How to think like a renegade and take radical action to create new solutions at work

To succeed in the new world of work, it’s thinking like a renegade that will help CEOS create new solutions to wicked problems and get ahead. Almost overnight, it feels like the world has changed.

Change is causing a storm in the world, and humanity is caught in the maelstrom. In business, leaders are facing an unknown future, trying to figure out how to navigate the way armed only with an outdated roadmap, bad intel, and operating systems that are obsolete.

You’d agree that this is not a time to follow the status quo. The way things have always been done. CEOs need to be thinking like renegades – radically different and actively breaking old habits to be able to circuit current break ways of operating and problem-solving – if they are to progress and create new solutions at work.

The first step to thinking like a renegade is knowing how you are getting in the way of your own evolution. One of the biggest barriers is relying on known ways of thinking to solve life and business challenges. Yet that is what most of us are doing.

Driven by fear, our craving for certainty and needing to feel in control sees us setting ourselves up to measure a successful past rather than building the capability to get in front of the curve and read the signs of today better.

Our current ways of doing business are set up for highly repeatable events and stable market conditions. The human mind is great at identifying patterns by creating shortcuts and relying on historical data. So, when we are confronted by unknown challenges, it means that our natural tendency is to identify trends we are already aware of. This is BAD.

Your standard operating procedures won’t work in the face of the unlikely or improbable. They will fail you in situations that are new, or that you are dealing with for the first time.

Research shows us there are some critical ways to be able to kickstart your thinking more like a renegade for enhanced problem-solving. Here are my top strategies to help you get started:

1. Expand your energy and extend capacity – renegades are constantly working on building their resilience and managing their energy to fuel enhanced problem-solving capacity and tap into that extra 60% that’s underutilized. It’s what helps them maintain their maniacal focus and a driving sense of purpose during tough times and stay on track when the weather conditions get stormy.

2. Making a choice to speed up or slow down decision-making – making the right decision at the right time for optimal results requires enhanced consciousness about when to rely on intuitive data or rational facts or a combination of the two. Renegades consciously do both. They practice slowing down their minds to help with more accurate analysis and processing. They also trust their instincts which enables them to capitalize on rich opportunities and get ahead in the game when every second counts.

3. Growing your connections – your ability to see the world through the lens of another has been deemed critical to internal and external customer engagement and maintaining a competitive edge. Successful renegades make deep connections with others and make showing compassion at work a top priority.

4. Enhanced collaboration – renegades know that individual giftedness is limited and that greater outcomes can be achieved through harnessing collective brilliance. That’s why they focus on moving their organizations and teams away from centralized decision-making models to become better coaches and facilitators. It also supercharges their ability to learn and generate new knowledge fast to bolster their performance edge.

5. Going against the grain – deliberately choosing the road less traveled in solution seeking is second nature to a renegade. This means relying on creativity to deliver non-linear thinking and innovation. Having an entrepreneurial mindset or cultivating it is a key part of this superpower. A great example is choosing to lead a project that is completely out of your wheelhouse. This decision forces you to not rely on existing knowledge and past practices to tap into innate sources of wisdom and ask for help from others.

6. Be prepared to blow stuff up – thinking like a renegade means a focus only on creating value and getting rid of stuff that doesn’t. This means saying no to non-value adding processes and being more focused on putting efforts into only that which accelerates your organization’s ability to deliver on the big picture. It builds your change agility at scale.

Written by Vanessa Vershaw.

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