Rethinking the Way We Think

Nice to be here.

My name is Erez. I'm a facilitator and account manager in the field of innovation. I work for an international company based in Tel Aviv called SIT. It's kind of a provocative name: it stands for Systematic Inventive Thinking. Most people say: wait, how could that be? Most of my work is to manage or facilitate thinking processes, especially in areas such as innovation, strategy, problem solving, et cetera.

I think I do it for three main reasons. The first one is a characteristic, or a persona. Because in this field of expertise, you have to combine two elements: a very structured, analytical, empirical approach, and at the same time a very creative, hectic, ever-changing approach. And I think it's kind of a complementary set of skills to my personality. This is how I know myself. This is how I grew up. So that's one reason.

The second reason is that when I'm looking around in today's world, for me this is the most exciting field. So I'm doing this because of that.

And the third reason is that I think it will play a bigger role, or will have a very positive impact, in the big picture. The world is changing in many ways, and I think that one of the areas that is overlooked is the changes that we need to accept or embrace when it comes to the way we think about the world.

I think those are slightly two different questions. If I have to find the most fulfilling moments in my life, it will be very hard. When your life is ever-changing and very eclectic, there are so many moments like this, and I just couldn't pick one moment.

But when you ask what's driving me, it's a little easier for me to answer. I think my main drivers are, first, curiosity. Second, my amazing love of and fascination with people. It's the thing that I love more than anything else in the world: people! It's the most complex and independent and authentic creature I came across. So that's the second driver.

And the third driver is change. People don't like to be told what to think, which is understandable. Thank God for that. People hate to be told how to think. We are all convinced that the way we think is the right way to think, the only way to think. And yes, we can change our mind regarding what to think, but not how to do it. So for me, a strong driver, but also a good success indicator, is the ability to influence the way people think. Not what they think, but how they think.

Wow. I like poetry, and I remember reading a poem many years ago. I'm going to try and translate it to English; I'm sorry for losing the aesthetic side of it. It says that if you are drafted, if you are called to fight a war for your country, then you're a patriot. If you are called again, then you're unlucky. And if you are called a third time, then you must be stupid.

If you find yourself in the third war... For me, I think the lowest moments of my life, the hardest moments of my life, were realizing that I'm taking part in a war. Regardless of the political situation, regardless of anything, just the fact that you're taking part in a situation where two groups of people are trying to hurt each other. It's the lowest that mankind can get to, in my experience.

And if I need to point at something that was not only the lowest point in my life, but also probably the one that had the biggest impact on changing my life, it was that. For me now, life is all about creating opportunities for people to be kind to each other. They call us the human race for a reason. So humanity, for me now, is the most important thing.

So I describe it as maybe the most horrific or lowest moment in my life, but I have to say that I benefit from the outcomes, and I'm making sure that people around me will benefit too.

The field that I've been spending the last almost 20 years in is a field that is all about ongoing changing of paradigms and breaking fixedness. So in that sense, it's an ongoing thing.

What I personally see as a big change to drive, and at least in these years I'm very passionate about it, is, as I mentioned earlier, rethinking the way we think. To be even more specific, look at decision-making processes in management roles through history.

Up until the fifties or the sixties, to be a manager, you needed to know what your team knows, and you needed to have a little more experience. But during the 60s and the 70s, we realized that this is not enough to be a good manager. You need to know what they know, you need to have more experience, but you also need to understand a little bit about management.

Come the 90s and 2000s, even that is not enough to be a good manager. You need to know how to manage, you need to know what your team knows, you need to have experience, but you also need to know how this relates to other parts of your organization and other parts of the business, and you need to develop some soft skills. Which is still good, but I'm looking around me now, and it's not enough.

When I look at the conversations or the relationships that I have with my clients, who are usually business leaders or opinion leaders in their fields: up until 10 years ago, it was more about, "Hey, let's talk about this problem," or, "Let's talk about this opportunity." What I get from them now is a call for help, for helping them to think together.

I think one thing that changed tremendously in the last 20, 30 years is complexity. The world is becoming more and more complex. The 2000s were very romantic: new age was all about "Let's make things simple." It was kind of a counter-reaction to complexity.

I think we don't give decision makers, we don't give leaders, not only business leaders but social leaders and political leaders, the tools and the skills to make decisions when they have to consider hundreds of different attributes. Making decisions or making choices 20 years ago meant taking fewer elements into consideration than today. We need to learn how to make decisions in situations of high complexity.

And more importantly, we need to learn how to think together with others. The last 20 years were all about collaboration. Collaboration means how to work with others, but it wasn't about sharing cognitive skills. If I need to predict something for the future, it is this: people who learn to perform well at thinking together with others. And I'm not talking about brainstorming, "I'll tell you what I think, and you tell me what you think." It's a whole different language. People who learn how to think in teams will probably do a lot better than people who still use the team to get inspiration, knowledge and data, and then make decisions alone.

Sorry, it was a long answer. What I think is really important in my field now is providing decision makers, whether they're young or old, whether the organization is big or small, with an additional skill set that helps them to think with others.

Yes, without compromising on accountability, responsibility, a single point of contact, and many elements from the old world. It's funny to call the last 20 years the old world. But there are many management elements that you need to maintain. Business is not going to act like a democracy, where the board will vote on it. At some points, you need to have someone who will take responsibility. You will need to have one leader, but that leader will need to have thinking buddies. This will help her or him to make the right decisions in very complex situations.

When I think "better future", at least now, between us, I don't necessarily think about better economics or better technology, [but] about mankind. And I think we need to find more ways, and new ways, to bridge gaps.

It's not that we have the marketing department and the sales department, "Go get them, it's all about making tons of money", and then we have the corporate social responsibility team, which is usually much smaller, doing their own bit. We need to fuse things together. It's all about fusion. You can't say: "Okay, I'm talking to millennials, so I need to have some conscious icons or tokens on my proposition." It's a change of perception.

So I think it's more of an evolution than a revolution, because I think that by now we understand what needs to be done, and what we're missing is how to do it. We try to implement new approaches, new concepts, using old systems. So we have the new "what", and what we're lacking now is the new "how".

And I'm optimistic, because I know that when you look at evolution, normally people are good at it. We make a lot of mistakes. We follow trends. We tend to admire, we tend to create gurus. Everybody talks about Steve Jobs, but no one can be Steve Jobs, and maybe that's a good thing. So we create idols and we try to follow them. I think the change that I want to see is moving away from creating idols and symbols, and focusing more on local and regional cultures. Creating change through culture, and not through strategy.

I don't know. I'm not sure I want to have a legacy, to be very honest. I'm so involved in and so excited about the present that I don't think too much about the future, at least personally. I don't think too much about my future, and it's not important for me to be remembered. It's important for me to go to bed every night knowing that I did something useful and I did something kind every day. So I don't really know how to answer that question.

So, my two biggest dreams. One, and it's something that I started to work towards, and it's complicated, but I'm on it and I'm looking for opportunities and partners to turn it into something that will grow: I want to create an offering. I want to complement each academic institute, or each training facility, with a curriculum that trains people to think, to have the thinking skills that are required for the near future, for the next 10, 20 years. So I want to create the curriculum for that. It's something I've been developing for the last few years, and I'm ready for the big jump.

The other thing is that I have this dream to establish, and it sounds like it's about size, but it's not the size, it's the impact, the world's biggest center for activism. I think activism is nowadays perceived as some marginal activity, usually by extremists, usually provocative and controversial. For me, it's a lever that could inspire generations. So I want to do it right. I don't want to do it as something small and reactive, but as something proactive, something that can actually initiate big changes in our societies.

Same here!

Thank you! Same to you! Take care!