It’s not a trap

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coconutI’ve seen a few references recently in the journals to the apple in the jar scenario.  The original for this metaphor was actually a coconut with a small hole cut in one end and a few peanuts inside.  It was used by monkey hunters who would tie a piece of string to the coconut and wait for the monkeys to find it.  The monkeys were able to get their hand inside the coconut but had to make a fist to hold the peanuts.  The hole was just too small for them to get their fist through; the hunters would pull in the string and that would be that for the monkeys.  The monkeys simply weren’t able to handle the idea that all they had to do to go free was let go of the peanuts – they were not trapped.

This is an incredibly powerful message.  As an observer it is often hard to see why  someone else might feel trapped by a situation but when you’re in the midst of it, it can be impossible to see how to let go without someone else’s help.  There are always things we can let go of in our lives and in our work.  Two key element of leading change are:

  • recognising that some people may choose to let go of the things you want them to keep hold of and
  • accepting that you do not have your team in a trap – they are free to leave whenever they choose to.

As a team member, recognition that it is your own choice that keeps your hand in the coconut is a great first step to understanding your motivation and the reality or otherwise of all the things that you feel you ‘have to’ do.

Randomitis

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I’ve just finished reading Fooled by Randomness (The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and have found it to have a strange effect on my outlook. In some respects it seems almost to be creating a feedback loop in my brain. As an example, take the riots in various parts of London over the last few days. As I read about them and watched video clips I found myself thinking not ‘how terrible, we must do something’ but ‘perhaps this is simply one of those things that will happen every so often when you have a large number of people living in close proximity’.

No sooner had I thought this than I disagreed with myself – fatalism is something that I abhor and my response seemed to almost be assuming that there was nothing that could be done to prevent incidents like this occurring.  Of course that then lead me on to think about how the specific conditions making these events more likely could be altered.  How social, political and economic change might make them less probable (or alternatively more probable if you get it wrong).

This is why I am actually happy that our brains don’t truly see the random nature of the word around us.  It would make taking action on anything that much more difficult.  The reality is that there is a chance that we will fail no matter how hard we try or how clever we are, just as there is a chance that we will succeed beyond our wildest dreams.  All we can do is to try to take as much of the information available to us into account as our poor biological brains can cope with, learn to live with our choices and then change our minds when we find out something new.

Building a community

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I attended my first Shaping our Future event at Queenstown’s Memorial Hall yesterday. It was an interesting session with a lot of ideas and enthusiasm for the future of the district being displayed. The word ‘community’ was used frequently and it got me thinking about the nature of a community, what it means and how you can actively promote its growth.
I don’t think that a community is simply a collection of people living in the same place. A community is formed through individuals in action – living, working, playing -together. It is this interaction that enables us to see beyond the labels and caricatures, and to accept each other as fully formed human beings like ourselves; each person with their own inner life, dreams and feelings and the same right to fair and equitable treatment that we demand for ourselves.
So these events themselves actually contribute towards building our community here in the Southern Lakes regardless of whether any of the ideas generated ever get put into practise. Getting a group of residents in the same room and giving them something to do is a huge step in the right direction.
Of course unless people see some effect from their input, their voluntary allocation of time and energy, they will start to drift away and this delicate snowflake of community will melt and disappear. I hope though that this doesn’t happen. I’d like to see the snowball accumulate and start to make it’s way down the mountainside.

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Shaping our FutureIf you’d like to get involved check out the Shaping our Future website and come alog to the next session at the Cardrona Hotel at 1pm on 13th July.