#Linkybrain #superskills 1/3 – Beginner’s Mindset
I got some Linkybrain provocation for my earlier post on what “normal” means and also a response to Becky Lodge ‘s photo, plus Nick Drage’s questions.
The conversation was about the Linkybrain qualities which are put to use. I responded:
Beginner’s mindset.
Mind’s eye thinking.
Dogged determination against the odds.
Over the next couple of days I’m going to explore what they all mean.
Today – beginner’s mindset
Everywhere I go I see people selling themselves on “xx years experience” as their headline summary. The message here is clear: if I spend decades in an area of business, I will develop definition, expertise and mastery. The fact that so many people are putting that at the top of their CVs, bios and LinkedIn summaries speaks volumes about what gets them hired (aka bought or procured).
That’s all fine when you can go from one large industrial machine to another. You’ve seen it before. And while the faces, places and logos may be different, it’s pretty much the same problem. Because the machines are pretty similar.
You develop an expert mindset. That means you have pretty fixed ideas about how things work, ideas which have been reinforced through learning and repetition.
And you develop a huge amount of cognitive bias towards how things are, and how things have been. And little or nothing about how things will be, or could be.
We’ve all seen how disruption rewrites rules. User behaviours, behavioural paradigms, business models and organisations are all reset. When disruptive technology turns up, it’s day one. 22 years of experience counts for nothing.
When you approach a disruptive challenge with an expert mindset you’ll experience cognitive dissonance. “But that can’t happen. It’s not how things are done.”
Beginners mindset is about freeing your mind of preconceptions. It’s about enquiring, asking questions. It’s about understanding first before thinking.
If you start with a day one point of view, you can accept everything that could be, can be and will be. By all means bring “the way things are right now” as an input. But don’t let it rule your thinking or make it bend your point of view to suit today’s model.
In the “normal” BAU environment that’s a tough sell. Outsiders are usually brought in for knowledge, domain expertise and experience.
Selling yourself as an empty vessel when corporations want to buy experience is bordering on commercial suicide.
Yet looking sideways at other industries, introducing other perspectives (hey — customers and users anybody?) is a vital component in uncovering new value.
It’s how disruptors think and act.
Beginners mindset is useful for resetting preconceptions. It frees up teams and individuals to accept, rather than fight, what’s new and what’s to be. It opens minds to what’s going on, addresses denial head on, and prepares for open-minded and imaginitive thought processes.
And most of all it sets people up to think. In the next post I’ll address the second #linkybrain superskill: mind’s eye thinking.
