2-3-4 Friday

‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’

1 thought

Recently I heard a sermon in church by a Reverend Daniel Wee, the Senior Pastor of Church of our Savior, a church in Singapore known for its community work.

Relax. I’m not going to preach here.

What he shared as an idea that really struck me, was how as a (church) community, we had been trying to do the same thing over and over again to get more people involved in their programmes. Christmas, Easter, gifts.

You’d be familiar with this. Whatever job you’re in, there’s some element of this. You need more people for the training programme you run. You need more clients to show improvement in outcomes.

You need more something. Anything. Just more.

And you try something.

But he decided to think a little differently. What if the church wasn’t just about the faith, but about how it could meet the people, where they were, as they were?

So he started to give people a reason to visit the church for something other than religion - whether it be something like a seniors’ dance activity, or heck, even a bicycle pump.

The ones you find at the kiosk.

Then he showed this gem of a quote, from Stephen Elop, the former CEO of Nokia, before it was bought over by Microsoft.

“We didn't do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost.”

We know the story of Nokia. How it fell from its perch at the top of the mobile phone market to being the butt of jokes.

This lesson can apply to much of how we do life today.

Week in, week out, you can do all the right things, make no big mistakes, but end up not getting closer to what you want.

You don’t have to do anything wrong to fail.

I repeat.

You don’t have to do anything wrong to fail.

The common misconception we have is that you have to make some huge mistakes in order to fail.

But actually, you don’t. All you need to do is to do things as per normal.

1 talk

“We didn't do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost.”

Stephen Elop, former CEO of Nokia

“When history was made at Kitty Hawk by the Wright brothers - inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful motor-operated airplane, it was man with machine - not man against machine. Today we don't think of aviation as "artificial flight" - it's simply flight. In the same way, we shouldn't think of technological intelligence as artificial, but rather as intelligence that serves to augment human capabilities and capacities.”

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, in his book ‘Hit Refresh’

1 tip

Here’s an example.

We all know that there are some irreversible scary things that are happening in our work.

AI, digitalisation, etc.

Amara’s Law provides a useful frame on how to think about these technologies,

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

It’s easy to think,

Ah!! This will take my job, I’m dead!

Or it’s just another hype, it will go away. And yes, maybe it will be.

But I think a more useful approach would be actually understanding what it could actually do. Read something, or dare I suggest, try it.

You’ll be surprised how Luddite I was about ChatGPT, screaming: I’m a writer! You cannot reduce me to an algorithm!

But eventually I just saw that I needed to work with the machine.

So really my advice to change isn’t to come up with some new quick agile mindset.

It’s just trying to understand and form an independent opinion about it. And asking this change,

How can I make your acquaintance?

Changes aren’t so scary when they become a friend.

John

Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love

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