I’m back from my mini-sabbatical. I think once the exhaustion wears off, my mental acuity, as well as my productivity, will be better than they were before I left. One thing that I can already feel, however, is that I’m refreshed. Let me explain why this might just be important to your business thinking. 
It’s not so much the break from the daily grind although there is an awful lot to be said for that as well. It’s that my perspective has been recentered. My golf group consists of a dozen of us. We have folks from all over the country (including one guy who’s now living in Thailand). We work in different business sectors – lawyers, media folks, defense contractors, consultants, and others. We’re all senior people, and we have the complete spectrum of political views in the group. In short, we haven’t siloed ourselves into an echo chamber, where confirmation bias can run rampant. We have a few common interests (golf and good food among them) but from there, we’re very diverse.
How is this refreshing? I won’t speak for the other guys, but it forces me to listen to different points of view which come from a different experience set. Ask yourself how often you’re speaking only with people in your own company or your own business sector. That’s not a broad enough view, in my opinion. It’s scary once we get outside of our own group-think bubble (which can be as small as a department or as big as an industry) but it’s absolutely required of us if we’re going to continue to be effective. Sure – we read the newspaper and we watch the news and we probably have the news come to us via various social media. What’s even better is an extended person-to-person discussion, and that’s what I had over the last few days with the boys. It invigorates one’s brain and forces you to be certain of your facts, at least if the group is as smart and experienced as mine is.
So I’m back, with lots of energy and, hopefully, a few new thoughts stemming from my refreshed perspective. Stay tuned, won’t you please?
Consult Keith 