I’m teaching a three day seminar with a facilitator from Raytheon Missile Systems. We were just talking about perception and how well people see what’s going on in and around them. She mentioned that she use to teach a drawing class (teaching people how to draw) and discovered that people who don’t draw well often have the skill, but not the vision. They simply aren’t observant in a way that translates the object to paper. One of the keys, she mentioned, was learning how to observe. The more observant, the better the drawing.

 

Of course, one of my four principles for living and leading well is paying attention. This connects directly to living an observant life. As a leader, maybe one way to develop better vision (the ability to see into moments, markets, people, etc…) is to practice drawing.Try it today. Take ten minutes and draw something that is simple and near you. Try and really observe it and translate your observations to the paper.