Wisdom

I’ve noticed that wisdom can be slippery concept. And it’s likely that you can be wise in one domain, and naïve in others.

I believe that “wisdom” is the ability to connect the large picture with the smaller concerns in a thoughtful way.

The large picture includes things like long-term, values, broad organization culture, even societal perspectives.

Smaller concerns would include daily decisions, juggling individual tasks, allocation of time, and making tradeoffs. It’s likely that we’d think about these as what we do day-to-day or even hour-to-hour. A leader can see this including interactions with individual employees and stakeholders.

Notice that I included in a thoughtful way. Too often we separate focus on the big picture from those individual actions. Sure, go ahead and do that retreat to work on the long term, but until that connects with what we’re actually doing, it doesn’t make much of a difference.

It’s not applying your wisdom.

So challenge yourself to ask some of the tough questions.

• If these really are our values, how does it change what I’m really doing this afternoon?
• Where are the difficult tradeoffs?
• Are we really going to achieve that desired vision? Are we getting closer to it?

Now you’re developing your wisdom.