Long-time readers of this newsletter and my personal blog recognize how much I look up to Dr. Thomas Sowell. One of his most strik­ing articles, from the Town Hall edition 9-9-2008 opens the door to the idea that only the humble can learn:

"'Experience' is often just a fancy word for the mistakes that we belatedly realized we were making, only after the real­it­ies of the world made us pay a painful price for being wrong."

In the glow of Easter, many travel to spend time with family or friends. That repositioning to be in community, to share the company of others, is central to the human experience. That centrality is part of why we chose Posititioning Talent as our 2Q:2015 theme.

Recently, Alan Hayman and I had a Skype call morning, Florida time, and afternoon Turkish time. Part of our discussion centered around effective managers positioning their people for success, by the counter-intuitive practice of teaching by listening.

Effective parents – & managers – listen as much as they speak and they highlight the single right thing in the host of errors.

The dog you feed is the one that grows.

In the coming 19 days, where can you find these right things: thought, word, deed?

• » 3 days: (b)right ideas from sources old and new,


• » 2 days: give 5 compliments a day,


• » 2 days: listen for 5 teachable moments,


• » 3 days: like the Boy Scouts, do a good turn,


• » 4 days: practice the miracle moment. How can you change a life for the better – right now?!,


• » 5 days: partner with at least 2 others, in a team of 3, to learn, review & teach one of your company's core competencies to build resiliency.

 

Gather 'round for the finish

So what does this focus on customer service excellence have to do with corporate risk management?

That's a great question! We discussed the answer in Perspectives (II) 19.
 

Want to know more?

Reach out to us [1, 2] if you're interested in more detail. We're easy to talk with and fun to work with.

Every task can be layered

Every task can be layered, the thinner the layer, the easier it is to understand. That is one of the keys to the Systemkey™ Risk Intelligence Framework. Making something "sashimi simple" is the verbal shorthand for conducting a "thin slice interview" which Whitney Johnson does so masterfully.

As a classically-trained pianist, Whitney is tuned (pardon the pun) to recognize nuances & subtle distinctions, that we here at STETA Group call #bizint, or business intimacy. Those experienced souls like Whitney, who continually empty their cup so they can learn more, derive answers from the nuances others simply overlook.

In the East, the concept of the empty cup, 初 心 者 (shoshinsha) expresses this other-centered outlook that fosters the rich dialog where innovation thrives. In the West, it’s the idea of renewing your mind, μετάνοια (metanoia). In other words, from every direction, innovative leaders embrace the challenge of change rather than run from it!

As the CEO of Glittering Carbon Activewear, I love Matt's fabric analogy describing Whitney's style as a brocade:

Whitney's work is like a Jacquard brocade.

Céline Schillinger describes "positive viral change from deep within the fabric of the organization…."

Because brocade is reversible, Whitney gives us specific examples in her blog, of ways we can offer others the op­por­tun­ity to examine their closely held beliefs in recognizable form, yet from a fresh perspective that they normally never see.

We can give them a physical, tangible metaphor for complex, interleaved interaction streams so they can touch & see a model of "level of effort" required for the innovation proposed.

Jacquard opens people's eyes (or can open them) to the reality that complexity is just orchestrated simplicity.

After all, every living thing we know, from Whitney to Matthew to Leonie, & everything in-between, is made up of just four DNA base pairs.

Not a gazillion, just four. Less than the fingers of one hand – and these four pairs only combine in two ways. Not 16, 60 or 600,000 – just two. Imagine we had adenine & thymine in one hand and guanine & cytosine in the other hand. Then just shake hands.

At the strategy level, it's just that simple. Because the repetitive process, or process structure embeds information in the design, just like we impress intelligence on a carrier wave through broadcasting television or radio, this embedded structural information results in endless variety from a stunningly simple starter set.

Simple stuff really. Never intended to be or designed to be easy. Excellence is for Olympic champions, easy is for dweebs. That said, I am in vigorous agreement with Whitney that the goal of delivering excellence is best served by giving a clear path – or in academic terms – a canonical pathway from old to new, to make the new idea seem less terrifying.

(I've read in forwarded emails that Whitney loves the phrase too, yet she's too modest to say so about it applied to her…)

We'll continue this topic in Issue 6, with Thin Slice Interviews.

Note: This post reuses previously published material, with permission. Our founder, Matt Weilert's blog posts and his leader's innovation manual: 19 Days to Business Intimacy [read sample, buy the book] both provided key ingredients to the tasty morsels served here.

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