Based on Savanting Studies 1 to 6 in Savanting: Outperforming your Potential (2019): Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Jim Carrey
EDITOR’S NOTE: SEE PRIOR ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES BELOW⤵︎
I THE CHALLENGE
Dear Lauren,
I’m fascinated by your distinction between leader and manager in Lead from Full Power. I’m “a manager who runs what exists.” I’m following your process for becoming a full-power leader who “brings the new into existence.” I’m concerned that I might not be creative, innovative or inventive enough. I’m hoping your process for increasing creativity will work for me.
I’ve started pursuing daily top-talent flows. However, with the demands of managing a large department, I don’t have the same flexibility as Sam to find tasks that will trigger your transformative flow state. Any suggestions, Lauren?
I’m in my early 40s and manage a large department. My performance ratings have always been above average, but I’ve never been considered for promotion to executive positions. Is it too late for me?
I’ve a talent for ensuring large organizational systems are effective. I’m a good problem-solver exceedingly capable of drawing information, solutions, and strategies from brainstorming with my people.
I’m looking forward to accelerated growth with your transformative top-talent-flow strategy, Lauren. Thank you for your consideration of my challenge.
Sincerely,
Derrick
Potential Executive?
II RE-DEFINITION OF THE GOAL:
More Information for Decisions, Directions, and Inventions
LAUREN:
I’m delighted that you want to increase your daily time in top-talent flow, Derrick. It’s the fastest route I know to sustainable maximization and self-actualized leadership. The strategies and tools I provided Sam for leader power can be adjusted. I’ve figured out how to accelerate your progress despite the confines of your large-scale management position.
The solution is an exciting and lucrative career mission which should keep you perpetually in top-talent flow, Derrick. As my prescription requires, these flows will be triggered by “applying your strongest, most rewarding talents to the most meaningful, impactful work for an audience most valuing of that work.”
To ready you for this mission, we need to accelerate your growth in one of the byproducts of top-talent flow – expanded consciousness. As this capability grows, you’ll want to exploit it in the ways I’ll describe to speed your advance.
However, this mission needs to be supplemented with the promotion of some other flow byproducts. Watch this space for upcoming studies about creativity from noncreatives;[1] vision from nonvisionaries;[2] brilliant breakthroughs from the nonbrilliant;[3] how to “leapfrog”[4] or “springboard off”[5] existing creations to lead your industry with new breakthroughs; and how to become an “execution creative.”[6]
Understanding expanded consciousness
I saw you look askance at me when I mentioned expanded consciousness, Derrick. Many have the wrong idea about it. Rest assured that I’m not talking new age, spirituality, mysticism, hallucinogenic-drug, or runner’s-high experiences. Here’s my actionable definition and how it will help you to achieve the executive leader finesse and functionality you’re seeking.
Expanded consciousness is simply a broadened perspective. Think of viewing the world through an ever-widening camera aperture. Each expansion or breadth of view enables you to “see” more information; more interconnections among information systems; more information about where they are going and why; more trends; more patterns; and so on.
Picture the events of your life as boxes floating by as you sit in a rowboat on a river. Now picture how different your understanding of these floating life-event boxes would be if you viewed them from an air balloon floating above or from the moon. Imagine the increase in information you’ll have for decision-making, direction-setting, or to re-combine to generate new creations.
Flow is an altered state of consciousness that everyone experiences. Over time, top-talent-flow sessions become deeper, more productive, more creative, more profound, more mystical and awe-invoking, and especially more expansive. This is because physiologically we all have a capacity for expanded consciousness. Well-placed electrodes in someone’s brain will let them experience the expansion. Flow releases the same functionality without the electrodes.
DERRICK:
So, you’re saying, Lauren, that this expanded consciousness will inevitably emerge as I increase the duration and frequency of top-talent flows? And then, because of the increased information available, my performance will improve on leadership tasks? And, did I understand correctly – my baseline functionality is going to upgrade in areas relevant to leadership as well?
III THE STRATEGY:
Promote leader upgrades by expanding consciousness
LAUREN:
Exactly right, Derrick. Let me give you specifics as to these inevitable upgrades in functionality and capabilities. Then you can push yourself from manager extraordinaire to executive leader at the faster pace you’re craving.
1. New or upgraded executive meta-competencies
Gustavo Razzetti defines a meta-skill as “a master skill that magnifies and activates other skills. A meta-skill is a high order skill that allows you to engage with functional expertise more effectively. It’s a catalyst for learning and building new skills faster.”[7]
There are very few programs for successfully cultivating these meta-skills. This means that those who aren’t born with them may not be ideally equipped for executive leadership. You are going to bypass that issue, Derrick. Your expanding consciousness will increase the very meta-competencies that companies seek when recruiting global executives.
Your wider aperture of view will reveal the interconnectedness, synchronization, and synergy of human systems. Therefore, you’ll have better pattern recognition, trend perception, and environmental scanning. Expect improvements in your ability to conceive of and use models, theories, and inferences.
Further, you’ll be delighted to learn that biochemical changes during flow also promote the ability to link “similar ideas” for pattern recognition and “disparate ideas” for lateral thinking. Therefore, expect improvements in creative and opportunistic problem-solving, adaptivity, and inventiveness as you more options link.
Predictable improvements to your cognitive skills will incite upgrades to conceptual skills, relational thinking, and big-picture thinking, and especially the systems thinking at which you already excel, Derrick.
