Regular readers know that I am a big believer in the power of travel to expand your mind and open your horizons. We all become locked into a set of beliefs and assumptions based on our history. This mindset often stops us from growing and locks us into things that are counter-productive to long term success.
We tend to estimate the probability of something happening based on how easy it is for us to recall examples. We predict the likelihood of future events based on what we know from our past. Since we’re all caught up in the day to day minutia we become myopic which only strengthens our tendency to want to stay in our comfort zone, the zone we know well.
Thus, I read with great interest the current issue of Leadership Matters by Donna Zajonc. It’s called My Limited Ability to Understand China. Zajonc was an Oregon state representative who has moved on to co-found the Bainbridge Leadership Center with her husband David Emerald Womeldorff.
Since Zajonc is an accomplished legislator and now someone who spends her time providing innovative, quality, leadership education, I was fascinated to read her thoughts on her first visit to China and how it challenged many of her beliefs and assumptions. I was particularly struck by her comment that her “Western mind has a limited capacity to understand many of the philosophies or current reality of modern China.”
That sums up the issue faced by so many leaders in a few words, their inability to break out of their cultural framework and understand the thoughts and ideas of those from differing cultural backgrounds. And yet, the world continues to shrink and the need to be able to connect with a variety of diverse people grows exponentially.
In politics we see the result of this every day. Gridlock, fingerpointing, anger, and a collapse of the world order with a total inability to understand what is happening and how they have contributed to it, much less how they can work together to solve the world’s problems.
We see the same thing in the business world where so many companies have proven unable to escape their bonds of group think and rigidity of ideas.
And yet, there are those who have forged ahead to great success both politically as well as in business. They have exhibited great flexibility, embraced change, connected with all their various publics, and shown a willingness to incorporate the ideas of all into their path to the future.
Unfortunately they are the smaller part of those out there. In spite of their example the great mass of managers and politicians are locked into a set of beliefs and assumptions developed in a different world and incapable of functioning in the world of tomorrow or even the world of today.
Read Zajonc. Travel widely. While on that nature walk I mentioned last post, re-evaluate your beliefs and assumptions. Decide to be part of the solution.