What to expect in 2023?

Even the most rudimentary PESTEL analysis, or glance at a news site, or social media, will give you a sense of what to expect this year at the macro level: continued economic uncertainty, and the looming potential for not-asked-for sequels to any number of environmental, health, political and business events/challenges/crises.

Yet taking this macro perspective to a micro one, at the level of individual or organization, there remain opportunities for growth. We know this intellectually, studies have shown again and again that leading individuals and organizations move forward and grow in bad times, even if we do not feel it emotionally.

Publishing Ascending Growth, a leadership book, late last year felt like the start of a new chapter, and coming full circle for me. Over the holiday period, I actually used the RVC and Growth Experience frameworks in the book to refresh my personal strategy and the business strategy for Total Life Complete.

I looked at who I wanted to serve and could make the most difference with (ambitious individuals and organizations, you), then the micro trends affecting those groups (AI/Automation, Work from Home → further globalization, need to reinvent/inject new thinking). In the months since then, I’ve been working away behind the scenes planning what these changes in focus and context will look like in practice.

Since you, the readers and leaders, are the target audience for whom the business exists, and I spend much time pondering about, I wanted to share this article so you can understand what I’m working on and why, and how that fits into the bigger picture. And if/how this might be of value to you and your organization.

In short, the focus for the next while will be Leadership and Creative Leadership, and on the other side of the house, Production (Creative Projects).

If it sounds grand to do a “strategy” for yourself it isn’t. At the core of strategy are choices i.e. working out how and where to add value, for whom, to produce the most value overall, against whatever your holistic personal and business scorecard is. And then how to act on that insight.

For those interested in more detail in how to develop a strategy using Ascending Growth, I do plan to circle back with an article detailing this, but in the meantime please hit me up on DM and we’ll arrange a conversation. One of my coauthors in Ascending Growth, Eve Chen, is already delivering impactful seminars to leaders, entrepreneurs and financiers about customer and revenue growth, based on the ideas in the book, and we’ll be expanding this going forward.

For now, part of the evolution of strategy for me/TLC is the move from mainly focusing on individuals at large, to focusing on organizations/leaders (B2B), and pursuing a much narrower, but more impactful, set of outcomes related to growth…for organizations, and for leaders themselves.

If you’ve been following along my work, you’ll know that I like to use a framework called The Three Circles as a tool to generate ideas of where to focus in life and at work. The latest iteration of my circles, since late 2020, are: Creativity, Leadership and Lifestyle (from 2017–2020 it was Art, Business, Community). The diagram below is a selective snapshot of what I’ve been working on (with the business) in the period 2017–2022 across the three areas:

What I’ve delivered in the first 5 years of Total Life Complete

This is amazing to see in one graphic, and I appreciate the help and support I’ve received from collaborators, guests, and the audience, you. Looking back, much of the time and energy spent in the early period of leaving my corporate job was in Lifestyle and Creativity, and working out “what is a good life” in the context of the intersection of “Art, Business and Community” which were the circles at the time. This felt like a whole lot of exploration, but in a sense this was starting with the end in mind, “working to live, rather than living to work!”, and exploring various ways to use creativity to live a flexible, meaningful and rewarding life, that made a difference. It was helpful and encouraging to work for a period with people whose primary focus wasn’t the career ladder or quarterly earnings, but on creating beauty, restoring hope, and tackling the biggest challenges facing society, for example. Dreams come in all different forms.

My involvement with the Ascending Growth project started on the basis of helping someone who wanted to make a difference. I wasn’t planning on writing a leadership book, rather helping a friend, and experienced leader in her own right, to reach her goals. Someone who tirelessly dedicated much of her free time to social issues, while running several businesses. For me, it was interesting to be using the full breadth of my experience, including that accumulated since my corporate management consulting career, towards a leadership book that also aimed to make a difference.

If you read the book, you’ll see that it differs from most of your “grandfather’s” leadership books. For one, two of the authors are women. Secondly, and perhaps this follows the first, you are the hero of the story, rather than the authors. We equip you not as a cog in the machine, but with the tools and frameworks to take flight and have freedom in your career, and make a difference in work and the world.

The frameworks in the book are about developing alignment and integrated capability “building blocks”, and focusing on customer and people growth. These approaches represent positive “ascending” leadership, in good times and bad. Arguably, focusing on the customer and maintaining them in your orbit through Acquisition, Expansion and Retention is more important in challenging times, not less.

As I’ve said the book felt like coming full circle. I’d spent almost 20 years working with leadership to help big global companies change, completing an MBA along the way as many do. Now I was returning to the subject area and audience with the additional perspectives of creativity, and a principled, authentic, vulnerable, and creative approach to leadership. I’d seen all of the things that the MBA doesn’t teach you and was all the better for it. Instead of returning to the leadership domain as an individual advisor, I bring the business and collaborators, seeking to build an impact and legacy that extends way beyond what I can achieve alone. It’s exciting. I might even start wearing a business shirt again occasionally, it is that kind of change I’m talking about.

Thus, the focus going forward will be on offering creative leadership services to organizations and individuals.

You’ll notice in the diagram a lot of new activity around leadership, creativity and the overlap between creativity and leadership. I’ve already started working on the next book The Creative Process and have decided to get creative in how I approach that. Writing from the perspective of artist, scientist and leader, and also how the book will be pulled together to be part of an ecosystem of resources (videos, seminars, interviews etc), and be much more concise! More of that later.

In addition, you’ll see that under “Creative Practice” are a series of creative projects, most of which the business will have a hand in producing as has been the case so far, in terms of development, production and distribution. Hopefully this will allow me/us to continue to work with other artists and clients in future, as we’ve done selectively off the radar over the past couple of years. I’ve seen encouraging signs of operating end-to-end, working on you and your idea, from coaching/development through content to fully fledged business.

From a personal perspective, these creative projects are as important as the business ones in my vision of what I want to achieve and contribute. In the language of Complete, these initial projects are steps towards much bigger overarching film and music “goals”, which are on my WIRW list (what I really want). Keep an eye on the resources link I’ll post for an upcoming article on how to do WIRW for yourself.

Also, I see pursuing both business and creative practice as win-win-win, an important synergy between the creativity and leadership parts of the business, offering practical insight and coaching to clients, just as IDEO the design business, for example, also publishes and teaches design thinking, and so on. And nothing beats real stories from the “trenches”.

Focusing on Creative Leadership, doesn’t mean that “Lifestyle”, life design, “Complete” and so on will be abandoned. In fact there will be a new Fifth Year Anniversary Edition of The Good Life Book, with new Preface and Introduction, a general refresh, and links to new thinking since the first edition, planned to come out this year (first draft already completed).

I feel that all of that material has gotten to where it needs to be for now, given the investment in prior years. There are an abundance of frameworks and methods to support creative leadership coaching for individuals and groups, which is something I’ve started doing as a public offering for the first time this year. And, I’ll post a link to the master resources list (on The Good Life Book website) if you’re interested in tackling this in self-improvement mode. The next iteration of that work will be to fill in the overlap between Creativity and Lifestyle, what I’ve been calling Creative Personal Growth, but that is for a later time, as it will be informed by what I’m doing in practice now.

OK, I hope this has been illuminating, and you’ve found something in there that resonates, even it is just hearing how somebody else sees and approaches things, and that there is some “method to the madness”, even if that came later!

Let me know any questions or comments you have, and I’d be interested in hearing where you are up to this year. Please reach out and let’s have a conversation!

Until next time.