How can we improve our performance at a given discipline? These are the basic options:

Better technology, equipment and tools.
Better processes and techniques.
Better insight and understanding.
Better mindset and attitude.

How would you rank their impact?

Technology is great, but as soon as someone has better technique they will wield the same tools more powerfully. Lewis Hamilton would be quicker around Silverstone than me in a Trabant for example. Plus most technologies are available to anyone with the money.

Better processes and techniques are advantageous then. But we can easily imitate or follow a method without knowing how or why it works. I can wire an alternator by following the instructions, but if I get it wrong I’ve no idea how to put it right, or whether there might be a better way. As Emerson remarked, “'The (wo)man who knows how will always have a job. The (wo)man who knows why will always be their boss.”

Insight and understanding is better still then. They allow us to stop imitating and start innovating from base principles. The problem is that facts have a half life and our theories might turn out to be wrong or have limited scope. If we become precious about our knowledge, stop learning, or can’t change our minds we soon stagnate.

The most powerful lever of all then is our mindset: our attitude, risk appetite, relationship with failure, curiosity, intellectual humility, open mindedness, ability to persevere and coachability, for example. Or lack thereof.

Yet look at how much attention most businesses devote to each and you see that hierarchy inverted. Technology and following “best practices” are presumed to be the solution to problems or sources of big advantages when they often aren't.

Very few people are working from a solid foundation of discipline-specific theory so their decision-making is unnecessarily hit and miss. And how much budget a year goes on mindset training and performance psychology for employees? You’re mostly on your own there unless you’re an athlete or Navy Seal.

Strange, no?

See this post on LinkedIn