Getting the tool is pretty easy. Your friends tell you about what works for them, but the problem is that it may not work for you in what you do. The hard part is lining up the process step by step to create the experience for your own productivity and your customers’ wow factor.
The illusion is that this newfound empowerment we now have to get anything we want and learn about anything we seek automatically creates success. It’s an illusion because success has so many nuances to it. If it were a straight line with a recipe to it and all you needed to do was follow the instructions, then everyone and anyone can do it. So why isn’t everyone doing it? Because when you are in the trenches, the decisions and boundaries govern you closely. What appears easy is not at all. Reality has a way of magnifying simple things into challenges.
The right process and strategy comes from mastery over a domain. When I see a doctor at work, they have paid the brain bill in their domain and understand the judgment calls and processes that work. The same goes for an engineer, accountant and cook. They have tried and failed enough to know what will or will not work. It is part of the mastery they have earned. The stripes on their back bear witness.
We are coming up to this double-edged world. We have access to everything like never before. But it has not necessarily made us all masters. It has only opened our eyes to what is possible. The hard work of lining up the process to solve a problem or delight customers still has to be done. And only those that have delved deeply and proportionally met the complexity of a problem can create the simple solution. The elegance of their approach comes from deeper understanding than the surface view might otherwise propose.
If you are a domain expert, you know what I am saying. It is because you are looking from the inside out rather than the outside in.
What are your thoughts?
Great post as always, and a point that escapes many. Mastery looks easy because someone has put in the 10,000 hours it takes to routinely perform a task that in the beginning is impossibly difficult. We have so many more channels and so much more content — that many more views of masters at work. Just because it looks easy doesn’t mean it is.
Thanks, Tom. Well stated and I can tell you have this experience as well with the brave new world we live in.