An Introduction

You’re in a meeting, listening as your colleagues say the same thing in slightly different ways. You watch people nod furiously and scribble notes, not fully understanding what they could be writing, as nobody is saying anything of use. You try to squash your frustration, thinking, why are people not getting this? It’s not complicated. We could have already finished the work instead of wasting all this time talking. After all, this isn’t the first meeting you’ve had about this particular subject.

You compose your thoughts and cut into the conversation, delivering what you hope will be this meeting’s coup de grâce. You explain what, why and how. You get to the point and express your ideas simply and effectively. You finish and look around at the blank faces. Suddenly somebody else starts talking. They appear to have understood what you said. Progress! A fellow sailor through the sea of stupidity! But alas, they miss; worse, they suggest we all circle back next week. The slap of laptop lids closing fills the room as people stand and congratulate each other on a productive meeting. Why didn’t they get it? Do they not have any common sense?!

Chances are, you have experienced something similar. You know the feelings of exasperation, melancholy, and frustration. Be it your superiors, peers, or subordinates, you have wondered where these seemingly intelligent people’s common sense is hiding. You have questioned your intelligence, ability, communication skills, and, finally, sanity, searching for possible explanations.

I have been in that same meeting many times. So many, I decided to write a book on the subject, and here we are. I plan to lay a path towards becoming your company’s chief common sense officer and equip you to help others find their sense of common sense.

Before we get started, I want to clarify something crucial. There is no such thing as common sense. It is a pseudonym for your unique experience, education, pragmatism, intelligence and ego.

From that list, ego has the most simplistic impact, as I almost always find an inverse relationship between a person’s perceived level of “common sense” and the size of their ego. The rest of the list is harder to examine in isolation and will require further investigation.