Category: SCAN

Listen for Underlying Influences; Helping Your Colleagues Get Unstuck

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Be present, get curious, listen with empathy, listen actively, set aside your own opinions and reactions. All good advice for developing your listening skills.

For over 30 years, I’ve been teaching listening skills workshops to organizational leaders. A few workshop participants get a lot better. Most improve in the classroom and then revert to their familiar communication habits when they get back to work – some are hopeless.

I’ll let you in on a secret. Those of us who teach leaders how to listen, secretly want to use the skill as a trojan horse for creating more humane workplaces. These noble intentions, however, can undermine the effectiveness of listening skills training. We place too much emphasis on behavior and mindset: how to be a better listener. We don’t place enough emphasis on what to listen for, becoming a more strategic listener.

Those of us who teach leaders how to listen, secretly want to use the skill as a trojan horse for creating more humane workplaces.

I can anticipate the reaction of purists who would warn against polluting one’s mind with listening filters. You wouldn’t choose bait without knowing what’s swimming below. When training therapists, coaches, or social workers I stand with the purists. Empty your mind, open your heart. When training leaders – busy, time-starved, results-oriented leaders – we need easy-to-adopt guidance so they can experience a noticeable improvement.

Got a Minute?

Some conversations are about career development, some are about establishing and maintaining relationship. Let’s focus on how to strategically listen when someone with a problem to share approaches a leader with the deceptively casual, “Hi, got a minute?”

As David Straus, the founder of Interaction Associates, pointed out in “How to Make Collaboration Work,” a problem is a situation someone wants to change.

Most problems brought to leaders at work are situations that the person raising the issue wants to change. The key to being a better strategic listener is to explore the nature of the situation and the nature of the change.

When a person feels stuck, it is likely that there are underlying or hidden influences missing from their thinking. The SCAN model from Unstuck Minds can help reveal what we might be missing when trying to make sense of the situations we want to change. Here’s a quick explainer video about SCAN.

When interacting with someone feeling stuck, a leader should listen for information from each of the SCAN dimensions:

  • Ask about structures: What existing systems, routines, or processes are resisting the change you want to make?
  • Ask about context: What environmental factors outside your control pose threats or opportunities?
  • Ask about assumptions: Name underlying beliefs you hold about the situation? What underlying organizational beliefs maintain the status quo?
  • Ask about needs: Who matters to the situation, what do they each care about? Whose perspective is missing from your understanding of the situation?

Without a framework like SCAN, we are all tempted to seek the kind of information we like best. Our favorite sources of information are like our preset music stations or playlists. We get a steady diet of what the channel provides, but a breakthrough might require a conscious effort to hear something unexpected.

If you’d like to learn which of the SCAN dimensions you’re most attracted to, you can take a free assessment and download a report.

How Leaders Turn Thinking Into Action: Lessons From Five Years of Data

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Organizations develop unique patterns in how they navigate complexity and uncertainty. After five years of assessing how leaders approach challenging situations, we’ve discovered that different organizational cultures rely on markedly different information sources to make decisions – insights that challenge our traditional one-size-fits-all approach to leadership development.

I don’t think anyone would be surprised to learn that a group of leaders in a government auditing function would process information differently than a group of technology company sales leaders. Why then, do we offer both groups the same advice about aligning stakeholders, influencing senior leaders, and managing change?

The SCAN Framework

To help leaders identify hidden influences and unseen barriers in complex environments, we developed the SCAN framework. This tool assesses four critical data sources that inform leadership thinking: Structures (organizational systems and norms), Context (environmental factors), Assumptions (underlying beliefs), and Needs (stakeholder motivations and desires). SCAN scores allow us to visualize how different leaders prioritize these information sources when moving from thinking to action.

Our analysis reveals that functional groups and organizations develop distinct thinking-to-action cultures – consistent patterns in how they process information when setting direction, making decisions, or solving problems under uncertainty.

Three Distinct Thinking-to-Action Cultures

The bar graph compares three different groups of leaders from three different organizations and functions. Bar heights represent percentile scores for each dimension of the SCAN framework. The black dashed line represents the average score for each dimension based on total database responses from groups working in the same functions and organizations (n=1528).

Leading Change

Let’s consider what the SCAN profiles in the above graph suggest about how each group of leaders might design a large-scale change effort and the pitfalls they might encounter during implementation.

Government Audit Managers

These leaders demonstrate a strong focus on existing systems and norms, scoring notably higher than average in the Structures dimension. Their systematic approach brings stability and consistency, but also creates specific challenges in change management. They tend to overlook environmental factors outside their direct control (low Context) and rarely question established systems (low Assumptions).

When leading change initiatives, these leaders excel at working within established frameworks but need to strengthen their ability to:

  • Connect change efforts to broader strategic objectives
  • Respond to shifting external factors
  • Challenge procedures that no longer serve their purpose

Technology Company Sales Leaders

These leaders excel at reading market signals and external trends, with significantly higher Context scores than average. This market sensitivity creates agility but can lead to implementation challenges. Their attention to market dynamics often comes at the expense of understanding internal systems and processes (low Structures), while established organizational beliefs remain largely unexamined (low Assumptions).

Their change initiatives benefit from strong market alignment but require additional focus on:

  • Analyzing how new priorities interact with existing systems
  • Building sustainable processes amid market volatility
  • Balancing quick responses with structural considerations

Software Engineering Leaders

This group stands out for their strategic and innovative mindset, showing exceptionally high scores in both Context and Assumptions. They readily embrace new trends and willingly challenge status quo operations. However, their significantly lower Needs scores suggest that they do not seek inspiration for innovation by attending to the desires and motivations of people.

Their change leadership strengths lie in driving innovation, but success requires:

  • Balancing innovation with operational stability
  • Maintaining quality standards while pursuing new ideas
  • Increasing focus on stakeholder impact and adoption

Implications for influencing, aligning, and deciding

Identifying distinct thinking-to-action patterns help us support rather than overwhelm decision makers when they deal with multiple complex, uncertain, and high-stakes situations. We can start by supplying information that’s easy to digest given a leadership team’s SCAN preferences. Next, we can make information from overlooked sources easier to digest so that leaders don’t run the risk of missing something important.

Understanding your organization’s thinking-to-action culture provides a foundation for more effective leadership development and organizational change. It allows you to leverage your cultural strengths while systematically addressing potential blind spots.

The Case for Reinventing the Wheel

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It’s probably just my reflex when told not to do something.

Whenever I hear the advice, “don’t reinvent the wheel,” I think, “why not?” I presume the subtext is: don’t waste resources solving a problem that’s already been solved. If nothing else, solving a problem as if it weren’t already solved is educational. In fact, the simple act of re-imagining solutions can raise useful questions about the effectiveness of the status quo.

“Reinventing Wheels” Reveals Hidden Assumptions

In 1997, I was part of a cross-functional “change team” at Pizza Hut. We had been asked by Mike Rawlings, the CEO at the time, to identify ideas for reducing overhead costs by 10% (in a previous blog post, I’ve described the change team experience in more detail). We came back to Mike and his executive team with recommendations that would cut expenses by 30%, a recommendation that Yum! Brands later adopted with savings they projected would amount to $300 million by 2019.

I didn’t recognize it at the time, but I see now that the change team had adopted a “reinvent the wheel” approach to our challenge. Rather than look for inefficiencies in the existing structure, we started by asking, “what do restaurant general managers need to satisfy their customers?” If a savvy restaurant manager acting like an owner wouldn’t require the support, it raised the question: why does this function exist? The ensuing discussion revealed a set of operating assumptions that had become invisible.

The SCAN Framework

The SCAN framework (Structures, Context, Assumptions, and Needs) is designed to reveal hidden influences that may be keeping us stuck. When we introduce the SCAN framework to our clients, people struggle the most with the ‘Assumptions’ dimension. Once we define our terms, it’s easy for people to grasp the differences among underlying structures, surrounding context, and human needs. Assumptions, on the other hand, are hard to recognize because noticing what governs the way you notice feels unfathomable.

A thought experiment like reinventing the wheel provides an indirect look at assumptions that might be worth challenging. Instead of trying to name your assumptions, reinventing the wheel invites you to justify the status quo.

Maybe you have a sinking feeling that something fundamental about your business or organization needs to change. Perhaps you don’t trust the typical problem-solving approach your leadership team would take if you raised the issue.

Before calling in the consultants, reinvent your wheel by starting with the questions below.

Reinvention Questions

  • What does your organization offer that people will continue to benefit from in the future?
  • Who are the people that benefit from what your organization will continue to offer?
  • What has changed about them since the time you set up the current systems and distribution channels designed to meet their needs?
  • What has changed about the competitive landscape? How else can they get their needs met?

You don’t have to literally reinvent your business. It’s enough to expose hidden assumptions so you can make informed choices about what to keep and what to change. Sometimes, when it comes to getting unstuck, even if “it aint broke,” break it. Then, reinvent how you fix it.

Jay G. Cone is the author of The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What to Do; Discovering Creativity and Compassion in a Time of Chaos. He is the co-founder of Unstuck Minds.

Are you Facing the Unfamiliar, the Unexplored, or the Unknown?

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Not all experiences of feeling lost call for the same remedy.

You may be facing an unfamiliar situation. Perhaps you’ve been assigned a complicated task you’ve never handled before. In such cases, people can instruct you. There are clear steps you can follow. Your sense of being temporarily lost stems from not knowing how to get started. Once you’re shown the roadmap, you feel reassured, and you can make progress.

Alternatively, you may be venturing into unexplored territory. Consider, for example, leading a complex organizational transformation. Here, there is no predefined roadmap. Advisors and consultants may offer relevant experience, but each change effort in every organization is unique. While there are recommended frameworks and methods, you’re likely to encounter unexpected obstacles.

Then, there’s facing the unknown. You may feel disoriented by your inability to make sense of what’s happening. You may be unable to predict the consequences of familiar actions. For example, you might be considering a new business line or expanding into a new geography. Or perhaps an unforeseen situation has disrupted your organization or your life, leaving you adrift. When facing the unknown, current conditions are unrecognizable and what once felt like a priority suddenly loses its importance.

In each case, you could describe yourself as lost. If you need a strategy to get unstuck, it’s not useful to focus on how lost you are. It’s better to focus on how you are lost.

When facing the unfamiliar, you need a roadmap and clear directions. To navigate unexplored territory, you need skills, tools, and a flexible plan. When dealing with the unknown, managing your attention becomes crucial, because you don’t know what to look for or how to interpret what you find.

When dealing with the unknown, managing your attention becomes crucial, because you don’t know what to look for or how to interpret what you find.

Facing the Unknown means getting comfortable with uncertainty

In previous posts we’ve defined the ability to manage your attention when facing complex and uncertain situations as “attention agility.” We have also described the SCAN framework (Structures, Context, Assumptions, and Needs) as a tool for developing attention agility. SCAN directs your attention towards a variety of information sources, countering habitual thinking tendencies that dictate what gets noticed and what gets overlooked. When facing the unknown, SCAN helps you ask better questions.

Before you can apply clear thinking to help you navigate your way through the unknown, you’ll want to come to terms with feeling disoriented. Humans tend to avoid uncertainty. When stuck or lost, we’re attracted to definitive answers and confident sounding advice. We settle for any port in a storm. When the unknown becomes our new normal, the storm doesn’t pass. We can end up settling for the wrong port.

To make sure you don’t respond to an unknown situation with strategies designed for the unfamiliar and unexplored, build your attention agility by taking a moment to reflect on a few questions:

  • What if I chose to pause before taking action? Is immediate action required or am I simply reacting to the discomfort I feel?
  • What’s novel about this situation? Am I jumping to conclusions about the nature of the situation? Am I looking for ways to frame the situation as an example of something I’m familiar with?
  • Who could provide a reasonable perspective that I’m currently disregarding? Are my advisors open to learning or are they set in their ways?
  • What low-risk experiment could help me learn my way forward?

Jay G. Cone is the author of The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What to Do; Discovering Creativity and Compassion in a Time of Chaos. He is the co-founder of Unstuck Minds.

Overcoming Roadblocks with Attention Agility

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My wife and I have been binging past seasons of “The Amazing Race.” We’ve been making mental notes of the exotic race locations for imagined future vacations. We also enjoy passing judgment on the way the two-person teams bark commands at each other while driving to their next clue. From our comfortable seats in the living room, we think, “Why not just relax and take in the breathtaking scenery?” Thankfully, we’ve never had microphones and cameras pointed at us while we discuss where to park at the mall.

I’m always impressed when a leg of the race requires teams to navigate in unfamiliar territory. They must drive under pressure, decipher road signs in languages they don’t understand, and arrive on time to avoid high-stakes consequences. Sometimes, they struggle with a manual transmission car. They’re forbidden from using modern GPS technology, creating stressful, complex, and uncertain conditions.

Lately, I’ve become interested in how our attention works and what it means for our ability to deal with an increasingly complex and uncertain world. When driving under familiar and predictable conditions, like a trip to the mall, we have attentional resources to spare. We can listen to music, sip coffee, and have a mature, collaborative conversation about where to park.

However, driving under hazardous conditions through unfamiliar territory requires us to use our attention differently. We become alert to our environment. Subtle features of the landscape take on greater significance. We may need information from people we don’t typically interact with. It sounds like I’m describing what it feels like to lead in today’s business environment.

We know what it’s like to switch the way we use our attention when driving. Changing conditions have an immediate impact. We’ve learned that misapplying our attention represents a clear and present danger. When organizational leaders get in the driver’s seat, the risks of misapplying their attention are less obvious, but no less perilous. We can’t navigate our organizations and teams through uncertain conditions with our status quo driving habits.

Attention Agility

Attention agility is the capacity to shift one’s focus and perspective quickly and easily in response to the dynamic demands of complex and uncertain conditions.

Developing the skill of attention agility allows you to deliberately and strategically allocate attentional resources to various aspects of a problem or scenario. You can recognize and prioritize key insights, adapt your thinking strategies on the fly, and generate holistic, multifaceted solutions. People skilled at attention agility notice evolving circumstances and consider a broad range of perspectives and possibilities.

Attention agility is the capacity to shift one’s focus and perspective quickly and easily in response to the dynamic demands of complex and uncertain conditions.

Attention agility is akin to mindfulness. It’s simultaneously sophisticated and simple. Like mindfulness, attention agility is less about doing something new and more about heightened awareness and managing distraction. A driver applies attention agility when switching from autopilot to vigilance as the road conditions change. A leader applies attention agility when challenging assumptions, watching trends, and taking in diverse stakeholder perspectives.

SCAN

In 1938, Orson Welles and his troupe of radio actors broadcast a story about a Martian invasion of Earth. The broadcast, known as ‘The War of the Worlds,’ was written and acted to sound like an emergency interruption of regular programming. Historical accounts of the broadcast differ on how many people recognized it as a hoax and how many panicked. My father heard the broadcast and told me that he simply checked to see if other stations were reporting news of an alien invasion. When he discovered that it was only being reported by the Columbia Broadcasting System, he sat back and enjoyed the program.

You can think of attention agility as the simple act of switching radio stations. Just as we have our favorite stations (or streaming channels), we also have our preferred types of information. When facing uncertain or complex situations, we tune in to the channels that provide information we trust, information that helps us feel in control. If we only attend to one kind of information, we miss the whole story. We don’t uncover new insights. We overlook risks and opportunities. We can get stuck.

We developed a framework called SCAN (Structures, Context, Assumptions, Needs) to help people pay attention to a broad spectrum of information so they notice the important, hidden influences that may be keeping them stuck. The SCAN framework facilitates the process of switching attention, especially when things get stressful, complex, and uncertain. Check out this explainer video to learn about SCAN. If you’re unaware that other channels of information exist, you won’t turn the dial. If you want to develop your attention agility, diversify your information sources. Learn to change the channel.

The teams that win “The Amazing Race” are not necessarily the most physically fit or the most worldly. Winning teams are able to shift their focus and perspectives more quickly and easily than team that get stuck and fall behind. When you watch the teams get stuck, you can tell that they’re only thinking about their challenge one way. When they switch the way they pay attention, they get unstuck.

Amazing Race teams don’t have the luxury of viewing themselves the way my wife and I watch them. But what if they did? What if a team feeling stuck could shift their perspective, even for a moment, from participant to spectator? What would they notice? What if a leadership team feeling stuck could shift their perspective? The next time my wife and I argue about finding a parking space, I’ll imagine we’re on camera. I think it might alter, at least for the moment, my preoccupation with being right.

Jay G. Cone is the author of The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What to Do; Discovering Creativity and Compassion in a Time of Chaos. He is the co-founder of Unstuck Minds.

Want to Stick to your Resolutions? Work on the Hidden Influences Keeping you Stuck.

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Resolution, the noun form of the verb resolve, derives from the Latin resolvere, meaning “to loosen.” The original sense of “resolve” is not about bringing something new to a situation you want to change. Essentially, a resolution is the untying of a problematic knot. Resolving to do something literally means to get unstuck.

As the new year approaches, we set intentions, goals, and resolutions to make things better. Usually, we frame our resolutions as behavior changes. We promise to start doing something, or stop doing something, or finally accomplish that thing we’ve been meaning to do. The statistics on our ability to make good on our resolutions are not encouraging. Only 8% of respondents to an October 2023 Forbe’s survey stuck to their New Year’s resolutions for more than one month.

Maybe it would be better to remind ourselves of the true meaning of a resolution. Rather than focus on the behaviors we want to change, we could focus on loosening the knots that make changing our behaviors difficult. If we resolve to get unstuck, maybe our desired behavior changes won’t feel like such a struggle.

Rather than focus on the behaviors we want to change, we could focus on loosening the knots that make changing our behaviors difficult.

If you’ve waited until the start of a new year to adopt a change, it probably means that you anticipate the change will require commitment and effort. Otherwise, you would have simply adopted the change when it first struck you as a good idea. Waiting until January to improve things is a telltale sign that a knot needs some loosening.

You can’t loosen a knot you don’t notice. That’s where SCAN comes in. If you’re unfamiliar with the SCAN framework, check out this post. SCAN does for your mind what a physical therapist does for your body. SCAN not only provides insights into what’s got you tangled up, SCAN teaches you strategies for increasing the flexibility of your thinking.

From January to SCANuary

Let’s work through an example. I’ll take a traditional New Year’s resolution and apply the SCAN framework to identify insights and options I might be missing. Suppose I resolve to get fit, lose weight, and eat a healthier diet in 2024.

Structures: Which of my habits and routines are inconsistent with a healthy lifestyle?

Maybe I’m in the habit of eating lunch without taking a break from work. I end up choosing convenient food that I can eat quickly while keeping my attention on my computer screen. I don’t feel full and end up snacking throughout the afternoon to keep me alert. Most of what I eat during the day consists of carbohydrates. If I don’t loosen the knot of my workday routines, I won’t develop healthier eating habits.

Context: Which environmental factors outside my control create opportunities for a healthy lifestyle, which factors put a healthy lifestyle at risk?

I could be on the lookout for new apps or devices that make it easy and fun for me to track fitness data. I could learn about new studies linking some of my current behaviors to a lack of stamina or energy. Maybe I should get the results of a physical before establishing a new fitness routine. A fear of the unknown may be a knot I need to loosen so that I can learn about what’s new and what’s changing.

Assumptions: How might my beliefs, mindsets, and worldviews be responsible for the way I’m framing my resolution?

What am I comparing myself to when I imagine that my current situation needs to change? Maybe I’ve formed an image of fitness that is unrealistic or inconsistent with what I value most. If I don’t loosen the knot of my biases, I may be striving to achieve the wrong goal.

Needs: How might the concerns and perspectives of people who matter relate to my fitness goals?

Of course, getting clear on my own fears and motivations may loosen an important knot. Who else should I include in my thinking about living a healthier lifestyle? Maybe I share meals with people who won’t enjoy dining with me if I change my diet. Maybe I’m trying to impress someone without really understanding how they view me now. Maybe I need to seek out a health coach to help me get started?

I get it. Asking yourself hard questions feels more daunting than simply setting goals and taking action. So, how about this? If it’s nearing the end of January, and you find yourself among the anticipated 92% of people who are about to call it quits on your New Year’s resolution, consider SCANning for a few knots to loosen.

Jay G. Cone is the author of The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What to Do; Discovering Creativity and Compassion in a Time of Chaos. He is the co-founder of Unstuck Minds.

The Odyssey of Change: Anticipating the Four Hidden Forces of Organizational Transformation

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Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, tells the story of Odysseus’ journey home after the fall of Troy. Odysseus and his crew spent ten years at sea. Some of their encounters along the way were fortuitous, others were fatal.

While organizational transformation is less perilous, it can feel just as daunting. It is unrealistic and possibly counterproductive to expect smooth sailing if the goal is to undergo a transformation. By paying attention to four hidden forces of organizational transformation You can, however, improve your chances of a successful journey.

To remember the four forces, we use the acronym SCAN, which stands for Structures, Context, Assumptions, and Needs.

Keep an eye out for entrenched STRUCTURES

I worked for a restaurant chain that was looking to improve its customer service. Because the company did a lot of delivery and take-out business, the main customer interactions occurred during the phone call to place an order (this was in the 1990s, before online ordering).

After the training programs and updated processes failed to improve service ratings, we decided to investigate. We discovered that restaurant managers were instructing their team members to ignore the phone if the restaurant was getting overwhelmed with orders.

The managers received bonuses for getting food out quickly. The point-of-sale system tracked how long it took from an order being placed until the order was plated or packaged. If too many orders came in, things backed up in the kitchen, and the managers’ bonuses suffered. If you don’t want orders backing up, don’t answer the phone.

Before initiating an organizational transformation, spend some time identifying systems, habits, and routines which will preserve status quo priorities and behaviors.

Pay attention to CONTEXT

On paper organizational transformation provides an illusion of control. Leaders imagine that clear goals and a well-designed plan will create the reality they envision. In the same way that weather matters to the success of an outdoor wedding, an organization’s business context matters to a change effort. The best laid plans are still subject to unpredictable and uncontrollable conditions.

Given the relentless headlines about the lingering impacts of the pandemic, disruptive technological innovation, and deteriorating trust in institutions and governments, context has become hard to ignore. Still, you may want to give some thought to contextual factors closer to your organization’s operating environment. If it’s outside your control and could have an influence on the success of your transformation efforts, it’s worth your attention.

Consider, for example, the potent combination of social trends and demographics. Baby boomer executives are retiring. Millennial and Gen Z workers are less interested in staying put and moving up the corporate ladder to fill the vacancies. HR leaders would be well-served by keeping these generational shifts in mind as they develop new talent strategies.

As you think about transforming the business, how will you keep an eye out for changing environmental factors that might become sources of both opportunities and threats?

Challenge out-of-date ASSUMPTIONS

After decades of decline, the Eastman Kodak company filed for bankruptcy in 2012. In 1976, Kodak had an 80% market share in camera sales and a 90% market share in film and film processing. It would be tempting to conclude that the company failed to notice the emergence of digital photography.

Kodak knew about digital photography. In 1975, it was a Kodak engineer who invented the digital camera. People unfamiliar with the company’s history are surprised to learn that The Eastman Kodak company held the first patent for digital cameras.

Kodak executives couldn’t recognize the significance of their changing context because they were blinded by their assumptions about the business. Digital imagery wasn’t simply a novel version of photography, it redefined the way people share the stories of their lives.

In the 1990’s IBM’s bread and butter, the mainframe computer, was being threatened by the rise of personal computers and the introduction of the client-server model. In 1992, IBM posted a $8.1 billion loss. In 1993, IBM brought on a new CEO, Louis V. Gerstner Jr., to return the company to profitability.

Lou Gerstner was able to challenge assumptions about IBM’s business in a way that the Kodak executive team could not. Gerstner was not blinded by an emotional attachment to IBM’s business model, products, or culture.

Before you transform the business, undertake a clear-eyed assessment of the deeply held assumptions being challenged by your vision of the future. How will you help people adapt?

Prioritize people’s NEEDS

In 1985, Coca-Cola introduced a new formula for its flagship soda, which was widely known as “New Coke.” The company spent $4 million on market research and taste tests, which suggested that consumers preferred the taste of New Coke over the original formula.

However, the introduction of New Coke was met with widespread backlash from consumers, who had a strong emotional attachment to the original formula. The company was unprepared for the negative reaction, and sales plummeted. The company received thousands of letters and calls from angry customers, and some even boycotted the brand.

Needs are manifestations of emotions. Leaders often underestimate the role of emotion in the success of an organizational transformation. Understanding needs requires empathy, not survey data.

Think about the people who matter most to the success of your transformation. What matters to them? Think about the people who are most often excluded from the conversations about an organizational transformation, what can you learn from their lived experience that would never have occurred to you?

Any significant organizational transformation with bump up against fixed structures, unpredictable context, embedded assumptions, and unmet needs. Conducting a periodic SCAN will help leaders navigate the uncharted waters during the voyage from current realities to a desired future.

Jay G. Cone is the author of The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What to Do; Discovering Creativity and Compassion in a Time of Chaos. He is the co-founder of Unstuck Minds.

How to Make a Consequential Decision

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Which college should I attend? Which job offer should I accept? Should we fix up our house or sell it and move?

Harvard psychology professor and best selling author Dan Gilbert argues that our approach to thinking through choices with significant future consequences is flawed. Gilbert has shown that we mistakenly assume our future selves will feel the same way about things as our current selves. In other words, when evaluating choices, we project our current mindsets and priorities onto the people we will become after the decision has been enacted. If the decision is consequential, we won’t be the same.

A couple may be discussing when and if they want to start a family. If you interview the couple to learn about their thought process, you’ll hear a lot about how they imagine kids will change their lives. The big assumption hiding in their deliberations is that they can rationally compare their current lives to their future lives.

Let’s say that in the current, pre-kids life the couple enjoys a weekly round of golf with another couple. It’s an important ritual that they prioritize in planning their weekly activities and commitments. The couple assumes that starting a family will spell the end of the weekly golf outings. Gilbert’s point is that when thinking through the decision, the couple can’t really weigh the pros and cons of playing golf against the pros and cons of caring for a child because they don’t have the lived experience of caring for a child to place on one side of the scale. They’re making a comparison between real feelings about their current lives against imagined feelings they can only guess at. We can’t feel the feelings of our future selves.

An alternative for thinking through consequential decisions

Step One: Stop asking, what should i do?

When faced with a decision to make, we have the unfortunate habit of asking, what should I do? The question tricks us into evaluating our options too soon. First, according to Gilbert, we should be skeptical of our ability to assess the options. Secondly, once we start comparing options, we stop imagining new, perhaps more creative possibilities.

Instead of thinking about what to do, anticipate the consequences of your options.

When people struggle with decision making, what they really want is a way to predict the future. It’s not the decision, but rather the outcomes after implementing the decision that matter. By shifting the focus from the choices to the consequences of the choices, we improve our ability to imagine the future. In other words, when I detach myself from the emotions present-me feels about my choices, I can consider how my options will feel to future-me.

… when I detach myself from the emotions present-me feels about my choices, I can consider how my options will feel to future-me.

Step Two: SCAN the consequences

The Unstuck Minds Blog introduced the SCAN framework a few years ago. In our work with organizations, we teach and apply the framework as a thinking tool to develop attention agility. Each of the four elements of SCAN (Structures, Context, Assumptions, and Needs) provide a view into different and overlooked aspects of our situations. Recently, we’ve considered how the framework might support an individual making a consequential decision.

It’s challenging to shift focus from your current choices to possible future consequences. Your current choices are defined and finite. Future consequences are vague, unpredictable, and infinite. The SCAN framework provides a systematic way to explore uncertainty and complexity.

Better questions to ask about a consequential decision

Let’s say that you want to exercise more regularly in the coming year. You are trying to decide between joining a health club, purchasing a Peloton, or hiring a personal trainer. Even though it’s a made-up situation, when you read the last sentence, it’s likely that opinions and feelings about each choice came to mind. Set aside early judgments and imagine asking the following questions instead:

Structures (how things get done in my life)

How will my current routines have to adapt to each option? What will it be like to integrate future routines into life with each option?

Context (the environmental influences of things I don’t control)

What might change in my environment that will influence how I think about the benefits and risks of each option? What might happen that don’t I control, which could change how I will feel about the decision I made?

Assumptions (my unchallenged beliefs)

What must be true in the future for each option to work out the way I want it to? What impressions will people have about me when they find out what I chose?

Needs (what matters to the people who matter)

How might my satisfaction with each option change as my needs change? How might each option impact the people who matter to me?

Step Three: Focus on adjusting to the future as it unfolds

We tend to think of decisions about the future as guessing games, like picking the cup that the pebble is under. We can be right, or we can be wrong. In reality, most of the consequential decisions we face provide a set of questions with no obvious right answer.

When you imagine consequences rather than dwell on how you currently feel about your options, you’re less likely to think of a choice as being “right” or “the best.” You’ll notice the overlapping benefits and tradeoffs of each option. You may even discover an option you hadn’t considered. When you take action to implement the decision, the future will unfold. The more consideration you give to future consequences, the more prepared you will be to adjust to whatever emerges.

In a recent podcast interview with Ezra Klein, the writer George Saunders talked about the power of literature. We feel about SCAN the way Saunders described great literature. “In the end,” he said, “you don’t have an answer, but you have new respect for the question.”

Jay G. Cone is the author of The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What to Do; Discovering Creativity and Compassion in a Time of Chaos. He is the co-founder of Unstuck Minds.

SCAN: Hidden Influences in Four Metaphors

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SCAN stands for Structures, Context, Assumptions, and Needs. Each SCAN dimension represents a hidden influence. Structures are the habits, rules, systems, and processes we follow. Context is comprised of the external, uncontrollable factors that represent both opportunities and threats. Assumptions are the unchallenged beliefs that determine our mindsets and our culture. Needs are what motivates the people we care about, the people we should include in our thinking and planning.

SCAN helps us notice the important information we’re not looking for, important information that might help us get unstuck.

SCAN helps us notice the important information we’re not looking for, important information that might help us get unstuck. While considering new ways to teach the SCAN framework, we’ve started thinking metaphorically about the four dimensions of the model. Each metaphor clarifies the nature of the dimension and why paying attention to it matters. Each metaphor captures the relationship between our experiences and the causal influences that often escape our attention.

Structures: The Flowers and the Soil

Structures are like the soil in which the flowers grow. Flowers thrive and grow in well-tended soil. The flowers become rooted in the soil. A lot goes on below the surface that determines the success of the flowers, which flowers do better than others, and whether weeds will also flourish.

Working with structures to get unstuck is like analyzing the soil instead of repeatedly pulling weeds.

Context: The Notes and the Melody

Context is like a melody formed by musical notes. The melody is a gestalt of notes in a particular arrangement. We make sense of the arrangement by detecting a pattern. When the notes are distinctive and the intervals between them seem random, it becomes difficult to discern a melody. When we detect a melody, we understand how to interpret and anticipate the notes.

Working with context to get unstuck is like learning to dance to new music before you appear out of step.

Assumptions: The Acorn and the Oak

Assumptions are like the acorn which grows into an oak tree. When the oak matures, the acorn essentially disappears. Still, the nature of the oak has been largely determined by the genetics of the acorn. If we want to understand the oak and predict how it will grow, we need to trace its development back to the seed from which it emerged.

Working with assumption to get unstuck is like acknowledging and perhaps reframing the characteristics that shape our reality.

NEEDS: MOTION AND GRAVITY

Needs are like the force of gravity influencing how things move. We notice action and motion. We can only infer the pushes and pulls influencing how someone behaves. Wants are expressed. A need, like gravity, is an unseen, yet ever-present force.

Working with needs is like deeply understanding what makes the apple fall.

Jay G. Cone is the author of The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What to Do; Discovering Creativity and Compassion in a Time of Chaos. He is the co-founder of Unstuck Minds.

Feeling Stuck? Try Brainstorming Terrible Ideas

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We recently led a series of breakout sessions at an annual conference. The conference was put on by a fast-growing bakery franchise. In attendance were bakery owners and corporate support staff. During the breakout sessions we taught the bakery owners how to use the SCAN Framework (Structures, Context, Assumptions, and Needs) to tackle challenging problems.

Most people using SCAN have an intuitive grasp of the structures, the context, and the needs influencing their situation. Assumptions are harder to access. Shared beliefs and mindsets form our operating systems, but like a computer’s operating system, most of us don’t know what it’s doing or how it works until something goes wrong or it’s time for a big change.

The company’s bakeries are known for their unique, high-quality, hand-crafted cakes. They think about the purpose of their business as bringing joy. They promote their cakes as the centerpiece of celebrations. They have a cult-like following of people who rave about experiencing their first bite of cake.

To help the bakery owners become more aware of their assumptions, I asked them to react to a terrible idea. I suggested that they box up their most popular recipes in cake-mix form and put them on grocery store shelves next to the Betty Crocker cake mixes. Lucky for me, I prepared them to be offended by the idea. When I asked them to explain what makes the idea terrible, we started to hear more about their assumptions:

  • People count on us for a consistent, fresh-baked product.
  • Our guests love the variety of choices we offer.
  • Only high-quality ingredients prepared by hand and using our methods will produce the cake. You can’t do it at home.
  • Visiting our bakeries is a joyful experience and essential to our brand.

The purpose of the exercise is not to abandon assumptions. The purpose is to become more aware of our assumptions. When you’re aware of your assumptions, you can have more productive discussions about controversial ideas. Controversial ideas are provocative precisely because they challenge our assumptions. Adopting a provocative idea often means letting go of something predictable and comforting.

Anticipate Change-Resistance

In our experience, organizations don’t suffer from a lack good ideas. In organizational settings, good ideas face two common obstacles. First, the best ideas may never get in front of the people with the authority to enact them. Secondly, new ideas rarely survive their first encounter with the status quo. Assumptions and mindsets protect the status quo.

Becoming aware of shared organizational assumptions will help you anticipate the change-management implications of adopting a provocative idea. For example, to support the growth of the bakery company, there will inevitably be pressure to streamline operations. At some point, an idea to increase efficiency will bump up against the assumption: Only high-quality ingredients prepared by hand and using our methods will produce the cake.

How to use a Terrible Idea to Uncover Hidden Assumptions

Let’s say you feel stuck. The ideas you have look great on paper and you’ve been given the green light to implement them. And yet, you repeatedly experience setbacks as you try to turn your ideas into meaningful change.

  1. Set aside the good ideas and bring together a team.
  2. invite them to brainstorm terrible ideas. Ideas that are guaranteed to produce a visceral, negative reaction from your stakeholders. By the way, your team will find it liberating and fun to produce a list of dangerous ideas.
  3. Rank the ideas to find the best of the worst. When prioritizing the list of ideas, the most useful, terrible ideas will be the ones that are plausible, but feel unsettling. For example, imagine recommending to the senior team of Disney’s Theme Parks that they open a Disney casino in Las Vegas. Useful terrible ideas will take the organization in a new direction, not just offer a bad change to an existing way of doing business. For example, suggesting that McDonald’s become a wireless network operator is a more useful terrible idea than suggesting that McDonald’s serve their food on fine China.
  4. Finally, facilitate a discussion about why the most terrible ideas evoke an emotional reaction.

Once you clarify the hidden assumptions that seem to create a gravitational field that holds things in place, you’ll have a better understanding of why your new ideas won’t take. You may also uncover some ancient assumptions that are somehow still in play, but no longer feel relevant.

Jay G. Cone is the author of The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What to Do; Discovering Creativity and Compassion in a Time of Chaos. He is the co-founder of Unstuck Minds.