First Echos

Friday March 27th marked my last day as a corporate employee. The company cut my role, and I stepped into something new.

I received my performance review which was positive. Four hours later, it was over.

Everything is always in motion - between two states. Always liminal.

I write this from that unpolished, uncomfortable place. From inside uncertainty. I might need a nap.

I’ve always had a yearning for independent work. Always sought to create things on my own.

It has to start somewhere, it had to start sometime
What better place than here, what better time than now.

I don’t know how this all ends.

But I know how it starts. I invite you into this space with me. To follow what it’s like as I build this. To feel what it’s like to be in a workshop where we play with uncertainty. To see what it looks like when what’s said or left unsaid is made visible.

I appreciate you sticking with me through this. I'd love to know what you're thinking too. Where are you playing with uncertainty? How are you making things visible?

Recent work

I scribed this during a group practice session with the folks from dpict. At first I wrote down too many words verbatim, and had to pause and rethink. It’s not about capturing everything, it’s about visualizing concepts that matter most.

The Institute for the Future held a book talk with the authors of The Age of Chaos. You may have heard the term VUCA. Volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous. The IFTF says “The future is BANI — Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible — but it doesn't have to be”. As we’re living past a VUCA world, BANI is real. Flipping BANI from the negative to the positive is future-forward and optimistic.

An idea I'm sitting with

There’s a behavior change analogy known as the Elephant and the Rider. check out this two minute video to get the gist of these three roles.

I’m turning this analogy into an interactive game. I’d cast one person to play the Rider. Another for the Elephant. Several others clear the path. So they feel these things in their bodies.

The goal of the game is to get the Elephant and Rider from one side of the room to the other. We’d have obstacles on the path, a fallen tree that is blocking the way as an example. We’d give the Rider logical instructions to complete the objective. The Elephant would receive instructions that disrupt and redirect based on emotions.

The Elephant represents our erratic emotional selves. It takes a massive amount of energy to make the Elephant start moving. Running flat out, it pulls everything in its wake. Nothing stops it cleanly. We are emotional creatures, no matter how much we “make decisions from data”.

To counter the power of the Elephant, the Rider would get bonuses. Like in a video game. A 3x power-up for getting good nights sleep would help the Rider take control from the Elephant at key points.

The other players would get challenges to clear the path. These roles would be effective for middle mangers in larger organizations, as they typically have to help their team member deal with their Rider and Elephant. They do this by motivating the elephant, teaching the rider, and clearing the path.

Would your team like to play this game?