Many people get freaked-out – or to be exact, have freaked-out thinking – about uncertainty or the unknown.
We seem to get in to the habit of projecting our thoughts into the future, or want to control the future. And yet the future does not exist until we step in to it.
And yet as the future does not exist there’s this wonderful space that you can create something to fill it. If it was all certain – good or bad – then that’d be a bit dull.
Charles Darwin said: evolution isn’t about the survival of the fittest, but being the most adaptable to change (I used to be a pioneering Landscape Ecologist)
Being flexible and responsive to that change is what really matters. And this includes the ability to let go of the past and what you know and think is real.
And here’s the contradiction of command and control levels of planning. You cannot plan in detail what hasn’t happened. And if you do, most of everything around you will have changed too, including you. That’s why 80% of big IT projects around the world fail to deliver: they’re neither responsive nor flexible over time.
And what about focus? Focus gives you tunnel vision, and misses out on all the great opportunities that lie in your peripheral vision.
I used to do presentations and trainings by detailed planning (I was a Strategic Planner in a former life trained to plan 20 years ahead!). And then I realised during a presentation that the exercise I was doing wasn’t working and so responded with something else in the moment and instantly the audience came back on board. Phew!
And that’s what I do now. I’ll have an intention, and maybe an overall strategy, and then in the space create what works, and it invariably does – way better than the constructed way. It allows me to respond in the moment in real time to what’s actually coming up for clients. And when I get out of the way of myself and all the stuff going on in my head, I can be the best for them too, and together create magic.
And the quality of the results of this? Exceptional.