Numerical fluency helps leaders kick ass
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Leaders that understand how exponential growth works responded much faster to the coronavirus outbreak. Could investing in better numerical fluency take your leadership to the next level?
I’m unashamedly hyper-competitive. One of my worst nightmares would be if I was somehow a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
Few of us would ever purposefully and knowingly enter a contest carrying such a significant handicap. But people as wise as Charlie Munger will tell you that this is exactly what happens when we go through life with a lack of foundational numerical fluency.
Centuries ago Galileo famously concluded that scientific reality is often revealed only by math. It’s almost like math is the language of God or the universe.
A positive attitude towards the value of math translates well in our everyday practical lives. For instance, how much sooner would you have realized how bad the coronavirus outbreak could potentially become if you had a solid understanding of how exponential growth works?
The same goes for many areas of our business and personal lives. Think of the power of compounding and how that affects your approach to saving, investing and borrowing.
Believing that a skill is worth investing in does not mean one will do it. Most leaders don’t have a growth mindset in the area of numerical fluency. I have an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics but still feel that I could benefit from brushing up in this area.
Few of us would ever purposefully and knowingly enter a contest carrying such a significant handicap. But people as wise as Charlie Munger will tell you that this is exactly what happens when we go through life with a lack of foundational numerical fluency.
Centuries ago Galileo famously concluded that scientific reality is often revealed only by math. It’s almost like math is the language of God or the universe.
A positive attitude towards the value of math translates well in our everyday practical lives. For instance, how much sooner would you have realized how bad the coronavirus outbreak could potentially become if you had a solid understanding of how exponential growth works?
The same goes for many areas of our business and personal lives. Think of the power of compounding and how that affects your approach to saving, investing and borrowing.
Believing that a skill is worth investing in does not mean one will do it. Most leaders don’t have a growth mindset in the area of numerical fluency. I have an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics but still feel that I could benefit from brushing up in this area.