Navigating the

Geography of Change
Thirteen Skills to
Master on the Path to
Exponential Leadership

A Collection of Insights
from Pascal Finette
Brought to you by Singularity University
Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Preparation is Everything . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

How to Nurture an Exponential Mindset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1. Think in Technicolor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2. Learn the Art of Receiving Feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3. Expand Your Thinking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4. Admit Your Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5. Reject the False Dilemma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. Question Everything...Better . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1
7. Assume Nothing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

How to Nurture an Exponential Mindset with Others. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

1. Reject the Lone Genius Fallacy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2. Redefine What it Means to Be Right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3. Master the Art of Changing Your Mind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4. Yes, And…vs. No, But…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5. Avoid Jumping to Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6. Remember There Is No Shame in Seeking Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Accept the Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

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Navigating the
Geography of Change:
Thirteen Skills to Master on the
Path to Exponential Leadership

A Collection of Insights Introduction

from Pascal Finette There are no maps. It may seem
Brought to you by Singularity University counterintuitive for a navigational
guide to begin this way, but bear
with me.

We are facing uncharted territories of

accelerating change, and business leaders
need to prepare for a future we know is
going to be significantly disruptive. But
how can you prepare for the unknown?
By honing the skills that will carry you
through any change.

And because the geography before us

is virtual, the survival skills needed will
be largely related to expanding your
critical thinking abilities and developing
a mindset that adapts naturally to rapidly
changing conditions.

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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership
I’ll start by setting the stage for how to
approach the spirit of this ebook and our
uncertain future.
But first, let me explain why there are no
maps. My former boss, Mozilla’s then-CEO
John Lilly, often told folks that there are no
maps. He prefaced every presentation with
this warning, along with the note that “your
mileage will vary.”
What he meant by this insight was that
there are, of course, maps; they’re just not
your map.
It is a solid and essential reminder. Any and
all advice someone gives you (including
mine!) is always deeply contextual to the
circumstances, the people involved, and the
time and place.
Sadly, I see too many people take advice too
literally. Do these five things and your startup
will be successful. Follow this investment
advice and you will be rich. Put these things
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on your slide deck and you will get funding.
This hardly ever works and more often than
not leads to poor outcomes.
Instead, it’s better to think for yourself
and decide 1) what you want, 2) what is
true, and 3) what you should do to achieve
#1 in the light of #2 (as Ray Dalio, founder of
the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater,
likes to say).
The way I incorporate this into my everyday
life is to force myself to process advice
before adopting it by a) writing it down, b)
thinking hard about what this means for
my specific circumstances, and c) creating
my own, contextual version of the advice
given. I then take the generated insight
and treat it like a hypothesis which needs
verification/falsification.
Try it out for yourself. By contextualizing
advice to your specific circumstances you
will begin to create your own maps.
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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership
“Recognizing when you are stuck . . . looking
at an out-of-date map rather than
looking at the road, is something that is
surprisingly hard to learn.”
Tim O’Reilly
O’Reilly Media
It’s equally important to remember an insight
I heard from Tim O’Reilly (of O’Reilly Media):
“The map is not the territory.”
Combine the two insights and you’ll gain a
unique perspective. We are all presented
with maps, all the time. However, whether
you’ve been given a map or you’ve created
your own map, recognize that those maps
are, at best, guidance and never an actual
recipe, although they are often presented
as such. Once you understand this, you
further need to realize that there is a vast
difference between the two-dimensional
flatness of a map and the three-dimensional
reality of the territory.
Tim has some wonderful advice on how to
make this work for you:
Pascal Finette
Co-Founder (and enfant terrible) at Radical Ventures
Faculty Chair for Entrepreneurship & Open Innovation,
Singularity University
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The art and skill for you to develop are to
understand which parts of a map are useful
for your situation. The best approach is to
learn to read the map and then keep your
eyes on the road (your reality) instead of
zeroing in on the map, refer to the map only
when you come to a fork in the road.
In this ebook, you’ll discover a suite of
thirteen important skills that will enhance
every leader’s ability to make better
decisions, work smarter, and remain calm
in the eye of any storm. These skills are
separated into those you can nurture on
your own and those you can only develop
with others.
Leaders lead people, so both types of skills
need to be practiced regularly, and like any
self-improvement endeavor, there are no
shortcuts. The work must be done, and this
ebook is intended to help you begin to do
the work. Being vigilant in nurturing a nimble,
inclusive mindset will help you navigate the
wild swings of the exponential age.
I hope you find this guide enlightening as
you progress along the path to becoming an
exponential leader.
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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership

Preparation is Everything If you have ever seen a good improv theatre

show, you know how natural and effortless
At Singularity University, I guide our clients,
the interactions between the actors seems
startups, and community to develop the
to be. As someone who spent a few months
mindset that many of our world’s most
learning improvisational theatre, I can tell
intractable problems can be solved by
you that effortlessness comes from diligent
technology or would benefit greatly by
preparation. It comes not from rehearsing
technology together with whatever is
specific scenes but from practicing the art
necessary to solve the problem.
of improv over and over again, continuously
pushing yourself to a more fluid flow of give
and take, action and reaction.

“When the pressure

is on, you don’t rise to
the occasion—you fall
Why is this important? Thinking linearly can to your highest level of
prove costly to businesses, governments,
and individuals alike. Firms in countless preparation.”
industries are seeing the effects of disruption
and disintermediation happening at the
Chris Voss
hands of emerging technologies and those
Author, Never Split the Difference
companies smart enough to be wielding
them. Exponential thinking reduces some
I believe this to be a fundamental truth. The
of this disruptive stress and reveals new
upshot is that we all need to spend (more)
opportunities. If we can better plan for the
time preparing and practicing our art so that
accelerating pace, we can ease the transition
when it counts, we can comfortably fall back
from one paradigm to the next, and greet the
on our highest level of preparation.
future in stride.
A few years ago, I brought Guy Kawasaki
But make no mistake. Nurturing an
to Singularity University’s Global Solutions
exponential mindset is hard work. It involves
Program (now the Global Startup Program)
unlearning much of what you’ve learned, and
to speak to a group of talented innovators
keeping in mind that what got you here won’t
and entrepreneurs. One of the participants
always get you where you want to go.
asked him how he became so good at public

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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership

speaking. Guy laughed and said, “Thousands

of hours of practice.” 1 Think in Technicolor
For a very long time, I took pride in my ability
Want to deliver an excellent pitch next time
to very quickly categorize problems into
you are in front of a VC? Or face down the
binary categories and make decisions. When
latest disruption to your market? Fall back to
I explained my decision making, I would
your highest level of preparation instead of
preface it with “I know that the world is not
winging it and hoping for the best.
black and white, but it helps me make quick
and decisive decisions” and move on.
That leads us back to preparation and, in turn,
the development of an exponential mindset.

How to Nurture an
Exponential Mindset
The first set of tools in this guide are ones
you can develop on your own and you’ll
find assignments to help you apply them
successfully. Mastering these skills will help
put you on the path to becoming what we
at SU call an exponential leader—one who
can adapt successfully in any situation, stay Then one of my mentors
ahead of change, and drive 10x results. challenged this view of the world.
Let’s dig in.

Upon hearing me make a (strong) argument

for a position I held, he uttered the phrase
“dichotomous thinking.” Admittedly I had
to look it up—dichotomous thinking is also
known as black or white thinking. It’s a trait
you will commonly observe in entrepreneurs.

While there are definite dangers with this

way of thinking—you can get stuck in a
wrong view and be judgmental of people,
experiences, and things—there are some
tremendous benefits, as it shortens your time
to decide, and for those who have honed the
skill, it achieves excellence frequently.

The trick, though, is to hone the skill.

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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership
My mentor reminded me again and again
that when faced with the choice between
two views which are seemingly at odds,
rather than making a quick decision, go slow
and figure out how you can have as much as
possible of both.
Sure enough, I have found that there is
almost always a path in the middle, one
which got me to a much better outcome than
either of the extremes.
Assignment: Look for the path which
allows you to get the most out of all
possibilities instead of settling for the
choice that is in front of you.
2 Learn the Art of
Receiving Feedback
Now, just because you’ve taken your time to
consider all angles of a situation, it doesn’t
mean your decisions or ideas can’t be
improved. I learned this a while ago when an
executive coach and friend of mine shared
some invaluable insight with me (dare I say
she gave me “feedback?”).
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It goes like this:
1. When someone gives you feedback
remember it is just someone’s opinion.
It is not truth (especially not what some
would call “Capital-T Truth”), but merely
the other person’s point of view.
2. You don’t have to accept it. Feedback is
a gift. As with any gift, it is on you to take
it (or not). Sometimes it is an unwanted
or uncalled-for gift—you are at liberty to
ignore it.
3. There is (nearly) always 2% truth in
everything. I’ve found over and over that
even in the harshest and uncalled-for
comment, there is often a kernel of truth.
Being able to see this and learn from it
might make the difference between good
and great.
I can’t count the occasions when these three
simple ideas made all the difference—from
either being crushed by bad feedback or
entirely writing it off as someone’s angry
ramblings. They help mitigate a good
chunk of our inherent biases, keep us
open to hearing what matters, and keep us
continuously learning.
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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership

Thinking in technicolor and receiving

feedback gracefully is not easy. Personally,
it took me a while to incorporate both into
my daily work. The most critical factor is your
willingness and ability to regularly review
your decisions and learn from them. Be
willing to be wrong. And when you are, admit
it, and change course.

Assignment: Review your decisions

daily by checking in with yourself
and your team to question if you were
right or not. Perform post-mortems
to dig into the reasons why something 3 Expand Your Thinking

worked or didn’t. Do this diligently,

capture the results, and constantly
review your insights. Over time,
you will get better and better at
making good decisions, which will
make you a better (and more
successful) leader.
“If all you have is a hammer, everything
starts to look like a nail.”
Abraham Maslow
I’ve thought about this saying quite a bit. I
believe it is one of the main reasons why
(startup) companies don’t always get to
proper product/market fit: It is too easy (and
too tempting) to start believing you found
the solution upon the first indication of your
product or service hitting the mark—and then
pushing ahead, declaring victory, and using
your newfound hammer.

Assignment: Keep your eyes on the

prize and constantly evaluate if what
you have built will truly meet your
clients’ needs because, generally
speaking, it’s better to have a full
toolbox than just a single hammer.

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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership
4 Admit Your Limits
Someone much, much smarter than I am
once responded to a question I raised with
three simple words:
”I don’t know.”
First I was surprised, as I expected her to
have an answer to my question. But then I
realized that she did something incredibly
courageous—instead of opening her mouth
and offering a half-baked answer, she owned
up to the fact that she didn’t know the exact
answer to my inquiry.
How many times have you heard someone
respond to a question with what turns out
to be incoherent, inconsistent, half-true, or
worse, complete nonsense? It happens
all the time. Somehow we have created
an environment where we expect our
leaders (and ourselves) to have all the
answers. Given how complex the world is
and how fast it is moving, this is, of course,
completely unreasonable.
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The problem is that these rapid-fire answers,
though they might initially sound impressive,
as we demonstrate we can think on our feet
and seem to know everything, come to haunt
you. People will find out—and once they do,
they will discount everything you say.
The three most powerful
words for building credibility are
“I don’t know.”
Assignment: Ask better questions,
and then create the conditions for
your people to figure out the answers.
Your role as a leader depends on it.
5 Reject the False Dilemma
Most people look at a decision with
multiple options as a choice driven by the
innocent two-letter word “or”—either we build
product A OR product B; we pursue venture
funding OR stay independent; I can have a life
OR build a startup. And much has been said
and written about the power of focus and the
constant battle of saying “no” to opportunities
which aren’t essential to your goals.
In the process we are missing something
important: Instead of perceiving the world as
one which only offers black and white choices,
more often than not, we can expand our
opportunities beyond two choices. Related to
mastering the art of technicolor thinking and
finding a middle path, it’s also critical to widen
your perspective when making choices.
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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership

“Wait, what?”
Assignment: When making a decision,
Asking “wait, what?” forces you to question
stop. Ask yourself: “Is there a way
what is in front of you in that moment. It also
I can do this AND that?” You will be
slows you down to allow you to find out
surprised how frequently you will find
more about something which has been said,
yourself being able to do both things,
written, or was experienced by you. It indeed
but if the answer is “No,” be tenacious.
is the mother of all curiosity.
Identify and tackle what might be
preventing the best possible outcome.
The second question comes from Guy
Kawasaki, Apple’s first evangelist back in the
day when the Macintosh was mostly a dream
and not yet reality:

“Isn’t that interesting?”

The question teaches you to explore the
adjacent—the things you usually would
brush off as not in your field of interest
or even being useful to you. I found time
and time again that the insights I gleaned
from this question helped me overcome
roadblocks or opened the path to abundant,
new opportunities.
6 Question Everything...Better
Maybe the best thing I learned in school was Assignment: Add “Wait, what?” and
to ask better questions instead of launching “Isn’t that interesting?” to your toolbox
myself into finding answers. The better the when you are exposed to new ideas
question you ask, the higher the chance that or ideas that may appear simple or
you will come up with a satisfying answer. irrelevant. As a founder, innovator,
change agent, or whatever other
Of course, there are myriad good questions suits you don, I’ve found these two
to ask—over the years two particular questions to be phenomenal door-
questions stuck in my head. The first one I openers to asking better questions on
discovered not too long ago when I listened my quest to find better answers.
to Dean James Ryan’s commencement
speech at Harvard’s Graduate School of
Education—it is deceptively simple:

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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership

We regularly make assumptions and form

expectations and opinions based on nothing
more than our gut feeling. Sometimes we do
this because we believe it would be impolite
to ask for money before we have even
talked, sometimes we forget to ask—until
we are far down the path of a conversation
when we realize that we don’t align.

It is a waste of time, resources, and energy—

three things you have the least of when you
are building something new (and truthfully,
they are always the things you have least of).

7 Assume Nothing Assignment: Figure out what you

Not long ago I spent a bunch of time in an
email thread, going back and forth, to set up
a meeting with a potential client to talk about
an engagement. It took the two of us at least
an hour each to finally agree on a date and
time to meet—with the purpose of discussing
the client’s needs and how we might be able
to help.
need to know and agree on before
you set up a meeting, get on the
phone, or waste anyone’s time and
money otherwise. It is not impolite
to ask. Quite the contrary: wasting
someone’s time surely is ruder
than a clarifying question early in
your conversation.

Within the first three minutes of the

meeting, it was utterly clear that the client’s
budget expectations were so far off from
what we usually work with that we both
agreed that there was no need to continue
the conversation.

The mistake I made was to assume that

client’s and our budget expectations were
aligned—and thus we ended up wasting a
valuable hour of each other’s time emailing
back and forth about a meeting which
wouldn’t have been necessary if I had
simply asked a few essential questions
from the get-go.

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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership
How to Nurture an
Exponential Mindset
with Others
Now that I’ve covered how you can improve
on your own to prepare for exponential
change, we can move on to how you can
work with others to hone your survival skills.
We don’t live or work in a vacuum, and if
anything, what we do know of the future is
that we will need to work collectively to solve
our global challenges.
Below you will find six invaluable skills
and accompanying assignments you can
work on with other people that will further
help prepare you to lead in a world of
exponential change.
1 Reject the Lone Genius Fallacy
Here’s another saying I’ve thought about a lot:
“You don’t know what you don’t know.”
It’s one of the most vexing problems for
each one of us: the classic dilemma of
not knowing what we don’t know. I’ve had
countless encounters with this particularly
nasty beast during my career—anything from
small hiccups which are easy to remedy to
large challenges leading to near-catastrophe.
It is one thing to realize you have gaps
in a specific domain and are choosing to
ignore them (the reasons for this being
manyfold—from simple time constraints to
being too arrogant to accept the insight that
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one has those gaps). However, it is another,
completely different thing when you simply
don’t know what you don’t know.
These gaps are more common today than
they ever were before in history—simply
because our world moves on this crazy
exponential curve, resulting in more and
more “stuff” which you ought to know about,
take into consideration, and act upon.
A solution lies in the continuation of
this quote:
“You don’t know what you don’t
know—but the crowd might.”
Assignment: Rather than falling for
the lone genius fallacy, engage with
a crowd that’s as big, diverse, and
relevant as you can. Establish open,
trusting, two-way communications,
not only with your employees, but
also your customers, supporters, folks
in related businesses up and down
your supply chain, and people
working in different fields who might
just have the answer you are looking
for. Your role and responsibility as a
founder, CEO, or leader is not to
always have the answers—your role
is to set and communicate the vision
and enable the best answers and
solutions to emerge.
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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership

2 Redefine What it Means

to Be Right 3 Master the Art of
Changing Your Mind

During a long one-on-one session with
one of my team members at Singularity
University, we reflected on all the amazing
people coming through our doors, whether
they be Faculty, staff, or program participants.
It made me remember a mantra my first boss
kept mentioning in meetings:
Of course, I realize that it’s very easy to say
you need to listen to others and embrace
their challenges, but as a colleague pointed
out, it’s incredibly hard for people to change
their mind, especially when a new insight
comes from someone other than themselves.

“I just want to be right. I do not care

if the right answer comes from me.”
Taking this principle a step further, he
also taught me to seek out the smartest
people challenging my assumptions, as it is
all too easy to fall in love with one’s view of
the world.

Getting to the best possible outcome

requires the ego to take a backseat and
the leader to seek out the right answer.
As someone much smarter than I once said,
Sadly we are all too often wrapped up in a
“I urge you to be curious enough to want
story we are telling ourselves about how we,
to understand how the people who see
as the leader, need to have the answers.
things differently from you came to see them
Nothing could be further from the truth—
that way.”
leaders need to be right, have the conviction
to follow the determined path, and bring their I wholeheartedly believe in this notion. At
people along. a time when everything is changing at an
exponentially accelerating rate, we cannot
afford to cling to our beliefs. We must be
Assignment: Remember that being
able to continually evaluate new information
right means listening to other people
and insights and allow ourselves to change
and have their insights challenge your
our minds at a moment’s notice.
assumptions.
That does not mean that you become
aimless. Rather, establish your North Star and
allow for flexibility in how to reach your goals.

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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership
As a personal hack, I try to catch myself
when I hear an inner monologue defending
my position against something someone
else said.
Assignment: Instead of protecting
your point, start asking questions.
Become curious about the insights
the other person had which led to
his or her perspective. More often
than not, you will learn something
incredibly valuable.
4
Yes, And…vs. No, But…
I once had the great fortune to attend
one of Google’s internal Design Thinking
workshops in which the participants were
reminded of the incredible power of saying
“yes, and…” as opposed to “no, but….”
It goes a little like this: Highly trained,
intelligent creatures we are, we often
instinctively go into “let me point out the
flaws in your idea” mode when presented
with an idea. What sadly happens in this
mode is that we shut down ideas instead of
building on them and making them bigger,
bolder and better. We say “No, but….” While
this may feel good in the moment (as it
demonstrates our intellectual capacity), it
contributes little to the idea and person
presenting said idea.
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Instead, train yourself to use “Yes, and…”
as your instinctive answer. “Yes, and…”
acknowledges the idea and builds on it,
enabling and fostering an environment
teeming with creativity.
Assignment: Try it out for yourself.
Have someone come up with an
idea or suggestion, say for example
an idea for a summer team outing.
Answer with “No, but….” Let the other
person come up with another plan
and repeat the “No, but…” rebuttal.
Repeat this a few more times and
see how frustrating the process
becomes. Then, switch it around
and respond with “Yes, and…” to the
same idea, building upon the notion
you heard, and then let the other
person react to it, to which you
respond again with “Yes, and…” and
so on. You will quickly sense how
empowering, creative, and powerful
this process is. This approach is one of
the most powerful tools in your arsenal
to foster creativity and breakthrough
ideas in your team and environment.
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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership

5 Avoid Jumping to Conclusions

In his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel

Kahneman offers fascinating and highly
readable insights into the way our brain
processes information and makes decisions.
Specifically, he describes the two systems
which govern our thinking:

System 1: Fast, automatic, frequent,

emotional, stereotypic, subconscious

System 2: Slow, effortful, infrequent,

logical, calculating, conscious
As an entrepreneur or leader, you will
likely spend a lot of time in System 1 as
you fight fires, deal with opportunities
and crisis, stay busy at work with many
day-to-day responsibilities.
Kahneman shows us that you should actually
spend time in System 2 doing strategic work
which will yield the insights that move the
needle for your business.
This is not just true for your own thinking; it’s
equally relatable to your interactions with
others. We often shoot from the hip when in
conversation, missing valuable information
and insights in the process.
Assignment: Designate one day this
week to be a “slow” day. On this day,
whenever you have a conversation,
take five seconds before responding.
Seriously. Every time.
6 Remember There Is No
Shame in Seeking Help
One of the more erroneous expressions
of startup culture is the belief that we all
need to have everything figured out. Similar
to the “everything is always awesome”
attitude, people also seem to expect that
entrepreneurs (and particularly the founders
of a startup) have all the answers to every
possible question, always keep their cool, and
overall have everything sorted out.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
I have never met a single entrepreneur
(or more generally speaking, person) who had
all the answers. The best entrepreneurs and
the most delightful interactions are
with people who openly admit to their
knowledge gaps and seek out help wherever
they can find it.
One of the most important things you
can do on your own leadership journey
is to develop a perpetual aggressively
help-seeking mindset.

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Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership
Assignment: Ask for help. Openly
and often. Put your ego aside.
Whatever you are building is more
important. And it’s also so much more
fun to keep learning.
Accept the Challenge
The work I’m advocating in this guide is
incredibly challenging. We are hard-wired
to see the world from a specific, existing
perspective—a shortcut which nature
designed to allow us to make split-second
decisions, preserving our life in a world
ruled by saber-toothed cats. Changing our
perspective can be hard, uncomfortable,
and, maybe most commonly, inconvenient.
It requires awareness, concerted effort,
and will.
But it is so worth it…
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is fond
of quoting Alan Kay’s great line: “Perspective
is worth 80 I.Q. points.”
Most breakthroughs in science and business
have come from people shifting their
perspective. Where others saw the same
problems, the same opportunities, and the
same solutions, changemakers who shifted
their perspective discovered new solutions,
unearthed new opportunities, and often
identified new (lucrative) problem spaces.
su.org
Likewise, we come packaged with a great
fear of the unknown. Since the dawn of time,
our amygdala, one of the oldest and most
primate parts of our brain, keeps us alive by
reacting to everything new and unknown
with a strong sensation of fear. And it made
so much sense when those saber-toothed
cats still roamed the planet.
Today? Not so much.
Today, fear of the unknown (in most
situations) keeps you from fulfilling your true
potential, becoming fully alive, performing at
your peak, and doing what you are meant to
be doing.
“Anxiety is experiencing
failure in advance.”
Seth Godin
Neither failure nor success is a given.
The future is unclear. But, as American
philosopher Alan Watts once said, “The only
way to make sense out of change
is to plunge into it, move with it, and join
the dance.”
Do not hesitate. Develop yourself to the
highest level of preparation you can. The
world is waiting for you to join the dance.
17
Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership
Enter Singularity University
Leaders often struggle to fully
understand and integrate the
power of rapidly accelerating
technologies into their businesses.
That’s a core part of our mission
at Singularity University, where we
empower a global community of
leaders with the mindset, skillset,
and network to create better future
for us all. As a catalyst for global
change, we help others leverage
rapidly accelerating technologies—
including artificial intelligence,
nanotechnology, robotics, and
digital biology—in innovative
ways to unlock solutions that can
positively impact billions of lives.
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We guide leaders from all sectors and
industries to develop exponential leadership,
business models, and innovation practices
to propel their organizations forward.
Through content, community, and a growing
number of programs—many of which can
be tailored to specific needs—we help
leaders navigate a profoundly and rapidly
changing landscape. Whether we’re training
an organization’s next generation of leaders
or taking innovation teams through tailored
prototyping sprints or disruption workshops,
we can help you see the future of your
industry and empower you to take decisive,
bold action.
Are you an entrepreneur working on
something big? Explore SU Ventures, where
we work with startups at the intersection
of exponential technologies and global
impact and offer what you need for your
startup to achieve long-term success: capital,
customers, and connections. You’ll find
bootcamps, sprints, and other programs that
go deep and aren’t available anywhere else.
Also check out our Global Startup Program,
a hands-on, scalable, and global program
for impact-focused startups that are turning
radical ideas into real impact.
If you’re with a large organization, we can
help you advance your strategy, leadership,
or innovation capabilities from any starting
point. If you want to learn how exponential
technologies and an exponential mindset
can help transform your organization,
apply to our popular Executive Program.
18
Navigating the Geography of Change: Thirteen Skills to Master on the Path to Exponential Leadership

Our Exponential Innovation Program will

help you map out a successful innovation
journey using the latest innovation tools and
methodologies and organizational models.

To disseminate this knowledge to a group

of key leaders in your organization and
customize the insights for your industry and
company strategy, consider a customized
10x Strategy Development Solution that’s
tailored to your specific needs and strategic
opportunities. Our 10x Innovation Sprint
can help you and your team jump-start
innovation at your organization. And our 10x Ready for a conversation today?
Leadership Training can help groom your Reach us at sr@su.org.
next generation of leaders so they’re ready
to help lead your organization into the future.

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