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bySINDUSREEBHAVAN


GROWTH MINDSET – WHAT

HOLDS IT BACK?

This is what holds people back from

developing a Growth Mindset

Martin Seligman and his colleagues prepared boxes with two compartments separated by a short fence for their experiment. They had two groups of lab dogs for their study. The first group of dogs were put in the boxes, one dog in each box. Periodically, they would turn on painful electric shock in the compartment where the dog is in. The dog


would frantically run around. At some point during this commotion, the dog would hop over the fence and realise that the other compartment of the box is shock-free. After some time, the researchers would turn on the shock in the compartment where the dog is in and the dog would again accidentally hop over to the other compartment to realise that that compartment is shock-free. After many such trials, the dogs came to learn the fact that as soon as they experience the initial waves of shock, they should hop over the fence to escape from it. The researchers repeated the same tests with the second set of dogs. But, this group of dogs were pre-conditioned. Before putting the dogs through this experiment, they were subjected to another experiment in which the dogs were tied to a hammock and were administered periodic painful electric shocks. There was no way for the dogs to escape those shocks as they were tied to the hammocks. When this group of dogs were subjected to the same experiment as the first group, the researchers found something that surprised them. This group of dogs did not try to escape. Since they did not try, they failed to figure out that there was a way to escape - that it was possible to jump to the other compartment to escape from their painful situation. Marty Seligman came up with the Theory of Learned Helplessness with these experiments. What if those dogs had not resigned to their fate? What if they thought "I was tied then, this is the chance for me to escape"? As I help organisations and individuals in developing growth mindset, I often feel it is the Learned Helplessness that holds people back from growing a growth mindset. When coming across challenges, many people often take a resigned approach, they say "I am not smart enough", "I am not lucky enough", "I don't have what it takes", based on some past experiences. What if we reframe our thinking to "I am going to figure it out this time", "I have learned from my past experiences to give it a good try this time".


What are the Learned Helplessnesses that pull you back from achieving your full potential? It is the time for you to shed those, hop over the fence and leap ahead in your life. After reading this article, could you please do the three simple

steps below?

1. Share this article with your friends and colleagues, so that they too are aware of this amidst their busy schedules.

2. Have you written an article that complements this article? Please share it in the comment section below with one or two lines explaining what that is about.

3. Do you have any insights or tips that you use? Would you like to share that?

Sindu Sreebhavan is an Innovation Igniter and the Executive Director at Thought Expressions. Sindu developed the Binding Rings Brainstorming model and the SOAR mindset for innovation. She speaks, writes and consults on innovation and growth mindset. She is passionate about developing growth mindset and innovation in organisations and education institutions. She is the founder and Chairperson of International Youth Leadership and Innovation Forum (IYLIF). She is also the CEO of As Many Minds and the founder of The Kidz Parade magazine - a publication that helps children develop growth mindset and showcase their creativity. Recently, she was at the Women Economic Forum as a Lead Speaker where she spoke about Innovative Mindset, Developing Youth for the Future and Intangibles of Entrepreneurship.


HR – THE INNOVATION AGENTS

I was the first in the taxi queue outside Suntec City in Singapore. Behind me was a young couple, full of mirth. Suddenly a BMW X6 gently pulled to a stop in front of me. I was disappointed that it was not a taxi. The young couple behind me moved towards the car, the driver came out and put their bags in the boot. The couple quickly got inside through the rear door of the car and it drove off. I stood there thinking with a tint of jealousy, “Wow! chauffeur-driven car in Singapore!” But, “Why did they stand in the taxi queue?” It took some time for me to understand the whole scenario. It was an Uber car. While I was waiting for my taxi to arrive, I stood there wondering about the speed at which Uber has become the common man’s brand and habit. What made it possible?


Uber, Airbnb and a plethora of innovative brands were founded with one important consideration – the need of the customer. Many of them use design-thinking methodology to formulate their business plans before and after they founded those companies.

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a customer-centered process that offers a structured framework for businesses to support innovation in an easy-to-manage, collaborative environment. It is an action-oriented approach that prompts you to look at the needs of your customers. Moreover, it takes you through different steps to design the offerings in the most user-friendly way within the constraints you face. According to Stanford University d. school, design-thinking process consists of five steps: 1. Empathize: Work to fully understand the experience of the user for

whom you are designing. Do this through observation, interaction, and immersing yourself in their experiences.


2. Define: Process and synthesize the findings from your empathy work

in order to form a user point of view that you will address with your design. 3. Ideate: Explore a wide variety of possible solutions through generating

a large quantity of diverse possible solutions, allowing you to step beyond the obvious and explore a range of ideas. 4. Prototype: Transform your ideas into a physical form so that you can

experience and interact with them and, in the process, learn and develop more empathy. 5. Test: Try out high-resolution products and use observations and

feedback to refine prototypes, learning more about the user, and refining your original point of view. The world of business has never been more volatile. While innovation has been a buzzword in the business world for a long time, it is hard not to notice that organizations often stumble when it comes to establishing a culture of innovation in their various segments. When an organization is able to transform new methods and ideas into something that creates value for its customers, the value of the organization and its offerings reach new heights.

Design thinking… is an action oriented

approach that prompts

you to look at the needs of

your customers.

However, many organizations still use the word innovation mainly when they talk about engineering and technology. Design-thinking methodology helps to establish a culture of innovation in all segments of an organization. Why Should HR leaders Become the i-Agents?


Apart from the remuneration and a challenging work environment, what an employee looks for from an organization is how effectively it helps them shape their future. They want to see where they will stand one year from now, 10 years from now and so on. Employees, especially the millennials, want to see what they will learn and how they will learn to equip themselves for future opportunities. Routine innovation has become a culture in the business world. With the changes in the organizational landscape and employee expectations, it is high time for human resource departments to raise themselves above the roles of hiring, surveying and training. HR needs to be seen as the agents of innovation or the i-Agents in an organization. HR professionals should see themselves as the providers of user-friendly solutions for all HR aspects of the organization, promoters of collaborative learning space for the workforce, and the incubators of new innovative HR processes. Design thinking takes a human-centered (or customer-centered) design approach – the needs of the customers take the front row in a design-thinking organization. Customers of the HR department are the employees and HR can apply design thinking to identify and solve the challenges they face using a human-centered approach. You can use design thinking to look at challenges like behavioral segmentation, building bridges between diverse ways of thinking, effecting cultural changes, bringing common culture among different generations within the organization, steering the organization towards heightened collaboration and so on. How Design Thinking Can Help HR Solve Painful Problems

If you are an HR leader, there are many areas you wish to improve. You want to create a list of these improvements in the order of their priority. How would you know the areas your employees are most frustrated with? Usually companies relay on the individual feedbacks and surveys. But, does it represent the truth? Haven’t you had situations where you acted on the results of surveys, but still ended up with a dissatisfied workforce?


Let us examine how you can make use of design thinking here:

Organize a design thinking workshop with the employees of your organization. Traditional projects start with a “what.” They start with “Let’s embark on a new project to improve HR processes,” or “Let’s improve the employee engagement by implementing a new user interface.” The majority of these projects start with assumptions about what users are feeling about the current situation, what they want to have, why exactly they are using your services or products. Design thinking starts with the basic, but often forgotten, question: What is the need that prompts your customer to use your products or services? As a first step, you can find the problems in the HR domain of your company as the employees see and experience them. In the second step, let them prioritize the problems they would like to see solved in terms of their urgency. Now, you have the list of issues prioritized. In the next step, you try to understand the “Why” of selected issues. Why do the employees see those as issues? This will help you to come up with a problem statement. Once the problems are clearer, the solution becomes easier. As the design-thinking workshop progresses, you will see the workforce collaborate, form ideas and brainstorm to come up with solutions. You will see them considering the constraints you have as an organization and doing rapid prototyping and reviews. The employees themselves vote for the solution they deem the best for your organization. Now, you, the HR leader can focus on implementing the solution selected by the workforce. Isn’t it better if you get employees to identify the problems, prioritize the problems, find solutions to the problems, do the prototyping of the solutions and they themselves select the best solution? The most valuable aspect of design thinking is that it just does not stop at brainstorming and formulating ideas. It gives you an opportunity to do rapid prototyping, to gather feedback from your workforce for your


existing policies and solutions and to go back and incorporate those new findings in the solutions. Advantages of Using Design Thinking in HR Delivery

1. Change management for new HR solutions becomes easier to handle: When the workforce propose solutions in the design-thinking exercise within the constraints you have as an organization, they will be able to understand why HR does certain things in certain ways.

2. Solutions are co-owned: When you implement the solutions from a design thinking exercise, the ownership of those solutions is not just in you, but also in every individual working for the company. The solution is a product of the collective expertise, co-selected and co-created by HR and the workforce. This results in enhanced employee satisfaction for HR offerings.

3. You’ll know your employees better: You as an HR leader will be able to understand what employees are really looking for. The mutual understanding and the partnership formed in the exercise will help to enhance the image of the HR department.

4. You’ll better understand constraints: When you start a project with the constraints of resources, these constraints will limit the creativity of the individuals involved. Let the participants propose ideas as if there is no limitation of resources and there are no constraints imposed by processes or policies. This helps in bringing the divergent thinking into play, which is essential for harvesting groundbreaking ideas. At a later stage, when you introduce the constraints, you will see that the constraints cease to exist or that you are able to customise your solution to accommodate the constraints.

5. There’s improved tolerance for failures: Employees will be more forgiving of failures rather than lamenting them. In many cases, design-thinking workshops help change the perspective about failure. The workforce will know that they can undertake another design-


thinking workshop again for an improved solution – this time with the enhanced learning from the previous exercise.

6. There’s improved buy-in from management for HR initiatives: With design thinking you are not just telling the management about the perceived benefits of your ideas. You are showing them how employees understand and appreciate it with the prototypes. Now you can go to the management with the proof.

Things to Keep in Mind to Make HR Design Thinking Work

The whole world is a giant playground - Make it fun.

Design thinking should be done in an environment where you can invoke child-like curiosity in the minds of the participants. Create an environment that is fun, not hierarchical, and with enough space for

people to walk around. Here you will empower the participants to express their viewpoints without getting shot down by others. A non-

judgmental environment is necessary for this. No idea is a bad idea when it comes to design thinking. You will be surprised to find the ways great ideas generate from apparently conventional ideas and

apparently stupid ideas. We are one connected family with varying tastes - Make it

collaborative.

A team of four to six members is considered ideal for a design thinking project. This gives enough room for everyone to express their

viewpoints and to vote for favourite ideas when it comes to that. Make it iterative - Design thinking should not be a one-time

activity.

You can use design thinking not just for implementing new processes and products. You can use it to evaluate the efficacy of the existing


systems; to understand how people feel about the current systems, to bring in improvements to the current systems.

Anybody would like to have a challenge - Organize design

thinking challenges for employees within your organization.

You can focus on HR processes, services and products when you organize such challenges.

Design thinking is not just a methodology. It is a mindset, it is a way of life you can adopt to enrich your personal and professional lives. After reading this article, could you please do the three simple

steps below?






DEFEAT THE DEFLATIONARY

MINDSET BY INFLATING THE

GROWTH MINDSET

Productivity growth is going down amidst deflation, population in the employable age is decreasing, tending the least optimistic millennials among its trading partners - just an increase in pay is not enough to solve all these problems faced by Japan. Businesses need to look at how they can inflate the morale and the confidence of its workforce to improve the business climate and the organisation culture.


In a situation like this, no doubt there are many areas that organisations need to focus on. To overcome the current crisis, the two areas to give paramount attention are people development and organisation culture. You may argue that it is the economy and the financial security that should be addressed first. However, doing that without empowering people and organisations might not yield the anticipated results.

As in the case of any other change management initiative, the most important factor in implementing this cultural change is willing participants. Many organisations across the world are adopting a growth mindset culture to fulfil these needs.

What is Growth Mindset?

Growth Mindset is a term coined by the famous Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. She classified people’s mindset into two - fixed mindset and growth mindset. Individuals with fixed mindset believe that their talent


and intelligence are set at birth and they have no influence in making any alterations in it. Whereas individuals with growth mindset believe that their intelligence and talents are malleable. That is, they are able to make significant changes to it by incorporating hard work, experience, strategies and feedback.

Individuals with fixed mindset tend to protect their image of being talented and smart. In contrast to that, individuals with growth mindset achieve more as they focus on learning and developing their talents.

People with growth mindset are characterised by their willingness to learn new things, seek feedback, reach out for help, reflect on mistakes and failures as opportunities to learn and look at risk-taking as a way to find out about the unknown.

It is important to note that growth mindset people have their own moments of self-doubt and struggles. But since they know that they can learn to overcome those moments and situations, they tend to be more positive than the other people with whom they work.

What if organisations practice growth mindset?

Companies and leaders with growth mindset inspire productivity, loyalty and commitment in their teams. Microsoft is consciously creating a culture of growth mindset in the organisation to create self-empowered employees with ownership and creativity. Employees that took upon high-risk projects are rewarded based on their efforts.

People development becomes one of the main focal points of a growth mindset organisation. When CEOs like that of Microsoft spends a week


to identify people who demonstrated growth mindset and unearth ways to spot and nurture good leaders and learners, we know that these companies are also reaping benefits out of that.

Listen to employees of the growth mindset organisations...

Carol Dweck and her colleagues conducted a study about the effect of mindset in organisational effectiveness, collaborating with the consulting firm Senn Delaney. They conducted the research at seven Fortune 1000 companies. The findings of the study are interesting and intriguing.

The research found the following about the employees from

growth mindset companies

47% employees are likely to say their colleagues are trustworthy

34% are likely feel a strong sense of ownership and commitment to the company

65% are likely to say that the company supports risk taking

49% are likely to say that the company fosters innovation

How could growth mindset help your organisation?

Adopting the growth mindset could help your company in more ways than the obvious.

1. Improves the internal and external image of the organisation


People would feel good about themselves, their work and their employer. This sends out positive vibes about the organisation to the outside world.

2. Attracts more growth mindset talents to your organisation

Positive image of the company attracts more people with positive outlook and growth mindset attributes to join the organisation.

3. Develop loyal employees

Since the employees are able to align their personal growth with the goals of the organisation, you will find loyal employees who would not want to leave the organisation for another. Your investment in people is not going futile.

4. Cultivates a collaborative culture

The culture emphasises on genuine efforts results in creating mutual respect between employees. This results in less competition and more collaboration between colleagues and departments.

Since the environment fosters continuous feedback, a common purpose for the larger cause prevails within teams and departments.

5. Drives Innovation

In an environment that forges risk-taking, collaboration and continuous learning, employees become more courageous in taking action on their ideas and bringing their ideas to life.

6. Makes change management easy


In a culture where failures and mistakes are not looked down, employees show more maturity towards changes. Instead of resisting changes, they try to adapt, learn and adjust to encourage and follow new initiatives.

Who should initiate the Growth Mindset culture in your

organisation?

Investing in developing growth mindset in people results in aligning the ambitions of the people with the corporate goals. Often the growth mindset initiative comes from the top management, like in the case of Microsoft. However, the lack of such an initiative from the top management should not limit a manager or a team lead from introducing it in their department or team or an employee from practicing it in their life.

We are living in the era of disruption. A deflationary mindset in such an era itself is a paradigm of sorts. To survive in this era, it is important to develop people who are able to identify new challenges, perform with a purpose, take risks to find more about the unknown and learn to tackle problems with creativity. When a person adapts the growth mindset in their professional life, that will be reflected in their personal life as well. Wouldn’t that provide a very effective way to come out of the deflationary mindset and get more excited about the future?

After reading this article, could you please do the three simple

steps below?



ScheduleFREEDiscoverySessionwiththeauthor

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