August 2023 - Peripheral Thinkers™ Newsletter
August 15, 2023
Aloha Peripheral Thinkers™,
Thank you for being part of the growing Peripheral Thinkers™ community.
This newsletter is for you. To serve you. To inform, challenge, and occasionally entertain you. To help you overcome obstacles, find new paths to growth and innovation, and thrive in any situation.
So…
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The August 2023 edition of the Peripheral Thinkers™ Newsletter gives you a lot to chew on. Take your time. Read it a few times. And when you are ready, reply with your thoughts.
Ready to feast!
Okay! Let’s do it!
🏄🏽♂️😎
A Peripheral Perspective: Grit Groups & Growth
CONFESSIONS OF A PEOPLE-PLEASER TURNED BUSINESS INNOVATOR
I like it when people like me. Respect me. Compliment me. Accept me.
From as early as I can remember, into my early 30s, I had an unhealthy need for approval.
I broke the addiction to acceptance through therapy, recovery groups, research, and self-reflection.
See my “I Quit” LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pauldanielsjr_i-quit-playing-be-like-us-to-succeed-activity-7071478273762856961-T4Fp.
SHORT BACKSTORY:
We moved a lot growing up.
As the “new guy,” some girls flirted with me during school. Friendly attention, but at a price. Their boyfriends beat me up after school, sometimes before the final bell. Teachers would break things up eventually. And since the new kid is already getting into fights, the school staff saw a troublemaker.
University was a little easier socially. However, I’d lived in 13 places by age 18; my perspectives were more diverse than many of my professors. You guessed it… “troublemaker.”
So, I kept moving after university. I started my first company at 25 and sold it at 27 to join an international public company where I relocated 5X in 6 years. I hit the glass ceiling for advancement and moved on. Wherever I could advance, I went. Worked for small and large businesses.
Lived in 24 homes by age 29—West Coast to East Coast and Int'l.
At every stop, I worked to please people and be accepted.
With time I focused more on understanding the different ways people think, feel, and make decisions.
TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY:
Note: I reference a few Peripheral Thinking™ skills below without detailed definitions. This is not meant to teach you each specific skill. Rather it is meant to show how Peripheral Thinking™ can transform COMMON SKILLS into super-skills.
Here are the transformational steps I went through. Some Peripheral Thinking™ skills were strengthened during the process. Other Peripheral Thinking™ skills accelerated the transformation. I’ve taken businesses and clients through a similar journey to build disruption-proof foundations and establish the skills they need to thrive in any future environment.
Hyper-Awareness: Growing up, I became hyper-aware of body language, micro-expressions, group dynamics, language, accents, clothing... anything I could see, hear, or touch. Over time, this skill helped me relate with people. But at first, it was for survival. When the big kid is waiting at the bike racks, it’s a good day to walk home.
I don’t recommend making hyper-awareness or hyper-vigilance part of your personality. It has adverse psychological and physical effects like paranoia, anxiety, ulcers, etc.
However, you can heighten your awareness in situations that don’t require it. In this state, you are observing with a sense of curiosity. Why does the line at the coffee shop take that shape? Why is the highway entry ramp this length? What are the people backstage at this performance responsible for, and how are they trained? What was hockey like before the Zamboni?
For me, hyper-awareness became CURIOSITY, a word more commonly used in the last several years. Sadly, it took the recent pandemic to reignite curiosity in many business leaders. What are the pandemic’s implications for my business? What needs to change for us to survive? And for a very few… Where are the opportunities for my business to grow and thrive amidst or despite this disruption?
Curiosity manifests while using the Peripheral Thinking™ skills: Studying, Deciphering, and Drilling.
While “curiosity killed the cat,” it’s at the core of every significant innovation in history.
Alex van de Hoef
Parroting: After decoding what made a person or group tick, I began to use their words, expressions, and mannerisms. I slowly blended into their ecosystem and became accepted. The more I became like others, the more they liked me. I was moving from the fringes into the population.
Do this for too long, and Parroting will cause you to lose your identity. You become one of “them” instead of being one of one. You see it in social clicks, cults, and even in business. When industry best practices and conventional wisdom dominate your business decisions, it invades your standard operating procedures and culture.
To avoid the negative effects of prolonged Parroting, seek to understand. Learn what makes them tick and why. Language, mannerisms, and even perspectives play a part in how they see and interact with the world.
Use Parroting to communicate in ways that resonate and allow you to learn as much from them as possible. Your goal is to UNDERSTAND and RELATE. In Peripheral Thinking™ terms, this includes Discerning, Empathizing, and Disclosing skills.
The more you understand and can relate to different people and businesses, the more resources you have to draw upon.
Cross-Pollination: Having multiple opportunities to practice Curiosity, Understanding & Relating, I began noticing similarities and differences across groups, genders, ages, geographies, etc. Aka pattern recognition.
Once I was semi-established in a new group, and before we moved again, I would introduce minor changes to the group’s norms, like micro social experiments. They were minor changes, like phrases, music, or preferred colors. The change was from a previous group’s standards.
These were my first steps in introducing ALTERNATIVES and building CONSENSUS. Sometimes I was successful. Sometimes not. Nevertheless, it improved my ability to join and move between groups more easily. And it accelerated the process at the next new school. Later it proved valuable with a new company or new client.
Innovation rarely occurs in a vacuum, using only your thoughts. It requires taking input from various sources and applying it in new ways to address a challenge or achieve a goal.
The Peripheral Thinking™ skills of Interpreting and Leveraging strengthen your ability to offer alternatives and build consensus.
Blender: During the journey, my repository of insights grew. Fed by a plethora of experiences. Big cities. Small towns. Public school. Private school. Culturally and economically diverse groups. Start-ups and Fortune 500s. While other people became industry and subject matter experts, I collected as many insights as I could from as many experiences as I could find. I tried nearly anything at least twice (Once is never enough 😎).
These insights were tossed into my mental repository—The Blender—and the concoction was regularly tested/tasted. Much like a chef combines different ingredients to create a new recipe. Or an explorer uses her machete and varied experiences to build a shelter in the wilderness.
You may be building your annual plan, product roadmap, or forecasting process. Your business, people, and clients expect your STRATEGY and PLANNING to be well informed. But without a broad set of experiences, your results won’t vary. At best, you’ll iterate.
The Peripheral Thinking™ skills mentioned above ensure you have all the ingredients and materials you need to build a lasting shelter with a variety of food.
Image: Tefal blender
Connector: In this last step of the transformation, I became a connector. Over time and distance, the experiences inform who I choose to be. I’ve spent time with the uber-rich, modestly comfortable, and desperately poor. I’ve learned from each of them. I’ve lived in my car and worked in everything from ivory towers to a trench in Nigeria. The consistent lesson is that lessons abound. Interestingly enough, the different people have more in common than they think. And the different environments offer each other more insights than 99% of the world would believe.
You can connect the dots for your business based on what you know. What your people are willing to share. What your industry, competitors, and advisors tell you.
Or you can expand everyone’s experiences so your business has the broadest insights available.
The sheer breadth of experiences and environments taught me how to relate to almost anyone. I use my voice—developed from varied experiences—to relate with people AND help them relate to each other. To help them learn and share different perspectives to ensure companies and their people can thrive in any environment.
Today is a good day to get busy breaking conventions, collecting perspectives, and connecting people & ideas.
The moral of this story is that you can access everything you need to achieve anything you can imagine. The elements you need already exist. So… keep exploring, learning, applying, and sharing.
I hope you like me have at least one takeaway you can act on today. 😉
Until next time, I’ll be looking for you in the Periphery.
🤙🏽
p.s. If you are new or want a refresher, here’s an overview of Peripheral Thinking™ 👉🏽 https://www.pauldanielsjr.com. Click and scroll down to “What is Peripheral Thinking™?”
Three Quick Things
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If you want to know how Peripheral Thinking™ can disruption-proof your business https://www.pauldanielsjr.com/contact. Select ‘ADVISORY.’
Do you or someone you know need a thought-provoking, inspiring “Innovation” keynote speaker? I know a guy 😎 👉🏽 https://www.pauldanielsjr.com/speaker
Thank you for making this group a unique, perspective-rich community!
Cheers,
Paul