Female Disruptors: Eleanor Winton of Foresightfully Limited On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
The very first time a ran a workshop for senior people I was terrified and it was tough, but it was also the first step in becoming an expert. Many of the things I once had to be brave to do, from asking difficult questions to speaking to huge audiences, are now the things I love the most about my work. The challenges we face as a global community require us all to be brave, to challenge long held assumptions and to advocate for what matters.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Eleanor Winton.
Eleanor is a consultant and expert in disruption, innovation and foresight and the former head of the Future Institute for a major consultancy. She has extensive experience of working with senior teams to stimulate creative thought and action. Through her consultancy Foresightfully, Eleanor works with organizations to understand what the future might hold for them and to develop strategies in response.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I definitely didn’t have a straight path to the job I do today! In fact, having trained as a lawyer, my early career was in investigations. I worked in a number of different organizations investigating misconduct, fraud and money laundering all over the world. I made the switch to innovation and foresight when I began to see for real how much more effective proactive mechanisms could be in addressing those challenges. In other words, you can’t think about risk without also exploring the opportunity to innovate around why those issues arise in the first place.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
Through thedisruptiongameplan.com, my colleague Ruth Murray-Webster and I have set out to challenge the way that organizations have traditionally treated innovation and risk. In our experience, they often act as deeply entrenched siloes- sometimes even fighting against each other for leadership attention and support. Indeed, that’s something we expect many of your readers will recognize. Our passion is in helping our clients to think clearly about what the future holds for the business before they decide how to tackle a new challenge. That’s disruptive because most established consultancies match their services to a client’s expressed need e.g. ‘we’ve identified a risk’ or ‘we want to innovate’. We, on the other hand, enable our clients to explore long term value and how they can shape new approaches to preserving and growing it. That’s a game changer in helping clients to think beyond the issue they see now and instead to explore what lies beyond that.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Shifting to a hybrid model for the delivery of our services (largely triggered by the pandemic) has led to Ruth and I developing lots of video content that our clients can access as and when they need it. We haven’t had many opportunities to record video together thanks to the lockdown rules here in the UK — but that’s probably for the best as we’ve found that we end up laughing the whole time when we do record together. I think sometimes you just have to record and put the content out there — it’s a mistake to over analyze what your face is doing on camera!
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I’ve been incredibly lucky to have been helped along the way by people who invested their time in my development — from the school teachers who drove me to debating competitions all over Scotland, to the boss who once told me I smiled too much to be taken seriously! My generation has been particularly lucky to see more women in power than ever before in history but Greta Thunberg’s incredible leadership and commitment to take action on climate change, from a position of no formal authority, has had a huge impact on me — as has the shockingly dismissive reaction of so many powerful people. It’s wonderful to have mentors but we must always question whether their route to success is still available in a disrupted world.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
I think it’s really interesting that you have interpreted disruption as having a primarily positive connotation. Our experience, in working closely with disrupted businesses, is that it can trigger a more negative response. In our book, ‘The Disruption Game Plan: New rules for connected thinking on innovation and risk’, we advocate that leaders see disruption and disruptive thinking as a force for positive change. Of course, that’s not to say that there aren’t often negative consequences of disruptive change — e.g. jobs and industries changing and even disappearing. What we have to be good at doing to really drive value from disruption is separating short term consequences from potential long term benefits. For us there are two key things which must be at the heart of disruption for it to generate positive long term outcomes:
- Disruptors must respect the shifting role of business and indeed capitalism. The desire to disrupt the status quo must seek to deliver maximum value to all stakeholders — not just shareholders
- Disruptors must acknowledge their part in addressing the climate crisis, the greatest challenge the world has ever faced.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
- Curiosity — This is the number one behavior we need as leaders in a disrupted environment. How can we expect to stay ahead of change if we’re not curious about what’s changing? Every day I force myself to read something I wouldn’t normally read / talk to someone new / try something new / ask a curious question to keep my Curiosity Quotient up.
- Bravery — The very first time a ran a workshop for senior people I was terrified and it was tough, but it was also the first step in becoming an expert. Many of the things I once had to be brave to do, from asking difficult questions to speaking to huge audiences, are now the things I love the most about my work. The challenges we face as a global community require us all to be brave, to challenge long held assumptions and to advocate for what matters.
- Collaborate — There are very few challenges that can be solved by you alone. In my experience there’s always value in collaborating both to understand the challenge and to address it. Collaboration sparks innovation and creativity — look at the impact of crowdsourcing on the development of Hyperloop or how ‘citizen scientists’ are helping to identify previously undiscovered stars. If you’re stuck or you feel like you’re dealing with an impossible challenge — chances are, you aren’t. You just need to collaborate on it.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Ruth and I have big plans to democratize access to our thinking by making it cheaply and easily available online wherever you are in the world. We think that by doing that we’ll help to drive positive outcomes for the stakeholders of businesses everywhere.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
There are all sorts of challenges around funding that are well documented. For us the primary observation, not necessarily a challenge, is that the vast majority of senior clients are male. That means we are surely missing the opportunity to work with talented women who are still not making it into our boardrooms in sufficient numbers.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
I absolutely loved ‘The Luck Factor’ by Dr Richard Wiseman. It’s an exploration of how the way we think about our own ability to be lucky shapes the outcomes we see. So, his research demonstrates that when we consider ourselves ‘unlucky’ we often stop looking for opportunities. Narrowing our perspective in that way means we don’t see the opportunities that a ‘lucky’ person might. I love the book’s message because it directly relates to how Ruth and I see the opportunity for business. Unless an organization can see that it has the potential to be a disruptor, rather than always the disrupted, it will continue to miss clear opportunities to change the game. That’s such a waste of organizational energy and talent.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
All of our energy right now needs to be focused on addressing the climate crisis. I’d love to see a ‘net positive’ movement which seeks to transform the way we impact our planet. Interface is a perfect example of business that is changing the game on climate and should be an inspiration to every leader.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
‘Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.’ Joel Arthur Barker, American Futurist
In a world that’s in crisis we all need to live and act with purpose. I use this quote all the time to explore with clients how they want to impact the world for the better. It’s a fantastic provocation to explore whether a business has a true strategy or is bogged down in activities.
How can our readers follow you online?
They can sign up to www.disruptiongameplan.com for access to our insights and consulting support as well as a link to buy our book. Alternatively they can follow Ruth and I on LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from your readers.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Female Disruptors: Eleanor Winton of Foresightfully Limited On The Three Things You Need To Shake… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.