@keenencharles talked about how “change is fundamental to growth”, and how it’s good but scary. It’s such a coincidence, because I just watched a TED talk by Natalie Fratto about the adaptability quotient, and how to measure and improve it.

She’s an investor and works with startups, so she listens to startup pitches all day. The interesting thing she discovered was that founders with higher adaptability quotient seem to do better, and she managed to come up with 3 ways to ‘measure’ it. These 3 ways also happen to be the same way you can improve your adaptability, because “adaptability is a skill, it can be learned, and we all have the capacity to improve our adaptability quotient.”

1. Asking “what if…?” questions to simulate different scenarios.

She would ask “what if…?” questions, and throw different scenarios and difficult situations at the founders, and see how they react and think. The ones with high adaptability would be able to simulate and talk in depth about how they can adapt and respond. So, to work out our adaptability muscle, we have to get comfortable with asking “what if…?”

2. Active unlearning to challenge what they already know.

Adaptable people are constantly learning to unlearn. They are always looking to falsify what they know, and open to changing their minds if the evidence shows. Like they say, “Strong opinions, loosely held.”

3. Exploration over exploitation.

We tend to overvalue exploitation on current successes and forget to look ahead on what might kill us next. This is the classic innovator’s dilemma. People with high adaptability quotient are always on the lookout for trend changes in the market, tech or competition that might put them out of business. They prepare for them, so that when it does come, they can adapt quickly.