We're all probably better than we think we are...

My trigger for this is Charles Handy. He is one of my inspirations when it comes to leadership, innovation, and just plain living life with head squarely planted on shoulders. His newest book is Myself and Other Matters More Important. When Gerry Sexton and I were writing our book, Leading Innovation: Creating Workplaces Where People Excel So Organizations Thrive, I was into Handy's Beyond Certainty. In that book he said that when he first grasped the significance of the discontinuity of change in his life (i.e., we don't move on straight lines into the future, so there's no predicting what's next), he felt as if he had been waylaid and misguided by all his previous education.

The main lesson he had learned up to that point, he says, is that the "experts" in the world -- the teachers, scientists, politicians, religious leaders -- had answers to all questions. His job as a student, if he had a problem or a question, was to find the expert with the answer.

That belief, he says, was wrong -- and crippling.

"It never occurred to me in a world of uncertainty," Handy says, "that some problems were new, or that I might come up with my own answers. The world is not an unsolved puzzle waiting for the occasional genius to unlock its secrets. The world...is an empty space waiting to be filled."

That's a powerful mind shift.

Make a Difference,

Brian
BLOG: Brian@GrowthWorks -- Life, Leadership and Learning