What skills do we need to overcome? The unimagined: the unimagined
What are the different skills we need as we journey forward?
Often we can give out a task, to only find the person does not know how to start. The requirement is to determine what skills they have and if they know how to discover. Most often we need to begin by pointing, directing, teaching or training, once going it will not stop. Early skills become soon become “experience” that knows how to repeat the same task. There is one way to do something.
Delivery always throws up variation, which means the one way of doing something ends up not scaling to all scenarios. An early discover skill taught well becomes a skill that finds many ways to delivery. Discover leads to more connections and vast experience. The most experience in delivery is capable of seeing, finding and looking for what is missing and preventing the issues before they occur.
Skills needed to overcome
The majority of skills developed in the next generation (which I was once) are known and then shared. Let’s now focus on two highly experienced individuals who are problem-solving, how to work on a problem that is imagined to you and me, top right in the diagram. We can easily and quickly get to a common language, agreement and a shared sense of what to do next. The majority of day-to-day problem solving is reaching a shared and collective understanding and communication.
More difficult is when something is imaged to you as a route ahead or unknown risk as you have perfect clarity based on time to think and data, but as this is the first time for me, it looks like madness. Similarly, when I have imaged a solution, it is obvious to me, and for you, it seems foolish. In both these cases, the is no substitute for time and the sharing of facts, insight and knowledge. Over time and through compromise, we can agree on the route ahead.
The unimaged: unimaged bottom right quadrant is one where we can consider risk. In this case, it is no longer about a decision based on facts but the requirement for complex judgment. We have to work together to determine the bias that we bring and to find a way to articulate what the scenario looks like so others can also imagine it. The unimagined: unimagined is not about the solution, but what the problem and the impact will be.