Change: The Canary Down a Rabbit Hole. I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. But unlike Alice, I have not emerged somewhere strange, new and somewhat disturbing. Although where I am, is somewhat disturbing.
The temporal gaps between good ideas or inspiration have many names: writer’s block, creative constipation, losing your mojo … but it’s a thing that many recognise.
Right now, I am aware that I don’t have a BIG IDEA that I am working my way through. And that, as a result, I feel somewhat becalmed, drifting in quiet waters. But I know that this tunnel is part of the process, and that to fight and kick against its fabric is to prolong its silence and reduce its impact.
In short, we need calm, deep silences in order to germinate new things. Time where the rational mind is … absent. Where the subconscious is busy but silent. These are the times for drinking in the present, for being present. For taken care of the self and, as I recently saw stated, mending your nets.
For the fire and fury shall return. At 50, I know this as well as I know the coming dawn. It is inevitable. And when that asteroid hits, I need to be fit, ready, refreshed and physically capable of riding the shock wave to where it is going.
These deep, dark silences produce bigger shockwaves for me the longer they persist. So, I am expecting a doozy this time around.
Imagine running your Innovation Factory like this.
Imagine logging time daydreaming, take an online course, learning Macramé … as time spent on R&D.
And yet, if you don’t allow these kinds of spaces in that factory, for those factory workers, way too much of what is produced will look and feel way too much like things that already exist. As it is, the fact that you have an innovation factory at all indicates that the rest of your organisation is not fit or ready for change. When that Asteroid hits, will it be able to ride any shockwave to anywhere beneficial?
But if everyone at work had time to be at rest, to regroup, to think and to dream, that innovation factory might not be necessary at all. If everyone was always busy thinking about how what they did fit in with what everyone else did, going big, then going small, going deep and then going helicopter view … would we be missing so much?
We love our patterns and our rhythms so much. Changes are seen as aberrations. A warning light on the dashboard that something needs fixing. But what if they aren’t?
What if change is the precursor of better ideas, new ways of doing things? An early adopter who knows what trend will supersede your business model?
But we can’t see it like that. Because it can’t be measured or plotted on a graph. In short, it’s just too open ended.
This pandemic has got me thinking. It has shown up the shortcomings of our modern, measurement obsessed lives.
Change: The Canary Down a Rabbit Hole
It’s my hope that we’ll learn that we’ll change. That the song of the canary will warn us before the gas explodes.
Our world hasn’t really changed its ideas about how to do things since the start of the Industrial Revolution. That’s a long creative silence. This Asteroid is going to carve an epic shockwave through our world.
It seems certain now that the gas will explode.
And we need more than just the mavericks to have heard the warning.
