Find People Who Recognize the "Implied"

/

My brother-in-law recently shared a slide with me from a management presentation he was reviewing from his medical residency program (much respect for doctors and their lifelong learning).  The topic was only a small part of the presentation however an entire course could be based on that one slide.

It posed the idea of identifying people in organizations who can recognize and identify the "implied".  These are the natural leaders and should be considered closely when developing culture and implementing change.

Every activity within our daily work involves a deeper mission that plays in the background.  Not everyone considers this when confronted with a specific goal - it's easy to only pay attention to the task at hand.  It's the people who consistently see the big picture through the minutia who I'm talking about.  These are the people to pay attention to when rallying support for the cause.

Even though we're thinking about it, we don't always spend the time to verbally tie everything we do to our long term vision.  This is the concept here - finding the people who naturally see the connection will support the vision even during their day-to-day tasks.

These individuals may not be in formal management positions, but they go a long way when it comes to the culture of an organization.  We know changing culture takes a lot of time and is one of the hardest things to do, but identifying the people who can see the implied tasks and mission behind it all will bring a higher chance of success.

So how do you identify these types of people?  That's the tricky part, and there aren't any hard-and-fast rules to do it.  Here are some suggestions on things to look for - 

  • they respond most when having a conversation about your vision
  • they don't require as much explaining "why" when you're talking about implementation and they consider things early on that you didn't
  • they seem to deliver exactly the information you need even if you don't specifically request it
  • they bring up [relevant] organizational level topics when talking about details

There are a lot of people out there who can recognize the implied, you just have to find them.  Happy hunting.