Epiphanies

June 13, 2011 by 4 Comments

I see my development as a person and a professional as a timeline filled with two elements – the slow, steady accumulation of wisdom that comes from experience, and the intrusion of epiphanies.

(from Dictionary.com – Epiphany: a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something)

For instance, I clearly remember the ground-shaking impact of the central message contained in the books First, Break All the Rules/Now, Discover Your Strengths. The insight that people can only perform at their best when working in alignment with their core strengths radically changed my world view and has profoundly shaped my thinking to this day.

What about you? What have been some of your epiphanies (people, books, talks, even tweets)? Please share in the comments!

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Filed under Innovation, Inspiration

About Steve Woodruff
Steve Woodruff is a blogger, a Connection Agent, and a consultant in the pharma/healthcare industry. He specializes in helping people and companies make mutually beneficial connections.

4 Responses to Epiphanies

  1. Sara Jean Goodman says:
    June 14, 2011 at 12:27 pm

    Steve, you were my most recent epiphany! Many months of pondering where to begin to look for my next career, I was stuck. My problem question, “how should I know where to look if I don’t know where I want to go with my career?”

    Steve came to Chicago and sat down with me just talking for an hour and a half, and finally! An epiphany! Just by conversing, through Steve’s listening and asking questions he helped me realize what I love about marketing…. and where I should head next. I love building marketing strategies, brands, campaigns from the bottom up, or as Steve put it, “from an empty tray, and making it full.”

    The people you meet can share so many ideas and insight, not only about themselves but about you as well. Thank you for my epiphany, Steve.

  2. Sean McGinnis says:
    June 14, 2011 at 4:15 pm

    Durn it Sarah! Ya beat me to it! +1

  3. JoeCascio says:
    June 14, 2011 at 6:00 pm

    The biggest revelation I’ve had in the past few years was hearing Jason Fried, founder of 37Signals, speak at a meeting of Providence Geeks, a monthly meetup of entrepreneurs and technologists in Rhode Island.

    As a software developer, a techie, I’d been told my whole career by the “business” people that we had to write specs, do estimates, commit to schedules, go to stultifying project meetings and be prohibited from talking to customers. In my gut, I always knew this was wrong. Software development is a process of discovery, iteration.

    Jason said out load what I’d always known was true. “Planning is overrated.” “Meetings are toxic.” “Don’t write a functional specifications document”. “The office is where you get interrupted.” It was the most liberating talk I’d ever heard. It was software development the way someone who can actually write code would do it.

    And now I’m very happy to be applying these liberating principles to my own software development business.

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