Mindshift: Transform Leadership, Drive Innovation, and Shape the Future
Brian Solis
Wiley (October 2024)

“If you’ve always done it that way, it’s probably wrong.” Charles Kettering

James O’Toole has suggested that the strongest resistance to change tends to be cultural in nature, the result of what he so aptly characterizes as “the ideology comfort and the tyranny of custom.” I agree and so does Brian Solis: “We need to open our minds and keep them open. We need to dig deeper, recognizing the world’s greatest challenges are our biggest opportunities. We should always follow the principles of design thinking and innovation: desirability, feasibility, and viability. This will help us harness the nexus of secular forces, all of which can be headwinds or tailwinds, depending almost entirely on how we choose to look at them.”

In Mindshift, Solis thoroughly explains HOW.

These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to indicate the nature scope of Solis’s coverage:

o Foreword and Introduction (Pages vi-ix & 4-16)
o A Set of Mindshift Practices: Developing Your Vision and Leading Others (13-16)
o Executives Don’t Know What They Don’t Know (20-27)
o Combat the Resistance Within You (47-51)
o Combat Negativity and Cultivate Optimism (58-64)

o A Successful Mindshift Requires a Shift to a Bedginner’s Mind (74-78)
o Vicious Cycle & Virtuous Cycle (90 & 91)
o How to Foster a Growth Mindset (97-100)
o Childlike Thinking (106-110)
o Transcending Awe to Self-Transcendence (113-116)

o Categorize (Themes and Patterns) 150-153
o Prioritize (157-161)
o The Future As YouWant It to Be (182-184)
o The Story Spine (201-205)
o Mindshifting the Pixar Way (219-221)

o Focus First on a Significant Minority (238-242)
o Begin Socializing Your Story (244-245)
o Going Wide with Trendfluence (247-250)
o Achievement Requires Resolve (253-259)
o If Not You, Who? (260-261)

In the proverbial nutshell, Solis identifies your challenge:

“Are you taking risks that:

IMPROVE OR FIX SOMETHING?
HELP SOMEONE?
TEACH US TO GROW?
CHALLENGE OUR CONVENTIONS?
MAKE US BETTER?

If not, WHY NOT?

To repeat, Brian Solis challenges you and others who read this book to complete a mindshift to transform leadership, drive innovation, and reshape the future: “We need to open our minds and keep them open [without allowing our brains fall out, as Richard Dawkins suggests]. We need to dig deeper, recognizing the world’s greatest challenges are our biggest opportunities. We should always follow the principles of design thinking and innovation: desirability, feasibility, and viability. This will help us harness the nexus of secular forces, all of which can be headwinds or tailwinds, depending almost entirely on how we choose to look at them.”

* * *

Here are two suggestions while you are reading Mindshift: First, highlight key passages Also, perhaps in a notebook kept near-at-hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines).

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.