My father first told me he was proud of me when I did the right thing at the age of six. Another young boy had taken my toy cars and I had steamed home, taken a Jeep’s aerial, and stormed back riddled with righteous anger. Fortunately, once the boy caught sight of me he left in a hurry, and I had the ample opportunity to take his toy cars. However, I only took my own and, when I went to leave, I bumped into my dad, whom had followed my juvenile crusade.There’s plenty of things about my behaviour there that’s questionable, but what I took away from it is that when you act rashly in the moment you gamble far too much on what you don’t know, and power will only amplify the consequences. It’s a lesson I took from that day into every position I’ve been in, from overseeing three hundred volunteers in a regional branch I built myself, to the super-agile industry veteran team I’m in now.There’s a sentiment expressed by both Mike Tyson and Dwight D. Eisenhower roughly along the lines of “Established plans are quickly wrong, but planning explores all options.” When you know everything there is to know about a given situation, it’s not difficult to generate a tailored response to unexpected emergencies. But to get to that informed state, you have to investigate and hypothesize even unlikely scenarios. You must not only indulge your curiosity, you need to train it till you’re habitually investigating all kinds of information. Have a look at my career to see it in action. Even @Nezuban is an example: We’ve sat down and determined policies regarding familial leave, work-from-home, flexitime and stand-up deadlines well before we even hired our first employee. In every policy, we’ve explored every option, drew a clear and cohesive code of ethics, as well as researching relevant laws and other business policy. Will it fall apart as soon as its put into motion? Perhaps. Will we know enough to adapt when that time comes? Absolutely.Drop me a follow if you’re interested in learning a little bit about everything.Interpersonal Politics | Data Analysis | Data Warehousing | Leadership | Teambuilding | Negotiation | Conflict Management | R | Business Development | Volunteer Management | SEO | Project Management