Honesty. (Including with oneself. In thorough analysis of _everything_.)
A forgotten trait? Or, rather, a systemically buried into the ground (ostrich like) skill we by far underutilize all too often?
"I read your resume. It still isn't very clear to me: What do you do?"
"I'm in sales. I've been in sales for forty+ years."
"You are? It doesn't say sales anywhere on your resume."
"Of course it doesn't. Most important things in communication are the ones that are not said. Peter Drucker said this, I think."
"What do you sell?"
"Smoke and mirrors."
"How do you mean?"
"It's a big lie. All the stories we tell are nothing but big lies. The one I've been most successful with for over two decades is 'education will change your life for the better.' That's what I mean by smoke and mirrors. If you can sell that you can sell anything."
"Education does change lives for the better. You're a liar!"
"It does, of course. The real question is 'by how much?' when you compare with the correct comparable. As for liar, didn't someone tell you that education will change your life for the better?"
"They did tell me, and it did."
"Of course it did. What do you do?"
"I'm the HR director here. You're supposed to know who's interviewing you."
"I know. You run the company? You own the company?"
"No, that's the CEO. The shareholders own it. I run HR."
"You own shares?"
"No. There are no stock options for us. Only for the VPs."
"That's what I thought. For how long is your contract?"
"I'm asking the questions here."
"Ok. It doesn't matter. This is a right to work state anyway, so however long your contract is it can end tomorrow."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"What do you think? Only the good questions are worth answering, remember? We're just trying to figure out together how much of a difference in your life did education make in your case."
"It made a huge difference. My career would not have been where it is without my degrees and certifications."
"Of course not. But do you know where would you have been had you taken the other fork in the road, say when you were 11 y.o.?"
"You mean a life of crime? They asked me to sell marijuana on the corner. I refused, vehemently. Obviously. My parents taught me well to stay out of that kind of trouble."
"Of course they did. What book do you remember reading when you were 11, that marked your life forever?"
"None in particular. There weren't any good books back then."
"I bet there were. Say this one: 'One thousand ways to make $1,000' was first published in 1936. I bet you could've read it when you were 11, but you didn't, did you? Why didn't you?"
"I didn't know. Nobody asked me to."
"Here it is. https://lnkd.in/eQQNMNq8 Read it now. You have children?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Maybe you can improve their perspective on life. Show them they can choose their own books to read, without waiting for school or you parents to tell them what to do all the time. Maybe it'll help them, and society too."
"Your smoke is deep."
"Is it?..."😇
Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.
Chief Future Architect, InnovationTrek
We got here. What's next?
Accelerate Innovation.
In companies and self.
Grow flow. Naturally.
ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org
