22/02/2019
Dear all,
I just want to quickly share a few realisations and insights I had one day after the fantastic TEDxDocklands 2019 yesterday.
Insight #1:
Almost all of the TEDx speakers have consulted big companies who are big names in their respective industries.
As much as the size of these big companies is their source of competitive advantage, it can also be their very big source of disadvantage.
Big companies can be too hierarchical, too rigid and too proud and too slow to change and to adapt to an increasingly dynamic environment.
That is why big companies love seek out individuals like those who spoke at TEDxDocklands2019 yesterday.
These are the very people who thrive on being themselves, doing their own thing so that they can contribute to humanity in their own unique and most efficient and most effective ways.
That’s how and why certain big companies will always get bigger and more successful.
Likewise if you and I want to move ahead, we must seek out these amazing, innovative out-of-the-box thinkers!
Insight #2:
You might say that all these speakers have so many wonderful things to teach us, the audience. Well, yes and no.
Yes. Of course! Otherwise they would not have been invited to speak, right???
No, besides having lots of amazing things to teach us they also believe they have many things to from everyone yesterday. I saw how passionately they seek out other speakers and also members of the audience as well.
Because these people, after hearing each of them spoke yesterday, and some of which I have talked to personally as well, as different as they are from each other, do share one other common quality - each of them has a student in them.
They are constantly learning even while they were giving a talk. Or even when someone approached them with questions.
They have this curiosity of a primary school student. And when you approached them with your questions, you can tell they are genuinely interested in your questions as if, now that you have asked them a question in the way you did, they have now discovered another new way of looking at something in the way they have not done before.
Put another way, they are great teachers because they have always been ready to learn from anyone and anything and any situation any time.
Insight #3:
They are willing. These amazing individuals are very willing to share, willing to add value, willing to push their limits and willing to help others push their limits so that others too can enjoy what they have enjoyed in the process of pushing their own limits as well as after having pushed their limits.
I used to think entrepreneurs are people who hated their jobs and therefore they started their own companies. That perception is not completely right. Because I can see that these people would still be willingly contribute to their employers even if they are still working for a company today. But because they are so willing, it has become a natural progression that one day they will have to start a company in order to scale their contributions to the world at large.
In other words, we should play whatever cards we are being dealt with. And work our way from and out of there.
We should worry only about the process that we are have control over and not the outcomes which we may or may not have control over.
Finally, I want to thank, from the bottom of my heart, Tansel Ali, Monique Toohey, Jaida Simone and Yanni Kourounis (among them are amazing and accomplished TEDx speakers and event hosts) and their entire team for putting up a such great event and are generous and trusting enough to let me share my thoughts on this amazing platform.
Thank you Tansel for being such a great mentor and friend to me all these years. I can never thank you enough.
Love you all, people!
Best regards,
Ken
