I used to manage live conferences with up to 3,000 people in the room. Every morning, before anyone walked through the doors, our team would say a proverb out loud together; stating a general truth. A kind of declaration. It went something like this:
Go to the people. Start with what they know. Build on what they have. And of the best leaders, when their task is done, the people will remark: "We have done it ourselves."
I've thought about those lines a lot lately. It’s been years since I spoke them out loud. 20 years of words sitting in my throat. I finally said them out loud, alone, in an empty room. Just me and the whisper.
I don't know what I expected. A sign, maybe. Something to confirm I was ready.
What I got instead was silence. And then, somehow, that was enough.
The best idea I could hand you, even if it's genuinely good, can still backfire. Because if it's mine and not yours, you'll follow it for a while and then drop it. You'll feel like something's missing. You'll be right.
The systems, the frameworks, the strategies: they only stick when they grow out of your own process of discovering what you actually value and how you actually think. Otherwise you're just wearing someone else's clothes and wondering why nothing fits.
That's the whole reason I'm building D.E.E.P. Design, a new BraveSpace framework for creative process. Discover, explore, experiment, plan. In that order, starting with you.
If you want to know more about how I work and what that kind of deep listening looks like in practice, come read about it here.
