Is unpredictability becoming a comfort zone?

 

Life is unpredictable.  Yet we try to search-out security.  And when it doesn’t happen, we acknowledge the unpredictability, which provides a weird sort of comfort.  It’s as though an unpredictable space is a natural comfort zone.

If we look at the world around us from whatever perspective dominates our thinking, we face uncertainty.  Economic instability, climate crisis, war-torn communities, unacceptable gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ - in every desperate scenario the dominant underlying cause is human behaviour.  But the behaviour includes an inability to  clear up the mess we have created and develop a predictable and sustainable norm.  Is the inability a consequence of the limitations of our thought processes, which we might recognise but fail to acknowledge?  But rather than admit failure, we sometimes create a model to explain to ourselves, and others, the complexities of a difficult scenario.

In the system thinking world, a causal loop diagram (CLD) is a widely used tool.  A CLD visualises how different variables in a system are causally related.  They are certainly helpful when trying to understand complex or complicated problems (there is difference) but the two-dimensional, static nature of most CLDs can, at best, only provide a snapshot of a multi-dimensional, dynamic system.  All that being said, the CLDs can provide a comfort zone when faced with unpredictability.

In the world of football, every game is unpredictable.  Pundits can wax lyrical on stats, but stats are backward looking and the future is rarely an extrapolation of the past.  But if experts can’t talk about past form, what else is there to discuss?  And if the results were truly predictable, it would take away the excitement of the games.  There are those who think thy can influence the results; players who touch the turf or say a prayer on their way onto the pitch.  I know one ardent fan who always uses the same urinal before home games - the comfort break and comfort zone both in one place!

The paradox is that the comfort zone of unpredictability is, for many, not very comfortable because there is always the thought of an eventual negative outcome.  We tend to worry about what might go wrong rather than be excited by what might go right.  Worrying is using your imagination to create something you don’t want.  If we think of the unpredictable state being analogous to an airport departure lounge but with more unknowns, we know where we want to go but accept there are uncertainties.  In the ‘real life’ departure lounge, our flight could be postponed, cancelled or, in the worst case, experience a mid-flight fault.  But the stats tell us it is highly probable it will leave on time and arrive at the planned destination, on schedule.  In our ‘imaginary’ departure lounge, we tend to anticipate our destination will not be where we want to be and will leave us in an undesirable state.  So, for example, the football fan’s team will loose a crucial match and face relegation; rather than hammering the opposition and continuing their journey to the top of the league.

So throughout life, we hop in and out of ‘departure lounges’, as a temporary respite from what we believe will be undesirable outcomes.  Maybe we should be more positive in our thinking and focus on the potential opportunities, rather than the problems - it’s a pity I don’t practice what I preach!

The Creative Edge

 

In my familiar stomping ground of business and technology, the term ‘Creative Edge’ is often used to sell an organisation’s capability.  But what does it mean and how is it achieved? 

Let’s start with ‘Creative’.  In the business context, it embraces originality, innovation, visioning and transformation,  In many high-tech companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon, creativity is the name of the game.  So what about ‘Edge’?  In the same context, it means superiority, which, for the companies mentioned, goes hand-in-hand with creativity.  They feed off each other.

There are many companies, however, that  might depend on a range of technologies, old and new, embedded in highly critical systems and infrastructures, for example rail transportation networks.  These will configure products and systems that have significantly longer lives than, for example, Apple products. For these companies, ‘Edge’ is just as important as in the fast-moving information technology sector, but the ‘Creative’ culture is quite different.

Whereas a Microsoft engineer will be motivated to design and get to market, products and systems that outperform the competition on a daily basis, a rail systems engineer has to accept the rail network will always be a mix of legacy systems, modern technology and ongoing projects aimed at developing a greener and more efficient network.  Both sectors require first-class engineering talent, but the challenges they face are quite different.

Research suggests there is a positive correlation between creativity and happiness; there is also evidence of a virtuous circle between the two, so each positively reinforces the other over time.  When it comes to recruiting and developing engineers, does this mean the high-tech companies, delivering products with lifecycles of perhaps a couple of years, have an advantage over organisations that develop systems designed to be in service for decades?  That doesn’t need to be the case.

Whatever the product, system or service that an organisation is delivering, engineers love to solve problems, and it is the problem-solving environment that provides a fertile bed for creativity, but it has to be encouraged.  Regrettably many risk-averse organisations have cultures where deviating from the norm is actively discouraged….”That’s not the way we do things around here”.  This article is not focussing on culture change per se, but clearly it is part-and-parcel of encouraging creativity.

Peter Drucker’s quote: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, has stood the test of time.  Company bosses can preach ambitious vision statements, but if they are out of kilter with their company’s underlying culture, they are very unlikely to become a reality.  Culture is an emergent property of individual employee behaviours, but the collective characteristic is far more dominant than the individual influence.  So, for example, if an employee with experience of working with companies where they enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, is seduced to join an organisation with an exciting vision statement but with a command-and-control management style, they will be unlikely to succeed.

When companies recruit, the process is typically one-sided; the company interviews the applicant, not the other way around.  Perhaps it should be a two-way exchange.  After all, if the company is investing in bringing talent on board and the talent is contributing their skills and expertise to the business, both parties should ensure they are receiving a fair return on their investment.  Arguably, both sides should ensure a good culture match.  From the potential employee’s perspective, the company should not just be assessed from its vision, but also its past achievements.  Is its future aspiration compatible with where it has come from?  Apple is synonymous with innovation and creativity.  Its journey since it was founded in 1976 has been super impressive, with numerous game-changing innovations.  But in recent years, iPhone models have been brought to market with incremental improvements, none of which can be described as game-changers.  Nevertheless, Apple watchers remain convinced that technological evolution will lead to revolution, because it’s in the company’s DNA.  So past achievements are an important factor when assessing company culture.

So returning to the original question: what does ‘Creative Edge’ mean and how is it achieved?  There shouldn’t be too much debate about the ‘what’ although the context obviously varies in different sectors and organisations.  The ‘how’, on the other hand, is dependant on  continuously recreating a competitive culture, individually and collectively, throughout the organisation.

It’s easier said than done!