Article Read Time
None of us has all the answers to everything. No plan is ever 100% complete. It’s only when we know what we don’t know that we can build our plan accordingly.
It can’t always be encouraging, now can it? I mean, sometimes when I work with people brainstorming their big idea, I can border on the nasty. Picture yourself for a moment. There we are, all excited and talking it through, point after point getting more and more positive. Your killer idea is the best one yet. We are pumped. We are focused. We are on fire.
Then I say something. Whatever it is, it stops the conversation cold.
This is when I get the stare. That look that says, “Excuse me?” It’s that look that hovers somewhere between injury and insult, not quite sure which is appropriate. Almost without fail, the eventual response is something like, “What do you mean?”
I say it again. Maybe it was something about your product or service I didn’t like. Maybe your understanding of something was just flat wrong. Maybe it was something that sounded like I hadn’t even been listening. Whatever it was, it made you stop and glare.
Now, one of two things is going to happen mentally. You might retreat, going back to the moment before, when everything was perfect and you were ready to take on the world with your idea. How dare I say something like that? I don’t know what I’m talking about. It has nothing to do with anything, it doesn’t help you in the slightest. I am wasting your time. You are now defensive.
On the other hand, you might move forward into the next moment and come up with an answer. That answer isn’t something that necessarily happens right away. All that brainstorming is still going on in that head of yours. It’s just taken another direction. There may be no right or wrong answer for the time being. The answer isn’t even the objective anyway. You are now responsive.
I can tell which it is by watching that stare. When it stops going to me, and starts going through me, I know. I know that all the energy whipped up by talking is now turning inward. We have gotten past the point of everything you had already thought about, past everything you know or thought you knew. We are now in that dangerous uncharted territory of “I haven’t gotten that far,” or “I never thought of that.”
This is where the magic happens.
None of us has all the answers to everything. No plan is ever 100% complete. It’s only when we know what we don’t know that we can build our plan accordingly. We can be so sure of our plan that we think we have it all figured out. That is, until we get hit with something we didn’t know.
Plans are like water, fluid and flexible. Like water, a plan will find a way. Questions will come. Circumstances and situations will threaten to get you off your plan. That is when your plan does one of two things.
You can be defensive. Or you can be responsive. Just remember where the magic happens.