EPISODE #902

High Performance Requires Radical Adaptability

Keith Ferrazzi

Work and personal success in a post-pandemic world means embracing agility and resilience like never before or you’ll get left behind.

In this Episode of The Human Upgrade™...

…entrepreneur, biohacker and leadership expert Keith Ferrazzi says going with the flow of change, or even leaning into it, isn’t nearly enough. You’ve got to go for radical adaptability. He’s here to explain what it means and how you can use it for yourself and your business.

“The essence of radical adaptability is that it is predictive, proactive, and progressive, very unlike the typical response to change, which is inherently reactive and conformist,” he says.

Keith, an expert in relational and collaborative sciences, founded Ferrazzi Greenlight, a research institute that focuses on the impacts of behavioral science on business. He coaches Fortune 100 company leaders and executive teams. In that coaching, he teaches people how they can change their organizational behaviors to increase growth and value.

“If you’re in business, if you work in an organization or you’re a leader of an organization, what you’re going to hear from us today is, well, how do you need to reboot yourself so that you don’t crawl out of the rubble and go back to old work ways, but you, what I call, don’t go back to work, you go forward to work,” Keith says. “How do you leap forward 10 years out of the pandemic?”

He addresses those questions in his new book, “Competing in the New World of Work: How Radical Adaptability Separates the Best from the Rest.” With equal parts vulnerability, authenticity and honesty, Keith walks you through how to become the best version of your career self.

“Part of what I really believe is when you uncloak things, this is that point of sunlight is the greatest disinfectant,” he says. “When you uncloak things, they don’t control you. Whatever it is.”

For example, he’ll talk about the importance of collaborating with your colleagues to focus on growth and learning, challenging your assumptions to build empathy and why without resilience you won’t make it far.

You’ll get a look into specific tools and apps that can help you build resilience from a distance, with trust.

“Real transformation occurs when leaders open up a space for dialogue and debate and truth and transparency.”

Keith Ferrazzi

Keith talks about a “Go Forward to Work” project he led during the pandemic that documented best practices and innovations happening in the workplace. Here’s what he found: “The pandemic gave people courage to shoot through the shit and state the truth, because there was an emergency going on and we rose to an occasion, and we didn’t give a shit about silos.”

Companies that successfully managed the hard and fast changes did the following things:

Co-elevation (working together to succeed)
Agility (pivots and sprints forward)
Team resilience (peer-to-peer support)
Foreseeing change (ready to act)
Seeking constant reinvention (discarding old assumptions)
Lego block workforce (versatile and fluid)
Purpose driven

In a post-pandemic world, it’s absolutely necessary to master radical adaptability. If you’re looking for ways to catapult your career or organizations forward, and not get lost in the chaos of change, you don’t want to miss the knowledge and practical tips shared in this episode.

Learn more from Keith, a New York Times best-selling author recognized as the modern-day Dale Carnegie: