Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results

There comes a time in every person's life when the methods and thinking that brought you success in the past won't continue to bring you success in the future. 

Your past successful strategies can bring you down. The key is to notice the signals and adapt before it's too late. 

Peter Senge's, The Fifth Discipline, points out the Laws of System Thinking:

• Today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions".
• The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.
• Behaviour grows better before it grows worse.
• The easy way out usually leads back in.
• The cure can be worse than the disease.
• Faster is slower.
• Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.
• Small changes can produce big results, but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.
• Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.
• There is no blame.

Each time we need to adapt and innovate, we go through distinct steps.

1. Unlearn: Unlearning starts with acknowledging that what you're doing now isn't working. You need to let go of past viewpoints or behaviours, then take action.
2. Relearn: As you unlearn, you can take in new data and perspectives. You must be willing to be open to information that goes against your beliefs. You may need to learn how to learn again. You must create an environment for relearning.
3. Breakthrough: It is the result of unlearning and relearning. 

• Identify a challenge your want to address. The best place to start is where you are now.
• Define success as if you would view it from hindsight. What behaviours would you, your team, or customers be exhibiting to confirm that you have succeeded?
• Seek courage over comfort. Moving out of your comfort zone requires courage and a willingness to be vulnerable.
• Commit to, start, and scale the cycle of unlearning. Commit to moving through the Cycle of Unlearning continually.

• Create options for small steps: List as many options as possible. Pick one that will most likely move you forward. Then celebrate, regardless of the result.
• Find the right behaviour that aligns with your level of motivation and ability.
• Start even smaller than you think.

• Reflect
• Feed forward learnings to the next experiment.
• Align impact and increase psychological safety.
• Increase your speed of unlearning.

• Leadership should provide context for what is to be achieved, why it matters, and then create a system of work that enables people to identify with those outcomes.
• Leadership should provide clarity.
• Control is reached by designing feedback loops, not by telling people what to do.

• Companies have two customers: the people you sell to and your employees.
• Direct, raw, unfiltered feedback from customers is much better than reports from within the company.
• When customers reach out, and they know they're heard and that their feedback will improve the product, they become more loyal. 

• Organisations and the people in them must continuously be stimulated to succeed in the long run.
• An organisation is transformed with a continuous individual transformation of both leaders and workers. 
• As a leader, you are responsible for enabling organisational learning by reducing learning anxiety across your organisation.
• Give people the opportunity to practice new behaviours deliberately.