Progress Over Perfection: Why Challenges Are Essential to Growth with Jason Feifer
Are you experiencing changes at your organization? Do you want the tools to help you stay relevant in the future?
In this episode, we hear insights from Jason Feifer, editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine. Through his experiences in organizational restructuring and acquisitions, Jason discusses how to develop grit to prepare for the future, new skills to stay relevant, and influence teams to work towards common goals.
After this Episode, You Will Be Able to:
Stay relevant in changing times
Define your core mission statement
Getting team buy-in for change
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About the guest:
Jason Feifer is the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine, a podcast host, book author, keynote speaker, startup advisor, and a nonstop optimism machine. His goal is to help you become more resilient and adaptable in a world of constant change — so you can seize new opportunities before anyone else does!
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The Impact of Journalism
I realized that journalism allows you to meet people who you wouldn't normally meet and talk about things you wouldn't normally talk about, and that was incredible.
But now I really think of myself as not being a media person so much as being a story teller. And I use that storytelling ability to help others, particularly in the realm of careers, business and goal setting. And so now I think of myself as a kind of rounded entrepreneur. I make media, I consult with businesses, and I help startups.
Predicting the Future is Wrong
Let's all agree that we have no idea how to predict the future at all.
So, anybody who tells you what the future is gonna be is totally wrong. I find conversations about the future totally boring because nobody knows.
So like why even bother? But I think that you can look at what's happening now and say, here's how I can put myself into a position of relevance tomorrow. The best thing that we can do is to be incredible at how things are changing around us to be pushing ourselves to develop new skills, to be interested in, and to engage in new technologies, in new ways of communicating, and in new ways of doing our jobs.
I meet people who are thrilled to say, this AI stuff, it's pretty crazy and scary, but I also know it's gonna impact my business. So I'm gonna figure out what that looks like right now and start to utilize it as a tool. And then I see other people who say, “You know what? This is awful.”
We need to just figure out a way to regulate it out of existence because I'm going to keep doing things exactly the way that I've been doing, and I know which one of those two kinds of people is gonna win.
So it's not like you can predict the future, but you can be open that things are going to constantly change. And then build that expectation into the way that you operate today. That's the only way to do it, is to create flexibility in how you operate instead of trying to be protecting what you used to do.
Embracing Change as a Catalyst for Innovation
One of the biggest challenges I've seen with an organization is that resistance to change, and when resistance happens in change, I find that those individuals get stuck.
They don't have the same progression as individuals who embrace change, embrace technology, and look at how technology can help us in the future.
I've been using artificial intelligence for the past year and I found it to be extremely valuable in efficiency, and productivity. It's prompting ideas for writing and content creation.
This is a technology that we can embrace. See how it's gonna support us in the future of business.
Every moment of disruption is an opportunity, and it doesn't always feel like that. So three questions you can ask yourself about any new thing:
1. What's the new thing?
2. What new habits or skills are we learning as a result?
3. How can we put that to good use?
I understand that things are disruptive. I understand that things are scary.
There isn't going to be loss and feelings of being lost along the way, but let's also be mindful that the thing that we are programmed to do as human beings is to avoid loss.
There are decades of psychological research confirming the loss aversion theory that we protect against loss more than we naturally seek gain. Protecting against loss becomes more valuable to us. And if we understand that that's our instinct, then we can try to counterprogram ourselves to recognize that always protecting against loss isn't exactly how we grow.
So let's figure out how to grow. It's not always gonna be easy. It's not gonna be simple. It's not going to be perfect.
Nothing is perfect.
Asking if something is perfect is a complete waste of our time. Instead, what we need to do is ask if our new problem is better than our old problem.
And when you start to filter things through that you recognize the problems are actually the way to track progress.
How do we drill down and understand the value that we have?
Separate from the thing that we do every day.
I encourage people to come up with this mission statement for themselves.
A short sentence as short as possible, starts with I, every word is carefully selected because it is not anchored to something that's easily changeable.
So for me, I tell stories in my own voice, can't take stories away from me. And once we all do some version of that and we really understand it and we're willing to stand by it, then what we're really doing is we're giving ourselves.
The freedom to navigate the world knowing that we have value that is transferrable, and we have something that does not change in times of change, and that by itself allows us to recognize and pursue new opportunities because we're anchored to something.
It's just that we're not anchored to the stuff that is kept.
What I'm hearing you say is when we understand what that mission statement is, we're tied to our purpose, not necessarily the job title or the description of our job. I also see having a mission, a personal mission statement, as a way of also checking the barometer on integrity of the decisions that you're making.
You have to know what you're starting from and you have to know what the point is of what you're doing.
And the wonderful thing is that once you figure out the real point of it, you recognize that this thing doesn't get disrupted very easily.
Anything that would happen in the world that would eliminate the desire for joy and also that would eliminate the desire for sweet things.
Leadership Transparency
We need to give people time and we need to help them understand how they play a role in what comes.
I love the idea of bringing people into the process.
So you're not delivering a final message here, but instead, you're saying, here's where we need to get to, and I'd really love your help in getting us there, because that enables people to be valuable to say, “Okay, great, I'm a part of this” which means that I can shape something for the better.
I can also figure out where I belong in it, which is incredibly valuable.
Let's not forget that people are not there for charity. People are there to benefit themselves, and that's great because if they can benefit themselves and benefit the organization as a whole at the same time, then everybody wins. But we cannot just discard people's natural instincts for self-preservation.
We have to use that, and you can, but it just requires letting them.
When we're in leadership roles, we are exposed to some of the decisions that are being made far in advance of what our team is being exposed to.
The Art of Leadership
People don't like new things. What people like are better versions of old things. The big mistake that a leader and innovator makes is that they are so familiar with the value of the thing that they are championing, that they forget that other people don't understand it at all. And then what they do is they try to sell it to people. But that does not work.
What you need to do is turn it around. You need to start with the people who you're trying to understand their needs, comforts, language, and what are they familiar with, and then build a bridge of familiarity.
Start building a bridge from them to you, and this is a leadership tactic.
Understanding the Drivers of Success
If someone wants to become a leader or a manager, how can they best prepare for the future as well? I think that they need to understand what drives success and then how to drive those teams toward success.
Make sure that you're setting the expectations for everybody, that you're there for them.
If you want to prepare to succeed in the future, you need to gain incredible clarity about what it is that you bring as a leader.
What kind of leader are you?
What are the things that create success?
How do you contribute to your team’s success?
And then making sure that when you have control over who's on your team, you're doing it with intentionality so that you're not just setting yourself up for success, you're setting literally everyone up for success because you're creating a coherent structure.
So let's empower people to make the decisions that they know how.
