Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Next Decade’s Most Pulsating Question: “What Can We Get By Without?”

Simplification. Adaptation. Agility. Response. These are all good words but they require some context. The goal is survival-through-to-transcendence in a new age.

Without much doubt we’re required to change at inordinate speed these days. That’s both exciting and daunting. Threats and opportunities are ever present, and at times they’re even wrapped in each other.

Little Wiz and Wizard Wallace provide a handy lesson. In this fable, Little Wiz’s Magic Box of Tools, the practical approach solves every problem without the need of Wallace’s wizardry.

Each time a problem is presented during the story, and whilst Wizard Wallace is racking his brain for the right spell, Little Wiz is able to come through with just the tool to do the job, and always just in time. He serves his mentor quite brilliantly. They make an inspirationally productive team.

And there are more lessons. They keep things light and simple, enjoyable even.

We have to learn to use what we already have. It’s actually more than enough, especially when we facilitate our results with a pinch of faith and an ounce of vision.

And when we find the need of a thing to fill a gap presented, we have to be ruthlessly honest with ourselves and courageously assertive with others. In this rapidly changing environment we find ourselves in we just need the tools that will assist. And that’s it.

We must resist the temptation to please people, and therefore create logistical monsters, which necessitate heavy, spongy and unresponsive solutions which will only serve to bog us down. We must learn and establish the routine of asking what we can get away with.

What don’t we have to do? And this, of course, implies a whole realm of other related questions and competencies around intelligence in getting fit-for-purpose outcomes.

© 2009 S. J. Wickham.

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