By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you become even more aware of your surroundings. Reading time: 3:36

How embarrassing! After all, I had been reading The Wall Street Journal for years before one day I noticed that PERIOD punctuation mark in the masthead for the first time.

How could I miss something THAT evident staring me right in the face day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year?

I felt so incompetent as a leader. I’m supposed to be more adept at my surroundings as a leader. I’m supposed to be more apt in noticing and responding to information from a variety of sources and formats. I know it may seem like just a little dot but that little dot loomed like a mountain of mistakes to me because I missed a clear piece of data — at my fingertips!

My Eyesight Lacked Insight

I had assumed that The Wall Street Journal’s masthead conformed to all other newspaper mastheads I had read. And so my eyesight lacked insight. Read on to learn what exercises I did to help me sharpen my powers of perception so that I could see ALL THAT MEETS THE EYE.

Scrabble -like Solution to Increase Your Perception

I am a Scrabble nut and so I devised a little word game to spur my powers of perception so that I wouldn’t make the mistake of not completely reading something right in front of me.

I deliberately studied very familiar words that I regularly overlooked — at first glance — before forcing myself to find a “hidden” meaning. Let’s play: Consider these five unrelated words: block, danger, climb, island and broad. Go ahead read them again: block, danger, climb, island and broad.

If you’re like me, you didn’t see the word within the word-at first glance anyway — that more fully develops a stronger relationship between the two words. Let’s review:

1. You read: BLOCK. The first time I read that word-BLOCK- I didn’t readily see the word LOCK in Block or make the connection that a lock is used to block someone’s access.
2. You read: DANGER. The first time I read that word-DANGER- I didn’t readily see the word ANGER in Danger or make the connection that anger can be a reaction to danger.
3. You read: CLIMB. The first time I read that word -CLIMB-I didn’t readily see the word LIMB in Climb or make the connection that you climb a limb.
4. You read: ISLAND. The first time I read that word-ISLAND- I didn’t readily see the word IS and LAND in Island or make the connection that an island is land.
5. You read: BROAD. The first time I read that word-BROAD- I didn’t readily see the word ROAD in Broad or make the connection a road is broad.

Let’s play again. Look closely at each of these words and you’ll see the word within a word: Choral, Grow, Drain, Narrow, and Soil. And so what does all this word play mean to a busy leader like you?

The DEVIL — D-Evil- Is in the Details

That word play help me focus my decision making to evaluate all the data in front of me, not just what seems familiar. Yes the devil is in the details, but today, I am even more aware of the word -EVIL- in the word Devil.

And I am more apt to stay more alert and remember to look for all that is available for me to read. Especially when it comes to the front of page of The Wall Street Journal - PERIOD.

Today’s ImproveMINT

Stay vigilant reviewing familiar information
to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.

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