Influence with Breadth, Depth, Strength

In order to untangle an unprecedented level of complexity, you need to reach a stage to assess the logic of everything, see things from different angles, and enhance the breadth, depth and strength of understanding.

We are experiencing a major paradigm shift from the industrial age with knowledge scarcity to the digital era with information abundance, and we are shaping the creative economy to advance humanity constantly. In fact, the rapid change, abundant knowledge, and diversified global society requires more advanced mindsets and differentiated capabilities. Today’s interdisciplinary leaders and professionals need to have a unique insight to bridge the multitude of gaps and demonstrate learning agility to lead innovation. A true global organization dedicated to bridge the gaps and unleash collective human potential.

Breadth of vision: Tunnel vision happens at every side of the fence, commercial and technical, under the silo walls. As people ignore the relevance of each other’s works; when they work as a group or siloed function, not as a cohesive team holistically. Because lack of clear vision, tunnel vision or “vision existing on the paper only” are all sorts of traps which mislead management, disable changeability, and decelerate business speed. With the new characteristics of global businesses such as hyper-connectivity, hyper-interdependence, and hyper-competition, the digital leaders today need to be constantly visible by sharing a clear vision and enabling others to share it as well.

Innovation is a means, not an end. If you don’t know where you want to go, you are unlikely to get there. The breadth of innovation is dependent on the interdisciplinary understanding of the patterns and information clues behind the puzzle. So the breadth of strategy needs to go beyond silo thinking and touch the ecosystem perspective, appreciate collective insight and embrace interdisciplinary knowledge.

Depth of gravity: The management needs to provide coherence between actual capability and the objectives that have been defined, and addresses in outline how the strategic objectives will be achieved, which includes exploring your center of gravity to build momentum and shape long term organizational competencies. Gravitas can be defined to mean substance, quintessence, or dignified demeanor. It's about how you can generate specific energy in yourself to create the authentic impact you choose consciously .

Gravitas is a mindset and philosophy. Not only does wisdom have dimensions, but also it has “gravity.” The gravitas in a leader is like a karat in the diamond; coming from his/her character, judgmental skills, the right mix of confidence and humility. It means consistency, persistence, confidence, and humility. You can only know what you know, but there are more dimensions which you don’t know; as there’s known unknown and unknown unknown. Great leaders share their breadth and depth of fresh insight, and lead forward step-wisely.

Strength of interdisciplinarity: The truth is in the eye of the beholder. Understand different perspectives without pushing toward the one that you think is the truth. It comes from data void of analogy, bias, irrelevant noise, and complexity, resulting in a clear uncompromised focus on what’s most important. In reality, people play different roles with their set of knowledge and disciplines. From a problem-solving perspective, everybody involved with the process thinks they know how it works and where the issues are, but putting independent eyes upon, it almost always ends up painting a somewhat different picture. So it’s more critical than ever to gain cross-disciplinary knowledge for discovering the multitude of issues in order to deal with complexity effectively.

We are encouraged to look for an experience of truth, the unfolding of wisdom by those who have gone beyond conventional wisdom. If you stand at the right angle to see from different angles, you know even they are different, but hold part of the truth in it. Today, we see more of a sharing between disciplines of neuroscience, physics, sociology, biology, psychology and philosophical practices in trying to answer tough questions and deal with complex issues in human society. It’s always important to strike the multitude of digital balances which impact each other in order to achieve a state of dynamic equilibrium.

People are complex, businesses are complex., societies are complex. Today’s business problems become over-complex and interdependent. In order to untangle an unprecedented level of complexity, you need to reach a stage to assess the logic of everything, see things from different angles, and enhance the breadth, depth and strength of understanding. You don’t need to agree completely with the other side's viewpoints, but you can always gain empathy, unique insight, and fresh perspective to see things from the other angle and figure out alternative solutions creatively.

Posted in: Innovation,Systems Wisdom,Thinkingaire