The Outward Mindset: How to Change Lives and Transform Organizations

Here are some questions you can ask yourself as you utilize the outward-mindset-at-work framework for redefining your role in this way: • Toward your manager. Do I have a clear understanding of my manager’s objectives? What can I do to learn about them? What do I need to do to make sure that I am holding myself accountable for my contribution to my

Have I (or we) thought this through with an outward mindset? Do I understand the needs, objectives, and challenges of those involved? Have I adjusted my efforts in light of those issues? And have I been holding myself accountable for my impact on these people? Have you considered what mindset-level changes might be necessary in addition to behavior

A related reason why people resist making the most important move is that they think an outward mindset will make them soft when hard behavior is required. But this is a misunderstanding.

Without realizing it, too many leaders assume that the role of leadership is to control. They espouse Plato’s “division of labor,” which, according to social thinker Hannah Arendt, has influenced government and military structures for thousands of years.

That mistake is the widely accepted conception of the self as an inherently separate and isolated entity independent from others.

Start with mindset. Apply the outward-mindset pattern, SAM: see others, adjust efforts, and measure impact (chapters 9, 10, and 12). • Don’t wait for others to change. The most important move is to turn your mindset regardless of whether others change theirs (chapter 11). • Mobilize yourself and your team or organization to achieve a collective goa

We were nervous because we needed the company’s money, and we were afraid that if we didn’t nail this presentation, the committee wouldn’t give us any. The objective in our minds was our own, not our customer’s.

Within organizations, every person who is burning time and energy seeking justification is doing so at the expense of the contribution he or she could be making to the overall results of the company.

Systems and processes that are designed to manage objects rather than empower people have widespread negative consequences. Efforts to rethink those systems and processes from an outward-mindset perspective can deliver huge benefits.