24 August 2007
Successful Intentions Newsletter
Hi ,
So there I am, fresh out of University, early 20's, standing at the crest of an ancient ridge, looking out across a vast salt lake enameled by the heat of a hundred thousand days. "Which way?" I ask my Pintinjarra guide. I have a map and a compass, but I can't get oriented. The country seems featureless. Better equipped people than me have died out here within days.
"That way" he says, pointing to some imaginary mark on the shimmering horizon. We drive for 3 hours to the other side of the lake. "There" he says. And we pull up next to a windmill which is nonchalantly pumping life-giving water from an underground river. I check, and the windmill is indeed marked on my map. "But how did you know how to get here?" I ask.
He has just saved my life, but he speaks as if he finds my ignorance amusing. He tells me the "dreamtime" story of the Rainbow Serpent, how it was pursued across the Western desert from Central Australia, and chased out to sea at present-day Exmouth on the coast. And it occurs to me that this story is a remarkably sophisticated navigational aid. Out here I get my bearings with map and compass. Yet he is deciding which way to go by reference to another kind of compass.
Wisdom is such a compass. Wisdom-decision making is a set of frameworks for making decisions about the fundamental pragmatics of life, when you are faced with big decisions, choices that profoundly affect your life and the lives of others.
Now, more than ever, our collective fate rests in the hands of leaders who decide and act either wisely or foolishly. How do leaders make difficult decisions when their own cognitive "map and compass" resources are inadequate?
A wisdom compass for leadership is:
- The application of tacit knowledge through,
- The acknowledgement of core values,
- Balancing the interests of self, stakeholders, and the organizational community,
- By adapting, shaping, or selecting appropriate responses,
- In order to achieve a sustainable common good, while,
- Directing attention to the processes of discernment, decision making, and action and,
- Facilitating reflection and insight through experience, feedback, and evaluation.
Coaching, when done with mastery , is a powerful way to discover your own wisdom compass for deciding "which way to go" when you're sometimes lost in the desert of life!
Keep your intentions clear,
Peter Webb
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