Talent or Competency... What do we need for Breakthrough Thinking?

Here are two definitions that apply to those who employ Breakthrough Thinking.

One is talent: and innate ability, aptitude, or faculty, especially when unspecified.

The other is competence: possession of required skill, knowledge, qualification, or capacity. This is usually used in reference to that which is required to accomplish something.

The question is, when looking for people to employ Breakthrough Thinking what are we looking for? Competence or talent, or both?

Can talent be taught?

What is the relationship between confidence and talent?

Uniqueness and The Great Mississippi Flood

It appears that our federal, state, and local govenments view the Great Mississippi Flood of 2011 as just another flood. I suspect that many of the farmers and residents of small communities along the river think differently. After all they thought that with this, like with other floods, they would have the protection of the levies. Alas, they have been sacrificied so that those downstream could be saved.

The question is whether that response will have been the right one. The answer is... "it depends". What is it that it depends upon? I would contend that one of the questions we first ask ourselves is what makes this flood unique? Once we do that we might then ask what the responses ought to be. So....

What makes this situation unique?

Expressing Disappointment; Second Life

We had scheduled an open workshop for this week and I am sorry to say that we got zero (non, nada, etc.) enrollments. That was real disappointment. I though we would bet at least a few people interested. I wonder what happened. Was it:

• wrong timing
• too expensive
• wrong venue
• wrong agenda
• poor advertising (we used direct mail, Google ads, prnewswire)
• something else?

We would appreciate comments from anyone who has some thoughts about this.

As a result of this apparent lack of interest, we have decided to discontinue open enrollment workshops. Our purpose was to help people use Breakthrough Thinking, and to generate some revenue for the center. We decided that there are alternatives that we should explore. Most of these involve effective use of the Internet with our website, Internet advertising, news releases and similar actions. We'll communicate more on offering consulting services for revenue generation.

Second Life

We now have a presence in Second Life. Our office is located in the New City office tower on the 7th floor. Next month, New City (which I own) will be hosting an international virtual conference for IDG, the firm that publishes CIO magazine, Computer World, and similar magazines. I will be present as much as possible but due to time differences (they will be hosting this from Romania) this may be difficult. If any of you are Breakthrough Thinking practitioners, I welcome your assistance. Please e-mail Gerry or me if you want to help.

I will be posting a separate Second Life article in a few days.

George

Execution

In recent months I have observed an increased emphasis on execution as a core leadership quality. Larry Bossidy started this trend with "Execution." I liked it although it lacked specificity on how to do it. "Vision to Execution" by Marv Covault (gloproinc@aol.com) covered the "what to do" in great detail. It is a great companion to Bossidy, particularly when looking at execution from an organizational rather than an individual basis. "Flexible Leadership", (Yukl and Lepsinger, 2004) brought it down to an individual level by detailing those competencies dealing with execution.

Interestingly, Breakthrough Thinking fits right in. If you employ Breakthrough Thinking principles, you will find that you are demonstrating some of Yukl and Lepsinger's core competencies. In short, Breakthrough Thinking enables you to execute. Thinking like a leader helps you to be a leader. This is what creating breakthroughs is all about.

Contact us if execution is critical to you or your organization.

George

Reference:

Yukl, Gary and Lepsinger, Richard (2004), Flexible Leadership, San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass

Interest in South Asia

I have been analyzing the hits to our website. We are getting significant interest from South Asia and Southeast Asia. We were unaware that we had disciples in these areas. It is a pleasing development.

We would love to hear from some of you. Do you represent the tip of the iceberg? Is there an unmet need in your region? What if we were able to conduct a Breakthrough Thinking workshop in the region? What about a webinar? Let us know what would help.

George

Smart Questions without telling anyone

All of us belong to and take part in organizations and groups where teaching participants the Breakthrough Thinking or Smart Questions concepts is not possible - restricted amount of time, the people do not think about thinking, you are only in an advisory position, and so on.

As a member of the Los Angeles County Quality and Productivity Commission, I am almost always in this position when evaluating proposals for funding from the Productivity Investment Board. A proposal last week sought $250,000 to hire consultants to tell the department what software/hardware would be needed to develop statistics and trends from a large number of different databases in many different County Departments.

The proposal listed the types of data available in the different databases and the different departments where they existed. However, there was no specificity about the requirements for or types of statistics and trends being sought. In other words, no requirements or key parameters were thought through. Just give us the money and we're bound to come up with great information.

I could have stated these negative comments and put the proposal on a non-approval path. In some ways, I perceived that there could be value created for the many departments if such a collective database were available. Since several proposals were on the agenda to be evaluated, there was no time to explain that I was about to use SQ/BT. All I did was to ask questions anout what purposes the consolidated database would achieve, what outcomes/departmental requirements would expected, what measurable benefits might accrue, and how the collaborating departments were going to proceed to accomplish all that.

The proposers said they would report back with as much of this information as possible prior to the full Commission review in three weeks.

This committee activity repeats many such situations in my experience. Using BT/SQ in all your activities even without orienting the groups can be your hidden competitive and leadership advantage and vehicle for personal career development.

Please add any of your similar experiences.

Gerry

Welcome our new website

We have been working hard to update our website. We hope you like it.

Gerry and I have also been working very hard on getting the October workshop going. We feel that it will be a significant improvement over the one we did in March...and the participants liked that one a lot.

It is amazing how wrapped up you can get in this. After a hiatus at AIG where my attention was directed elsewhere, I still find that the principles of Breakthrough Thinking, using Smartquestions techniques, are still as relevant as they always were. Now, more than ever, leaders need to constantly look toward the future. They need to engage in action that has purpose. They need to engage and inspire people through asking, not telling. In short, they need to act and behave like a leader.

I just finished helping a friend conduct a strategy offsite for one of his clients. The company's entire senior management team was there. They desperately needed some tools to help them focus on the future as well as to understand their issues holistically. Unfortunately, this was not my cliet so I couldn't teach Smart Questions...it would have been totally inappropriate. However, there may be an opportunity to do this as a follow up.

The reason I bring this up is that I recognized a crying need for what we do. I see this in many of the leaders I deal with on a formal and informal basis. Now that we have our own act together we can do something about it.

More to follow soon...

George