Lead the Change you want to see in the World

A collaboration by Kyle Cahill and Mario Moreira

In the beginning, the world was filled with doers.  There was so much to do that there was only time to get things done.  These were the no-nonsense types who like to just get on with it. They like to act first.

Then the second type of person came into being called the thinker.  Thinkers were the armchair philosophers. They are great at stepping through the arguments. They are awash with mental models and can run the thought experiment in their heads. One's ability to critically analyze the situation starts with uncovering the problem and this means ensuring the right question is asked. As Albert Einstein (was thought to have) said: “If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” Einstein understood that hard thinking was to correctly identify the problem so that the solution becomes easy and addresses the real problem.

Over time, the third type of person emerged who has an extra skill. Not only can they think and act, but they are also talented communicators. Communication is easy to understand the concept but hard to do effectively. Communication at its essence is the imparting or exchanging of information. The ability to effectively communicate ideas can determine if the idea succeeds or fails. Often in today’s business world, you must win the war of ideas and this war is won not just by having the right idea but also by communicating it effectively.

Finally, the world evolved to create agents of change. They are the doer, thinker, and communicator combined. And they have a fourth attribute, they can help people and organizations transform by focusing on better outcomes and motivate people to take ownership of the change.  These are the people who propel the world forward, crush inertia, and break the chains. If you want to change the world (or anything for that matter), you need to be this type of person, who can think of ideas in context to the right problems, communicate well, be the doer to propel the change, and the motivator to get others to be the change.  It is the consistency of the actions that can remove inertia and break the chains that will change the way people work…forever.

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