Earlier today I published a post on LinkedIn that said AI scales our blind spots. Here's how I first learned to see mine.

Back in 2010, I ran my first interview series, "5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success." I asked one simple question: what's your best process improvement strategy or tactic that has worked really well for you?

In over 40 interviews, almost no one answered with a framework or methodology. I expected frameworks. So did others.

Everyone answered with experience. And here's what I noticed: when you ask for direct experience, there's nothing to debate. People stop mirroring the usual discourse and start telling you what actually happened and worked. What actually happened almost always meant the unseen, deeper aspects of people, work, and life.

I eventually retired the series because it was never really about process improvement. Then I leveraged what I learned two years later into the six foundational questions of Forward Thinking Workplaces. Those questions attracted a wide and diverse group of people, and each interview revealed more and went deeper.

Then one day I realized the world was looking much different, and I was seeing things I never saw before.

That's when I created SEE DIFFERENT.

But I didn't see how this all fit together until recently. I had no idea I was leading myself to see differently. I simply followed what wanted to emerge. Often, it didn't make any sense. Now the pieces fit together.

Here's what I've learned since: others can travel the same path much faster than I did and start in a place that meets them where they are. It doesn't require years of deep inner work.

Asking different and better questions — and truly listening — will get you there.

Creating spaces where that can happen is what I'm building at SEE DIFFERENT. Above all else, I choose to see differently.

— Bill