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.
Viola Spolin is the godmother of modern improv. Her landmark development — with her mentor, Neva Boyd — of ‘theater games’ during the height of the Great Depression in the 1930s laid the foundation for everything that has happened with improvisation in the 80+ years since, including the theories and practices of GameChangers.