Welcome to a new season of Leaning Toward Wisdom. It's season 2020. Surely a year of clarity - at least we hope so - for many of us.

I've got some new things in store for you this year. The first is something you're hearing, a different microphone. It's a mic made by a company I'd never heard of before (neither had anybody else), TechZone Audio Products.  I won't bore you with the minutia, but you're hearing more details in my voice and I hope you find it even more pleasing than before. ;)

The biggest new thing centers around my new focus on the power of others. So intense is this urge to talk more about it, to incorporate it in all that I do...that I rebranded my "work" podcast into The Power Of Others. It was the Grow Great podcast.

I can't think of a better way to begin this new season of Leaning Toward Wisdom than to talk about how important it is for us to help each other move forward and get things done. The pursuit of wisdom isn't about just holding good, wise thoughts. It's about making smart, wise choices that will affect our behavior. It's about being better by doing better!========================“You can't plow a field simply by turning it over in your mind.”― Gordon B. HinckleyHe was a famous religious leader, the 15th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yes, I confess I had to Google that whenever I first read this quote. It's among a list of quotes I rather like - quotes about doing things versus just planning to do things.

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."[State of the Union Address January 11, 1962]  ― John F. Kennedy

Back in 1999 I read a book that distilled better than I ever could how I felt about doing things, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton. Many of us are prone to seek more knowledge. We think if we could just learn something more, then success would be certain. The nagging question is, "What if we just did what we already know we should do?" In other words, what if we closed that knowing-doing gap and moved forward doing what we already know.

There are untold thousands of people buying information and training every single day. Training and education they'll never implement. I've long heard that fewer than 2% of any audience will deploy the things they learn from a public speaker or a trainer. And that may be a high estimate.

This also explains why ideas aren't nearly as powerful as we may think. I still get tickled if somebody asks me to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), which I refuse to do any more. People can protect their ideas like they're gold when the reality is the gold is in doing something with that idea. Execution of the idea is where success is found.

Reminds me of that famous quote by head football coach John Mckay when he was coaching the upstart, expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Talk about a man who could produce some of the funniest quotes!

In response to a question about his team's execution, the head coach responded, "I'm all in favor of it." :D

"We didn't tackle well today but we made up for it by not blocking."

The coach was right. We all know it. You have to DO something. Thinking about it won't get it done. Planning it won't either.

“If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else.”      ― Yogi Berra

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”        ― Dwight D. Eisenhower

I love to plan. I want to be prepared. And I'm prone to overthinking. Not enough to not act, but enough to get in my own way. But not about everything. Mostly the things that are incongruent for me. The things that don't quite fit with who or what I am. Dirty Harry said, "A man's gotta know his limitations." I know mine. And I know my strengths. My overthinking leans hard in the areas where I know it's not a natural fit for me...