14 Mindsets Traders Can Adopt to Generate Insights By, Ken Long

My good friend, inspiration, and research partner, Professor Angus Fletcher of Ohio State University, had a problem.

He was trying to figure out how to expand the outreach of his world-class research into creativity that uses the power of storytelling and narrative to help professionals in diverse fields. These professionals included Hollywood screenwriters, medical doctors and surgeons, entrepreneurs, military special operations forces, leaders in the Department of Defense, general contractors, and academics.

Because Angus and I were working on a collaborative research venture here at the military college where I teach, this topic came up in conversation.

His specific problem was that he was inside his own fishbowl and simply needed a nudge from someone else, telling him to take his own advice.

If our roles were reversed, he would have no trouble telling me what to do—simply step outside of my routine point of view, adopt the mindset of a different character in the same play, and give myself advice from that alternate point of view. Then, fail by design under controlled conditions. Fail early, fail often, fail forward, gain balance, and learn to walk. Ever experienced that? It works…

He does this so often for others that it turns out it was impossible to apply it to himself. He was too close to his own problem and simply needed my help in learning to let go.

Once he took his own advice, we were able to achieve some staggering results, including a whirlwind set of interviews with global thought leaders from many different professions and publishing a best-selling book, “Field Guide to Creativity for Army Leaders.” This Field Guide has been adopted and taught in the curriculum of the Army University. It was also the #1 book on Amazon as of this writing in the category of Leadership Education.

The key to this explosion was simply giving Angus the powerful story that established the value of his work to people outside of his academic circles.

I gave him that story and stood back to watch the fireworks, which happened right on schedule.

I told him that from a military officer’s point of view, I would value his two-hour executive summary lesson on creativity at $30 billion a year, and the value of increasing creativity between soldiers would be incalculable.

As a result of our collaborations together, my Commanding General has internalized the Fletcher Treatment in Creativity and sees the implications of 2nd and 3rd order effects without being prompted.

When leaders and workers (or coaches and students) engage in synchronized transformative behaviors, there is POWER.

“Trusted Others”

Imagine what the power of micro-improvement in creativity might mean for you in your daily life as a trader or at work in your transactions with trusted others… Find and read the book: “Nudge” by Richard H. Thaler.

Now there’s the rub, the key phrase: “trusted others.”

Let me ask you to look at your own work experience in life…

Estimate how much of your time and energy is spent trying to figure out how the other parties around the table are trying to exploit you in some way. How are they trying to “get you”?

What level of effort do you engage in to protect yourself and your organization against predatory behavior?

After you do that, how much energy and time is left to find ways to exploit opportunities for mutual benefit?

In my work experience, outside of trading, I would conservatively estimate that 90% of my time and energy is spent in self-defense of my organization because of the world that I operate in—national security. And that about 10%, if I am lucky, is then available to pursue opportunities.

It is no wonder we are locked into the status quo.

Imagine you could work in self-directed teams in a safe and trusted environment, where you enter a project with the full knowledge and belief that everyone in that room is committed to each other’s success and mutual benefit? Where people tell the truth as they see it, as best they can, all the time, in support of commonly held beliefs and values.

What if you could turn all of the energy of investigation into leveraging and exploiting opportunities into a mutual benefit?

What would be the enterprise value of that if it were applied to every working meeting and transaction between you and your peers, your customers, and suppliers?

Or between you and your collaborative trading partners?

Now, working with trusted others…where do you find them?

Turns out…That’s the easiest part!!!

You’ll find them in True Storytelling Circles. They may be in other places, but that’s the first place I go to look.

That’s the promise and the reality of True Storytelling as taught by my doctoral mentor, Dr. David Boje, and the quality people at the True Storytelling Institute. I have been working there on a daily and weekly basis intensely for the last three years to become a licensed practitioner. I’ve done the work throughout the Covid era, and as part of my ongoing postdoctoral academic research with my mentor, Dr. Boje.

I’ve learned how to establish True Storytelling Circles that are built on a foundation of safety, trust, and truth, and I have discovered that an unlimited number of opportunities for mutual benefit invariably emerge.

I’ve brought that work into my personal life and in every place I teach.

When you combine the power of Fletcher Creativity and True Storytelling, and a modest touch of Systems Thinking, in a mutually supportive professional environment, it is not surprising to see the transformations.

When you apply that to the practice of trading, here is what can happen.

I bring you a warehouse full of trading ideas, because I want everybody to know everything that I know. But it can feel overwhelming.

This “warehouse” approach to idea generation is expanded in structured training environments like the Core Trading Systems Workshop, where traders are guided through proven frameworks, and the Swing Trading Systems Workshop, which focuses on building practical, tradeable systems for real market conditions.

So, what if you were working with graduates of that course who had developed their own niche systems to meet their own requirements? And what if they had been taught by a master curriculum designer? And, what if this collaboration improved the teacher’s own understanding of their own system? That is synergy and a reciprocal learning environment. That is a transformative power to do good work.

Imagine you checked into a maker’s workshop filled with raw materials, spare parts, industrial-strength tools, trusted others, guides and blueprints, and professional norms, and were simply looking to make a trading system that worked for you and your circumstances.

Imagine that, instead of working by yourself in the dark, you shared a collaborative working space with trusted others and could leverage the work that had already been done under the watchful eye of experienced traders.

This is nothing more than applying the Fletcher Treatment for Creativity to the particular task of developing trading systems. By systematically adopting each of the following mindsets, I believe that we can rapidly develop solutions that not only fit us but also those that are in the same niche that we represent. The different roles include;

• The Architect who designs the strategy
• The Draftsman who crafts the blueprint for specific implementation
• The General Contractor who assembles the members of the team that are going to deliver this product on time, under budget, and to the proper specification, while allowing for adaptation and modification as we go, within reason
• Our “Point Man” is an entry specialist at the front of the formation, who makes first contact with the target; the optimistic speculative trigger puller who gets us into the trade, and then their job is done
• The Fireman, whose job it is to prevent our entry from becoming a disaster, gets us to “not lose plus dinner for two” (meaning you don’t lose your money and even have enough for dinner) as quickly and as reasonably possible
• The Medic who takes care of us and gives us the courage and confidence to take risks
• The Day Shift Manager who executes our routine exit management plan and gets us to the average when we’re routinely better
• The Sniper, whom we invoked to ensure that we get the best payoff possible from above-average wins by understanding the specific context of this special trait
• The Advisor who is ready when you need to phone a friend
• The Coach who helps you see the game and learn to self-manage with continuous improvement
• The Accountant who keeps our numbers straight and properly reports
• The Analyst and Data Scientist who studies large data sets of their trading performance to find ways to improve their process systematically based on evidence
• A Chief of Staff who can integrate all the members of this team and make sure that everybody is contributing to the greater good, and ensures that we have disciplined, systematic thinking, and good morale throughout
• The Owner/Operator of the System, who we are trading, whether that be our children, our estate, the future, a charity, or our own retirement. It could even be you

The Fletcher treatment of creativity ensures that we have a reliable way of quickly adopting different points of view, generating insights, and then applying that to restoring our future. This is done in a way that enables us to take a fresh look at challenges and opportunities and enlist the power of our evolutionary brain to come up with solutions that are good for us in the long run.

When I helped Angus Fletcher see that for the problem and opportunity of disseminating his work beyond academic environments, he was able to use my bumper sticker quote about being valued at $30 billion a year and turn that into interviews with a major British magazine, a BBC radio podcast, in long-form podcast interviews with global thought leaders Jordan Peterson and Malcolm Gladwell, a strategy meeting with a major Hollywood movie studio, and a feature article interview at Martha Stewart online. Right now, we are working on getting an interview with Martha Stewart’s business partner, Snoop Dogg, because I want to see those two in a Zoom meeting together, and I want to persuade Snoop Dogg to become a guest lecturer at our military college, because that would be hilarious.

So, learning to adopt different points of view systematically is nothing more than unleashing the power of our own brain with all of the required skills already on board, and we just need to be reminded how to do that and then have a safe, trusted, and truthful place in which to try it on for size.

I hope some of these ideas give you some creative sparks!