"What is the future vision we are climbing towards? - What is a future outcome I would like to be part of?"

***

A rabbi is watching a group of young boys attempt to climb a very flimsy ladder to the top of a tree. Each boy takes his turn and each, at some point, falls back to the ground. Yet only one boy succeeds in climbing it. Asks the Rabbi to this young man - "why do you think you reached the top when your friends did not".

"The others fell when they focused on where they had come from, I was focused on where I was going, and how much higher I had to go"

***

 

Two great conversations happened to (with?) me today. [you can read more about the conversations below*] 

Together two streams met: my ongoing thinking around the intersection of appropriate use of technology/media selection, and the importance of dialogue and human communication - conversations and stories, and also, how I conceive of strategy and consulting, and why I see stories as key.

Beyond Problem Solving

Let’s start with the latter. Too often we are bound in a world that defines a problem in a point in time and goes about solving it (often to the point of finding more problems. Ok so lots of us know this and we have attempted all realms of ways to move out of that: mediation, facilitation, creative thinking and so forth. Yet if you look around the world, particularly in business/organizations but all sorts of other places to, you will still see that most people spend a lot of time and money paying for a strategic plan. Ie A plan that plots out a set of things that addresses the current state of thinking and projects that and the past forward. Now I am not saying that the past shouldn’t be honoured or remembered. What I am saying is that if we are looking at a strategy of what we want to grow towards, what we want to become, then perhaps it is wise to have inkling of what we are trying to grow towards?

An alternative action: Take a Point in The Future You Are Working Towards and Start there

Thus, a quick way to move outside of the problem-solution-more problem-solution mindspace - pick a future point, a vision of where what (and why) you want to be/become. Then imagine / put yourself there. Now work backwards in time and space at the steps you have to take. Make room for windchanges up there.

How to Spread this? A Story - Everyone Speaks Story

Now, how many of us have spent a lot of time and money on strategic planning processes only to find that there is a brilliant document/report created that isn’t shared beyond ‘those who need to know’ and tends to hang out in a drawer. I remember one organization, where I was sitting on the Board, who refused to show me their strategic plan on the grounds that it was confidential. Yes, it is. And when they finally did it took two weeks for someone to find the file. As far as I am concerned, everyone in your company - your janitor to your CEO, should know your strategy. If your strategy is sitting in a drawer/computer somewhere and no-one knows it, tangible or not, that is one very expensive piece of tangible!

Moreover, how many of you have been in many a ’strategic conversation’ where a. most people don’t understand/care for strategy and b. most people have a different opinion about what a strategy is in the first place! ie not everyone is speaking the same language [you can try this at home/work - ask a group of people to write a sentence about what strategy means on a post-it note and then share the responses...that said, even if you yield similar responses, try this idea anyway...never hurts to try something different!]

What everyone DOES speak is story. So perhaps the question is, after we go through a process of a future vision of what we want to be, is to encapsulate and send that around in a story, or a collection of different stories?[thanks Ashraf^]

How to Begin: Ask a New Question and Come to Be, (instead of Be what you already are and were)

Which leads us back to the question at the top of this post - "What is a future outcome I would like to be part of?".*  instead of asking "what is the problem I would like to solve" or "what is the change I want to make", "what do I want to change in the world" , present and past centred questions, perhaps we need to reflect more what, who and how we want to be? What is the future vision we are growing/climbing towards? and in asking those questions, move ourselves towards be-coming. Ie We come towards the ‘be’, becoming it…rather than being what we are and coming back to that. 

In summary: Choose a point in the future, focus on it, look at what steps/rungs you have to take to get there from there to where you are, describe that vision, share it in story…and become it!

I look forward to your feedback. And any organization interested in experimenting on this can contact me. I can’t guarentee the outcome, but I can guarentee AN outcome that makes sense to your organization. And a fun process that can be shared will come out

* * * *

^Special thanks to Ashraf Ramzy for reflecting my conceptualization back to me. There are of course other’s who think similiarly, including Kevin Nuttel and Victoria Ward. (via Victoria Ward via workingstories)

~Special thanks to Gus,  Jochem and James for some play with new skype conference calls during which this question popped out. After Gus’s comment about butterflies.

photograph source

Addendum: Musing About the Converstions - interplay of communication, media/technology, human inter-relationship

*Both involved strangers that I met via friends of friends. All were a result of a technology mediated process (one initiated via email, another via skype) though both were the result of exisiting human relationships. Both mentioned butterflies (in response to my new tagline "small change –> big impact") and the butterfly effect: a butterfly flaps it’s wings off the coast of Brazil and sets off a tornado in Texas). And lots of cross-cultural stuff going on too.

The conversations actually both illustrate the butterfly effect and also, why I have so much faith in dialogue and maximum mix conversations. The first conversation today was face to face: with Ashraf Ramzy over coffee in Amsterdam where I am currently sitting, though I am Australian and live in NY. I met Ashraf at the email introduction of his colleague/friend London-based Victoria Ward, who I met for coffee in NY via an email subject: ‘dialogue serendipity’ she sent to an organizational storytelling listserve, workingstories, we are both part of, that I replied to.

The second conversation was with England-born but Sydney residing Gus who I met sharing a table in a cafe in Sydney we both love via Skype about subjects including but not limited to tea and butterflies, when I got a second skype call from my friend who had never met Gus, Dutch born Copenhagen based  Jochem, which after realising there was a new skype conference call system we thought we would play, then including Gus’s friend London based Englishman James. One interesting thought that also came about was that when you speak on Skype something different happens as there are voices in your head…and it is quite an intimate space, and suprisingly deep…even if you don’t ‘know each other’. And is actually the closest example I can think of to making the metaphysical connections during conversation seen/tangible: I believe in conversation we created shared mental spaces between us. And that we speak our worlds into being and through the questions we ask, shape them. A skype conversation that takes place in real time across four time zones in four countries where synchronicity and shared understanding and conversation can occur very quickly seems to suggest it is true. I could go on about the possibility of our very words and their vibrations impacting the sphere of the between we had created and their impact but that may sound wack.

That said - if you are reading this, here is the amplification of those sound vibrations: I am writing on my blog, a broadcast media that allows my word and concept to spread across the world - easily readable by someone in Japan, Africa and yes, Brazil and Texas.

And just incase you do want to feel strange: I promise you I am not kidding when I say - I just received a skype message from a colleague of a colleague Grazi who from Brazil and currently living in Amsterdam who I know through Colby who I met via email and skype via Jochem who…yes, Grazi is currently skyping me from Brazil where she has returned for a quick break.

Perhaps I should go check on the weather patterns in Texas!?  

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 7:53 pm and is filed under action, branding, change, conversation, dialogue, knowledge & wisdom, photography, questions, quotes, stories, talk, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

"What is a future outcome I would like to be part of?"

A rabbi is watching a group of young boys attempt to climb a very flimsy ladder to the top of a tree. Each boy takes his turn and each, at some point falls back to the ground. Yet one boy succeeds in climbing it. Asks the Rabbi to this young man - "why do you think you reached the top when your friends did not".

"The others were focused on where they had come from, I was focused on how much higher I had to go"

Two great conversations happened to (with?) me today. Both involved strangers that I met via friends of friends. All were a result of a technology mediated process (one initiated via email, another via skype) though both were the result of exisiting human relationships. Both mentioned butterflies (butterfly effect: a butterfly flaps it’s wings off the coast of Brazil causes a

Together two streams met: my ongoing thinking around the intersection of appropriate use of technology and media selection, and the importance of dialogue and human communication - conversations and stories, and also, how I conceive of strategy and why I see stories as key.

Let’s start with the later. Too often we are bound in a world that defines a problem in a point in time and goes about solving it (often to the point of finding more problems. Ok so lots of us know this and we have attempted all realms of ways to move out of that: mediation, facilitation, creative thinking and so forth. Yet if you look around the world, particularly in business/organizations but all sorts of other places to, you will still see that most people spend a lot of time and money paying for a strategic plan. Ie A plan that plots out a set of things that addresses the current state of thinking and projects that and the past forward. Now I am not saying

  

I always speak about changing the world for the better and so forth and today, with thanks to some play with some lovely friends of mine Gus, Jochem  and Gus’s friend, James, I discovered a question that moves away from the problem solving mindspace I get concerned with.

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 7:06 pm and is filed under misfit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.