Simon Sinek defines "existential flexibility" as the ability to make a profound, 180° strategic shift to stay relevant and continue advancing an organization’s cause (not routine operational flexibility). He explains such shifts can be prompted by events like pandemics, technology changes, or cultural shifts and illustrates the idea with Apple/Steve Jobs abandoning prior work to adopt the graphical user interface.
Chapters
When the pandemic struck. My book came out a few months before the pandemic. And so for someone like me who loves to observe and whether this stuff is true or not, you sort of go, you sort of wonder, is everything going to hold up or not? An existential flex is something that I predicted would happen either 0, once or at the absolute most twice in a career. But, but when Covid happened, we all went through it at the same time. Existential flexibility is that you're able to make a profound 180 degree strategic shift in order to continue to advance your cause. In other words, stay relevant. This is not about the daily flexibility of business. We're talking profound strategic shift here. And sometimes brought on by pandemic, sometimes brought on by changing technology or politics or culture or tastes, but you're able to adjust. So for example, it's Apple, Steve Jobs, when they're developing technology in one direction and they discover this thing called the graphic user interface that they did not invent and they decided to walk away from millions of dollars spent and countless man hours in order to focus on a different strategic position. Because Jobs believed that that was a better way to advance his cause of empowering individuals to use personal computers.
That's existential flexibility. That you're able to make a profound 180 degree strategic shift in order to continue to advance your cause. In other words, stay relevant. This is not about the daily flexibility of business. This is. We're talking profound strategic shift here and sometimes brought on by pandemic.
