Welcome to Module 3, and we are outside to talk about life hacks. What is a life hack? Well, look, hacks are older age. I never even knew what the word meant a few years ago. Then of course, we all learned only too well about cyber hacks. Somehow the word hacks started to go mainstream. More common, usage to signify something useful, often a shortcut, to even the name of an Emmy Award winning comedy series on HBO starring the legendary comedian and actress Jean Smart. In this module, we're talking about the good type of hack to be sure. I think about it as a useful trick, a shortcut, but something important, something practical, something relevant. A good hack sometimes seems obvious in retrospect, but that doesn't change the fact that most people just don't do it. I learned these hacks in different ways, sometimes from researching the issue, sometimes by paying attention. In my case, more than four decades of paying attention, often by talking to lots of people to learn what they do. When you do all of that, you start to see certain patterns. Patterns for what is more likely to work, and patterns for what is more likely to be less successful. I suppose we can call it a bit of wisdom as well. I could probably put together an entire course on life hacks as the list of possibilities seems to grow week by week. For this module, I selected five of my best, each closely related to our work lives. I also wanted to highlight life hacks that tie back into our personal leadership, the overall theme of this entire course. One of the things I learned over the years is that good ideas have legs. They should not be locked into a narrow slot as a solution to a narrow problem. The common expression, think outside of the box, refers to how when confronted with a problem or challenge, we might consider thinking beyond the confines of that problem to come up with ideas to deal with it. Can you think of an example where you did this? I bet you can. For me, it might have been when I started coaching executives years ago about their company's strategy and competitive position. To prepare, I spent some time looking at what professional psychologists do with and for their clients, even though I would not be interacting, of course, with my executive clients on interpersonal or psychological concern. I wanted to see what will I learn from digging into a related but different field. I learned a lot, not the least being that people love to talk about themselves. Coaches can be much more effective when they're active listeners who create a comfort level for their clients to talk. That turned out to be quite beneficial in my own work. Well, the reverse is also true. A good idea or a good way of thinking about a particular problem or issue or challenge can be applied to different problems and different issues. Rather than start with a problem and look for answers that are not obvious, the reverse hack is to start with a good idea and look for places where that idea can be applied beyond its original intent in a valuable way. Let me pause to make sure you're tracking what I'm saying. I've actually done this in many places throughout this Strategic Leadership Coursera specialization. For example, back in the first course in the series, lessons learned from the Why Smart Executives Fail project, I gave learners a bunch of ideas on how to evaluate a company's strategy and what some of the vulnerabilities to that strategy may be. It turns out that the same logic can be applied far beyond corporate strategy to how we think about and manage our own careers. Just like value can migrate from one part of your value chain, remember value chain, that set of activities a company does the be in business with some of those activities generating outsized values and others much less or not at all. Just like value can migrate from one part of your value chain to another part of your value chain, yeah, merchandising and e-commerce is a common example, so too could value migrate from one part of your skillset to another. Just thing about AI robotics, automation in general, all of which are threats to certain jobs that rely on old time skillsets. By the same token, thing about data analytics, mobile apps, and coding, there are opportunities for people with the accompanying skillsets. What works for a company today will not necessarily work for a company tomorrow, and what works for your own skillset and career today might not work for you tomorrow. That's an example of applying an idea in one sphere to help solve or understand a challenge in another area. There are really a lot of life hacks and this module, I get to share some of my favorites with you. As always, I've designed application exercises to help you apply the hacks to your own work, to your own life, which is really where the action is, right? Let's get started.
