Serendipity and Learning

Today I was listening to someone talk. The topic of was the future of work in a post pandemic world.  What was striking that the leader was saying the right things - yet nothing was strikingly new. It was what everyone has been saying on Linkedin or in any other report. And that led me to think - given that there is the internet and what people write typically and know as typical - it is very easy to believe that "you know everything" because everybody knows it and believes it to be  true.  To find original thought, you have to go beyond that. Else you will be taken by surprise when a different thought comes along. Or caught unawares when the market moves.  Sometimes our confidence in what we know is foolhardly  (this was written when the pandemic had just made an appearance) and will prevent us from seeing beyond what we know. So, at every point, how do we ask this question of ourselves? The title of the post is a question that is ostensibly asked by Jeff Bezos...

This is well known - the moment one talks about learning to say No - the most common road is 'assertiveness' skills. However, by and large assertiveness is not the issue. The issue is something else. The issue is that there is no greater yes that enables your no. The greater yes is the assertion that you need to say no, not the assertiveness as a skill. This was an old realization for me (nothing original - well researched, consultants know this, salespeople practice this and negotiators swear by it), but it came back while working on a short project. 

A few weeks ago, I got an innocuous request. Can you help a small team frame conversations with their stakeholders. I spoke with a couple of the stakeholders and heard them out in terms of the way the problem was framed. I was lost after the initial framing. This was a topic that they had dealt with in depth through two frameworks in 6 months and I was wondering how to take them through this. This was my uncertain territory where there is a search for a solution. I usually like this uncertainty because it results in some insight sooner or later. And sure enough thats what happened. I was able to break conversation skills into a few distinct parts, break it into what they are doing now (stakeholder inputs) and in doing so, what are they missing out on. The breaking in the parts was not a surprise for them or for me. The what they are doing now was also not a surprise. What was not obvious was the final framing of what are they really supposed to do (as opposed to what they are do...

For anybody in any service type of function - be it Human Resources, Training, PMO - there are always two ways to do the role. One is to take that little black book, a pencil and ask, at every table, "Sir, what can I get you?" (Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like - but notice, I did not mention the uniform.) The slightly sophisticated method around the above is to use some really cool digital stuff to take those orders - like they do in fancy restaurants - where they use blackberry (then) or tablets (now) and that sends the order right into the kitchen. And sometimes they give you these buzzing thingies that even buzz when your order is ready (how cool is that). (But yes, again, it is exactly what it sounds like.) Variants of the above include when the customer says, there is too much salt in my salad - to take it back and fix it immediately. Or when the customer says, the room is too hot, apologize profusely and talk about other things and hope that works. Or, as...