A few “mixing desk” thoughts

Nearly three years ago, in “Learning from The Beatles — “Mixing” your Leadership”, I wrote:

In supporting leaders over many years, I love to distil to simplicity, to allow them to focus on their priorities, their message, their context. As Da Vinci said: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”

At the same time, sometimes we need to consider more than ultimate simplicity, we need to consider several dimensions to give depth to our context. By dimensions, I like to envisage sliders on a studio production mixing desk.

Imagine moving them up and down based on what is appropriate for your leadership and what your organisation need. This gives you the choice of moving beyond “either/or”, “yes/no” binary choices, to give some richness and depth to focal areas.

In that post I was writing about how many “sliders” to have, how many dimensions to focus on, and where on the spectrum do you choose to sit.

Last week I then listened to the “On the Edge” podcast with Roland Harwood (mentioned in the last week in the post “Outsiders Outside”), interviewing Margaret Heffernan, author of “Uncharted: How to Map the Future”. In the podcast Margaret began by talking about Uncertainty an how it differs from Risk. During the course of the conversation (do listen!), I found myself writing notes, considering pairs…