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The Solution Is Finding New Answers
No matter what the industry every leader is facing new challenges. These are not the same old challenges of yesterday so the same old solutions will not meet today’s challenges.
Market’s are getting smarter. Competitors are getting smaller and employee’s are expecting more than a pay check as the reward for a job. Customers are expecting instant feedback and customization. Reorganization isn’t the answer. A new mission statement isn’t the answer. Forming teams to solve your problems isn’t the answer. Bringing in the “change experts” isn’t the answer. Hiring a social media guru isn’t the answer. Leveraging more technology to do more of the same things at less cost isn’t the answer. So what is the answer?
The answer begins by realizing that very things that used to make you successful are the same things that are holding you back today.
The Solution Is Finding New Answers
A Fast Company article titled “How Your Own Expertise Is Holding You Back” by Mark McNeilly states : “How are entrepreneurs able to create new companies and inventors capable of bringing new products to market? It’s because they avoid accepting the way things are in their industry and instead see what might be. It’s because they have shoshin, or, “beginner’s mind.”
Shoshin is a Zen Buddhist concept that means “having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject.” Shunryu Suzuki, the Zen master who wrote the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, summed up the philosophy well by saying, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”
“As Suzuki implies, the expert faces the challenge of knowing too much. She knows what works and what doesn’t. He knows what’s been tried and why it didn’t work. Unfortunately, by accepting these things as givens, they cannot see what is possible. Only someone who views things with a “beginner’s mind” can imagine what could be if the assumptions are challenged.”
If we approach every challenge through the filter of previous solutions gained from past experience and education then we are not likely to find learn anything new needed to create new solutions.
Most leaders believe they made it to the top because of their experience, knowledge and past success. The problem with that assumption is today is no longer a reflection of the past. Everything is new and subsequently it requires a new way to think about everything.
The answers come from what could be rather than what has been.
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