How creative “lenses” reveal opportunities and possibilities
5 eye-opening perspectives on cultivating personal innovation skills with Stephen Shapiro
Success begins with the ability to see new opportunities and possibilities. To do so, we need to put on different “lenses” — to view our world from fresh perspectives. Here to help us with that is Stephen Shapiro, a business author, consultant and speaker on the topics of innovation and collaboration and author of Invisible Solutions: 25 Lenses that Reframe and Help Solve Difficult Business Problems.
Chuck Frey: From your perspective, what has changed post-COVID for people who are trying to accelerate their careers, build value and differentiate themselves?
Stephen Shapiro: One of the biggest changes I’ve seen is that remote work has opened up a much larger potential market for many job opportunities. In the past, we were very geographically constrained in terms of where people worked, because we needed to live near our workplace.
Now, with the ability to work remotely, we have access to more jobs, even in time zones that are far away from where we live. But it also means more people have access to those jobs — so you’re facing more competition than ever.
Frey: What skills do readers need to master to stand out so they can leverage these amazing new opportunities?
Shapiro: You’ll need to get really good at mastering remote work. Because of COVID, many of us have been working remotely for over 15 months. But I think that a lot of that was actually reactionary rather than by design. So when you look at how most people work remotely today, they’re still not as efficient as they could be.
The people who are more efficient remote workers are going to have an advantage. People who are better collaborators are also going to do really well. There are actually many different ways of collaborating, not just conducting meetings via Zoom calls.
If you want to get ahead, you also need to be flexible and adaptable, and willing to learn new…
