I have often had the feeling that we are all just following a bunch of made up rules that we’ve convinced ourselves work. But in reality no one actually has any idea what they are doing.
And I suppose that’s how anything non-scientific starts or continues on. We tell a story. Build a culture. And perpetuate it.
But often we get in our own way. We set ourselves up to fail rather than succeed. And because the culture and the things we do are so ingrained and accepted there is no room to question it or make big changes.
And so we keep getting in our own way.
I think this is why I loved rowing the single. I could drive the process from start to finish. And I could only blame myself – whether I won or lost. But if I’m building something bigger than that I need other people on board. And that’s where stories and culture come in.
And eventually you build something that you convince yourself works. Until it doesn’t. But then you’re stuck. There’s no room to change. To do something different. Or revolutionary. We do what’s accepted and accept the lack of success because we are doing it the way we are supposed to do it. We stay within the lines.
But what if we didn’t. What if we did it all wrong. What if we did it the other way. What if we went with our gut instead.
What would be compelling enough to convince us to go the other way. To get out of our own way. The only way we can answer that is by doing something completely different. Not a little different. Not similar. But something we don’t normally do.
That’s rare. And maybe rare is better than tried and true.
Or I don’t know. Maybe I’m just fed up with inefficient and arbitrary processes. Lots of talking ourselves out of things. No risk taking. Few successes. Hard work with no rewards.
I want to win. Which is why I try to get out of my own way as much as possible. I don’t always succeed. But I never claimed to know what I was doing. I just know how to see when what works isn’t working anymore.
