Do you know there's a clear difference between the words 'strategy' and 'plan'? Do you know what that difference is or how to apply it in your everyday life? The nuance between 'outcomes' and 'destinations' is everything. What does that mean for our politics? Give me a few minutes.
Right now, there are three competing battles happening in our collective politics. You've known about one for a long time - that's the Left vs the Right. But did you know we have a growing Establishment vs Anti-Establishment battle? Or a growing Politically Correct vs Politically Incorrect battle? Can you guess how these three link back to Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton? Give me a few minutes.
Do you know what values really are and how they impact your leadership practices? How about mindsets? Do you understand how mindsets impact the way we process information? How do these two concepts come together to shape our leadership and political practices as well as our ability to influence others? How can you change someone's mindset quickly? Give me a few minutes.
There are two types of change continuous (incremental) and discontinuous (transformation/disruptive). What is the difference between these two types of change? How can leadership be responsive to communities and manage both incremental or disruptive change initiatives? Give me a few minutes.
Where do you find yourself on the ladder of engagement? Apathetic? Us vs Them? Issue-oriented? Systemic? Some people move up the ladder. Some people never change. Many don't understand where they truly sit. The best way to understand where you sit on the ladder is to think about what you do in between elections. Give me a few minutes.
When is an apple not a fruit? When it's an iPhone. Sensitivity to word choice is one of the strangest phenomena in our linguistics. Why is this so important? How does Donald Trump create so many supporters and opponents with just his words? What are his supporters hearing that his opponents aren't? Give me a few minutes.
The key to changing hearts and minds is not to be abrasive and try to debate or "one-down" the person you are trying to influence. The key to changing hearts and minds is to "join them in the hole and show them the way out". You will never be able to change someone by attacking their beliefs. You must understand their beliefs first. Give me a few minutes.
We all love technology, but how is it impacting our democracy and our movements? How is distracting us from the real problems that exist in the real world? Are we entrapping an entire generation from an attention standpoint? How is this all impacting our power and our leadership? This and more in the 3rd full episode of Connect the Dots.
Too many leaders are living in a bubble. They're totally disconnected from the grassroots and totally enveloped in a mindset that only allows them to see the world a certain way. It's happening across all of our sectors, and it's leading to an extraordinary breakdown of social institutions. We can stop this, but it requires a change in our leadership practices. Give me a few minutes.
There's a difference between implying conspiracy and inferring conspiracy. When we infer conspiracy, we subconsciously reject the speaker's point and even potentially distrust the person based on their word choice. Most people don't have mastery over the English language let alone mastery over how to talk about complex systems. That's okay, but it does impact how we interpret people's concerns and perspectives. A follow-up to "Complexity or Conspiracy". Give me a few minutes.
The world is pretty complex, and so are the problems that it has. So why do so many people make snap judgments and stay there without thinking through issues further? What does this look like in practice and why is it important? Give me a few minutes.
As automation continues to decrease the number of jobs, a simple question comes to light: How do we organize society if we don't have enough jobs? How would a concept like the Guaranteed Basic Income actually work? How would we balance valuing and rewarding "hard work" with fighting inequality and ensuring goods and services could move in a nearly completely-automated economy? Give me a few minutes.
Too many leaders take a top-down approach to engaging their people, and it's tearing society and our institutions apart. Too many leaders are caught up in the bureaucratic, operational, logistics of existing systems, organizations, programs, etc. and they are forgetting to actually lead their people, let alone engage them in open, meaningful, and interactive ways. We must commit to advocating for, experimenting with, and supporting a broader engagement spectrum that creates space for bottom-up i...
If we truly want to be innovative, we need to stop thinking that the people at the top of our current broken system are the only ones qualified to fix it. We need to be more open to the ideas that come from the grassroots, from outside the current system and views of the world that lead to the perpetuation of problems we have today. This is a problem for organizations, businesses, and government. And it requires purposeful awareness to change it. Give me a few minutes.
Pursuing a dream is a psychological struggle. Dealing with the daily whiplash of the ups and downs of life can be challenging, but it's exactly this rollercoaster that makes life worth living. We just have to remember that we're on it.
We are born into a world that is not of our own design. Yet, we learn and adopt paradigms, assumptions, values, and views from the people who came here before us. So, how do we build a better future? At some point, we have to step back and reflect on long-held assumptions. With everything in our reach today, how do we build a better tomorrow?
Sometimes we wake up and say "How did I get here?" Where am I going? Is that where I really want to be going? Is this what I really want to be doing with my life? Getting off auto-pilot is simply a matter of asking yourself a few basic questions, which can help you take control of your life.
Leaders need to take more purposeful and specific action to rebuild trust in America. We know trust is decreasing and we see evidence of it all around us, but we don't take action to rectify it. That needs to change.
In business, in our personal lives, and in society as a whole, we need to think twice about the metrics we use to measure our success. Sometimes we assume or accept metrics without thinking about it, and so we end up being successful at the wrong thing.
The smallest action can make an enormous difference on the rest of the system. Understanding how one can impact the larger the system is an issue of leverage points, strategy, influence, and systems thinking.
In this episode, I talk about the difference between the "intentions" of movements and their "effects", which often differ in hindsight. The complexity of human interactions in 21st century movements also demands different leadership practices to influence effectively. What does every leader need to prioritize when trying to influence within a movement? How is this approach to leadership different than traditional styles? This and more in this episode of Connecting the Dots with Jesse Chen
Why is it that every time we come across something extremely complex with a negative impact on lots of people that we think it's a conspiracy? Are there a group of people sitting in some dark room smoking cigars somewhere making these decisions or is it all the natural outcome of a broken system?
Climate change is real - not just the kind that impacts the weather, but the political climate and economic climate, too. Change is happening.
People were never able to connect with each other at the scale like they can now. This makes our current political and economic systems unsustainable.
A populist uprising threatens to disrupt the current system and balance of power. The last 15 years shows a trend that a real populist uprising is emerging and highlights the practices that the leadership class must embrace to remain relevant in these turbulent times. Is a revolution coming? Is it already happening? What can we do as leaders and citizens to make a difference? This and more in the first episode of "Connecting the Dots".
