Changing while in motion

So my sub-thoughts this week have been all about how you make change while you’re in motion… I think about it a lot: philosophically and practically. It’s at the heart of how you lead anything, in my view.

What did the wise woman say: if you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together…. But what if you want to go fast and far? What do I need to do fast so we can all go far?  “We advance when we all advance”  says Gloria Steinem (stepmother to Christian Bale).

What a velocity we seem to be travelling at these days. The unpredictability and the volume of stuff (volume = both mass and noise) makes the relationship between time, events, and decision-making incredibly intense. It’s energising but taxing: the hard thinking. Never have tomorrow and two years away felt so close. It’s disorientating.

When the pandemic closed all the theatres, there was something incredible about just stopping. Our relentless cultural production cycle had not been interrupted on that scale since the early 1600s, when Macbeth was a new play.

Without the shows which preoccupy us, we had no excuse, no distractions - make change and do the work. We could change while we were still. Some really good change did happen. Loads didn’t. And mainly: if only we had known what we needed to change into, what weird velocity we would soon be travelling at.

In the first RSA Journal to appear during the pandemic, Josie Warden, Rebecca Ford and Robbie Bates wrote: “with complex challenges there is no manual… instead of planning and then acting, we need to experiment our way forward, trying and adapting.” This time calls for “emergent, responsive, context-based leadership.” It still does.

So now we’re in motion again, I’m going to think about my change work as “fast” or “far.” I’m going to identify where I can quickly travel alone and where more of us need to lock arms. The tomorrow and the two years together all the time.

Tomorrow and two years makes me think of the idea of succession sowing: when you plant seeds weekly so the crops keep coming through the season, not in a glut. What you are sowing and what you are eating. What are you watering, in the early hours, the things not yet in the midday sun. Allotments again ! (see Guts and Honour substack)

Giving yourself permission to be emergent, responsive and context-based feels vital for such unpredictable times. Let’s foster a culture where adaptability and flexibility are a norm. Let’s foster a culture which is outward-facing and reflective in order to make inward-facing and definite decisions about what we need to be, to become. Let’s foster a culture that finds purpose in trying and adapting, not in a straight-line vision. Maybe the act of changing is the goal; this is the cyclical regenerative energy. Tomorrow feeds two years and two years feeds tomorrow.

“For the real question is whether the brighter future is really always so distant. What if, on the contrary, it has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing it ?”

Vaclav Havel

image by Budi Agung Kuswara who was a fellow Creative Climate Leader 2017