“Leaders listen for the future of their organization” – and I would add, of their world.
I came across this quote in a book I’m reading, called “The Three Laws of Performance”, by Zaffron and Logan. The quote resonated with me, because when I was in my 40s and trying to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up(!), I went through a creative process that has resulted in the work I do now. During that process, I had a moment when I could see, feel, and conceive the future I needed and wanted to create for myself. It was an exciting and verdant time.
The quote also resonated because of a talk I heard yesterday by Barbara Marx Hubbard hosted by Women on the Edge of Evolution (womenontheedgeofevolution.com). She spoke about the transformation the role of women has gone through since her youth in the ’50s, and how challenging it was for her to hear the new future she was destined to be part of, until she started to find other voices that were working on defining a new kind of future that excited and resonated with her.
We cannot always easily hear or recognize the future that is calling to us. I heard part of it during my verdant time of creation in the mid ’90s, but more (much more!) is unfolding. And as Barbara commented, in the early stages it can just feel like a restlessness for something different, an unspecified anxiety, even depression. In The Bigger Game (www.thebiggergame.com) we talk about it as the hunger for something we can’t always name, but that will feed us once we’ve named it.
It’s taken me some time to hear the next piece of my future, and I’m not fully there yet. I had some old baggage I needed to walk away from, and some family issues to deal with like the decline into Alzheimers and subsequent death of my mother. I also needed to create (or find) a community of like-minded people within which to explore the ideas and activities I want to pursue. I’ve found some more of that in London this past summer.
But it’s coming, it’s taking shape, and I’m beginning to hear the next piece of my future. It’s an exciting process to be in! So I encourage you who are reading this to take a moment to listen to yourself, your body, the voices in your head. What are you hungry for? What do you wish were happening in your world and the world around you? What can you conceive of doing, even if you’re not doing it now – what problem would it be fun for you to solve? Whatever it is, consider that perhaps now is the time to focus on it.
We can always find other things to keep us busy, but when you think about your priorities, where does the future of your world and your children’s world fit on that list? When you then think about potentially changing a piece of that world for the better, and then about all the other things that keep you busy, what comes higher on your list?
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