Surfing Temporal Tides - Part 2
Learn to read the metaphorical tide charts to catch serious innovation waves
Last week we narrowly avoided the ripcurrents below the surface, driven by the Temporal Tides.
Luckily OMERS knows a contingent of lifeguards, just in case.
This week though, the sun’s out. The tides are just right. And the waves are primo.
Let’s spot the signals to watch out for and the actions to take to turbocharge change. We’re operating with the same dimensions, but reframing them to new conditions.
Vision (Future + Known) – the flipside of Certainty
What you hear: “Imagine if we could…”
What’s happening: A true leader has emerged, with a bold, ambitious, and compelling picture of the future. Unlike the Certainty-peddlers of last week, this vision has questions, hypotheses, options, and flexibility. It’s knowing what the world could look like, but also knowing there are a thousand ways to get there. Much like the barbell approach to innovation, where we spend our time at the extremities – either spinning up a rapid concept or thinking 50 years out. True vision has the temerity to take a risk, but the humility to ask for help.
What you can do: Run towards these people. Ask how you can be part of the journey. Help them fill in the gaps, build out the plan, and field test the assumptions. Find the deeper truth behind the vision. Explore why you were drawn to it in the first place. Realign your goals and projects with it, and hang on for the ride. (Or, in the absence of such a leader, become one yourself. Leadership has many voices, many forms, many backgrounds. Step up. The world needs more you.)
Trust (Future + Unknown) – the flipside of Impatience
What you hear: “I believe…”
What’s happening: Sometimes the future is so bold, so audacious, so… out there, that you need to trust the process. Signals keep aligning and the universe seems to be telling you GO. But the way forward is as unclear as to the destination. Unlike Impatience, which can be a reckless drive to destroy and move on, Trust exudes wisdom and understanding. Innovation powered by trust is rare in corporate environments, but game-changing when it happens. It does exist. We’re evidence of it.
What you can do: If you’re a leader working with innovation teams, hold off on the metrics and measurements for a bit. Trust the team to find the right problems to solve, and support them in solving them, even if they don’t entirely make sense to you. Trust the people you’ve hired to figure it out. If you’re in a team working with the business or with clients, seek out the leaders who trust you and want to work with you. Then deliver! Never take the trust for granted, and prove why their trust was well-invested. Trusting that the future can be better, even in an unspecified way, is both a necessary and sufficient condition for innovation.
Mystery (Past + Unknown) – the flipside of Regret
What you hear: “I wonder why…”
What’s happening: We can’t know everything. We can’t peer into the heads of previous decision committees, nor see the invisible pressures they faced; nor the fraught tradeoffs they were forces to make. We can’t expect a sprint retrospective to fully account for the human factors. The ability of a leader to leave some things about the past unknown is directly related to their ability to think freely about the future. Do we need to fully know how the pyramids were built to truly appreciate them? When you hear an open-minded approach to the unknown past, it’s a good sign that person will be a solid and flexible partner going forward.
What you can do: Rather than regret our past actions, use appreciative inquiry to hypothesize why things happened. Always leave room for mystery. Despite what we say, innovation is far from a science. It would be silly to trash the intuitive elements of successful innovation, strategy, and design. Mystery works both ways – if we can’t fully be blamed for failure, we can’t fully take credit for successes. Build in a little mystery to your next project and let serendipity work its magic.
History (Past + Known) – the flipside of Tradition
What you hear: “What can we learn?”
What’s happening: Clearly someone took ‘fail fast’ to heart. When we look to the past and the details are certain, it’s a good time to employ the growth mindset. When you hear this, it’s a sign you’re ready and primed to move forward, head held high, new knowledge in hand. Historians catalog the past to inform the future. Traditionalists cling to the past to avoid the future. When people learn from the past, progress thrives.
What you can do:Be a student of histories, and a historian of futures. Read widely and listen well. Every corporation has its relics buried treasures (and tombs…). Find the longest-tenured person and buy them a coffee. Imagine they are you, 50 years from now. What stories will you be telling, about how empires declined and fell, new leaders rose, and new ages dawned? What will come up over and over, and what advice would you give to fix the broken loop? Think about how you can be a good corporate ancestor to future generations of innovators on the team. And never take your rituals too seriously, lest they become rigid traditions, devoid of their original meaning.
For each of these, think beyond the third person. If no one else is saying it or doing it, be the light you want to see in the world. (Or, if you truly never hear anyone say any of the above, it might be a sign to update your friend circle or question the conditions of your current career path.)
You can’t force innovation any more than you can force water uphill. If the lakeshore isn’t giving you the waves you desire, perhaps it’s time to move to the seaside.
Temporal tides are powerful forces, tied into people’s ego, identity, and sense of being. Much of what shows up as resistance is discomfort with oneself, as we saw last week. Temporal tides can be resonant frequencies (waves!) that transform you for the better.
I write this to give you hope. To use this framework as a pair of polarized sunglasses that allow you to see below the surface, into the deep currents. I hope that you can hone your internal sensors to spot the people and projects who are ready.
Go find those people, and go all in.
Vision, trust, mystery, and history are the green flags on the beach. When you see the parking lot full of VW camper vans, you know it’s going to be a good day.
Surf safe, surf long, and surf free, my friends.
Onward.
What we’re reading (and listening to)
The Dark, Democratizing Power of the Social-Media Stock Market - BitClout collapses everything—art, humor, personhood—into money, laying bare just who, and what, we are willing to pay for.
In Praise of Extreme Moderation - Extremism is becoming the norm not only in our professional lives but increasingly in our personal lives as well, from politics and parenting to food and fitness.
Science Fiction Prototyping, Design Fiction, and Worldbuilding, What Are The Differences? – An excellent primer for both insiders and outsiders on the tools to help us think about the future.
A Big Little Idea Called Legibility – One of the most influential articles on my thinking, now over a decade old, but still relevant as ever. Why we keep making the same mistakes by forcing order on fundamentally unordered systems.
Rest and recovery – Why taking a break is the most productive thing you can do, even when it seems like your world is on fire. A case study from a software company.
Last word
"Surfing's one of the few sports that you look ahead to see what's behind."
- Laird Hamilton