For some, the word ‘fearless’ encapsulates bravery; bold and intrepid pioneers. When we asked children what it meant in our recent Fearless Stories competition, we received stories about parachutists, soldiers, and birds taking their first flight.
But we can also look at the word ‘fearless’ another way, which is the removal of fear. At the Martin James Network, our mission is to challenge and change societal behaviours in order that every individual can live a life with less fear, and empower them to fearlessly pursue their dreams.
We asked three of our leaders from our TalkOut, OKRA, and caseflowhr, to outline what what ‘Fearless Futures’ means to them. From courageous mistakes, measured risk, and disruptive strategies, our leaders are redesigning the way in which we make positive social and economic change.
Tim Luft is a Director of TalkOut. Tim leads the TalkOut VR studios, transforming mundane training sessions into exciting sensory experiences. They help the most complex scenarios become easy to understand, and the most dangerous environments become safe. We asked Tim what fearless futures mean to him:
‘Fearless Futures is an ecosystem which creates the environment to allow people to work in a truly unique way, specifically to engage in critical thinking, challenge the root causes of inequalities and to champion transformative change. It is trusting people to ask the questions that need to be asked and if a clear answer is not received, putting forward new disruptive strategies which solve the problem.’
The Martin James Network has seven overarching values which apply to every Group within the Network:
Creative
Curious
Collaborative
Courageous
Candid
Caring
Committed
These values promote a unique working style where we encourage colleagues to respond to change with creative solutions, whilst continuing to challenge our personal biases. Our core vision of creating fearless futures, involves consciously listening to others in a mission to improve communities and promote equality using disruptive technology. Tim’s response really highlights our Creativity and Curiosity values whilst emphasising our approach to Fearless Futures.
Greg and Jill Hartigan have many years of HR & Legal experience between them. Last year they fearlessly started-up their new company caseflowhr, a digital ER specialist. Their product uses ground-breaking technology to aid HR professionals’ decision making and monitoring cases. When asked about fearless futures, they submitted this poem:
Fear transforms into courage
Rewards are for the trying
Bravery is for rising after the falling
Boldness is worn by the timid
The inner impostor is slain
Scars become medals
Bitter tears savour sweet and
From setbacks flow the springs of life
– Greg and Jill Hartigan
Greg and Jill’s creative interpretation of Fearless Futures ties into another of our values: Courage. It reiterates that although we all face fear, it is the action of transforming fears into action that shows bravery. And although sometimes we may fail, the attempt of trying shows courage over anything else.
The final thoughts on fearlessness in this blog come from OKRA’s Rasim Shah, who leads the implementation of AI in life sciences. OKRA delivers predictions, suggestions and explanations to empower life sciences executives and operational teams to drive the right drug to the right patient with humanised and understandable AI outputs.
‘As Winston Churchill brilliantly said “never let a good crisis go to waste.” For me this represents embracing the uncertainties we currently face (for me there are many), facing the future with optimism (this is a daily challenge), adapting fast and daring to allow controlled mistakes to happen along the way (this causes major anxiety). Fearless Futures for me is about having the courage to reimagine both business and yourself, and empowering others around you to build their future irrespective of the differences and by challenging the current norms.’
Rasim mentions ‘embracing uncertainties, adapting fast, and daring to allow controlled mistakes to happen’. At Martin James Network we encourage our people to be mould breakers and change makers, but doing so can often causes anxieties. One of our values is being Candid and we welcome candid conversations around the challenges that individuals feel in the workplace. We work hard to support our colleagues on their entrepreneurial journey by assigning internal mental health ambassadors to support and listen along the way.
Our Network works fearlessly in its approach to deliver ground breaking experiences. We are proud that this is felt right across our teams, who want to ensure that the communities around us can live without limitation or prejudice, thus creating a fearless future for all.