Cultivating a Future Ready Mindset

May 20, 2025

Dr. Frederik G. Pferdt, former Chief Innovation Evangelist at Google and Stanford educator, dives into cultivating a future-ready mindset. He discusses how psychological safety fosters innovation and emphasizes rituals over rules to embody organizational values. Frederik also explores the importance of resilience and curiosity in preparing for uncertainty, suggesting that we should focus on internal preparation rather than rigid planning. His insights on prototyping non-physical ideas and the power of asking questions to spark deeper inquiry make for a thought-provoking conversation.

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ANECDOTE

Childhood Workshop That Shaped Curiosity

Frederik recalled building a radio-controlled plane with his father that crashed on its first flight.
He valued the joy of experimentation and learning from the process more than the failed outcome.

ANECDOTE

Google Garage And Letting Go Ritual

Frederik described creating Google's Garage to remove boundaries between idea and prototype.
He introduced rituals like a Day-of-the-Dead inspired practice to help people emotionally let go of failed ideas.

ADVICE

Grant Permission To Experiment

Treat innovation as a permission problem: give people psychological safety to experiment.
Teach teams how to prototype and unlearn so non-tangible ideas can be tested rapidly.

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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.

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Time stamps:

(00:00) Deep Dive Interview with Frederik

(47:34) Practice Makes Profit

(50:34) League of Strategic Minds

(53:16) Winsights, Ideas for Advantage

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Links:

Submit a question for Rich to the League of Strategic Minds: https://www.strategyskills.com/strategic-minds-podcast/

Frederik Pferdt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fgpferdt/

Strategic Quotients Assessment: https://www.strategyskills.com/strategic-quotient-assessment/

Rich Horwath on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richhorwath/

Rich Horwath on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RichHorwath

Rich Horwath on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richhorwathceo/

Strategic Thinking Institute Website: https://www.strategyskills.com/

Inc. Magazine’s Top 4 book for 2024: STRATEGIC Book: https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Direction-Advantage-Executive-Excellence/dp/1394215339

New executive development platform: Strategic Fitness System: http://www.Strategic-Fitness-System.com
Sign up for Rich’s free Strategic Thinker Newsletter: https://www.strategyskills.com/subscribe/

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