The following is an excerpt from The Reset Mindset, a new book by Penny Zenker, The Focusologist, an international speaker and best-selling author.
A mindset is a way of thinking, a mental filter that colors what we see and how we think about the world. It steers our attention to certain things and shapes our reactions to what happens to us and around us. Now let’s define a Reset Mindset and compare it to the Growth Mindset for reference.
A Reset Mindset is a pattern of thinking and a set of beliefs centered around dynamic reassessment and the willingness to re-invent.
A Growth Mindset is a belief that we can improve our abilities and intelligence through practice, effort, and learning from our mistakes. A person with a Growth Mindset views challenges and obstacles as opportunities and believes failure is just a temporary setback that one can learn from. It’s about embracing challenges, persisting in the face of setbacks, learning from experience, and finding inspiration in others’ successes.
Both the Growth Mindset and the Reset Mindset are grounded in maximizing potential and turning challenges into opportunities, but they are built on a different foundation. A Growth Mindset is grounded in learning and a Reset Mindset is grounded in value creation. The Reset Mindset is the capacity to quickly adapt to change, reframe setbacks for a new focus, reassess a complex problem, or make new connections to leverage a new opportunity. You are constantly reevaluating your current goals and priorities to ensure your focus and energy are aligned with your values and greater aspirations, and in doing so, it offers a renewed sense of purpose and strategy.
While a Growth Mindset focuses on evolving within the path you’re currently on, a Reset Mindset focuses on a willingness to change the path itself to iteratively adapt to new information or circumstances as you go. The distinction is crucial because they each have unique impacts on how individuals and organizations approach development and change.
Both the Growth and Reset approaches agree that there is no finish line. There can always be further improvement or adaptation to changing circumstances. However, a Reset Mindset can provide a competitive advantage by enabling quicker adaptation to industry trends and disruptions, potentially outpacing competitors.
And it may not just be a matter of competitive advantage—it may even be a matter of survival.
Back in 1849, Charles Darwin wrote a universal truth. “It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives. It is not the strongest that survives. The species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.” For example, Nokia was the leading mobile phone vendor in the world up to early 2011. Due to its slow adaptation to newer smartphone technologies, they gradually lost market share and sold to Microsoft in 2013.
The CEO at the end of his speech during the sale said, “We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow we lost.” They lost because they didn’t adapt quickly enough to the changing environment, and they were not willing to re-invent themselves.
