*This content is brought to you by Tracking Success
By Alex van den Heever & Grant Ashfield*
Using an ancient African practice as a modern-day guide to life and business.
In the last essay you learnt about the first activity of ‘finding the right track’ in the Tracking Success Pathway. We now take a step further to following the tracks.
Activity two – Follow the Track
The focus in this phase now shifts to the following of a trail of signs.
For the wildlife tracker, signs include footprints, scent markings, feeding sign, alarm calls and many others.
For a business leader these signs may be diminishing staff engagement, shifting market behaviour, new trends in innovation, customer satisfaction and many others.
A curious mindset here is key. Curiosity is a state of mind characterized by a hunger to learn something new. To go beyond the surface of things. It’s usually borne of a desire to solve a problem.
This phase is not like following your dog on the beach.
It’s more complex than that. The signs you are looking for are almost always feint and obscure.
Hence the ‘follow’ stage involves the deliberate act of searching.
It requires one to be highly attuned to subtle differences, variations, and characteristics that define a specific trail.
A seemingly insignificant scuffmark may be crucial information to staying on track.
What’s more, the nature of the trail is constantly evolving. A lion trail over stony ground differs from one in loose sand or through tall grass.
The tracker therefore needs to be adaptable. Open to adjusting their perspective.
Ultimately, they must connect all these bits of evidence – to build a cohesive story, about the animal’s behaviour.
The common trap in the following phase is hyper-focus.
Continuous intense focus actually impairs the trackers’ ability to notice things happening around them. For a lion tracker, hyper focus may mean missing an important bird alarm call indicating danger ahead.
A softer focus is preferred. This allows the bigger picture to emerge. For connections to be made between apparently unrelated pieces of information.
Expert trackers constantly shift their focus between the detail and the wider environment. They zoom in and they zoom out.
This focus shifting, open state of mind, helps to take in a wide range information allowing for the formation of new ideas. New theories.
The mindset of constant curiosity ensures we live life in a state of creative response to the world around us.
Business leaders can create an environment where curiosity thrives. The rewards for doing so are great. They do this by embracing new perspectives, encouraging exploration, and rewarding people for innovation and new ideas.
See www.trackingsuccess.tv to learn how you and your team can adopt the mindset of a tracker.
Image credits: Follow the Track – Ian Thomas*
