If you are a game-changing leader you show up with a point of view about the future. If that point of view solves a problem in the marketplace, you become the ‘go to’ person on the topic. Maybe it’s about technology, team performance, business development or customer experience. It could be specific to the future of your industry or, more broadly, your profession. When you have a solution to a sizeable problem many organisations face, that’s when they will seek you out.
But how do you develop your point of view about the future? A starting point could be your own experience. You may have lived through the consequences of things not working and know there has to be a better way. Maybe you have analysed future trends and you can see how companies should prepare for what’s coming. You read everything you can find on your favoured topic and listen to podcasts.
But market testing your point of view about the future with other people enriches it. You will develop a point of view that is expanded by their collective insights.
‘When you put it all together, human thought is incredibly impressive. But it is a product of a community, not of any individual alone.’
Steven Slowman and Philip Fernbach – The Knowledge Illusion
In The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, the authors Steven Slowman and Philip Fernbach argue we all overestimate what we know. For example, most of us are familiar with bicycles and know how to ride them. However, a psychology experiment revealed many people can’t draw one or even pick a proper bike out of a lineup.
But that does not stop us from rating our knowledge of how a bicycle works as very good. The authors make a powerful case for collaborating, suggesting the key to success lies in harnessing the people and things around us.
Slowman and Fernbach contend our collaborative minds enable us to do amazing things and we find true genius in the ways we create intelligence using the community around us.
🙋 What is your point of view about the future that makes you the go-to person on the topic 🙋♀️
Best regards, Brian