Wednesday; September 16

In all honesty, I haven’t read much of what Malcolm Gladwell has written; however, I recently came across a couple of quotes from his book “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”.

The first quote is, “The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.”. In this simple observation, Gladwell captures a definition for the concept of wisdom. Facts are everywhere. Data is easily obtained. Yet, the key to being successful is synthesizing the raw data into useful ideas. Interestingly, this isn’t accurate in just the applied sciences, it is especially true in the social sciences as well. We need information, but people who are true leaders are those who can translate it into applicable truth.

Gladwell’s second observation is, “We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for.” (Now if you need to go back and reread that one, that’s understandable.) At the risk of becoming one of “those types” of people, as I read this quote I thought about how often I offer superficial answers based on a casual investigation. We think too shallowly because we feel compelled to speak too quickly. We are too excited about being the one with the first answer that we actually sacrifice the correct answer.

Let’s dedicate ourselves to gathering credible information, then processing it through wisdom. When we do, we will be able to make statements that are accurate and insightful.

Think About It!

Popular posts from this blog

Thursday; May 3

I have a fish tank that allows my three Bettas (Larry, Darrell and Darrell) to live in the same structure, but remain hidden from each other – well sort of.   When I go to feed the fish, I believe that one of the Darrell’s can sort of see that the other Darrell is getting fed and he will linger over on that side of the tank even after I put his food in his tank.   I have to tap on the side of the tank where his food is floating to help him refocus and eat.   I get the impression that he is so interested in what is going on in the other Darrell’s tank that he can’t enjoy his own food. I have been told that the brain of a fish is pretty small – which explains their inability to process “blessings”, but are we guilty of the same malady as Darrell?   Are we so worried (or consumed) by what happens to the people around us that we fail to realize what is going on with us?   Are we envious of the blessings that others are receiving and end up missing out on what we have been given?   Are w
Read more

Thursday; February 14

         While most of us are familiar with today being Valentine’s Day, there are some who actually refer to February 14 th as “St. Valentine’s Day”.  This title is often affixed to a criminally historic event known as “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” on February 14, 1929 in Chicago, but that is another story for another time.  Not knowing much about the history of “Saint Valentine” I did a little research and found out he was a Roman religious leader who was martyred in 269 AD.  According to my limited research Valentine was killed because of his encouragement of Roman men (especially soldiers) to marry which was in violation of Claudias’ edict that prohibited marriage to keep their minds singularly focused on their task of defending the Empire.  Somehow, from this beginning – and possibly embellished by Chaucer – St. Valentine became intertwined with the concept of romantic love.           I am not really sure how February 14 th became connected with love, but inspired by thi
Read more

Wednesday; December 6

What does it mean to be a leader? I subscribe to the belief that a leader is someone who seeks the best for others and works with them to achieve their potential. There are others; however, who define leadership as the ability to have a vision and the tenacity to get their own way. Leaders who are this way are often portrayed as having developed the maturity to manipulate people to do things their way. However, is the ability to drive people in our direction mature or is it childish? The Christians of the 1st Century came from a lot of different backgrounds and had to work hard to work together. As the Apostle Paul challenged Christians in the city of Ephesus he challenged them to accept individual differences, “… until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. “ (Ephesians 4:13). Bossiness was not to be viewed as a sign of maturity, a willingness to wo
Read more