No One Is As Smart As I Am … I Think

I was sifting through a complex to-do list today, mostly around strategy initiatives that some individuals were NOT embracing as they should and I thought “Surely with all the knowledge that we have access to in the world, people can’t be making the same common business mistakes repeatedly. In fact, I’m sure Dr. Seuss could have explained how to employ strategy in a way that anyone could understand it”.

Then the light came on – I would write a cute little ditty under the guise of “strategy as explained by Dr. Seuss”.

Feeling quite content with myself, I thought “Maybe I should take a look around on the web to make sure someone else hadn’t already done it”.

And I stumbled upon this brilliant little piece:

A Common Seuss Approach to Strategy

I am strategic. Strategic I am.
Do you like to think strategically?

I do not like to think strategically,
not in an office
not in a tree.

It’s more fun to think tactically,
stuff I can touch,
stuff I can see.

……………..

Click here to read the rest of this brilliant work.

As I read this and realized that this author had written a better piece than I had envisioned, I was reminded of something.

When we go about our day-to-day work, we often think we have the best answer to a specific challenge or problem.  Sometimes it may be true.

However, if we choose to ignore the possibility that perhaps someone out there has a better solution than we do or has the missing piece of a puzzle we are wrestling with, then we are denying an opportunity to discover or create a better solution.

Oftentimes, we go about believing that our way is best or our solution is THE solution instead of A solution while forgetting that leveraging the talent and skills in others is the basis for truly successful collaboration.

For all the teams I have built over the years, there was a set of characteristics that I always looked for in addition to the required technical and business skills:

Are you smarter than I am or at a bare minimum, do you bring things to the table that I don’t have within me or have access to.

If the answer is “yes”, then I want you on my team.

Because if my success and the success of people around me is limited to just my intelligence and capabilities, then I have condemned everyone to less than the best we are capable of.

And that is a shame indeed.

If my ego doesn’t like it, that’s too bad.  I find it far more fun to promote the brilliance of others than to lay claim to my own clever insight.  And when I think about the brilliance I have been surrounded by over the years, I am humbled indeed.

As Sir Isaac Newton said:

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Now … I wonder if I can do something with Dr. Seuss’s “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish”.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS For another brilliant application of children’s literature in conveying business knowledge, I highly recommend “The Ugly Duckling Goes to Work: Wisdom for the Workplace from the Classic Tales of Hans Christian Andersen” by Mette Norgaard.

Authenticity – The Emperor Is Naked

Do you remember the story of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”?  It is a story of an Emperor who is duped by shysters who convince him to wear clothing that has so many wonderful powers that the clothing is invisible to people who lack the intelligence and insight to see it.  Of course we know that there was no invisible clothing and the Emperor goes sauntering down the street completely naked.

Everyone witnessing the parade, not wanting to look like an idiot, marvels out loud about how beautiful the clothing is.

It takes the innocence of a child, someone who doesn’t feel the pressure to tell people what they want to hear, who calls it as it is and thus alerts everyone else to the truth.  The Emperor is in fact naked.

I wonder if we face many situations where we are afraid to exclaim that the “Emperor is not wearing any clothing” for fear of how people will receive the message and for fear of what the repercussions could be.

Airport Security and The Emperor’s New Clothes

This thought came to mind this morning as I listened to people on the radio discuss airport security.

Airport security keeps the "amateur nut" from doing stupid things on aircraft.  That being said, a security system is only as strong as the weakest link. 

I travel quite a bit and have witnessed in airports where airline crews go around security.  Incidents such as the EgyptAir crash and the Air Canada copilot who needed to be restrained on a flight to London last year show that flight crews are human also and can place aircraft in jeopardy.

I watched in Toronto as a cleaning woman with her cart was sent around security so she could make her rounds inside the secure area.  She may be clean from a security standpoint but if someone observes her daily routine, something could be planted on her cart to be picked up on the inside by someone else.  I have been given tours of airport grounds without going through security and could have left something on the grounds for someone else to pick up.

Suicide bombers in the Middle East are now putting PETN (the material used by the individual on the Amsterdam to Detroit flight) INSIDE their body.  This will not be picked up by the new imaging systems that governments are insisting on installing

So the measures are good.  However, let's not get so complacent as to believe that the measures will catch everything as some officials want us to believe.  The tighter we grip something, the more likely we believe things are secure.  The truth is that, like grains of sand, the tighter we squeeze our fist, the more likely that some things will slip through. 

Air travel will never be completely safe and we need to accept that instead of being shocked when incidents arise.

Consulting and The Emperor’s New Clothes

When I look within the spheres of influence that I move in, whether it be in the professional consulting world or in many of the volunteer initiatives I participate in, the Emperor doesn’t just have some invisible clothing – he has a whole wardrobe that grows by the day.  I have many examples I could give but in doing so, my blog would be hundreds of pages long and I might inadvertently violate a few nondisclosure agreements along the way.

Suffice to say, many people tell their clients exactly what they want to hear and not what they need to hear.

Conversely, some clients create projects where the message they want to hear is the deliverable.

In either situation, no one is doing anyone else any favors.  In fact, they are just adding to the wardrobe of invisible clothing while telling the world that the world would be an idiot if they didn’t see the beautiful patterns and materials that the invisible clothing is made of.

In other words, they are sending more and more people into the world totally naked.

Perhaps that person is themselves. 

Perhaps that person is you.

If you are such a client, demand better from those offering advice to you.

If you provide guidance to someone else, insist that you be allowed to call it as you see it instead of providing something that the client wants to hear.

To not demand and expect authenticity in information exchange is to not empower people to make appropriate decisions in a timely, effective fashion.

Receivers of poor information find that they are not in demand after awhile as their poor choices are a reflection of the poor information.

Providers of poor information find that they eventually are not in demand either as their resume fills with one failed client after another.

Failure, like success, is a process that takes time to develop.

Do your best to demand authenticity in every exchange you have.

Otherwise, you may find yourself parading around your sphere of influence totally naked.

In a metaphoric way, of course.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

 

To read my Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Authenticity – The Emperor is Naked”, please click here.

 

PS There is a wonderful book, “The Ugly Duckling Goes to Work” by Mette Norgaard, that readers of this blog may find quite interesting and thought provocative.

 

 

When I first read this book, I could tell by its opening line that I was in for a wonderful voyage. 

Work can bring us alive, but it can also kill us.

Thus opens a fascinating book that evokes a fascinating structural tension in the reader – the nostalgia of revisiting childhood storybook favorites versus the A-HA moments of enlightenment one receives when discovering fascinating insight into our personal or professional lives.

Taking six of Andersen’s stories, including “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, the author, Mette Norgaard, shows how a story enjoyed by children has deep insight into the life we live as adults.

I highly recommend this book to everyone and have given many clients a copy as a gift.