Category: Communication

Mixed Feelings and a Wall of Sound

Recently I’ve been thinking and writing about the importance of leaving spaces in between stuff, of leaving room for things to grow – particularly when thinking about change.

And talking with Heather Bussing this week she reminded me that dealing with change is about mixed feelings. It’s not about good or bad, right or wrong, happy or sad, nothing is absolute. It’s about good and bad, right and wrong, happy and sad. Being able to hold these conflicting positions together in our heads is part of what makes being human so exciting and scary.

So to counter the spaces in between I want to finish what has been an outstanding first week of our fifth year for What Goes Around with a little something that has absolutely no spaces in between. One of my very favourite songs and two minutes of the finest noise ever to emerge from the USA. ‘It’s good to be back in England and it’s good to see y’all again’:

Spaces in Between – Part Three

I was on the train home from a celebration last Friday when I stuck these words on Facebook:

‘Forget neat and tidy. It’s the gaps, the spaces in between which leave room, for you and I to grow.’

I confess – these words are not entirely mine, there’s a heavy borrow in there from the wonderful lyricist Mr Neil Peart. I’ll quote him fully later.

I also confess to being a little drunk at the time of scribbling, though thankfully nowhere near as smashed as the guy Keira and I saw earlier that day being helped across the road at the traffic lights. ‘There goes the drunkest man I’ve ever seen’, said Keira. He was wobbling all over the street. Anyway, where were we…

Ah yes, spaces in between. My friend Nigel Bird contributed to the flow with this:

True. The solid properties of matter are illusionary – matter is made out of atoms, which are 99% empty space, yet we see & experience it as being solid. Everything is just space with a few particles spinning around. And energy. Space and energy. Thats what it all is.

A few more likes and comments followed and then I walked up the hill to home and bed. The End.

Except not this time. On Saturday I awoke and scribbled Part one of Spaces in Between, then Ian Pettigrew and I had a useful exchange on Twitter about frameworks, models and spaces. On Sunday Part Two followed and here we are on Monday in the home straight.

Forget neat and tidy. It’s the gaps, the spaces in between which leave room, for you and I to grow.

Those gaps are full of:

Excitement

Possibility

Diversity

Risk

Fear

Wonder

Uncertainty

Authenticity

And much, much more besides

I guess this Friday to Monday meander has been as much about the acceptance of the randomness of change as it has anything. As human beings we’re all unpredictable, flawed and a lot bit out of whack. We don’t often fit the mould, and yet a lot of time, effort, energy and resource is expended trying and failing to get us to fit. I understand that sometimes people need and appreciate a framework, a model, a lens through which to operate. And not always. Sometimes we just need to recognise the differences, appreciate the differences and let those differences help us to do our best work.

Heather Bussing puts it like this:

We have mixed feelings about most things, most of the time. Our culture and our brains like to label everything as either good or bad, black or white. But when we do that, we leave out all the other colors, feelings, and possibilities for insight. Things are not inherently good or bad. They just are. The way we view things is entirely dependent on whether what is happening is what we want. But when we can put that down, there’s a chance to see more clearly. Then whole new options begin to open up.

And Neil Peart puts it like this:

We are secrets to each other
Each one’s life a novel
No-one else has read.
Even joined in bonds of love,
We’re linked to one another
By such slender threads.

Just between us,
I think it’s time for us to recognize
The differences we sometimes fear to show.
Just between us,
I think it’s time for us to realize
The spaces in between
Leave room for you and I to grow.

Have a great week.

Spaces in Between – Part Two

I’ve just finished reading Wool by Hugh Howey. It’s a nerve jangling, thrilling tale of a not so distant future world that I don’t want to live in. You can read a review of the book here and check out the official Wool web site which uses the wonderfully no win strap line, ‘If the lies don’t kill you, the truth will’, as its forerunner of impending doom.

There’s a passage in the book where one of the leading characters, an engineer named Jules, manages to persuade the powers that be to turn off a vital piece of mechanical equipment for a few days, in order that she and others can strip it down, do some maintenance and make adjustments on it and reassemble it. Once reassembled, the machine will be more efficient than before. It’s a big risk – this piece of kit is very important, yet Jules wins the argument on the basis that a) it will run much better after it’s been worked on and b) if we don’t maintain it then one day it’s gonna blow. Those aren’t her words, I’ve just always wanted to write that phrase.

The work is undertaken. The pressure is on. Things are taken apart, polished, adjusted and reset. Tolerances are checked and double checked before nervously, the machine is reawakened. In its rebirth the machine performs so well that Jules and her fellow mechanics need a few seconds to realise it is active. What used to rattle, now hums.

Clearly Jules and her team are skilled engineers, but the great thing about machines is that you can recalibrate them, take them apart, replace worn cogs, adjust tolerances and make them more efficient. And for a machine to be efficient, the spaces in between have to be carefully managed, exact and precise.

Neatly stacked

Tightly packed

Manageable

Convenient

Easy

Tidy

And I may be wrong, I often am, but unless I’m in some Truman Show-esque joke, you’re not a machine, are you?

Mechanical efficiency. Human effectiveness. There’s a world of difference between the two.