“Must Learn” To Do List: #1 View the World Around You with Fresh Eyes
Want to connect people no one else is connecting? I think your very first step is to “learn to view the world around you with fresh eyes.”
It’s so critical! It’s built into all of us to grow accustomed to the way it is, to look right at glaring issues and completely miss the obvious…because we’ve gotten used to bad design or outdated methods. Fresh eyes allow us to see the world around us in the way it actually is; in the way it is seen by those who aren’t blinded by the status quo.
I love this line from Gary Hamel’s newest book, What Matters Now:
“The first and most important step for any organization intent on building a capacity for continuous, gamechanging innovation is to teach people how to view the world around them with fresh eyes.” What Matters Now, Gary Hamel
Hamel makes an interesting observation. He points out that people have to be taught how to see the world around them with fresh eyes. They won’t come by it naturally.
I’ve found there is an instance where fresh eyes are actually quite common. It’s when we visit an unfamiliar place. When we visit another church for the first time, we see all kinds of things. Some good and some bad. Some that we tell ourselves we’d fix right away. Others we make a note of to implement in our own organization.
But…once our eyes have become accustomed to the issues in our own place, in our own organization, it becomes increasingly more difficult to notice what someone with fresh eyes would see right away. And that’s Hamel’s point. If you don’t want to settle for the status quo…you’ll need to learn how to view the world around you in a new way. With fresh eyes.
I loved this simple exercise and plan on implementing it with my own team.
- Gather your team and “ask each person to identify a product or service that dramatically reshaped their expectations–something that made them go ‘Wow! How amazing!” (Note: it doesn’t have to be related to your field or expertise).
- Ask your team, “What were the unique attributes of that experience that made it so memorable? How exactly did it defy their expectations?”
- Finally, ask your team, “How might we leverage this idea to redefine customer expectations in our own field?” (p. 70, What Matters Now)
Want to learn how to see the world around you with fresh eyes? Here’s a start.
