Newsletter 041: A Walk, a Problem, and a Clearer Direction

A good day to you!

On a recent morning walk, I finally named a problem I had been carrying for months – and with the naming came the clearest sense of direction I’ve had in a long time.

Meetings were happening; interest in my ideas was real. The diagnosis I kept returning to was the same: My framing needed to be sharper, with the vision for The Learning Engine more compellingly described.

Somewhere around mile two, I understood what that diagnosis had been missing.

The vision was intact, but the sequence for communicating the vision was backwards!

When I describe what I help people do – building learning systems that turn teaching and leading into lasting mastery – I tend to start at the hundred-thousand-foot level. That is where I naturally live: The full arc of the system, the transformation people experience over time, and the deep shift in how an organization approaches growth.

But buyers arrive at a specific problem on their desk before they can care about the destination. Money changes hands at the one-foot level, not at the hundred-thousand-foot level; I had been leading with the destination before anyone knew they were looking for a door.

Since that walk, I have been rebuilding the materials that describe this work: Consulting documents, a workshop, and a pilot program for high school students. All of them now open at one foot – with the destination waiting for the moment when the door is already open.

This change in direction has already felt much more clear!

If you are a leader and the gap between what your people are capable of and what they are actually producing feels too wide, send me a reply to this email. That conversation is one I am having right now; I would love to have the conversation with you!

All the best!

Nathan