Today is ‘Steve Jobs Day’, a day to recognise the incredible innovator that he was, and all that he’s done to both change and define the world that we live in.

One quote of Jobs that we often refer to is:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.”

This was Steve Jobs, prompting Stanford graduates during his inspiring 2005 commencement address, that connecting the dots is an important pact of trust with yourself.

We focus heavily on the Connect the Dots method in our Advocate Mentoring Program for SME’s, as well as our leadership training with FTSE corporates.

You see, people who are able to “connect the dots” are forward thinkers, innovators, and leaders.  They can zoom in and out of the issue at hand to make a logical or implied connection between facts or disparate pieces of information in order to arrive at a solution or conclusion.

This massively helps businesses of any size to execute their strategy through aligned vision and teams.

It’s not an easy skill to learn, but here’s a few quick pointers that can help you…

• Be in tune to the all interactions you have; everything that is being communicated, not just the spoken word.  Digest the words spoken and the facial expressions that accompany them.
• Learn to retain information that is important and keep it front of mind.
• Set aside thinking time to review and analyse how all of the information you’ve received might benefit from other intel that you’ve gathered.
• When faced with a challenge, don’t assume the obvious.  Dig through your mental backlog and process whether unrelated intelligence may be more relevant than it seems.