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Harnessing the Flywheel Effect: Turning Experience into Wisdom…
“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.”
Calvin Coolidge
I chose this quote as I begin work on my quarterly review and planning process. Sitting down and reflecting on wins and losses, goals and outcomes, is a critical part of my improvement cycle. The structured practice of reflection is the ‘severe discipline’ necessary to convert knowledge into wisdom. Without pausing to think about what knowledge means, how will we apply it to ourselves differently in the future?
I’m a massive fan of Jim Collins’s “Flywheel Effect” and think this simple yet highly refined concept can bring value to many areas of life. As I reflect on the more profound meaning and application of this quote and apply the flywheel concept, it comes to mind that Experience > Knowledge > Reflection > Wisdom > Application, and this starts over again with new Experiences.
A key lesson is that applying reflection can be a manageable investment of time and energy. It doesn’t have to take hours or days; it just has to happen. Simply pausing and capturing what you have learned from a given experience is the action that can unlock wisdom. Building a structured process of review and reflection that is experientially triggered and/or time-triggered is enough to unlock the wisdom effect. Shoot me a note if you want a copy of the format I use each quarter.
