Conclusion: Keep Practicing

 

In the final segment, we’ll consider the power of practice and why it makes all the difference in your ability to live and work with ingenuity. You can listen to the audio below. There is also a transcript if you would like to refer back to this segment.

 

Your mission is too important and your resources too precious.

Work with ingenuity!

 

Transcript Below: The transcript below is not meant to replace listening to the audio, but serves as a reference for post-listening learning. Please forgive any errors due to the skill level of the A.I. robot that created this transcript. 

 

00:12

Remember, Tyler, The Alchemist of alcohol, the bartender that my wife and I got to know, when we lived in Boston. Let’s come back to Tyler, as we finish looking at the framework, Tyler was so good at what he did, because he practiced again and again. I mean, when we showed up at that bar that Sunday night, and spent time getting to know Tyler eating, and having drinks, all orchestrated by his genius, it wasn’t his first night there. He had been practicing and cultivating and reading and think for years. I mean, this was his thing. Now, he had some natural skill, he was really good with people, he had kind of this sense, you could tell of mixology, and you’d love to talk about food and how to pair things. I mean, part of this was a kind of a natural way he was you could just see it coming out of him. But then he had honed his craft, and he was continuing that process, right up to the moment that we walked in the door. Our encounter with him was another opportunity to hone his craft further, and he just continues to do that, to this day. Now, I bring you back to Tyler, because I want to share with you that these five elements of ingenuity that are often present together, or in some sequence, or in some combination, when when teams are being ingenious, these five elements happen naturally, when we need ingenuity the most. And that’s in a crisis. When we’re in a crisis, we just move into these and shift into these behaviors. Yeah, you know, we, we start exploring solutions. And we’re, we’re weaving perspective together. A

nd we’re looking for that Aha insight. And we come up with a solution and we start to bring the right people who do we need, and let’s get this person and that person. And then we start thinking about our resources. And we look around and we, we utilize what we have in a MacGyver like way, and we connect the urgency of the moment, because it’s so easy to do in a crisis. And then the way we talk, are you kidding, we don’t have time to mess around with negativity. It’s about realism and optimism. And the whole thing just kind of rolls out. When we really need ingenuity, it seems to just flow out, particularly in a crisis. But in everyday work, it takes a kind of practice.

Just like Tyler practices, his ingenuity, we have to practice around ours. And I want to leave you with three reasons to practice the five actions. One, it will make you more mindful of what those elements are and how to draw them out. It will make you more skillful in doing any of the actions associated with the five elements. And it will create more consistency in your ability to materialize those behaviors, those actions and elements when you need them. The reason to focus on the five elements and to practice them is so that you can more mindfully, skillfully and consistently, draw up ingenuity when you need it. Practice the five elements together and see what that practice brings. You see the the alchemy, the ingenuity, the arranging of your world that can make a difference the solutions you can create, the way you execute them, and most importantly, the way you advance your mission. I believe that focus on the five elements will bring you to a place in your mission where you are consistently advancing it and able to adapt it when necessary.05:15

Keep the five elements in mind and heightened them. At any point you can and watch the magic happen, not by accident, although that is a glorious moment, but by intention because of our work and our commitment to a process that can make a difference. This is Dave Fleming at the ingenuity lab. Here’s to ingenuity.