If plans don’t always pan out, how can we best prepare for the future?

In this episode, Rich sits down with Dr. Frederik G. Pferdt who was Google’s first Chief Innovation Evangelist and is now a Stanford educator and an Executive-in-Residence and Visiting Fellow at NYU Stern.

In this conversation, he shares insights into how to ritualize and embody cultural values, how to prepare for the future and the power of choosing to show up.

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Key Quotes:

“Instead of planning, we should invest more in preparing. Because planning is usually external. It's timelines, it's spreadsheets, it's steps, it's milestones, all of those things. But preparing is internal. It's your mind state, it's your emotional readiness to adapt.”

“ Innovation is a permission problem, not an idea problem. People don't need more creativity. They need more psychological safety to use it.”

”If you wanna create an environment for innovation, I would recommend using rituals and not rules. Rituals are sticky and they're human… Leaders have specific values in an organization that they wanna activate, bring to life. I think rituals are the best way to actually do that.”

Practice Makes Profit: Making collaboration seamless by assessing alignment.

League of Strategic Minds [listener question]: What strategy myths hold organizations back from being more successful?

Winsights: Ideas for Advantage: Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said, “I bet 70 percent of the innovation we do focuses on slightly improving a process. That incremental invention is a huge part of what makes Amazon tick.” Do you and your team have a process to stimulate innovative thinking throughout the year so that you're always providing new value to your customers? Innovate and evolve or risk becoming obsolete.