Unleashing the Power of Human Capital
The Key to Invention lives within the power of our imaginings. No one person develops anything completely on his or her own; however, a great leader stands out in front pointing to an impossible goal and helps motivate and guide others to make that goal a reality.
As leader your job is to ask questions no one else will ask, look into places no one else will look, and point the way that no one else can see. You have to Break OUT.
Most people are locked up in a prison of our own making. Most of us don’t know that we’re in this prison because it consists of the boundaries and limitations we choose to place on ourselves and our lives. These choices, conscious or not, impact everything that we do ( and don’t do)- how we think, behave, act and react.
Through experience we gain knowledge. This knowledge becomes so much part of our thinking that it grows to be “natural” or “automatic” behavior. “Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them,” said Alfred North Whitehead.
Our experiences teach us that certain things are true and natural. So, we come to expect them. These thoughts are called premature cognitive commitments ( PCCs). We know what we know based on past experience, and it affects our current behavior. PCCs help us live out our daily lives automatically, without starting from scratch every day. Naturally, by basing our actions on past experiences, we limit ourselves to only what we have done before. This is where the prison comes in. Our prison of past experience limits us as to what we “think” we can do.
PCCs exist within individuals and groups. Why do companies go out of business? Why don’t they just switch from one thing to another? They don’t because the prison of what they have always traps them. The “Break –OUT” idea to switch from what they have always done to something new isn’t perceived as a “realistic” option. So, despite all their efforts, they go out of business- they fall victim to their premature cognitive commitments.
But some organizations do Break-OUT of their PCC prisons. It is said that change happens when you either “feel the heat or see the light.”
How You can Break-OUT
Here are some do’s and don’ts:
1.Don’t Rely on Benchmarking
2.Forget about them- know yourself
3.Turn down the volume to pump up
4.Map from “A” to Break OUT
5.Use high-octane 80/20 fuel
We encourage you to think big. BreakOUT is risky. It takes courage and an open mind. In mapping BreakOUT, it is easy to get stuck in incremental change- taking baby steps toward your goals instead of reaching for the stars.
Don’t limit yourself. You can change transformationally and unleash the power of people-setting then free to soar to new heights.
