“What an astonishing thing a book is,” marveled Carl Sagan, the astrophysicist who ignited our appreciation for the vastness of the ever-expanding universe. “It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.

“But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.”

Sagan demonstrates a key to thinking like a leader:   Seek the value in anything and everything.

Find meaning in the mundane. Discover its impact on others. Mine its significance, no matter how long overlooked or discounted. And come to a greater appreciation of its intrinsic value.

That’s why thoughtful leaders step up on The Three-Legged Stool of Thinking to gain a broader vision that spawns new perspectives, new options and a new energy in innovative problem-solving.

THE THREE LEGGED STOOL OF THINKING

 

• In firmly footing that first leg, they seek to discover what ought to be — what scientists call normative.
• Then in setting that second leg, they seek to discover if the issue at hand can be replicated based on the evidence — what scientists call empirical.
• And then in anchoring that third leg of the Thinking Stool even more strategically, they seek to discover if the issue at hand is reasonable, that it makes sense—what scientists call critical.

No wonder the word –science — stems from the Latin scientia, for knowledge and from scire “to know.” To know is first to think. And to lead is first to think. On purpose. For added meaning and significance.