S2A

The 5x5 Rule:

Devoting 5 minutes a day, 5 days a week, to your professional development will put you 100% ahead of your peers. Every additional 5 minutes adds another 100%... spend a half hour a day on your professional development, move ahead 6 spaces (or 600%). Here’s the math:

According to a study by Deloitte, “1% of a typical workweek is all that employees have to focus on training and development” – most of which is focused on technical skills and corporate objectives. In other words, the average employee spends roughly 25 minutes a week on training and development. And those 25 minutes are focused on the 80 percent of activity (technical skills) that drives less than 20 percent of business results. That’s 5 minutes a day, 5 days a week, on average. Therefore, if you spend an extra 5 minutes a day, 5 days a week, on your professional development, you move ahead of your peers by 100%.

You can multiply the effect of your 5 minutes a day by focusing on the 3 skills that determine more than 80% of on-the-job success: critical thinking, emotional intelligence and strategic thinking. Most people understand the importance of these 3 skills. Most people understand these skills account for 70-90% of career success. Yet, the gap between what we know and what we do about what we know is wide. Less than 5% of all managers say they are actively working to develop these skills.

5-10 minutes a day developing these skills pays disproportionate dividends! Not sure where to start? Let me know… I can direct you to a number of excellent (and free) resources. Or build your own development plan.

Whatever you decide, keep it simple and make sure you can stick with it over time.

Why do most managers seem hellbent on making things complicated?

They don’t do it on purpose; but unfortunately, few problems show up with simplification instructions attached. In conference rooms big and small, managers muddy the waters, confuse the issues and find the right solutions… to the wrong problems. Why?

1. They don’t understand the problem.

Einstein said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking of a solution.” This isn’t what happens in most companies. Instead, they toss a poorly framed problem on the table, discuss it for a minute or two, then jump headlong into “brainstorming” session to find a solution. Seek first to understand the problem! Go see it for yourself, if possible.

2. In an effort to look smart, they ask complicated questions.

In most meetings, the questions aren’t designed to uncover simple truths… they’re designed to showcase intelligence. If you want to simplify the problem, ask simple questions. Ask questions like Socrates... questions that:

…clarify what the other person means.
…probe assumptions.
…look into the facts the other person is using.
…examine other perspectives.
…consider the implications.

Complicated is easy and ugly. Simplicity is hard and beautiful.

Consider this... "Ninety years ago, Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman began an ambitious search for the brightest kids in California, administering IQ tests to several thousand of children across the state. Those scoring above an IQ of 135 (approximately the top 1 percent of scores) were tracked for further study. There were two young boys, Luis Alvarez and William Shockley, who were among the many who took Terman’s tests but missed the cutoff score. Despite their exclusion from a study of young “geniuses,” both went on to study physics, earn PhDs, and win the Nobel prize."

How so? Read more about the power of Spatial Intelligence...

Recognizing Spatial Intelligence Our schools, and our society, must do more to recognize spatial reasoning, a key kind of intelligence