I’ve been thinking about real-life use cases for adaptability.
One is knowing when and how much to “adjust the dial” when something you’ve been doing needs to change.
A friend of mine recently had her first baby, and this weekend we talked about the seismic adjustment of being fully responsible for another human being. I commented that you need to learn constant vigilance when the baby is born, and you need to unlearn it during the emptying nest phase. Dial up, dial down. Both require adaptability.
My strategy clients are often concerned that to be a strong strategist they need to be good at accurate prediction. Let me reassure you that strategic behaviour does not require you to be clairvoyant!
It does help if you can discern signals.
Even better if you can differentiate them from lagging indicators and old news.
When you are leading in uncertainty or navigating a transition, it’s common to describe the experience as driving through fog. Jim Collins uses this metaphor in his recent book to describe the experience after people — even very accomplished people — live through a ‘cliff’ moment in their lives. The transition or crisis is usually followed by an extended period of fogginess.
I am just back from an incredible family trip to Africa that has offered so much fodder for this blog that I hope you’ll indulge me for a couple of weeks as I process some of the lessons from our time away.
It occurred to me while there that one of the ways I could answer the question of “what do you do?” is to say, “I create containers.”
An odd answer perhaps, but it’s true. (I haven’t tried it yet in conversation — not sure it would land too well!)
This African adventure proved to be a container of sorts — it offered a structure for adventure and family time and personal growth that then got filled by each of the ten people travelling together. (Our literal ‘container’ was the Land Cruiser you see in the photo. I can’t tell you how happy it made me to have all ten of us in one place for longer than a holiday dinner!)
Our cottage is a container — for rest, fun and countless memories — for us and others.
Retreats are containers. The conversations that happen within them are too, as are the ones I facilitate during a strategy-building process or a coaching session. They need to be the right size and sequenced in a way that makes sense. Otherwise, it’s like trying to put nesting dolls together in the wrong order.
“Containers” is admittedly a bit of a dull label for the magic that can be created within them. But it’s now become an image I’m seeing across many parts of my life.
Sometimes a new metaphor can breathe life into familiar patterns — ones that we are so close to, we barely notice them. But once we do see them, they can’t be unseen.
So, if I were to ask you what you do, what pattern could you name? How could you frame your ordinary superpower in a new way? My guess is that it’s a gift to the people around you in more ways than you realize. I’d love to hear about it.
