Annnnnnnd …… Action!

There is a scene from an old movie, Shakespeare in Love, where one of the theatre actors is pressuring the theatre owner on the arrival of Will Shakespeare’s next play, badgering him with questions which finally ends with the exchange  ……

·       Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

·       So, what do we do?

·       Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

·       How?

·       I don't know. It's a mystery.

Even though the movie takes place in Elizabethan times, I feel like any one of us could recite that line on any given day in our current times … how will it end? I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

The pace of change has become exponentially complex and fast. The interdependencies are vast and sometimes it can feel like we are living in the constant perpetual motion of life’s Rubik’s Cube… constantly shifting to find the alignment. And, just when we feel all the blocks are lining up, something shifts again.

As leaders it is hard to simultaneously try to align our changing work with other priorities and of course, our people. As an employee it is hard to read the signs accurately when communication may feel inconsistent or stay focused on the work at hand long enough to feel a sense of accomplishment before it changes. It can be exhausting for everyone.

I recently worked with an amazing team where part of my job was to provide stabilization during disruptive times. Rather than focusing on what we didn’t have to work with, I focused on what we did have to work with. I affectionately referred to it as the Apollo 13 exercise. On any given day we would walk into work as if someone dumped a new bag of ‘stuff’ on a table in front of us and said ‘this is what you have to work with today. It’s not the same as yesterday’s bag, and I can’t guarantee it will be the same as tomorrow’s bag, but I need you to do brilliant things with this and go save the world’.

And we did. Well, maybe not save the actual world, but we figured out how to use what we had for what we needed to accomplish. It required imagination (what if …), curiosity (what happens when …), encouragement from each other (I like that …), honesty (nope. I don’t think that idea will work, but what version of it might), cooperation (how might we ...) and belief (showing up for each other).

A result of framing this in a daily reset - something consistent that was going to happen - reduced anxiety. It had become a predictable occurrence, and once that happened we learned how to work with it. The creativity could become engaging vs. draining, and re-imagination allowed us the opportunity to fine tune. It was rare that we ever had to start from scratch, so we kept the best parts of the plan and iterated on it as much as we could.

We could say a lot of things about today’s work world, but one of them is it certainly isn’t boring. It keeps Shakespeare’s world of anticipation-of-the-end timeless. But if we look to each other, if we look toward what we can do, it has a way of working out.

Action!