There’s an old joke about ‘Henry’ getting lost in the narrow lanes of Devon, England and needing to return to London. He spotted a farmer on the side of the road and pulled over, admitting to the farmer that he was lost and was looking for directions to get him back to London.
“London!” … replied the farmer … “… well if I was going to London … I wouldn’t be startin’ here.”
It’s an old one. It’s a funny one and like all good humor is rooted in truth.
I had a great call with Steve Cook of The UNdaunted the night before last and over the course of multiple hours we covered oh so much .. and will save those stories for another time.
Except this one.
Discussion included the old chestnuts; change, transition and transformation.
People who work in this world know the Current State / Future State model (or as we used to call it in Group Partners … Current Reality / Future Vision). Steve and I agreed that a big stumbling block is people starting at the current state - and wanting to know the steps to take to get to the future state, more often than not with an end result of ‘It’s too hard’. … ‘It doesn’t work’.
Result? They give up. Worse? It fails.
I would argue that ( and to paraphrase my friend John Caswell ), they are attempting to ‘solve the wrong problem really well’.
Moving from Current State to Future State is not easy if you are attempting to solve the problem with the same thinking that got you there. Instead imagine … visualize (Now you know why we say ‘future vision’) the best outcome and then engineer backwards. It’s not the same.
Back to our farmer.
Current Reality - Lost in Devon
Future Vision - Safe in London
All he was doing was highlighting the limitations of ‘linear thinking’, which in three steps might well have the driver lost again. Instead visualize London
- “You know how to get there from Bristol .. right?”
- (confirm a basic level of knowledge)
- “And you know how to get to Bristol from Exeter?”
- (drilling down to get to more detail)
- “Oh .. you used to live in Exeter?”
- (additional information unpacked by asking questions)
- “Then you know Chagford?”
- (reaffirming assumed knowledge to make the next step as simple as possible)
- “Of course you do .. well … Chagford is only a couple of miles away .. you need to head back to the church …”
- (restatement of the problem, simplification of the actual ask)
At a stroke the driver’s challenge is significantly reduced and very manageable.