IDKN in leadership and troubleshooting – and why its crucially important to you and the world?
If you achieved a great result – in a leadership role, troubleshooting a situation or delivering a project, what ever it is, there must have been a train of events that occurred in the course of getting you there.
In essence, (of course there are often ‘trial and error’ loops within this, but generally) we get results from the quality of our actions. My argument is ‘Better actions produce better results’. The exception is where there is a high degree of chance involved. If this is generally accepted as correct, then what might support good actions? Certainly practice and experience help, but all these also rely on a certain quality of decision making, and this in turn is reliant on the quality of ones thinking. Badly thought through plans (or not thought through at all) will only produce desired results by a substantial element of luck!
So far I’m suggesting that great results come from great actions, which come from great decision-making which in turn comes from great thinking.
So, we must train, develop and practice in our thinking. But underlying our thinking is our emotional self, and this has an effect. What happens therefore, when we suddenly find ourselves in a moment of not knowing? The IDKN moment. How do we feel? How then do we react? Do we know ourselves well enough to be aware of our reaction tendencies? Do we ‘just go for it?’ Or do we freeze? Are we able to admit publicly we don’t know, or would we do anything to avoid perceived embarrassment or pillory? What’s at stake for us, our ego, our emotional well-being? Are we looking at our own ‘survival’ and if so, do we care about the impact of out thinking and actions on others?
Thus, great results have their genesis in handling yourself well that moment of IDKN. We’re currently experiencing the results of various politicians decisions regarding actions taken during the pandemic. Some have denied it, some have vacillated, changed their minds once or several times, some have taken prompt and decisive action. In each case they had very similar information (or lack of it), yet each acted differently. Some with regard to the safety of the populance, some with higher regard to their own image, perceived authority and self service. The results are becoming evident.
The study of oneself in IDKN will therefore be of interest to people – leaders and others – who want to get great results for their team, project, company etc. It probably won’t be of much interest to those who are more interested in their own self serving progress, because they’re likely to have well formed strategies to shift blame for failures and milking any successes. We propose that the world will be a better place with leaders who fully understand themselves and others in their reactions in moment of IDKN, and become familiar with navigating through it.
We believe that best results, whilst never guaranteeing 100% success, have a better chance if the leader is comfortable in IDKN and can therefore produce better quality decisions and thinking.
Congratulations! And a bonus…
Congratulations if you read this far, and are in general agreement with the points made, then this is going to be an even bigger suggestion to take on. Up to now we’ve been talking about a ‘result’. We get the result from taking good action, we take good action base on good planning, we get good planning from good thinking , but how is our thinking when we are coming from ‘I Don’t KnowNess’?. These steps are a series of ‘solutions’
We’d like to introduce a BIG concept here, where you can leverage the power of IDKN® . It’s the generation of ‘OUTCOMES’ . Outcomes are much broader than individual ‘solutions’, and give greater choice, and we believe, ultimately greater successes. These are gained by the illumination of new perspectives, which is, for those of you familiar with the IDKN® Leadership Landscape, a major part of the journey.
