Microsoft's Leadership Principles are "Create Clarity", "Generate Energy", and "Deliver Success". The rolling out of these principles nearly a decade ago was accompanied by a video from CEO Satya Nadella. When Satya was expanding on the Create Clarity principle, he said, "Don't propagate the noise … propagate the signal." That comment itself was very clarifying for me, and I have held onto Satya's words since then, repeating them regularly to my team and to my mentees.
"Tomorrowmind"1 is a terrific book by Gabriella Kellerman and Martin Seligman that explores how to thrive in an environment of much uncertainty. Early in this book, in a section named "The Nature of Change", they gave a lovely detailed description that furthers Satya's above line. "In 2000, 400 million people, primarily in North America, were online. Today it's 5 billion. That's 5 billion points of origin, 5 billion points of amplification and mutation, for any piece of information -- for any ripples or rapids in the whitewater around us. The size of that ripple corresponds to the size of the impact that each piece of information, or each global event, will have. The ripples will interact -- some will amplify each other, others may cancel each other out. Each of us sits amid these billions of ripples every day, deciding which to attend to, which to ignore, and which might signal a life-altering shift we must get ahead of."
The volume of noise in the system is increasing at an exponential rate. Without intentionally amplifying the signal, we will descend further into chaos. All of the noise will make us deaf.
This is an ongoing fight to increase our signal-to-noise ratio. This is not a battle that any one of us can singularly win. It is enough individuals stepping up that will ensure that we don't collectively lose. Be the signal you want to hear in the world.
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