This article is a guest post from our partners Dr. Jay Chopra, of Making Shift Happen, and Damian Costello, of Decode Innovation. View their blog series here.

Are your past successes making you more susceptible to being disrupted? Does your position in the market make you a more attractive target to disrupt? Has COVID-19 given your potential disruptors time to find new ways of undermining you?

COVID-19 has caused havoc to all businesses, but that does not make it a disruption. If your business is prepared to remain resilient during a period of disruption—in hindsight, the disruptive phase may be viewed as simply an interruption.

This article is a guest post from Ashley Blackburn, Director of Programs at Uncharted Learning.

Do you know what your brain “looks” like?

I didn’t, until about 3 months ago when I completed a Whole Brain® Thinking assessment (called the HBDI®) and participated in a debrief workshop as a professional development event led by our friends at Miami University’s John W. Altman Institute for Entrepreneurship. Through this experience, I gained exciting new insight into my own thinking and that of everyone around me - students I’ve taught, colleagues I’ve worked with on teams, supervisors I’ve reported to, even my personal connections.

This article is a guest post from our partners Dr. Jay Chopra, of Making Shift Happen, and Damian Costello, of Decode Innovation. 

One of the most unique things about the current COVID-19 crisis is just how universal it is. No event in history has affected every single country in the same way and at the same time. It is safe to assume even at this early stage, that an event of this magnitude could send the shock waves of disruption through every sector, every business and every product line that is trading today. 

The big lesson from the current crisis is that some countries have managed this disruption better than others.

The video featured here is part of a series of Whole Brain Thinking topics presented by Ann Herrmann-Nehdi. 

CEOs and key leaders need to be more agile than ever in today’s onslaught of change impacting organizations. This requires a stretch for many leaders I am working with.

Momentum for action on racial equity has continued to build around the world, and we like many others have spent the past few weeks in an ongoing discussion on what else we can do to help contribute to positive change. It remains remarkably difficult for organizations to have uncomfortable conversations about racial bias, so as a first step we’re spreading awareness of how cognitive diversity can be used as a powerful device to break down the walls in these conversations.

The impact of COVID-19 on our ways of working has been staggering. The most obvious, the shift to remote work, has impacted organizational cultures and employee engagement almost overnight. Beyond remote work, it has accelerated a number of key future of work trends, in some cases irreversibly. In the years to come, it will continue to reverberate in the ways we collaborate, balance our career and family obligations, and think about our teams and organizations. 

The shift to pandemic-related uncertainty and distributed work caught a lot of teams unprepared. By now, most have adjusted to the basics of remote work – spending most of your days on video calls and chat with your team, but have you asked yourself whether—and how—you could be doing things better than you were before disruption? 

Managing stress during this COVID-19 crisis is definitely easier said than done. We all have different ways of thinking and processing information. Therefore, it makes sense that we all have different ways of internalizing and reacting to stress.

This blog post is a brief excerpt from our latest white paper on adapting to uncertainty. The full piece can be found here.

It is no surprise that in the face of today’s constant volatility and uncertainty, agility is frequently cited as one of the most important attributes for leaders to be successful in growing organizations. Yet most managers and leaders have not been prepared or trained for how to deliver this agility, especially in a crisis. It’s one thing to have reactively put things into place in response to a new reality, often with a lag that creates competitive disadvantages. It is another to think about what’s next in the midst of a crisis and stay ahead of change, rather than chasing after it.

As the virus has swept its way across the planet, people from all walks of life, families from every region, and businesses large and small have all had to adapt to change. The most common change, and the most likely one to be affecting you right now, is adjusting to any social distancing measures you're taking or a shelter-in-place mandate from your government, which has likely resulted in you staying at home. For many companies, it's also led to remote-working measures being set in place.