The Most Powerful Context You’ll Ever Need

I recently published a presentation on LinkedIn called ‘Current Perspectives’ where I’ve been grappling with a strategic-level view of how to realize my vision to create sustainable communities where people can thrive and grow. These are a collection of thoughts or a brainstorm on what I see as the levers I get to push when encountering any problem. I built this presentation to help guide my daily actions which increasingly elude my rational mind as to how they all add up to coherent trends in my work. I just keep following my heart, and it’s served me well to date.

As a result, I make quite a few shifts and changes to stay in flow with my client community. I used to joke that I created a new brand every year. The stark truth in that is the world continues to change at an increasing pace, and the solutions my team develops for today’s clients will not necessarily help tomorrow’s clients. I can’t just pull a past solution off the shelf and, in good faith, hand it to my current client hoping that it will still work. It probably won’t. So what makes these solutions so short-lived?

The natural culprit is technology. Technology is changing, software gets upgraded, products become obsolete, people stop using certain applications (or never started), the list goes on. I’m tired of hearing about it. What does technology even mean these days? It’s not just something with a silicon chip. I use communication technologies all day long, and I don’t mean my cell phone. What I mean is empathy, persuasion, polycentric influence, foresight, code matching, cultural sensitivity, etc. (talk to me if you want more information on any of those).

Here’s the thing: I don’t think the solution I’m seeking, which is a timeless strategy for solving all problems (that would be efficient, now wouldn’t it?), lives or dies by the vicissitudes of technology. I do think that timeless methodologies are just that, timeless. So what are they?