Are you defending a position or earning the merits to receive a ranking? Two different mindsets and approaches.
Do you start your board service believing you need to maintain the achievements accomplished by those who preceded you, or do you believe your board term is an opportunity to navigate the unknown and leverage your strengths on the organization’s behalf?
If it is worth it or necessary, we line up. If we have the option of a detour, an alternate strategy, or a delay, we might consider them. What if we evaluate what we wait for and what we bypass? What does it reveal about our priorities?
Periodically, we gain a vantage point that lets us see the route ahead. They can be illuminating, inspiring, or discouraging, depending on what we see and what we were expecting.
How might we use moments of elevation to assess the resources required to successfully navigate the terrain ahead?
The renowned author for your literary organization’s gala fundraiser falls ill. The easy solution is to cancel. The school buses contracted to shuttle spectators from a remote parking lot to the World Cup ski race are forced to abandon their shuttle route and pick up school students after the district pivots to an early school dismissal due to weather. The easy solution is to blame the snowstorm. The venue you booked for a conference forgot to provide projectors, so the keynote speakers had to adjust their presentations. The easy solution is to focus on the vendor’s mistakes.
These unplanned moments offer an opportunity for our values to be lived, not just recited. If we talk about ideas such as resilience, grit, determination, people-first, collegiality, we can come together and deliver an unscripted performance. Occasionally, these instances of misdirection reveal an even better experience. People cheer for us when we are working to overcome the elements. How might we use disruption to delight our fans?
We can map out our route until we cannot. There is a moment at which our planned itinerary contains a gap or uncertainty. It may appear that we are traveling a continuous path, but serendipity and detours will appear, even in the most detailed schedule of events. How might we expect the unexpected and embrace the elements of our plan that fall into place?
If we only look for the open straight road, we are likely doomed to remain in the flat terrain. However, if we take a path that includes switchbacks, our chances of reaching higher ground and gaining perspective are greater. Straight roads allow us to cover more distance. Switchbacks provide us access to the viewpoints.
If you want people to sign up for a unique journey, being honest in your help-wanted sign forms a basis for trust. If we hide the difficult parts in our help-wanted advertisement, we might assemble a team that will fracture when we wander off course.
It is easy to think about how to scale when, in reality, we might not comprehend the realities of scale.
Two Starbucks, located across the street from each other, appear like poor business planning; until we recognize that the stores exist in an urban design that prioritizes automobiles. If ease of pedestrian travel were a preference, perhaps one store would be sufficient.
How might we understand ‘who it is for’ before we begin our design and implementation phase? Starbucks does not exist to serve vehicles, but it does serve people. That said, it inhabits an environment that has amplified the needs of motorized travel; therefore, its design model accommodates those arriving in vehicles.
Not all strategies can be BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). Sometimes, section hiking or even linking together day hikes might be more productive than trying to complete the entire thru-hike that we aspire to finish.
What-if-concepts 