Last week we kicked off a series about how my kids play chess and examined how we can change the rules.  This week is about translating conceptual thinking to action.

Cam and I sat down to play chess and he talked me through the different variations in the rules he made up.  We would bring pieces back from the dead, have backstabber pieces where we controlled opponent pieces, and new pieces that would block parts of the board.  As he explained them, I thought to myself that this was all relatively straight forward.  Then, we started playing and Cam crushed me!  It was then I realized that while I might have understood the rules, I was having difficult translating that to action.  It took me several rounds before I began to internalize how I could apply these concepts differently to ultimately win.  

Let’s make some connections.  Have you ever had an experience like this at work?  Maybe it looked like this.  You had a beautiful process diagram, and everything felt like it made sense.  Then, once you started executing the process you realized you were still unsure of how it worked.  Or maybe it looks like this.  You conceptually know how to leverage AI, but once you got to the tools you didn’t really know how to put that into action.  I experience this all the time.  I’ve found that it’s easy to get lost in overthinking.  It’s easy to swirl around frameworks and process maps, talking about them until you feel everything is perfect.  It’s important to do the thinking AND it’s also important to jump in as soon as you can to apply these concepts.  The application is what forces you to turn those ideas into action, because thinking can only get you so far.

The challenge: How will you translate conceptual understanding into action?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry