Overview: Resilience, the
capacity to deliver creative solutions when things go off plan, arises from granularity, or
how closely we observe the world around us – and the human experience lived day-to-day, moment-by-moment.
Matt asked me to write up an article, expanding on concepts he briefly presented in
Verona, Italy.
One of the most distinctive arrows in our quiver is cross-disciplinary insight, so I will show, very counter-intuitively, how to foster innovation in the language of business, by using the wordless language of dance!
Let Me Illustrate:
In the 1953 MGM film,
The Band Wagon, with Fred Astaire & Cyd Charisse, the "Dancing in the Dark" sequence distills down to 03m:24s, much of what you and I need to and deliver innovative and consistently superior performance in logistics!
This exponential reduction is similar to our Systemkey™ Risk Process called
Semantic Compression™ yet it is:
- » as old as humanity itself and
- » available for the price of simple discipline and commitment to excellence.
Simple never implies easy
to those leaders worth following.
How?
Using the language of human movement, the characters of Gabrielle Gerard and Tony Hunter portray for us a visual outline of the major points of an innovation campaign:
Business Resilience
- » feeds
- » nourishes and
- » supports
Business Innovation. This "Dancing in the Dark" vignette from
The Band Wagon, captures the 4 steps of consistently fostering innovation throughout your value-delivery circles.
Lesson Roadmap
- » Resilience
- » Granularity
- » Love your people
- » Innovation then arises naturally & organically…
from the full blossoming of effective ideas sown and harvested across our organization(s) and our entire value-delivery circle(s).
To recap, Resilience, or the capacity to deliver creative solutions when things go off plan, arises from Granularity, or how closely we observe the world around us - and the human experience lived day-to-day, moment-by-moment.
In the language of business, such level of detail is
aggressively opposed and often fiercely resisted, yet in the language of music or dance, it is natively, intuitively understood. At the elite level, a musician's or dancer's every nuance conveys meaning, no motion or expression is wasted.
In the movie, Gabrielle & Tony are cast together in a stage musical, yet are fearful of working together. Rather than directly speaking of their concerns plainly, gaining clarity, they have each magnified the other based on reputation. Fear is rarely useful in business. We'll leave aside other aspects of the topic, as outside the scope of a 300-word blog post(!)…
After a conflict, as they each apologize, they realize their common fears got in the way of working together effectively. They decide, very literally, to "take a walk in the park" to enable the best performance for the show they want patrons to enjoy and recommend to others.
Lesson:
They intentionally choose to look beyond their differences for the good of the show, so it will have a "long, profitable run" on the Broadway stage.
Dance Sequence
START:
Getting into horse drawn carriage.
While it's true that the dance in the park sequence stands on its own as one of the great moments of dance captured on film, the carriage conversation before reaching the park is the "getting acquainted" phase so essestial to superior performance.
DANCE:
Cor ad cor loquitur. We see the body dynamics and discrete signals beginning to flash
cor ad cor loquitur or the full expression (in English) "heart speaks to heart before mind is open to mind."
DANCE:
Open the conversation Gerard wordlessly proposes a musical|dance question to Hunter.
Someone has to go first. Gabrielle opens the conversation. Tony replies. As they are both highly trained professionals, they read and follow cues with grace.
Lesson:
This is the basics of "knowing your business" and while it is unique to every business, it's no secret.
- » Seek out talented people
- » Equip them with the tools, conditions and effective processes for success, then
- » Get out of the way and let them do the job for which they've been hired!
These 3 timeless points are "the milkstool" (3-legged stool) of why servant leadership and humility are observed in cultures across this big blue marble.
Lesson:
From the 11C Samurai tea ceremony to today's authors like Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life, the true power in business is the power in powerlessness that "entrains (pulls or draws) people in the flow" as it captivates participation in an idea, a cause, a vision, through the shared-mental-model highlighted in the systems thinking discipline.
Lesson:
The real currencies of business aren't money. As an experienced engineer, globally schooled in the details of risk management, I have realized the real currencies of business aren't traded on any exchange. Most companies are not in the finance business - most companies are in the people business and they just use money to keep score of how well they are solving problems.
The most successful companies "share the care" by letting people be people, not with flavor-of-the-month programs handed down from C-level exec, but from ordinary people doing extraordinary things on a regular basis, because they have been taught the language of recognizing risk and schooled in the cross-disciplinary insights that ideas come from combining things that nobody has thought to put together before.
Lesson:
The fluid transitions that Cyd Charisse portrays in this vignette are captivating slices of effective business processes in the ballet of a global supply chain. The latter has a global stage and no footlights, but requires no less discipline, attention to detail or dedication to craft.
END: Fosters a new beginning (Background music & dance wrap up)
Gerard & Hunter are peacefully, joyfully, deeply relaxed in the horse-drawn carriage seats, as they ride back to the hotel, hand-in-hand.
Lesson Summary
When you have Olympic-level dedication to knowing your business and sharing the love of your craft, that sharing creates the flow cor ad cor loquitur that creates the pull to which others willingly respond. That back and forth flow of effective, resilient dialog enables harvesting innovation after innovation in a never-ending story. Just as a lighthouse beacon sweeps through a 360° circle, illuminating the darkness to dispel the risks to ships plying the waters en route to their ports of trade, so too does becoming fluent in the language of risk become a beacon to dispel the risks of confusion, discord, dissent and doubt among people willing and able to think before they act, work hard and play hard.
It really is that simple.
It has never been easy, nor has anyone worth following said it was easy. When we learn how we resonate with others, we learn that
Y.O.U.R. is really an acronym: Your Own Unique Resonance, nested infinitely deeply, as we learn to have fun building a business that other people want to be a part of, as co-creators and as customers.
