Dorrier Underwood

As the first item of business on our company retreat, we wrapped up the sales game we’d been playing for three weeks. Jane, who had come up with the idea for a game, asked Gary and me to design a session for evaluating it, acknowledging the participants, and announcing the winners. Left to lead the conversation myself, the team would have experienced Boom, Boom, Boom – This is what we did. These are the results we produced. Here are things that X, Y, and Z did particularly well. The end. Thank God I didn’t take the opportunity to bore everyone to death with my bias to action and my understanding of “completion” as “an assignment to handle as quickly and efficiently as possible.” There’s something to be said for speed, but not when the bigger goal is opening up new actions that could prove more effective than anything we’ve tried before. I think of myself as someone who’s all about creativity and innovation, but am I?  I was charged with building on what we learned i...

My first thought was “Wha--?” My second was “terrorists?” My third thought was “Someone who resents high performers?” None of these thoughts required any work on my part. I did not cogitate, analyze, weigh or seek additional information. The thoughts arrived unbidden. I need to remember that. I need to remember that because my brain, like all human brains, attend to the drama—the outrageous, the loud, the flashy, the emotionally compelling—and, in so doing, either miss some critical, quiet clue or put undue weight on the Big Events. For instance, many more people die of poor diet (too much salt, fat, sugar) than terrorist attacks, but I pay much more attention to screaming headlines than to what I put in my body. Actually, I do pay attention to Cheese Crunchies—a lot of attention—so it would be more accurate to say that I let drama convince me that there are Bigger Things at Stake than the effects on my body of Crunchies and too few vegetables, statistics and the relatively q...