4 Steps to the Pragmatism
1. Presence of mind: you must expect the unexpected and be absolutely ready for surprises. It will keep you prepared for that moment of spark, that flash of insight, that rapid discovery of truth. Presence of mind requires you to be patient, as well as attentive to opportunities.
You can’t go into a situation knowing what theory to apply; you don’t know what theory to use until you see a way to use it. The moment you hit the battlefield, everything changes. You choose the theory depending on what you face. By fighting where you can win and holding back where you can’t, you conform to circumstances instead of trying to bend the circumstances to your will.
2. Creative imitation: Ideas usually aren’t just dreamt up of – they are taken from already existing ideas. Creativity is just connecting experiences with new synthesized ideas. Just take the idea from somewhere else and then innovate at increments. Perhaps you take a new idea, add an element of what already works, and you have your creative imitation.
You must be in constant motion in order to see an opportunity or have that intuition. If you’re sitting down and expecting an opportunity to come to you, it probably will not happen. You must study hard to take your ordinary intuition to a level of expert intuition. Your personal experience is limited, so you must attain experiences of others.
Art of Learning: Learn from experiences without getting “trapped” in that experience. Change bureaucracy to decentralization, open communication, team work, collaboration, risk taking, honesty, and trust. To make knowledge work, you have to convince people to use it. But if it doesn’t work, why would anyone use it?
Solution: Single out what works. Search from any practice, knowledge, know-how, or experience, that has proven to be valuable or effective within one organization that maybe applicable in another. Move the best practices around (like the Achievement Network of GE).
Problem still lies in ignorance on both ends of the transfer: “I didn’t know you needed this.” vs. “I didn’t know you had this.”
The Life Long Journey:
• Personal mastery: growth and learning
• Mental model: Surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works.
• Team learning: Aligning and developing the capacity of a team to create the results its member truly desire.
• Shared vision: What do we want to create?
• Systems thinking: Conceptual framework to make the present clearer. Example: how to change more effectively?
3. Flash of Insight: It’s the moment of rapid discovery of truth due to contemplation, examination and reflection. It’s the moment when key patterns come together for you to recognize that a goal is actually achievable.
Entering into the Byzantium Empire, Khalid bin Waleed showcased an amazing strategy; a strategy that would require his entire army to be in constant motion, and seemingly it was without a clear goal. What was Khalid bin Waleed looking for? He kept moving, remaining out of reach with the desert behind them to disappear in, but looking for the right opportunity. The battle that was actually fought was from a result of a single instant, single thought, a psychological spark. He didn’t set a goal until circumstance allowed it and he saw a way to achieve it.
4. Resolve: There is no way to prove your “flash” to be 100% right. There will be doubts, so you must remove the torment of the doubts. You must follow through with certainty.