January 2024 - Peripheral Thinkers™ Newsletter
January 15, 2024
Aloha, Peripheral Thinkers™!
It’s a new year with hopes, dreams, and opportunities to expand your Peripheral Thinking™ skills. This month, we are not talking about resolutions or goals. Why? Because as Peripheral Thinkers™, we think differently. Calendars do not bind us.
Growth, innovation, and inspiration happen year-round. New experiences and perspectives are available 24/7/365. Of course, goal setting and daily action to achieve those goals are essential. What’s more valuable is gaining and sharpening new skills. That is a never-ending process with exponential returns. So, this month, we are talking about the Peripheral Thinking’s™ Deciphering skill.
But before we dig into this skill, please remember that your participation in the Peripheral Thinkers™ community strengthens us all. Thank you!
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Oh! Now I Get It!
A Peripheral Perspective Of — Deciphering
Oooo! Deciphering.
That sounds intriguing and investigative. Like an inspector, detective, or one of those CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) people? Or maybe an archeologist finding a new written language written on a stone tablet.
Well, sort of. ‘Deciphering’ is a Peripheral Thinking™ skill with two steps and one objective.
The first step is Understanding a situation by “taking it apart” to examine the elements involved. The second step is identifying the elements’ interactions and developing a simplified analysis.
The objective of the Deciphering skill is to determine ‘why.’
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Continue reading to learn why Understanding, Simplifying, and Why are critical to your future and business.
THE STEPS
1. Understanding
We could spend years on this topic alone. Humans have been looking to understand each other and our world for eons. Go ahead and sing kumbaya. You know you want to.
Misunderstandings or a lack of understanding are central to poor relationships, conflict, and missed opportunities.
Understanding, as part of the Deciphering skill, is the ability to comprehend the premise of an idea, approach, solution, etc. To do this effectively requires that we remove preconceived ideas and experiences. Put those aside initially to increase the input you receive.
Remember, the understanding we seek is new perspectives about the inner workings of an issue, process, or solution.
How does it work?
What contributes to it not working?
To do this, you need to take it apart. Remember, briefly silence your opinions. You have two eyes, two ears, and one mouth. Use them proportionately when seeking to understand.
Take It Apart
As a kid, I loved building things that we couldn’t afford to buy. A new bike. Lots of skateboards. A basketball hoop. …
To get the parts I needed often required some dumpster diving. And when the part I needed was attached to something else, I had to take it apart. In so doing, I learned how things come apart and go together. I also learned why someone put the bike seat, skateboard trucks, or plywood in the trash. The parts were often broken, requiring me to take them further apart.
Root Cause Analysis. Parsing. Decomposition. And dozens of other methodologies walk you through getting “to the bottom of it.” They all involve breaking down a problem or challenge – even a complex one – into small, manageable parts. Whether it is people, processes, or technology, they have interconnected parts. Getting to the parts level is essential to understanding.
Let me challenge you to try something new. It’s more than a challenge. It’s a directive. You need to do this.
Find a personal item that is broken. A watch. A lamp. A stuck drawer. A wobbly chair. Anything that you can put your hands on.
Take it apart.
Take pictures as you go and document each step of disassembly. Find YouTube videos and user communities to walk you through the process if you like. Note: your objective is to physically take something apart to learn how it works and maybe find what’s broken. This is a practical lesson for breaking down business processes, solutions, and problems into manageable yet connected components.
This is where some of you will nod knowingly and never follow through. You don’t have to be a handy person to do this. Anyone can do this; you are much more than just an ‘anyone.’ Don’t have all the tools you need? If you have to buy a special tool, do it. It’s an investment in expanding your Peripheral Thinking™ skills. Besides, you can never have too many tools! (That is not an official Peripheral Thinking™ statement. It’s a personal belief. Okay, it’s an addiction, which I freely admit.)
I rebuilt my first car engine using a shop manual, YouTube videos, and a helper. I don’t recommend this as your first-ever hands-on project. I do recommend asking for forgiveness rather than permission when accepting little helpers. Daughter and I had a blast. Mom was unhappy!
There is another step to Deciphering before you get to the objective.
2. Simplify
The second step is identifying the elements’ interactions and developing a simplified analysis.
Now, we can apply new understanding with previous experiences to find commonalities and differences. Taking and simplifying new or complex ideas does not make them simple—as in easy. Simplifying does not denigrate the intricacies of complex issues. Instead, Simplifying allows the Peripheral Thinker to categorize groups of elements.
For example, baking a cake might be simplified to the following: gather ingredients, mix ingredients, pour the batter into a pan, bake, and decorate. You understand the process because you took it apart, right down to the quality of ingredients, proper tools, temperature and duration, and design styles.
Simplifying provides reference points. These reference points are like analogies. They can be used to explain commonalities and differences. They ground your actions to references that cross situations, issues, and even industries.
THE OBJECTIVE: Why
The objective of the Deciphering skill is to determine ‘why.’ Not the eternal ‘why.’ The ‘why’ of something happening. The ‘why’ something does or doesn’t work. The ‘why’ this is important now.
In our quest for “Getting To Yes,” we often miss “Getting To Why.” Knowing the ‘why’ is foundational to your ability to overcome challenges. To innovate before and beyond obstacles. To predict and create the future. The more ‘whys’ you have, the more resources you have to achieve [your top priorities, vision, dreams].
‘Why’ is not ‘fixing.’ The Deciphering skill does not fix. It informs. For those who want to fix things, wouldn’t you like to do more than fix something that may break in the future? How about creating something future-proof?
Understanding by taking apart and Simplifying gives you what you need to know WHY.
So What?
The Deciphering skill is helpful for problem identification and for gathering valuable parts to build something new.
When you decipher WHY something does or doesn’t work, you have increased the repository of insights you’ll use to inform your problem-solving, solution-creation, and future-proofing initiatives.
Skip understanding and simplifying, and you risk using only what you know and miss the opportunity to expand your perspectives.
While Deciphering is not a problem-solving or solution-creating skill, it is a critical foundational skill for world-class problem-solvers and solution-creators.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, the Deciphering skill contributes to 4 of the top skills they identified as critical for business success through 2030.*
Now What?
As a collector of perspectives, add your insights from deciphering a situation to your Peripheral Resource Library™. Then, combine the insights gained from Deciphering with your Interpreting, Inventing, and Predicting Peripheral Thinking™ skills to achieve more than you ever expected.
Until next time, we’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™?”
Additional News
You may have noticed that I opened up one final “Free Keynote” date for 2024—February 29th. When you consider the uniqueness and power of Peripheral Thinking™, what better day to learn about it than on the one day that occurs only every 4 years… If you or someone you know has an event on the 29th, please tell them.
When you are ready, here’s how I can help you.
1. Executive & Board Advisory, Take your observations from the newsletter and start applying them to your business. The Peripheral Thinkers™ advisory programs help CEOs, Founders, Business Leaders, and Corporate Executives apply new perspectives to future-proof your business. Programs are designed for your needs and delivered in 1:1, group, and ongoing advisory sessions. 👉🏽 https://www.pauldanielsjr.com/contact, select ADVISORY, and I’ll reach out to discuss your objectives.
2. Keynotes & Workshops. At a time when speeches and workshops look and sound the same, audiences say that the Peripheral Thinking™ message stands out. “New. Insightful. Inspiring. Immediately applicable.” Samples 👉🏽https://www.pauldanielsjr.com/speaker. Click on “Hold The Date,” and I’ll contact you to discuss how I can make your event the best ever. “With Paul on stage, event planners relax confidently. Sponsors stand proudly. Audiences engage fully.”
*The Deciphering skill contributes to the following WEF top skills:
Logical Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (including finding relationships among seemingly unrelated events) and/or to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
Complex Problem Solving: Developed capacities used to solve novel, ill-defined problems in complex, real-world settings.
Active Learning: Understanding the implication of new information for both current and future problem-solving and decision-making.
Critical Thinking: Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions, or approaches to problems.