The power of personal and professional revisiting, and the courage needed

In 2015, I wrote a Gartner ‘maverick’ research note providing eight lessons for digital leaders from the game of Go/ Weichi. (Link in comments for Gartner customers.) The last lesson was based on a specific tactic which requires the player to immediately play back in an area where they just lost some of their pieces. This tactic is known as ‘under the stones’. ( 石の下 in Japanese.) Using a fair amount of artistic license, I used this tactic as a metaphor for going back to something you had failed at in the past and trying again. The example I used in the note was Apple’s Newton tablet device, which wasn’t very successful, being followed later by the iPad. We shouldn’t exclude areas we have tried in before, for at least a couple of reasons. One is that we have probably learned a lot during previous unsuccessful attempts. Another is that the world has moved on. Supply and demand side conditions are not the same. As Heraclitus pointed out, “No one ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and they are not the same person.” This point is a close cousin of the economic idea of ‘sunk costs’. It doesn’t matter what we invested before – we should make decisions based on forward looking estimates of cost, benefit and risk. The idea of revisiting applies professionally and personally. I have met a few people recently who I had parted ways from one way or another in the past. It was a tiny bit uncomfortable/ scary at the start, but has been a very positive experience. Both professionally and personally, I think revisiting requires courage. There are often all sorts of unresolved feelings and traumas personally, and as a company you might feel the potential shame of failing more than once in the same venture. Let’s all be brave enough to consider revisiting past sources of difficulty, danger and failure. #unthink #unask #unlearn #strategy #thegameofgo #weichi