One of the things I love most once an idea has emerged from a conversation with a client is when I hear them say:
that seems so obvious…now
..with their emphasis on the “now”
I was reminded of this when in conversation yesterday on #WhatComesNextLive with Rory Sutherland . Rory and I talked for 48 minutes rather than the usual ~30, full of so many ideas bounced around. To learn more about Rory, one of several blogs I have written inspired by him is centred around one of his best-known phrases “the problem with logic is it kills off magic” within which is a talk by Rory on his 10 rules of Alchemy (also the title of his book).
Both of us love to listen and learn from people from wildly different backgrounds, then draw upon what we learn to connect dots. For Rory, he reserves at least some of his time for his employer, Ogilvy, so is in the ad business, coming up with ways to land messages for clients. For me, I largely work with CEOs and senior corporate leaders and am their sounding board to connect dots from different directions and tangents.
The picture above is a FB memory from 7 years ago yesterday and is an example of connecting the dots, as I’ve been fascinated for many years by how elite performance learnings can be taken from sports to business leadership.
I close today with a recommendation to watch one of the highlights of Nudgestock 2022 (which ran all day last Friday, June 10th, led by Rory and Ogilvy). Rory and I talked about this in our conversation and it is a chat between Matthew Syed and Iain McGilchrist. Listen in particular to something Rory noted in our chat, which is how Matthew Syed noted that the English Football Association put together a technical advisory board that included experts from sports other than football, including Syed himself, as well as (to name one) Dave Brailsford of British Cycling.