Why your smartest people stop taking risks at work (& how to reverse it)
You’ve probably said some version of it yourself: We need to be more experimental, more adaptive, faster to learn. And you truly meant it. So why isn’t it happening? The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that 39% of core skills will change by 2030. Creativity, adaptability, and resilience are among the most in-demand of these skills. Many organizations talk about how these are the skills that they need more of. But in reality, there’s a contradiction. These organizations want the outcomes of experimentation, but the signals they send breed the opposite. This can look like asking for detailed business cases before they’ve tested these ideas, or step-by-step annual plans before putting the right conditions in place. They also demand multiple layers of sign-off before anyone can make the slightest change. Then they wonder why their teams hesitate, overthink, and relentlessly ask for permission. Experimentation doesn’t emerge because the company lists innovation as one of its values. It emerges when people believe it is safe, worthwhile, and expected to test ideas and learn as they go. This begins with changing the way you lead and the environment your team operates in. What a real test-and-learn culture looks like The Australian technology engineer James Galdes experienced firsthand what the right conditions look like under extreme circumstances. In March 2020, he and his team had the job of building a functioning digital public health system for South Australia’s COVID-19 response in just three weeks. This is a project that would normally take two years. With no committees, no approval layers, and no time to wait for perfect, they shipped a working version, gathered feedback, and improved it in real time. Three months later, the rest of the country adopted their approach. James told me that “overthinking had diminishing returns.” He said, “The best way to learn was to release, observe, and adapt.