Read This!

Thanks to Observer, Chops and Nicolaas who contributed to the previous post.

I was thinking quite a lot about your responses and the value of an outsider’s point of view.

I had always thought that the main vlaue was seeing the wood instead of the trees. The outsider is not immersed in the detail. “Al chinese look alike” for the first time visitor to China. The obvious is in the foreground. It occupies the mind and pushes all else out.

You see the big picture.People with their noses to the grind stone often forget to look up and see how the big picture looks like.

Last year on the Harvard Strategy programme we had a session where you could pick from a list of some 50 questions one question to ask to at least 10 of your fellow participants.  From the 9 or so people who came to me all but one asked the following:  “How can I see the big picture?”

Well. there is a technique ( as there is with thinking out of the box – turning assumptions  into their negatives and see where it gets you, see previous blog).  But before I come to that, what struck me again over the past couple of days mulling about this blog, is that insiders are trapped in the middle ground. They are like cinematographers making a movie without zooming out OR zooming in. The see only the medium distance, the big picture is lost, but so is the detail that they take for granted – like driving a car and unconsciously touching the brake before switching on the ignition.

The outsider brings the big picture view,  “All Chinese look alike,” but also the microscopic, zoomed in view. More tomorrow.

Oh and two other things, I made the switch to the Mac – on advice from a friend bought a Mac mini over the weekend. Will keep you posted.

And I did read the Krugman blogs – not convinced, but will get back to that too.