Enrique Aboitiz Mendieta 09 -25 – 2021
We keep getting requests for perspectives on leadership. As I think about it and the fundamentals remain the same as far as I see it, I can add content to circumstances but the essence of the situation has not changed much in anything other than speed and intensity — and that, of course, matters seriously. As I see it, human nature evolves slowly. Well, it used to. Now, with accelerated changes and technology, it may evolve faster. With great interests we will watch and learn.
A very long time ago I came to the conclusion that three things mattered in people:
01. Intelligence
Do you get it?
02. Emotional Stability
Can you get it done?
03. Diligence and Discipline
Do you get it done?
All too often I hear comments like “we are working very hard”, “we have put so much time into this” or something similar.
The reality is that these “feel good statements” do not really matter as much as we want them to.
Only one aspect matters and that is “are we getting things done?” and/or “is it done?”
It is a wild world, a complex and complicated world we operate in. The world of accelerating change that we are facing has neither sympathy nor empathy for how hard we work and how much time we put in. The reality, as much as we may want differently, does not care if we are stressed and it could not careless what we feel. Einstein’s God is indifferent to anything but survival of the most adaptive.
We need smart people that get it and get it quickly. Without intelligence, complexity cannot be broken down and the complicated cannot be navigated. ‘Complex’ meaning difficult to understand and ‘complicated’ meaning many moving and related parts. Our thriving relies on the timeliness of our adaptation.
We need people that are not affected by failure, who learn from it and do not get offended nor are on the defensive. Confident souls, open minds, and sturdy constitutions are pre-requisites.
Fundamentalists of any kind that have any level of intolerance to ideas just do not belong in thriving teams that are out to keep advancing the cause of the infinite game.
Discipline and diligence is narrowing the leeway for the non-fit physically, emotionally, and mentally. Covid is putting a test to this as I am sure you all experience.
Science and technology is helping us all understand that the triangle of Alan Watkins — your biology drives feelings and emotions for top performance — is real.
Strategy is something only we can do and better than anyone else. That is the path we are searching for daily and course correcting all the time.
The faster one course corrects the faster we arrive closer to an ever moving and faster moving infinite game. Attention & Engagement 24 x 60 x 60 996 (more on this here) have more relevance today than ever. As I see it, intolerance to openness is what we need to be intolerant to if we are to advance at a speed faster than the rest in the course of the infinite game.
Open minds need to be fed with perspectives to distill ravaging information and disinformation in a world were the ignorant and the misinformed have more and more influence and more and more loud say. Biases and prejudices are fueled by technology. Distraction is a greater and greater distraction from focus and getting things done.
There is little doubt that agility and course correction to adapt to change at the right time are the guiding ingredients to advance towards the infinite game that is itself advancing. Is the game advancing faster than we are? Are we changing and adapting ahead of the need is a question that is in my mind all of the time. You see advancement is beyond the corner and we are before it. That is the geography we face.
When it comes to talent, the world is truly our pool. Talent can contribute from anywhere and all of the time. Since the world is our pool of talent and will be that for all then the world is our marker and our measure.
Can we feed that talent without active and continuous learning, formal and informal, travel real and on YouTube, reading and listening? You answer that for yourself.
We cannot accept the affects of Covid as an excuse cum reason for not getting things done, I do not think.
If we do not learn faster than the rest, they will know more than us and they will advance ahead of us. The purpose of learning is to evolve our beliefs and not to confirm and deny them. Our enemy is alarmism, inflammatory rhetoric, ignorance, the misinformed and the lack of energy. Time is our limitation and human stupidity is our foe.
“It is a world pool that we are competing against” — this cannot be repeated enough.
For those of you that are asking me to write about my thoughts on leadership and all, please let me know if you see flaws in my thinking as they are very welcome. The greatest contribution to others is to argue their reasoning so beliefs can evolve.
We cannot all be right but we can all evolve our beliefs as we learn 24 x 60 x 60 997.
