Digitalization is transforming the competition faster than ever before in our times. And no one really knows what’s coming next. The new normal is living in this constant change.

Organizations and their talents must together be continually ready to transform to succeed… or even to survive. Learning and growing is high performance. You can’t grow your business beyond you and your people – people are the business.

Meanwhile, no one can change or ‘fix’ other people. Everyone is responsible for his or her own growth.

In this new context, the most essential task for leadership is to build and protect a culture in which you and your people can and will choose to learn and grow. A culture in which it’s more important to ask the right questions than it is to have the right answers. A culture that enables you and your people to do what you don’t know.

We call it a learning habitat and it’s the enabler for being future ready.

How can we enable you and your people to thrive in this pressing change, while still needing ‘weavers’ for the current business… knowing we need weaving machines or even something beyond them for future business?

The context now requires leadership with a capacity to see, act upon, and hold a more dynamic and bigger picture.

One risk is that the weavers will throw out the inventors of the weaving machine because they don’t understand them and/or they’re threatened by them.

Trust then becomes the lubricant in the gearbox. The speed of learning and transforming demanded today by the world around us creates great forces and friction, which puts the gearbox at risk of blowing up if trust is lacking. While trust is a feeling we give, and receive. It can be earned, but it can’t be commanded.