Please Read Carefully

Again with the collisions..

Over the summer, on a lazy Saturday morning, I stumbled across a garage sale with a slew of business textbooks. Most of them were on Organizational Behaviour, and as usual, I bought them all. I figured with all of the staleness in organizations around motivation and innovation, there might be something worth passing on...

Fast forward to last week, when I was scouring the web for videos for an upcoming workshop on 'Execution and Accountability'. I came upon a clip from the Kellogg School featuring Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE. His take is that his role is overwhelmingly based in Organizational Behaviour. If you have some time check it out. (Real Player Required get it here)

Fast forward again to this morning where I went to check out my newest 'must read' blog Slacker Manager, and I found an interesting post on 'Managing Your Boss'. Halfway through the post there is a section on perception.. with the following:

Read the following text:

Finished Files are the Re-
sult of Years of Scientif-
ic Study Combined with the
Experience of Many Years

Got it? Makes no sense, huh? Don't worry about that. Read it again and just count the number of times the letter 'F' occurs.

How many did you count? If you counted less than six, go read it again and count the number of times the word 'of' occurs. In a group of 20 people, 2/3 of them will see the letter 'F' occurring only three times. Often, you can have them read the paragraph over and over and they'll still miss the word 'of.' You probably get the idea, but in a group of people, it's a pretty dramatic example of how all of us perceive reality in different ways. We'll see things differently from the boss, who will see things differently from our co-worker, and so on.

Needless to say, I got caught. Perception gap. Reminds me of the time in 7th grade where I was caught with this one..


My point is, we deal with people. It's not a game, it's a science. In 2006 there will be a strong push towards understanding the science of people. That will get them going..

Remember, you read it here first...