Blind Spots That Are Holding You Back

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If you want to get ahead in your life, you must question everything. Do not get too comfortable with what you already know.

To know more, to relearn what you already know, you must question everything.

Because, according to Danny Warshay, ‘Overfamiliarity can cause us to miss what in retrospect seems obvious.’

‘Our enthusiasm for solving problems can cause us to converge too early on a potential solution, rather than forming a portfolio of options.’

‘We rely too heavily on ‘Corporate Immune Systems,’ which reject not only actual threats but also valuable innovations that compete with existing ways of operating.’

‘We suffer from fixedness- a cognitive bias or a mental block against using something (e.g., an object, an idea, a service) in a new way- which often inhibits our ability to see solutions to a problem.’

‘In a creative process, we tend to add things, which often makes products more complicated, rather than substract things, which often yields simpler and better solutions.’

‘Our personal and organizational resistance to failure limits our ability to learn, iterate, and improve, and it reduces our ability to think big.’

‘To find and recruit team members, you may be tempted to mine your network of close contacts, yet you are better off tapping your weak ties more than your strong ones.’

‘Even in diverse teams, many focus on what they share in common, rather than leveraging the full range of diverse expertise and insight available.’

Source:

Danny Warshay (2022). See, Solve, Scale: How Anyone Can Turn an Unsolved Problem into a Breakthrough Success

Managing Your Strengths

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We all have strengths and weaknesses. Success comes from strengths. Failure, on the other hand, comes from doing what we are not good at.

If you wan to succeed in your life, use your strengths, not your weaknesses, to get what you want.

To manage your strengths, according to Robert E. Kaplan and Robert B. Kaiser, ‘… is to accept them. If you literally don’t know your own strengths, you have no way to calibrate or modulate it.’

‘… to stop overplaying your strengths does not mean … to stop using it. It means using the strength more selectively.’

overusing one’s strength not only corrupts the strength, but it begets weakness in yet another way.’

Leaders who develop versatility don’t lose their range, they embrace it.’

Versatility requires knowing when a certain approach is appropriate and when it is not.’

‘You best chance of making change stick is to do both the outer work and the inner work of improving.’

‘… an iterative cycle of reflection and action is required to achieve lasting change: insight begets action begets insight begets action.’

Changing yourself is an admirable exercise in self-control. But it is wise to also employ counterweights- process or people- to aid your efforts.’

‘… to accept yourself is to look at yourself as if you are somebody else.’

To accept yourself is to be courageously objective about yourself, inside and out.’

Source:

Robert E. Kaplan and Robert B. Kaiser (2013). Fear Your Strengths: What You Are Best at Could Be Your Biggest Problem.