Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:25: Idea for action 1: unlearning

00:03:20: Idea for action 2: what-if questions

00:06:29: Useful resource

00:06:37: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Today's skill is all about adaptability, and this is where you are matching your skills and your strengths to a situation.  So, you're taking the things that you've got, the abilities you've got, but you're really thinking about what does this opportunity or this moment need most right now, and that ability to kind of flex, to use them in different ways is what we're talking about today.

Sarah Ellis: As we're reflecting on adaptability, this is never about being someone that you're not.  I think it's always about starting with yourself and stretching yourself in different directions.  It's sort of sensing, it's being able to read the room, but fundamentally you are still you.

Helen Tupper: Yeah.

Sarah Ellis: And we all have adaptability.  I think often, people are more adaptable than they give themselves credit for, but there's definitely a watch-out here to not adapt so much that you no longer feel like you're you anymore.  So, for today's skills sprint we've taken inspiration from Natalie Fratto.  So, Natalie did a brilliant talk all about the idea of Adaptability Quotient, your AQ, and she talks about three things that contribute to adaptability.  They are what-if questions; unlearning, the ability to override what you already know with new information; and explorers versus exploiters.  So, we thought we'd take a couple of those ideas and then bring those to life for our listeners.

Helen Tupper: So, I'm going to talk about unlearning because it always sticks with me.  Sarah goes, "You always go on about the backwards bike experiment".

Sarah Ellis: You do always go on about it!

Helen Tupper: Because it really sticks with me.  So, in Natalie's talk, she says that this idea of unlearning, the way she sort of brings it to life is the idea that a lot of us learn to ride a bike when we're kids, you generally do it without thinking.  But what somebody did, and you can look these videos up on YouTube, they're sort of amusing, maybe a bit cruel, is people basically change the way that the bike works, they do some minor engineering, so that when you move the handles left, the bike goes right and vice versa.  And it is such a simple change, but it is one that our brains find really hard to manage, because we learned to ride a bike a long time ago and we often do it now without thinking. 

So, to relearn, sort of unlearn the way I did it and relearn how to do the bike, it takes our brain quite a while. Now, the point, unless you actually really want to do that, the point for your work is, what are we doing on autopilot; what did we get taught when we started work, like how to run a meeting or how you write an email; and what do we do without even thinking about it anymore?  And if you were going to do that in a different way, so instead of writing email, maybe it could be a quick note on Teams, or could it be a voice note?  Take all of your defaults and think about, what would the opposite be?  So, maybe you always use PowerPoint to present, and you're going to do a presentation with no PowerPoint.  Or maybe you're going to do a bit of live drawing.  Or maybe you've never used a tool like Miro or Mural before in your sessions.  It's this idea of taking what I do on repeat and thinking about what would the opposite be. The more that you do that, the easier adaptability becomes, the less fearful you are when someone goes, "Oh, we can't do it in that way anymore".  You're just like, "All right, no problem.  I'll give it a go".  When we don't have that ability, because we've not done the unlearning, that give it a go feels really scary and can sometimes result in us going, "Oh, I won't do it then", and you rule yourself out because the adaptability isn't helping you stay in.

Sarah Ellis: And the what-if questions, I reckon could then help you to figure out what to unlearn.  So, if you ask yourself some of these what-if questions, you might start to realise, "Oh, well if that thing happens, if that scenario or situation happens, then I need to do something different", and perhaps then you have a go at it now rather than waiting for that scenario to emerge.  So, some what-if questions, I wrote some, which I think some of these you're not going to like.  Some of them are quite dramatic.

Helen Tupper: Heads-up, Helen!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, because my first one was, "What if Amazing If didn't exist this time next year?"

Helen Tupper: Okay, keep going!

Sarah Ellis: That was my first one.

Helen Tupper: What if it was double the size of the business?  Can we have some positive ones?!

Sarah Ellis: That's the other way to look at it.  I was just trying to be provocative.

Helen Tupper: Sure.

Sarah Ellis: Then I wrote, "What if I manage my week like Helen?"  But I was so uncomfortable with the idea of it, I almost didn't want to say it out loud, I nearly scrubbed it out.  I was like, "No, I should keep it in".

Helen Tupper: What would that look like for you?

Sarah Ellis: Oh, I don't even want to talk about it!

Helen Tupper: We'd be going to a party.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, imagine.

Helen Tupper: You'd be cramming lots in.

Sarah Ellis: I think I would last until Wednesday lunchtime.

Helen Tupper: Then you would just go, "I'm going for a walk".

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I would have had to see so many people and be so sociable and do back-to-back things that you do.

Helen Tupper: That's great.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I'd run out of energy by the middle of the week.

Helen Tupper: You'd just run out of Sarah; there'd be no Sarah left!

Sarah Ellis: But it's interesting.

Helen Tupper: Great question.

Sarah Ellis: I did have a doubled one, "What if I doubled the frequency I asked for feedback?" so I asked for basically twice as much feedback.  "What if all career questions could be answered by AI?"  And I've started using AI a bit more.  We've both been experimenting with it.  And somebody in a workshop the other week followed up with me and said, "Oh, I've got these couple of questions".  And I was saying to you yesterday, I answered the questions first and didn't think anything of it. 

And then I suddenly had a thought, "Oh, I wonder what ChatGPT would say to answer these questions", put them in ChatGPT, which actually people can now just do, they probably don't even need to ask me, and I thought, it'll be a really good filter because I'll be able to see what I've said and what ChatGPT says.  And often you might think, "Oh, it won't be that good, or how useful will it be?  Surely, I'm so helpful here, this is what I'm expert in". But the actual practical content wasn't that different.  The only thing that was really different was my personal reflections and stories.  So, you hope those things are helpful, but there I felt like I was unlearning.  Answering questions has to look like, this all has to come from my head.  And I was starting to think, "Okay, answering these questions, unlearning, this has to come from me".  Because actually, what I think people were looking for there was actually some practical things like, "How do I get a mentor?"  And I was like, "Well, you can probably ask ChatGPT and it would give you some pretty sensible places to start". 

If you're asking, "Well, Sarah, how did you get a mentor?" and you want my personal story, that's slightly different.  And perhaps the combination of those is really interesting. But I'm like, that was me adapting in that moment, and it felt a little bit uncomfortable, which I think often adapting and unlearning does.  So, some of those what-if questions I think are really helpful, even more useful if you ask them with someone else.  Because often it's quite hard to do scenario-planning just sitting in your own head or just making your own notes.  So, good things to do as teams, I often think.

Helen Tupper: So, the link to learn more from in the resources today is Natalie Fratto's talk.  So, it definitely is not a very long watch, but it's actually a good one.  I think she presents really well in it as well.

Sarah Ellis: And the next skill that we're going to be talking about, which is one of my favourites, is focus.  So, thank you so much for listening and we're back with you again soon.