To Celebrate Full Moon Day: Three Pillars in Building the World-class Insight

Misunderstanding is the big cause of many human problems, hence, insight is the light we should pursue for.

It is another mid-autumn moon festival and the time to celebrate the full moon day. We humans share the same sun, the same moon, the same set of stars and the same nature resources, but can we or shall we share the common insight or set the similar standards, even though we speak the different languages, or have different customs? Beauty is in the eyes of the beholders, but insight can be shared to connect the minds and touch the hearts without the border. So the world- class insight, do you have one, and what are important pillars to build it?

Cognition: Misunderstanding is the big cause of many human problems, hence, insight is the light we should pursue for. Insight can only be captured via cognitive minds with multidimensional intelligence. The most important capability of cognitive mind is the willingness and ability to seek out acknowledge, gain in-depth understanding, and address our ignorance and the assumptions we make to minimize it. Insight is the act or result of understanding the inner nature of situations or of seeing things intuitively. It leads to a vision; then leads to the paradigm shift, strategic changes, or leadership transformation. Knowledge is concrete, and intelligence is contextual. At today’s digital world, logic is often nonlinear and multidimensional, hence, the minds with tunnel vision have difficulties in catching the world-class insight. Fortunately, nowadays new technologies and social media platforms are driving an unprecedented reorganization of how we produce and create knowledge and share wisdom to overcome common challenges and discover insight and solutions. Amplified by a new level of collective intelligence and tapping resources embedded in social connections with multitudes of others, we can now achieve the kind of scale and reach previously attainable only by very large organizations do. When in-depth thoughts and understanding transcend into insight, better at the world-class level, the optimal solution to a specific problem can be scaled and applied to other domains; the mindsets with the cognitive difference can be connected seamlessly and the hearts can be touched via positive emotion flows, and insight becomes the common sense to advance the society.

Abstraction: Specialization divides, but abstraction bridges. Abstraction is being able to step back from details and see patterns, generalization, standards, context, and a bigger picture, and then the insight is emerging via multilevel of understanding. Through content understanding, we turn on our imagination and knowledge that we have to decode the thought hidden not only in the message as itself but also in another mind, with the goal to enforce understanding in a structural and scientific way. The abstraction helps us reach the point of agreement which could be reached, and then you can elaborate via decomposition, specialization, inclusion, or realization until you reach a point of disagreement, always open your minds, listen carefully, first understand, and then being understood, keep capturing the flash of new insight, gaining the in-depth understanding of things underneath, and always pursue the premium solutions for the long run.  

Profundity: Insight is not just about “seeing,” but through sophisticated thought processes. In fact, it can leverage multiple thinking processes in dealing with varying situations wisely. In order to “see” things differently and understand them profoundly, you need to leverage critical thinking which is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion. In order to see broadly and the big picture, you have to apply creative thinking and systems thinking as well in order to connect the nonlinear dots and see the interconnected relationship between parts and whole. To put briefly, insight comes via the perception that is based on one’s thought processes influenced by one’s thinking style, cognitive understanding, and knowledge level. A profound mind is like a big ocean, deep, but also open. A profound mind is humble enough to be aware of and admit what you don't know and share what you know. The point is that the more you know, the more you know you don’t know and admit unknown unknown, the more insightful you become, to be open minded with learning agility.

Life is just like the moon, there are moments of full and wax, the clear insight is perhaps just like the moonlight lucidity, make you keep pondering, not just jump to the conclusion; observe remotely, and feel cool, calm and unique inside...

Posted in: Food for Thought,Keywords in 21st Century,Mindshift