The Change Mindset

strong>A bookazine build around seven chapters. About the changing world and a changing mindset and the change mindset Yes … And … Act … we get many short stories, anecdotes, tips, exercises, and references to some awesome, related videos (see some at the bottom of this post) and a lot of references to books. In every chapter the spotlight on a thought leader, entrepreneur or specialist.

1. A changing world. When the world goes bananas … The world of today (VUCA, 1 in 4 people hate their job, think about the major barrier to success: changing mindset and attitude, change is the only constant, complexity rules, happy is productive), the world of yesterday (from Reactive … to … Relax. Everything is under control), and the world of tomorrow (from Proactive … to … Relax. Nothing is under control). Professions of tomorrow: e.g. digital detox therapist, organ harvester and many more.

2. Ladders & Bananas. Human beings love to think in patterns. Placing a ladder over a banana peel to avoid people slipping on it is not the most efficient solution. However, if you look at organizations, it is strange that they have built so many ladders in their structures and systems (red tape, bureaucracy). Seven solid reasons to build ladders are explained. Depending on your role you would solve the banana peel problem in your own way. Many different roles and solutions are given e.g. the scrum master or cleaning lady. And be aware of different shapes of fears. Three kinds of fears that often pop up: fear of the unknown, fear of different opinions and fear of failure.

3. A changing mindset. Do you choose a fixed or growth mindset? You always have a choice. How are you making your (conscious) choices? Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you!

4. The change mindset. The growth mindset is a mindset that is open to change. Three crucial ingredients play an important role if you wish to stay agile. ‘Yes’ stands for positive thinking. ‘Act’ is about getting into action and experimenting. ‘And’ means exploring different views and stimulate your imagination.

5. Yes. Suspend your judgement is the first ingredient to allow change. Watch out for idea killers and use the 3-minute rule to triple your number of ideas. Understand when you can say ‘no’ and when you can say ‘yes, and’. What are you willing to struggle for, or to suffer to realize your dream?

6. And. Switching perspectives is a great way to broaden your own reality. Flip your perspective from a problem to an opportunity. We get 21 activities to broaden your perspective and 7 creativity methods to generate ideas.

7. Act. You can have lots of ideas but without action their value diminishes quickly. Human beings operate on the principle (“The banana principle”) of the least effort – given several paths, we choose the easiest. Start with a BaNaNo action, a first small step, to check if the idea or project had potential. To change behavior, pay attention to nudges (small easy and inexpensive changes) and the intrinsic motivation. Use nearlings (something new that was done with the right intentions, which had not (yet) led to the right result) to create learnings.

Conclusion: A fun to read and beautifully illustrated bookazine. It’s inspiring, pragmatic, and it opens your mind and gives lots of ideas and some food for thought (and it inspired me to create some ppt slides to be used during talks and training classes) and it offers a great set of video links. Looking at all those videos you can ask yourself if an ‘onlookazine’ (an online bookazine) wouldn’t even be a better format because you have to view them, many are awesome! The banana is key in this bookazine and be aware that 65% of your genes are the same as a banana. I would say a must read and I finish with a quote from Lewis Carroll “In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take“.