Major in thinking, not technology (aka bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger).

Last week we ran the first Million Dollar Plus program in Sydney. MDE Core is our flagship program for helping clever people be commercially smart. MDE Plus is our new program for accelerating that journey. Craig Rispin, our futurist in residence, came in and did a section on technology platforms. If you haven’t met Craig, he is an endearing nerd who has accidentally become cool by being nerdy in all the right areas (although given he’s a futurist, it's probably not completely accidental). He worked at Apple in the early days of Apple, gets tips on his website from the Vice President of Google, has 400 recommendations on LinkedIn and actually understands how to use Twitter.

I used to tutor high school maths, and what made me good at that was that I understood the maths from first principles. It wasn’t just that I knew how to apply the formula, I actually understood where the formula came from, which meant I could explain it three different ways if I needed to. Craig is like that with the technology – he understands it from first principles. Which means he can explain it so that those of us who aren’t fluent in computer-speak actually understand what he’s talking about.

He said some really cool things about why it's better to use Google to host your email accounts (they will get through more spam filters), why you don’t need a website before blue belt (your LinkedIn profile is sufficient until Green Belt), and what you need to get started (and indeed what will get you to black belt) in terms of website, CRM, email system, project management and payment gateway.

The message I took away was that our job is to major in our thinking, not technology. The technology is critical in our practice – can’t run a practice without it. But we don’t need to spend a day researching all the different website solutions out there. There are Mentors like Craig and Gihan who have done all that work for us. Let’s just take their advice, use the solutions they suggest, and get on with our job – thinking, selling and delivering our expertise.

My response after his talk was, in the immortal words of Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral “bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger”. I realised that some of the solutions I currently used and had invested time and money in getting used to were heading out the door. But now that I’ve reconciled myself to that, I’m very excited about implementing it all.

Love to hear your thoughts on majoring in thinking, not technology.