One of the characteristics of networks is their flexibility. What our communication channels looked like yesterday may not be what they look like today. This, of course, can be an asset or a liability. The net that allows us to build new relationships, discover markets and expand our potential for taking productive action is the same one that swallows channels and markets like a singularity sucking down solar systems in nanoseconds. The global financial system, guaranteed, is right now teetering on the edge of such a debt-and-greed-spun vortex. Call it The Bank Hole.
In our crazy race to escape these kinds of vortexes, we can turn direction-blind. We pick a course of action, or someone picks a course for us, and in our all-out effort to escape a certain fate, we go heads down as hard as we can for as long as we can in that direction, like barn-sour horses galloping toward a distant barn. A strategy, as Umair Haque points out in his latest HBR post, can be just as bad as a locked-in direction, because it can confine or limit one’s options instead of liberating them.
What Haque advocates, and what we could not agree with more, is adopting a set of behaviors (he calls these behaviors ‘Wisdom’) that foster liberation of the ideas and the ethical actions that can deliver us from the Goldman-Sachs Singularity, and whatever else sucks. These behaviors have no time frame, because they are timeless. They cannot be quantified, because they are potentially limitless in number.
One of these behaviors (me, adding to Haque’s list) is to Envision. And by that I don’t mean Ayn Rand’s old Burt Lancaster-as-One-Of-A-Kind-Genius concept of vision but what I call ‘Viola Vision’, which consists of ’seeing and sharing what we see.’ This kind of envisioning expands our horizons, and gives us infinitely more options for escaping what sucks. So in your quest for solutions, don’t forget to:
Look over. It’s how you get perspective on a problem.
Look under. Play with the dynamic of concealment and revelation. Respect roots. Dig deep.
Look sideways. My friend, the animation director John Musker, talks about stories as ‘taking an unexpected left turn.’ A sideways move can shake up your narrative in a way that keeps you on your toes and your audience engaged.
Look down. Who needs a helping hand? Some days, this the only question worth answering.
“There’s also the nature of the contact itself to consider,” Ett went on. “Was there rubbing involved or was the contact static? Was it hand contact only, or was it of a hugging nature so that bodies were touching? This is an important distinction, because hugs are becoming increasingly problematic in the workplace. Many employers prohibit what we call ‘full frontal clutching’ while still allowing what we call ‘casual side-to-side linkage.’ We’re seeing strong anti-clutching trends across the corporate landscape.
“Also what, specifically, was ‘the back’ being patted? I’d want to know that. Was it in the region of the upper, or Cervical, vertebrae? If it was on the upper back it was probably okay, assuming of course, it didn’t last for longer than three seconds and no rubbing was involved. Middle, or Thoracic vertebrae, are a gray area, especially numbers T-One through T-Four. You find HR people very divided about this, and there are no clear guidelines, so my advice is to steer clear of the Thoracic region entirely, just to be safe. The lower, or Lumbar region, is a definite no-no. And a pat on the Sacrum will get you a visit from Security, no question.
1. They’re optimists. Feeling good about the future is the first step toward making it so.
Kevin Klose, 
Raymond Roker
This story broke in the L.A. Times a couple of days ago
Catherine Stephens, a Disney executive, coined this phrase last week in casual conversation when she and I were discussing the studio’s new eco-brand, 
‘Flexible’ is what the improvisational brand has to be at the edges of its network. Continuing the tree analogy, flexibility is what you find in the tree’s outermost branches and leaves. For a business operating in the Networked World, the edge is where the action is. It is where creative disruption happens. Where innovation is most likely to find its inspiration. Most importantly, it is where a brand carries on conversations with its customers. This is where you find skunk works, social networks, and tweets. It is where buzz begins.
