Taming the Lizard: Herminia Ibarra’s Outsight

Author and entrepreneur, Seth Godin, has a nice way with words. In his book, Linchpin, he introduces us to the idea of the “lizard brain”, that voice in our heads that always seems to be telling us to back off, think again, run for the hills even. Our lizard brains might have given us a distinct evolutionary advantage when faced with immediate threats to our existence. But at work today, says Godin, taking flight, giving in to “the resistance”, failing to capitalise on the freedom we don’t realise we have, may well be the most dangerous thing we can do. 

We live in strange times. As if the complexities and uncertainties of a post-industrial world were not challenging enough, we’re also still living with the after-effects of a generation-defining pandemic. Many of us have had our working lives turned upside down. It’s hard to have the self-determination Godin calls for, to make the deliberate choice to become an independent and indispensable “linchpin”, when all we crave, please, is a day off from Zoom.

Maybe, though, just maybe, this is the perfect time to work on that self-determination. It’s a characteristic that needs a good healthy dose of self-awareness and self-control, but we can also nurture it with the connectedness that comes from a strong social network and by learning and practicing new skills. Gaining mastery in any field – outside as well as inside work – helps make us feel that we have the autonomy and freedom we need to take charge of our own destinies. We need to find creative ways to tame our lizard brains and make the most of ourselves and what we have to offer.

Organisational psychologist, Herminia Ibarra, believes that we can be our own worst enemies when it comes to this flexibility It’s all too easy for us to become entrenched in the jobs we do, staying focussed on routine operations, gaining insight from the usual suspects, playing to what we consider to be our strengths.

Instead, Ibarra exhorts leaders and managers to develop what she calls outsight, to look for the fresh, external perspectives that come from new projects and activities, building relationships with new people and trying out new ways of getting things done – and then learn from those experiences. Outsight “gives you fresh stuff, instead of rehashing the old”.

When it comes to developing our outsight, Ibarra advises us to make changes in three key areas: our jobs, our networks and ourselves.

The first stage is “tweak, expand and redefine” our jobs. Doing things differently, and doing new things, immediately changes our networks too, feeding change by moving beyond the people who simply reinforce the status quo. As we emerge blinking into a post-lockdown world, might this be the perfect time to re-cast what we do and how we do it, to take advantage of the disruption we’ve all experienced over the last year?

Ibarra also encourages us to see our jobs in terms of being a bridge, linking ourselves and our teams with the outside world, rather than as internally-focussed hubs, “to be the link and the funnel of information, ideas or resources from the outside to the group”. If we just sit in our silos, the chances are that we’ll miss out.  We need the perspective that comes from broadening our horizons, taking on activities outside our existing areas of expertise, our organisations, even our industries.

Ibarra makes the case for more intentional, strategic networking, rather than relying on the people closest to us, or most like us. She invokes what she calls the BCDs of networking advantage:

Breadth: strong relationships with a diverse range of contacts

Connectivity: the capacity to link or bridge groups of people who wouldn’t meet otherwise

Dynamism: a network that evolves as we do, and our aspirations change.

Building BCDs requires forethought and planning. We need to think carefully about who we want to connect with, make it happen and follow up; reach out to people in different parts of our companies or industry; learn what they do, how they contribute to their organisations, and how it may apply to our work.

The third area of Ibarra’s outsight plan involves ourselves. Outsight here means stretching ourselves beyond the boundaries of who we are today, experimenting with different roles and approaches and seeing ourselves as “works in progress”. We may not be able to see exactly where we’ll end up, but we will learn a lot about ourselves and the way we think about what we do.

Who knows: outsight might just give us at least some of the tools we need to trade in our lizard brains and embrace our inner linchpin instead.