NEEDED: BOLD THINKERS TO CHANGE THE WORLD (#3)

Are you a bold thinker? If you think you are or fear that you are not, here’s a question to find test yourself: “Are you working on something that can change the world?” Yes or no? In their book, Diamondis and Kotler assert that the answer that 99.99 percent of people give to that question is ‘no.’ They are working on much more mundane things. And it was probably such awareness that led Larry Page to say, “I think we need to be training people on how to change the world.”

Why do we need to become bold thinkers? In part because of the world that we now live in. It’s a world that is global and exponential. Once upon a time things were small, local, and linear, but that’s not the case any longer. What you do can have global ramifications. Your influence can extend far beyond yourself and a small circle.

When Apple introduced it’s “Think Different” campaign, it did so with these words: “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes ... the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules ... you can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things.... they push the human race forward, and while some may seem them as the crazy ones, we see genius...” (1997, p. 232)

In founding SpaceX, Elon Must gave us a great example of how a bold thinker thinks. To seriously think about planting a colony on Mars— now that is bold thinking! As I think about the bold pursuit we have set in Neuro-Semantics — enabling people everywhere to actualize their highest meanings into their best performances by owning their powers of thinking, learning, and meaning-making, the question that then arises is how can we scale this?

5) A bold thinker sees through the darkness of problems to solutions. What’s involved in any and every significant goal are problems. If there are no problems, it would already be done. The bold thinker is a fierce thinker who boldly embraces both an optimistic future and the problems that are in the way and which need to be solved. The bold thinker embraces problems honestly and openly. The purposeful intention of the bold thinker is to make a difference, or as Steve Jobs said, “to put a dent in the universe.”

The bold thinker thinks with courage. He is audacious in his attitude because he focuses on what is possible and what he is willing to risk. At times she will throw away the rule book and “invent it as she goes.” Because the bold thinker thinks big, thinks at scale, he does not engage in wimpy thinking. Further, the bold ideas of bold thinkers are often considered crazy.

“The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it is a crazy idea.” (Burt Rutan).

“Trying out crazy ideas means bucking expert opinion and taking big risks. It means not being afraid to fail. The road to bold is paved with failure and this means have a strategy in place to handle risk and learn from mistakes is critical.” (Bold, p. 76)

Bold problem-solvers use rapid iteration of an action or process to intentionally learn from failures while still in the discovery process. Intentionally increase rapid iteration which is one of the best risk-mitigation strategies every developed. Create an agile design that has fast feedback loops so that you an constantly upgrade things. Reid Hoffman, LinkedIN founder, “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

For the bold, there is no failure. Therefore at times they even aim to fail; they know that’s the source of new ideas. The unofficial motto of SiliconValley: “Fail early, fail often, and fail forward.”

“Failure comes part and parcel with invention. It is not optional ... we understand that and believe in failing early and iterating until we get it right.” (Jeff Bezos) “If you fail in doing something ambitious, you usually succeed in doing something important.” (Larry Page, Google)

6) A bold thinker embraces the difficult. A bold thinker is a fierce thinker in going where others fear to tread. She entertains questions that cannot easily be answered and she stays with the question. With it she constantly interrogates reality and will not let it go until it releases its secrets. It takes courage to be a bold thinker— courage to question, courage to doubt, courage to say, “I don’t know, but I will search.” It takes courage to face one’s own ignorance and confusion without giving in to cynicism. The bold thinker embraces skepticism as a tool for discovery, but never gives up the search. It takes courage to admit the lack of skill and “go back to school” to develop the competency which is next needed.

Bold thinkers love challenge and are ruthless about challenges. They love change, growth, and development. They love pushing the boundaries. In a word, they “have a healthy disregard for the impossible.” The impossible is to them what a red flag is to a bull.

We sometimes consider the constraints of reality as hard or difficult. Critical thinkers, however, simply treat them as constraints and embrace the constraints. If it is a real constraint, the constraint actually liberates just as a good constraint is a lane marker on the highway. Things like time limits; competition limits and conditions are just factors to work with. Without constraints, people actually take their time and are more wasteful with their energy and money. If it is not a real constraints but a false one, a man-made one, then critical thinking can be used to expose that it is fluffy vagueness.

As a framework for thinking, critical thinkers boil things down to the most core or fundamental facts, elements, and truths. They ground their thinking in those fundamentals and thereby are able to edit out unnecessary complexity. Here’s to you and I become truly bold thinkers!