Was Bill Gates Lucky? How about Einstein?
June 7th, 2007 by HalWe often discount great accomplishments by saying people were just lucky. The luncheon speaker at the TWI Summit says otherwise. Luncheon speakers are about as good as the conference budget allows. I wasn't expecting much at the TWI Summit. It's the first of its kind conference. While it was the largest meeting of TWI proponents in over 50 years, it was only about 135 people. Boy was I surprised by the luncheon speaker on the first day. Jim Swartz spoke about finding and seizing great opportunities. His talk was based on his book Seeing David in the Stone, by James and Joseph Swartz.
Due to significant Florida weather delays, I had the opportunity to read and finish Seeing David in the Stone in one setting. I am impressed. Very impressed. I shouldn't be. Norman Bodek introduced Jim to me calling him a genius. After listening to his speech, being in a private conversation and reading the book I can see that Norman is right. Not only is he a genius, he's written an easy-to-read and engaging book.
The book is based on many years of private research into what makes the great ones successful. They studied 70 great people to discover what was common among them. In addition to Gates and Einstein, the authors studied Galileo, Edison, Michaelangelo, DaVinci, Pasteur, Curie, Eisenhower, and Walton. The authors identified three groups of behaviors with a total of 12 actions. Here they are:
Finding & Seizing Great Opportunities
- Seize Great Opportunities
- Develop other innovators and high achievers
- Deliver rewards
- Seize rapidly at high-leverage points
- Use superior design and planning processes
- Mobilize Support
- Find common meaning with and negotiate with opposers
- Sell the opportunity to those that are cautious
- Co-create with those eager for opportunity
- Find the highest meanings of others
- Find Great Opportunities
- Select only high-leverage opportunities
- Learn to envision opportunities
- Use powerful learning processes
- Differentiate yourself for opportunity
Jim gave away 80 books at the evening's reception. While people stood in line for the free book, they lingered to have a conversation with the author. I was one who did more than my fair share of lingering. I urge you to do your own lingering with his book.
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June 10th, 2007 at 9:56 am
I’m guessing the authors did not make note of what innumerable leading researchers currently believe these people all had in common. That all of these greats are likely to have had autism? The traits the authors describe are part and parcel, characteristic of persons on the autistic spectrum. It’s a given (as is typically, genius). Unfortunately, these are not traits or characteristics that the average person can easily incorporate into their lives, changing their behaviors.
Just as one cannot “study harder” and learn more to become a genius, minimally, people who are neurologically typical do not have the interest or ability to adopt a lifelong perseverational interest with the end of dominating it utterly. Saying so tho, wouldn’t sell many books.