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The Explanation Age - Next-generation Thought Leadership Coaching
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  • The Speaker
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  • The Method
    • Story Thinking
    • Option Outline
    • 8 Degrees of Reason
    • The Symbiotic Table of Knowledge
  • Contact

Questions

  • You will only find answers to the question being asked. — John W Lewis
  • Knowledge is no longer the ultimate​ power – questioning is power. — John W Lewis
  • You can lead a horse to knowledge but you cannot make it thirst. ​— John W Lewis
  • All knowledge is just an answer to a question. We should teach questioning skills before knowledge. — John W Lewis
  • You are what you ask. — John W Lewis
  • One man’s HOW is another man’s WHY. ​— John W Lewis
  • Are rhetorical questions really rhetorical? — John W Lewis
  • Are you asking me a question from curiosity or from conviction? — John W Lewis
  • We control our destiny from the balance of curiosity (?) and conviction (!). — John W Lewis​
  • Curiosity killed the cat, and conviction killed the rat. — John W Lewis
  • Three strikes and you’re out because three curiosities brings conviction. — John W Lewis
  • Without curiosity, there would be no significant innovation, or significant foul-ups. — John W Lewis
  • A fact is just today’s conviction, which may or may not be true, today or tomorrow. — John W Lewis
  • Are you fact-finding or truth-seeking? — John W Lewis
  • There will always be those who give themselves the false sense of limited choices. — John W Lewis
  • Question everything, including the limitations of your perspective. — John W Lewis
  • You can keep people from questioning if you can convince them it’s still working. — John W Lewis
  • You will eventually lose if you refuse to muse. ​— John W Lewis
  • If a leader is not leading change, then what are they leading? — John W Lewis​

Learning

  • We are born as Learners, not as Knowers. — John W Lewis
  • We learn by trying, not by doing. — John W Lewis
  • If learning is fun then learning about learning should be ecstatic. — John W Lewis
  • Starting with WHY is good (your motive). Starting with WHEREFORE is better (your story). ​— John W Lewis
  • Learning is the gaining of knowing, satisfied with some degree of reason. — John W Lewis
  • The fast learner can recite the answers, but the slow learner can solve the problems. — John W Lewis
  • You can teach wisdom to the ignorant but not to the arrogant. — John W Lewis
  • Most people are Knowers not Learners, because they know how to memorize (and defend) but not how to learn (and unlearn). — John W Lewis
  • The worst possible mental state of any organization is having a poor definition of learning. — John W Lewis
  • To become a Thought Leader there is a period of time that must be spent being a Pioneer. — John W Lewis
  • Thought Leaders understand that learning is more than just memorizing “what works.” They also know what to do when it “won't work” and what to do when it “could work.” — John W Lewis
  • Perspective drives perception. What you see is what you are positioned to see. — John W Lewis
  • Situational awareness requires an understanding of both the observed and the observer; both insight and perspective; both evidence and premise. — John W Lewis
  • Too often, we view innovation as an unpredictable event, which is set apart from us, as if there is no way to prepare for, initiate, and capture the process. — John W Lewis
  • Judgment helps us learn, but condemnation only serves our confirmation bias. — John W Lewis
  • Single loop learning is for productive goals; double loop learning is for inventive goals. — John W Lewis
  • Productive goals involve mistakes; inventive goals involve learnings. — John W Lewis
  • History repeats itself for one reason and one reason only: the generational loss of lessons through the erosion of appreciation within education. — John W Lewis
  • Appreciation is a required organizational learning objective, regardless whether Bloom can measure it in the classroom or not. — John W Lewis
  • When you can teach a course on Critical Thinking, but can’t test the students for understanding, pedagogy is the problem, not the curriculum. ​— John W Lewis
  • All organizations are “learning” organizations – some with more learning disabilities than others. — John W Lewis​
  • The only real sustainable solution is a real learning organization. — John W Lewis​
  • Education is currently run from evaluation models, not learning models – and the base measurement is memorization skills, not questioning skills. This is why we are unprepared for the Fourth Industrial Revolution – we are promoting the wrong skills and the wrong people. — John W Lewis

Knowledge

  • My answer is not simplistic; it is elegant. — John W Lewis
  • There is no singular without a set. — John W Lewis
  • While dichotomies appear equal, IS has more power than NOT. — John W Lewis
  • The real problem with stupidity is that it doesn’t stop at the doorstep of self-assessment. — John W Lewis
  • Stop seeking concise knowledge and start seeking consequential knowledge. — John W Lewis
  • Science becomes an obstacle to progress when we forget that this shorthand term represents the scientific method of reasoning. — John W Lewis
  • We act on what we understand, and should expect poor results from poor understanding. — John W Lewis
  • The reasons for and behind everything we know come from an explanation. — John W Lewis
  • Sometimes we pretend we are listening to the voice of a viable alternative opinion, when in actuality we are just hearing a classroom interruption by an uninformed student. — John W Lewis
  • What gets measured gets done – but what gets modeled gets measured. — John W Lewis
  • Those who understand the least are the most confident. — John W Lewis
  • You’re either telling the whole story or usurping authority. ​— John W Lewis
  • A Change Agent is only as good as their model. — John W Lewis
  • OCR works because of the R. — John W Lewis
  • Expedience towards knowing can limit the questions towards understanding. — John W Lewis​
  • After decades of developing knowledge workers, it’s time to start developing knowledge leaders. — John W Lewis
  • Understanding is the knowledge of the whole story from at least two perspectives. — John W Lewis
  • If you are just an Expert, your job is about to be outsourced or embedded in a microchip. — John W Lewis
  • Without a map we are lost, in geography and epistemology. — John W Lewis

Decisions

  • Policy-making is mandatory – politics is optional. — John W Lewis
  • It is better to decide based on error preference than on preference alone. — John W Lewis
  • Data without knowledge is useless. And knowledge without data is a useless education. ​— John W Lewis
  • For matters of the heart, I trust the musician over the scientist. — John W Lewis
  • Being reckless is not wreck-less. — John W Lewis
  • Life is not a linear equation. — John W Lewis
  • I can write, and I can edit, but I can’t edit what I write. — John W Lewis
  • If you want to go all out, you have to be all in. — John W Lewis
  • In an operating room, I prefer my doctor’s name be followed by M.D. rather than Ph.D. — John W Lewis
  • You will not reach your potential until you realize you have more than 5 senses. — John W Lewis
  • You can rely on your eyes as long as your goals are not over the horizon. — John W Lewis
  • When we don’t think from our sense of balance, we appear like children gathering fish on a pre-tsunami beach. — John W Lewis​
  • When we don’t think from our sense of balance, we think with the minds of locust. — John W Lewis
  • These words are the primary enemy of innovation and sustainability: It works for me today. — John W Lewis
  • A lie of omission, ironically, is the biggest lie we can tell. — John W Lewis
  • Within dysfunction, authority is granted to those who are the most offended. — John W Lewis​
  • The implication, not the evidence, is what stops many from accepting the truth. ​— John W Lewis
  • As now fights later, only maturity considers the now we will want later. ​— John W Lewis
  • Stop trying to build trust. Build transparency – the trust will follow. — John W Lewis​

Life

  • It is easier to believe in something than to research it beforehand. — John W Lewis
  • ​If you want to understand the world, understand organizational learning disabilities. — John W Lewis
  • The meaning of life is to determine whether our life has meaning. — John W Lewis
  • I explain, therefore I am. — John W Lewis
  • Intention is a dimension. ​— John W Lewis
  • Hear at 528 Hz, because we are not just listeners of sound, we are resonators of soundwaves. — John W Lewis
  • Find a good addiction before a bad one finds you. — John W Lewis
  • Our educational institutions operate from evaluation models, not learning models. ​— John W Lewis
  • Our educational institutions are unfortunately driven by the tyranny of the tester. — John W Lewis
  • It is impossible to deny yourself something and not gain something else. — John W Lewis
  • It is impossible to have disruption without both problem and opportunity. — John W Lewis
  • Some will sacrifice themselves to give to others; they are the stars. Some will sacrifice others to give to themselves; they are the black holes. — John W Lewis
  • Teaching/Parenting is a balance between looking out for, and giving in to, the Student/Child. — John W Lewis
  • Recognizing that we may want what does not work, that there is such a thing as insidious want, is what separates the adults from the children. — John W Lewis
  • The truly ingenious ideas can only come from the truly tortured mind. — John W Lewis
  • A horse that has been broken does not know it is broken – such is the nature of blindness – and total control. ​— John W Lewis
  • Though we may stand so close today, you and I travel through space and time on vastly separated planes, which merely intersect, here, and now. — John W Lewis
  • Society can be explained, knowing it is full of pampered children that have not yet learned consequence, and unloved children that are still acting out. ​— John W Lewis
  • Our life’s struggle is like an undercover cop, remembering the good of our purpose while surrounded by evil.​ ​— John W Lewis
  • Falling in love with this world would be like the caterpillar falling in love with the silky cocoon. ​— John W Lewis
  • First we say someone should do something; then a few say they will do it; then fewer still get it done. — John W Lewis
  • Many are Knowers; Some are Learners; Few are Truth Seekers. — John W Lewis​
  • Flow is normal. Mindless routine is abnormal. — John W Lewis​
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