Yesterday I enjoyed one of those E.F. Hutton moments. I was walking with my daughter amongst a crowd of people when she asked me for my opinion. For those of who are parents of teenage daughters we know how flattering this can be. For a moment time stood still, and I did not want to be shallow, superficial or unwise. As an ENTP I have two abilities that served me well in the moment, rapid mental processing and verbal processing. Most of the time those abilities only allow me to stay incredibly mindless things at inappropriate moments, but in this moment I was provided a flash of insight. I don’t need to go into great detail about the situation, only to say I wanted her to understand something about decision making and how I view the world. How do I encourage my daughter to make her world bigger without feeling lost? These are the words that flowed from my brain, through my mouth to her ears and the unexpected listeners in the crowd. “Your enjoyment in life, and your usefulness to other people will increase if you make your world bigger, and your truths simpler. Tragically, many people are neither joyful nor useful because they make their world small and their truths complex.” My daughter looked at me and said, “huh?” Others in the small crowd stopped their murmuring for a moment and said, “would you repeat that?” At that moment I was not completely sure what I meant by the statement, and in repeating it I found the need and opportunity to embellish on the thought. The world, along with all of the challenges and opportunities is a complex place. We live in a world where one size does not fit all, and because of that reality many people shrink the scope of their influence. There are some that greet this complex world with broad, very open minded, sometimes impractical, and often delusional solutions. My desire for the next generation of my family would be to carry simple, universal, timeless truth and figure how out the simple truth throughout history provides value to a complex world.
I believe these same truths can be applied to our worldviews and decision making in relation to entrepreneurship and leadership development. Would you agree?
