a set amount of time, a specific skill or topic you want to cover, a set of exercises you want to practice, or other experience you want to incorporate into your life?

4. Block Learning Time on Your Calendar 

Treat your learning time as important as your other commitments. I set a reminder that ensures I am available for my blocked time. It also gives me time to reschedule my learning block if something urgent needs my attention. The point is not so much when you keep you keep your commitment, but THAT you keep it.

5. Visualize Success

Your rewards may be extrinsic or intrinsic, or some combination. They could be as spectacular as walking across the stage to receive your diploma to the cheers of your family and friends, or as humble as being able to find your way while traveling abroad. They could be measured in the bottom line or in the positive energy in the lunch line. Visualizing the value of your learning and growth can keep you going when your commitment falters.

6. Celebrate Your Progress—Grow Your Learning Agility: Learning agility, or the ability to learn and adapt in changing circumstances naturally grows as you build your confidence in your ability to learn and adapt. Confidence grows over time, through incremental successes. It is important to recognize and celebrate that progress. This might mean mastering a new skill, building a new relationship, successfully navigating a challenging project, or overcoming a setback.

What ways work for you to make learning a habit and to build your learning agility confidence?

Bonus Resources

Here are a few resources to help you build your learning agility habits:
  • What is Learning Agility (and how can you develop yours)? Click the button to read my short intro to learning agility.
  • How to Develop New Habits: A recent Washington Post article on how readers develop a wide range of new habits.
  • How to Make Learning as Addictive as Social Media (Short, interesting, and funny, TED Talk by Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of Duolingo)
  • If you want to leverage the power of streaks to develop your learning habit (or any other), the app Streaks allows you to set your goals and track your progress, with helpful reminders to keep you on track.
  • If your colleagues, and team members could use a boost of inspiration, please share the #SummerOfLearning “Learning Letter” sign-up link: Share SOL Newsletter!

 

Spotlight on Leading and Learning with Agility: Bryan Davis, Executive Vice President and head of VIU by HUB

Pamela Meyer

Image of Bryan Davis, Executive Vice President and head of VIU by HUB

In Staying in the Game: Leading and Learning with Agility for a Dynamic Future, I share the lessons I learned from some of the world’s most agile leaders across sectors. Based on this work, I introduced a new type of leadership: Embodied Agile Leadership. Embodied Agile Leaders (EALs) embody the values and practices of agile leadership and are attuned to their bodies and environment as a source of agile learning feedback, energy, and resiliency.

In this month’s spotlight, I’m honored to shine a light on Bryan Davis, ChFC, CPCU, an inspiring leader who is constantly innovating within the constraints of a highly regulated industry. In this spotlight I draw from a few brief excerpts from Staying in the Game and share some fresh inspiration from our recent conversation.

••••••••

Leaders who stay agile and innovative are keenly attuned to the market’s needs and the competition’s activities and offerings. However, even more than attuning to external threats, Embodied Agile Leaders (EALs) consider themselves their most formidable competitor. Bryan Davis, ChFC, CPCU, Executive Vice President and head of VIU by HUB, an innovative digital insurance platform, is this kind of leader. His passion for continuous improvement and innovation makes him a top leader in the highly competitive insurance industry and beyond. Among top honors awarded throughout his career, Bryan was named to Savoy’s 2024 list of Most Influential Executives in Corporate America.

Never resting on past achievements EALs like Bryan Davis are motivated to do just a little better each time out of the gate.

Even in a highly competitive business, such as financial services, when progress can be measured in relation to others, EALs stay in the game by raising the bar even higher. No stranger to the constraints and competition in a highly regulated industry, Bryan Davis learned to set the bar high early in life when he quarterbacked teams to success from grade school through college. He shared the philosophy that guides him:

I want first to play my best, and in the process, I want to win at the same time. My perspective is that you never want to base your standards on the environment you’re in. Your standards must be higher and bigger than that. And to me, that’s what I do in leadership. That’s what I do in sports. That’s what I do in business. Set your standards high because you can sit here and say, “Hey, I’m at organization X. They used to be mediocre.” So I can come in here, be a little bit better than mediocre, and be great. That’s why I’m always trying to push myself to higher standards, if possible.

Tapping the Power of Intrinsic Motivation

When your most worthy competition is your past performance, coupled with the innate pleasure you derive from continuous learning and improvement, you are propelled by an infinite energy source: intrinsic motivation. Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, psychologists and social scientists at the University of Rochester renowned for founding self-determination theory (SDT), discovered the power of this magic combination when they expanded on their initial research with their colleague Christopher Niemiec.

Looking for factors that support sustained engagement, they studied college students in their first year after graduation. They discovered that recent grads who measured their success solely based on the achievement of extrinsic goals reported overall poorer psychological well-being. In comparison, those whose goals were intrinsically focused reported better psychological well-being.[1]

Similar studies in populations of all ages in business[2],[3] and education[4],[5] reinforce the value of finding a sustaining intrinsic aspiration to motivate you to stay in the game. Of course, you don’t need to be a psychologist to know the importance of finding intrinsic motivation for continuous improvement; you have experience to guide you. If you have ever used achieving a specific goal or reward (e.g., losing fifteen pounds by your high school reunion or winning the top sales award) as your motivation, you’ve likely experienced that motivation wane soon after the goal was achieved. When our primary focus is the external reward, our source of energy and engagement is also largely out of our control. A variety of factors can impact your performance on any given day. If you are motivated to continue only if you consistently step on the podium, you will soon be derailed by the inevitable setbacks.

Competing for Learning

The intrinsic value of learning and improvement is at the heart of Bryan Davis’s practice of Embodied Agile Leadership. He shared that “this is where the great leaders separate themselves from the average or even subpar. I would say to my

Bryan Davis was named to Savoy’s 2024 list of Most Influential Executives in Corporate America.

organization at this stage, ‘we’re not failing enough.’ And so, when I do performance reviews, everybody will tell you what they did well.” To shift the focus, Bryan starts his performance reviews by asking his leaders to “tell me what you messed up. Because if you haven’t really disrupted anything and had setbacks in something, you’re probably not trying hard enough.” At the same time, he emphasized that this doesn’t mean, “Okay, well, I don’t have to have any accountability. I can just go mess up something. We’re all kumbaya, and this is not a big deal.”

Throughout his impressive career, Bryan has observed and studied many leaders. He discovered, “The great leaders know how to find that balance between one extreme and the other. As a leader, you promote this environment of ‘How do we find the positivity and accountability in failures?’ And accountability could be like, ‘Man, what should I learn to do differently?'” It takes both courage and humility to model the continuous learning of Embodied Agile Leadership. EALs know this because they don’t expect or invite their colleagues to venture into new territory they don’t explore themselves.

Leading with Intentionality and Patience

Two years into launching their innovative new division, I asked Bryan what new lessons he was learning. While operating as a startup within a long-established organization, his team were early adopters of agile ways of working. Bryan shared two critical insights relevant to leaders across industries who are guiding agile organizations:

More than the Agile techniques, success depends on an agile mindset. This takes an intentionality. It is not something that is natural for some people. You have to be so intentional about calling out the small things to create the environment and culture that you want. And that’s something that I’ve observed now, two years in, that it’s so easy to creep back into a waterfall [traditional project management] mindset. And so the leadership challenge is not necessarily saying, “Hey, we want to be agile.” The leadership challenge is being able to see the small things that create the end game that you’re shooting for.

Bryan’s insights are particularly relevant for the majority of companies that adopt Agile frameworks or undergo enterprise-wide agile transformations and are driven by the promise of improved speed and efficiency. This is because those who focus solely on speed rarely achieve the true benefit of becoming more agile: maximizing stakeholder value. Achieving this result requires something that is seldom talked about in Agile circles: patience. It takes a seasoned and visionary leader like Bryan to practice it. He reflected that,

It takes a lot of patience because you have to let some things burn. You have to let some things burn to get to the overall place you’re trying to get to. You lose some battles to win the war, and you can have a team fighting it out, and they’re fighting for their lines in the sands of waterfall silos. That’s what they’re fighting for. So, I can be the parent that goes and puts the pacifier in their mouth and babysits them, but then we never grow and mature. So, I might’ve put that fire out, but it’s going to be another fire. It’s going to be a forest fire. The fire’s going to keep getting bigger.

Bryan added that he takes inspiration from the Navy Seal credo that “slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” He shared the paradox of this approach, “It is patience in the beginning so that you can go fast.” There is no prescription for the intentionality and patience of Agile leadership, Bryan reflected, “That’s the art. That’s the art. That’s my day job, honestly.”

References

[1] Christopher P. Niemiec, Richard M. Ryan, and Edward L. Deci, “The Path Taken: Consequences of Attaining Intrinsic and Extrinsic Aspirations in Post-College Life” Journal of Research in Personality 43, no. 3 (June 1, 2009): 291–306, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2008.09.001.

[2] Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2011).

[3] Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2018).

[4] Carol Dweck, Mindset – Updated Edition: Changing The Way You Think To Fulfill Your Potential. (New York: Hachette, 2017).

[5] Angela L. Duckworth, Christopher Peterson, Michael R. Matthews, and Dennis D. Kelly, 2007. “Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 no. 6 (2007): 1087–1101. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.6.1087.

••••••••

DISCOVER MORE lessons from Bryan Davis and other Embodied Agile Leaders from from across industries in Staying in the Game: Leading and Learning with Agility for a Dynamic Future. Now Available on Audible!

Follow the Energy to Build Your Mental Agility

Pamela Meyer

 

Follow the Energy to Grow Mental Agility

A constant for agile teams, whether on an improv stage or in a collaboration session, to get the creative juices flowing, you must follow the energy. By seeking out what is most compelling and engaging, we often find our greatest successes.

 

The Key to Mental Agility 

An improv troupe, mid-performance, is not relying on their quick-wit alone. By exploring how the performers cultivate their ability, we can begin to understand how to be more effective in our work and better at finding new solutions to problems.

The mental agility of an improv troupe is more than just quickness of mind. A person who is mentally agile is able to think on their feet, solve problems, and be creative in the ways they engage at work. For most of us, cultivating mental agility in the workplace is not about getting a standing ovation from a heartily entertained audience (wouldn’t that be nice). Mental agility allows leaders to be more effective, and it helps teams collectively brainstorm better solutions and, ultimately, organizations to achieve more on the whole.

 

Appreciative Inquiry and Mental Agility

Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider, D., & Whitney, D, 2000) is based on the principle that in every human system, something works. When we Grow Mental Agilityintentionally tap into the energy of what is working, we will likely tap into what people care about and their generative capacity to create positive futures. Just as plants grow toward the sunlight so, too, do human systems grow toward their generative and energizing core.

An appreciative focus does not mean that we ignore obvious problems, or put on rose-colored glasses that only reveal the positive. It means that we use the generative energy of what drives us to co-create new and better possibilities. In an improvised scene, players foster generativity by the practice of saying, “Yes, and . . .” They accept their fellow players’ and the audience’s ideas (or “offers”) and build on them with something that heightens and explores what is most interesting and energizing. The most compelling offers are usually those that are novel and spark their curiosity. 

In creative collaboration and agile teams in the workplace, “players” similarly come together to generate new possibilities by building on each idea, rather than searching for every conceivable flaw. In organizational systems, it means following the people, processes, and products that are generating most interest and attention, as well as revenue. 

 

Four Ways to Cultivate Your Mental Agility

 

Notice the (and Your) Energy

The first step to tapping the positive energy available in any situation, collaboration, team, or even organization is to notice it. Pay attention to the situations where you feel most engaged and energized. Notice the interactions and people who elevate your thinking and bring out your best, and those that you find draining and deflating. Researchers have mapped energy hubs in organizations and have found that not only are the people who energize others more productive at work, the people who work with them are also more productive, as are the people who work with those people (Cross, R., & Parker, A., 2004)!  While you may not be able to spend all of your time in or with the energy hubs, you can become more aware of them and, better yet, become one yourself!

 

Make the Mindset Shift

I have written extensively about the importance of developing an agile mindset for overall agile success. The reason I keep repeating myself and sharing new strategies for making the shift is two-fold: 1) It is not easy, and 2) It requires repeated intentional practice. We are all wired to retreat back to our comfort zones, even after successfully finding our way through a disruption, crisis, or even unexpected opportunity. As exhilarating as these experiences are, we eventually drift back to familiar routines. This wouldn’t be a problem if we did not also drift back to a routine mindset that was not on the lookout for unexpected challenges and opportunities, and new learning. To ensure that you stay in an agile mindset as much as possible, make time to share your agility success experiences and lessons learned with your colleagues. How did you cultivate and maintain the frame of mind necessary to adapt to the unexpected quickly? How did, or do you, foster continuous learning? What could you have done differently to be even more agile and effective? Sharing your lessons learned has an added benefit: it helps build a culture of continuous learning, which is essential to agile success. 

Learn to Improvise

Quite possibly you have attended a live improv show, or even taken an improv workshop at some time in your life. Improvisers are masters of responding to the unexpected and unplanned. Their mastery doesn’t happen by accident. Before they even step on stage, they have taken the time to get in the mindset and practice the skills they need to accept whatever the audience suggests or their fellow players add to the scene and build on it. What better way to develop critical skills you need to access when the stakes are high at work than in a playful improv class? You will have no trouble finding one in your area with a few clicks of your mouse! 

Let Go of What is No Longer Working 

The art of letting go also means not laboring over relationships and projects that simply are not coming to life, or life-giving. I regularly have opportunities to relearn this lesson, and each time I have discovered that when I move on from a situation that is no longer generative, it frees up additional energy and resources for even more fruitful possibilities.

For more ideas on improving your and your team’s Mental Agility visit: https://pamela-meyer.com/meyer-agile-innovation/

 

References

Cooperrider, D., & Whitney, D. (2000). A positive revolution in change: Appreciative inquiry. In D. L. S. Cooperrider, Jr., Peter F.; Whitney, Diana; Yaeger, Therese (Ed.), Appreciative inquiry (pp. 3-27). Champaign, IL: Stipes.

Cross, R., & Parker, A. (2004). The hidden power of social networks: Understanding how work really gets done in organizations. Cambridge: Harvard Business School.

 

Meyer Creativity Associates, Inc. is now Meyer Agile Innovation!

Pamela Meyer

Meyer Agile Innovation

Welcome to Meyer Agile Innovation!

If we have been in communication recently, you may have noticed that you now receive emails from [email protected] (a bit long, we know, but there you have it) rather than [email protected]. [Note: both email addresses will continue to work] and that we are now using MeyerAgileInnovation.com as the primary URL for the website.

Why the change to Meyer Agile Innovation?

Creativity and innovative learning and talent development strategies are still at the root of our work, and our specific expertise in business agility, namely helping leaders, teams and organizations build their ability to respond effectively to the unexpected and unplanned and quickly turn challenges into opportunities is more relevant than ever.

The name change is in response to two robust trends:

1) Organizations recognize that to compete they need to adapt more quickly and innovatively to change than ever before.

2) Businesses across industries are adopting and scaling agile frameworks and specific methodologies, such as Scrum to improve everything from product development cycles to marketing strategies.

These shifts inspired me to practice what I preach and adapt to the market, drawing on my years of experience and research helping others do just that. – Pamela Meyer Ph.D. President, Meyer Agile Innovation

What Does This Mean For You?

How Can You Get the Most Out of These New Agile Innovation Resources?

  •     Check out our latest business agility offerings
  •     Sign up for our monthly newsletter (In the box to the right)
  •     Contact Us to tell us about your agility leadership and team development needs
  •     Follow us on social media: 

 

 

How Fit is Your Business? Part 4: Speed & Mobility

Pamela Meyer

How Fit is Your Business? Part 4: Speed & Mobility

Many day-to-day business responsibilities and operations are routine. In order to be prepared for the unexpected, we must constantly scan the environment for new opportunities and challenges.  Responsiveness, Competitiveness and, Innovation are key components of an organizations Speed and Mobility.

How Fit is Your Business?Are you and your workforce able to move quickly with the needs of the market?

 

Flexibility is not one in the same with speed and mobility as discussed earlier, physical flexibility enables broader access to your strengths. Therefore, you need to be flexible in order to move. You also have to be ready which is where speed and mobility enter.

Readiness is the Capacity for Speed and Mobility

Military troops are ready when they can be quickly mobilized to respond to an emergent need. Similarly, your workforce is ready when it can rapidly mobilize to respond to a new opportunity, a shift in the market, or even a crisis.

In The Agility Shift, I describe the events that revealed a significant gap between competitors Nokia and Ericsson’s ability to mobilize. A fire in an Albuquerque, NM semiconductor plant caused a supply chain disruption for a crucial component on which both cell phone manufacturers depended. Nokia was ready to quickly mobilize in response to the crisis, while Ericsson was not, leading to significant losses and a drop in their market share. Sometimes it takes a crisis to prioritize agility. In recent years, Ericsson has done this across its enterprise with impressive results. The good news is that you and your business can benefit from the lessons learned by others and develop your readiness by attending to these critical areas:

  • Communication, Collaboration and Coordination
  • Surface Exposure
  • Decision Speed
  • Time to Market

Four Ways to Improve Your Speed and Mobility

Improve Communication, Collaboration and Coordination. Speed and mobility require competence, as well as systems and processes for what I have identified as the three Cs of agility: 

communication, collaboration and coordination.

Often cited for its agility, fashion retailer Zara is able to respond to changing trends and customer tastes at a regional and even store level. With an integrated supply chain and innovative systems and processes to monitor sales and feedback, Zara is able to get new fashions from

 concept to retail racks in a matter of weeks. Are you making optimal use of your existing systems and processes to maximize the three Cs?  

Increase Your Surface Exposure.  One of your first priorities to improve speed and mobility is to increase what researchers Christopher Worley and Edward Lawler call “surface exposure.” (2010). Surface exposure is the degree to which members of your organization are exposed to feedback and new developments in the marketplace. Zara has developed sophisticated channels and practices for just this purpose. Another of my clients uses Slack to monitor social media and other feedback channels in real time and immediately discuss them across product development, marketing, and customer service. In these examples it is not enough to monitor the information; your team must have the commitment and capability to digest and rapidly respond. How can you increase your surface exposure and responsiveness to the feedback it provides?

Improve Decision Speed.  Agile systems and processes have little value if the ideas and input they channel get lost in a maze of confusion and enervation. Numerous studies have linked fast decision speed with organizational performance and growth. Agile organizations empower their employees to make decisions on the spot, especially when they directly affect business results. Don’t let your fear of losing control deter you from improving decision speed. Rather, use it as motivation to clarify decision rights throughout your team or organization. This recent HBR article on decision making provides an excellent guide. Are your employees empowered to quickly make decisions that can impact business results?

Improve Time to Market.  You will have a hard time sustaining your results if your competitors beat you to the market with new products and services. A study by Salesforce.com found that developers using agile methodologies improved their time to market by 61%. Rather than adopt all of the elements of agile methodologies, especially if you are not in the software business,  you can significantly improve your timing by shifting your mindset and business practices with many lessons learned from agile pioneers. I distill and translate many of these lessons for wider application in The Agility Shift.

What business practices, systems, and processes do you have in place to increase your speed and mobility in response to shifts in your market?

What was the best thing about . . . ?

Pamela Meyer

Today is the day after Thanksgiving. Despite the blare of television commercials and media reports from area shopping malls, we are choosing a quiet day of puttering around the house with vague plans for an afternoon movie. I am enjoying this calm and thinking about our dinner last night with friends.

At some point in our feast, between our non-traditional Thanksgiving Ceasar salad and Rita’s amazing stuffing, my partner asked “so what was the best thing about this year for everyone?” As we went around the table, each sharing a bit of gratitude and anticipation for the year ahead, I was reminded of the power of simple appreciation. The things we named—weathering a relationship rough patch and feeling hopeful; happy for abundant client work and interesting projects; excitement about creative energy in a new collaboration, and simply being able to create the space to share a decadent meal in the midst of it all—became a bit brighter in the claiming.

It is so simple, and perhaps a bit new-agey, yet has played out again and again in my experience: what we focus on becomes our reality. As we drove home, completely satiated and a bit over-indulged, I felt the opportunities and generative core each of us tapped guiding us. How nice that we take at least one day a year to slow down enough to notice this. And even nicer that we can choose to do it whenever we feel our vision of possibilities flagging.