How Might You Imagine It Differently?
You and me. We can’t carry on like. Sorry.
We need to imagine it differently.
Be that imagining a different route for your company; whether you’re averting a death slide to commercial oblivion or simply needing more sales or less stress or if you’re wrestling with something larger. Larger like what role for my company or work in a world which needs to make and sell less stuff.
On which, there’s certainly a need to imagine a new way of live and work at the mega, big daddy system level too. In case you were wondering: the world on fire and drowning at the same time (although not, clearly, in the same place), species dying at an unprecedented rate, on track for more fish than plastic in the sea, 1% of people owning 50% of the wealth and a general dying, crumbling and failing of the eco, environmental, political, commercial foundations on which we depend. Heavy.
We can’t carry on like this. We need to imagine a different way forward.
Decisions are not made in a vacuum. The decisions we take, the ideas, stories we see as important, are the product of the company we keep.
This is true of the big guys, calling the big shots in Government HQ. If you spend a lot of time with big companies, for example, thinking and talking big company shit, it’s likely that big company ideas come pretty central to the solutions. This is not a judgement on big companies. It’s an observation as to how we think and decisions are made.
It’s true of us little guys too.
Decisions we make here in the day-to-day are a product of the norms, ideas and behaviours of the company we keep. If you want to imagine a different way forward, whether big or small, at a your company or entire system level,you need to change the company you keep - in amongst a few other things too, of course.
To imagine it differently, you need:
- Space I. Can’t imagine much differently when we’re stuck on ‘back to back calls’ or our phones or the constant barrage of info we’re otherwise subjected to. You need to switch off to switch on.
- Space II. Back in the early days running FreeState we played with a strap line, of sorts; you shape the environment and your environment shapes you. If you want and need to change your thinking, change your environment. Can’t solve a problem in the same room / building / physical space that created it.
- Better ingredients. The answer is more middle aged white men, said nobody ever. And the solution isn’t a cursory nod to gender balance, as useful as that might be, it’s about opening to completely different ways of seeing the world. What does the Inuit see, or the Aborigine? Mixing worldviews will make for real, genuine and radical innovation - of which we need much. Choose what you read and in who’s ideas you invest your time.
- To go large on little. ‘Big being best’ is a story which underpins much of what we do. Big company thinking dominates. Which is fine, of course, on the proviso you’re always asking… who benefits? More importantly though ‘big being best’ ignores how systems work. We are nodes in a system; fractals playing out at ever larger scales. From the microbes in your belly to the delicate dance that is your life and body to the complex, rich murmurations of company and social life playing out around you. Complex, interconnecting, fluid and dynamic systems. Ad these are not systems playing out ‘at’ you. You are a participant. You shape the system as much as it shapes you. You are not powerless or a victim. Engage with it. In so doing, you influence it. Your little node counts. Don’t cede all the power to the big; small is power too.