Last week London, this week Johannesburg; where I am working with leaders from a FTSE 50 multinational corporation to help them align their strategy across their teams.  We’re using the Connect the Dots method to help their people understand how they fit into the overall strategy.

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, so whilst I may be a little over 5,000 miles from you, I’d like to “virtually” share with you a few, quick easy 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.

As Steve Jobs prompted Stanford graduates during his inspiring 2005 commencement address, connecting the dots is an important pact of trust with yourself: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.”

Have a great week.