Proceed Until Apprehended

There’s a certain boost of adrenaline that comes with the phrase, “working without a net.” When the trapeze artist performs without a net, there is no backup if the performer fails. The show gets better for the audience. People straighten up in their seats. The tension goes up. Breath is baited.

There’s the work equivalent, too. It’s working without deniability. What if there’s no fallback if your plan fails? If the initiative doesn’t make your numbers? What if ultimate responsibility lies with you and only you. That would be disastrous, wouldn’t it? Enter deniability, the practice of getting prior approval, consent or direction from someone else. This safety harness allows you to undertake initiatives without fear of reprisal. You’ve got all the CYA you need, so go forth and give it a shot. If it doesn’t work, that’s OK. You were following directions.

Deniability, however, really eats into your ability to create the kinds of change we need. Solutions that would really provide the kind of transformational thinking we need. The process of seeking deniability requires that you first anticipate the interests of the approver and mitigate the scary parts of the initiative by rounding the corners. Essentially, you propose something that’s got the scary parts removed to make it more palatable. The consequences of not doing the scary parts are where the real disastrous consequences sit. Not doing the thoughtful, scary parts is a subtle way of supporting the old model… the one you’re trying to change.

The alternative is to work without deniability, which is to say you would take initiative you think serves interests without checking for the go-ahead, first.

Do you need deniability? Is it all that important? If you fail, do you land in the middle ring of the big top, never to get up? Unlikely. Instead, you sheepishly admit your mistake, you get some amazing life experience and, as an added bonus, the people who really matter take note of the fact that you’re willing and able to work in an environment without deniability.

There’s an excellent audio lecture available right now. So excellent, in fact, I can’t believe it’s free. Seth Godin shares the main concepts of his latest book, Linchpin in a highly engaging presentation. He’s not actually talking about his book, though.  He’s providing advice about work and life that is spot on, relevant and very accessible.  Naturally, it inspired this post. By all means, read the book, but here’s an easy way to get your head around the concepts. Enjoy!

The Internet is such a firehose. The information comes fast. The marketing comes fast. The new ideas, the new products, the next thing… fast, fast, fast.

I find myself getting pretty frustrated with the skimming it induces. A full night of superficial snippets can leave me with a lot of trivia and nothing of substance. I find it more important than ever to make sure I pull away from the bells and whistles every once in a while and actually go deep, immersing myself in something that engages my brain.  Deliberately exploring a topic to a new level of understanding makes a lot more meaning for me than the skim.

In fact, if we were to collect all the things we hear and see each day and somehow conduct an audit to figure out what actually made it into our brain, we’d realize we can do without a lot of the barrage that occupies us.

So, why do we often choose to consume so much at a superficial level? I think it’s because choosing to actively ignore information that’s coming at you is like the problem with not buying a  lottery ticket. How can you possibly not buy a ticket? This may be THE ONE.  What if this ticket is the one that makes you rich? What if that next phone call is the President? What if the next big Internet sensation needs my investment immediately? What if a once in a lifetime announcement is just around the corner? All that hope, all those what-ifs… they cause a lot of attention to be directed to areas that rarely, if ever, have a payoff.

Here’s why some can do without lottery tickets: They get the math. They understand that one in 14,000,000 means you’ll typically spend $14,000,000 on tickets before you hit THE ONE. There’s an equivalent logic for understanding the information barrage, too. It may be less tangible, but intuitively, we know it’s there. If you step away from the constant flow and deliberately pursue and immerse yourself in what you want to see, you get more, you learn more. It’s more relevant. It’s more applicable to your life because you have selected, not received.

We’re now in a world where it’s easier for each of us to be our own program director. There’s unlimited information. It’s accessible at the click of a button. It comes on our time and on our terms.

It’s time to break an old habit – technology now allows you near complete control of the firehose. Don’t let others choose the messages for you.

The myth of epiphanies is that they strike you when you’re not expecting it.  You’re sitting in your bathtub and suddenly you shout “Eureka!” because you’ve realized that water displacement can measure volume.

Well, OK. I think that one actually did happen.

I don’t think that’s always the case.

Often, epiphanies come from a systematic effort to think about a problem differently. I propose that the key is actually that you open your mind to approach the problem from different angles. You have to deliberately steer your mind to make wander or make connections between seemingly unrelated concepts.

The reason epiphanies sometimes happen when you’re not trying to solve the problem is that we allow our minds out of the restrictions we were imposing on it. That doesn’t have to be by accident.

In 1990, Frank Lynn Meshberger, M.D., saw that Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” on the Sistine Chapel was actually a side profile of the human brain. The fact had been overlooked for centuries. I remeber hearing this back in the day, and it has always stuck with me. I find it pretty cool, not because of what Michelangelo did (it’s debated), but that Dr. Meshberger saw what so many others had not.

He had been in medical school at the time and happened to look at picture of the fresco shortly after dissecting and drawing a human brain – here’s the story.

That discovery, I would suggest, was a very happy coincidence (if you indeed believe Michelangelo was drawing a human brain). Regardless, this kind of a discovery offers a glimpse, into how we can synthesize and find solutions.  Sometimes, problem-solving comes when we add in lots of influences, not when we buckle down and “work the problem.”

If you’re stuck or things aren’t coming together, it might be time to pick up a book, look through the funny pages or listen to a symphony. You might need to invite in some other opinions, or draw the problem as a picture, or write a short story about it.

Putting in some extra hours at the office is likely counter-productive.