“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
— W. Edwards Deming
Kind of harsh? No, not at all. At least not if you want to be considered a Thought Leader.
Have you ever thought about how much you deal with that you don’t understand?
We get up and go to work (or at least we used to) in a car that we don’t entirely understand. When we get to work, we use a computer that we don’t really understand. We meet a potential customer for lunch, and we don’t understand as much as we should about their situation. While at lunch, we eat a meal for which we don’t know the recipe or steps taken to prepare it (fast food is much worse; “11 Secret Herbs & Spices,” anyone?).
And so it goes throughout the day and night. I don’t even understand my own dreams half of the time.
So when I go looking for a mentor, a teacher, or a thought leader, what is my unspoken expectation of them?
That they make the world make sense.
I want solid answers, not “well, it depends…” I want a process that leads to an outcome I can understand and believe in.
This is what your audience wants from you. Are you prepared to deliver it?