Clarity Comes From Quiet, Not From More Content

Patrick Lencioni almost photocopied his first book at Kinko's and handed it out to clients himself.

Lencioni has been a friend of my father's for years, and I got to know him too. His first book, The Five Temptations of a CEO, wasn't planned as a book. He'd been observing a handful of real leaders he worked with and built a theory out of it. One client told him, "you should write a book about it." So he wrote it as a fable, deliberately simple, because he wanted his own consulting clients to actually finish it, not nod along and shelve it.

He was seriously considering making copies at Kinko's to hand to clients directly. Then a publisher saw it, bought it, and it became what he calls an accidental bestseller.

What stuck with me most wasn't the book. It was his process. He told me he's not an avid reader of business books, on purpose, because he doesn't want to cloud his own thinking. He does his best thinking in two places: on a running trail, and in the shower... the only two places he's ever truly alone. Everything else is noise competing with three kids, a wife, and a full client schedule.

Two lessons in that.

1. Simple spreads. The framework that travels isn't the one built from the most research. It's the one simple enough that a busy executive actually finishes it.

2. Clarity comes from quiet. Not from consuming more content. From carving out the one place where nobody's talking and your own thinking finally gets room to work.

Where's your version of the trail or the shower, the place you actually think instead of just absorb?