Starfield overlaid with the words 'What do we do when hope is lost' - Adventurous Visions

Adventurous Visions

How do adventurous visions provide a source of hope – engaging your people in a cause bigger than themselves?

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Hope is the most powerful force in existence. It turns losers into winners. It helps defeat impossible odds. Hope keeps people going when they would otherwise give up. It inspires incredible acts of bravery. Hope ignites creativity. And it transforms businesses.

What do we do when Hope is Lost?

Hope - reaching out for a vision - Cottonbro-viaPexelsBut when we see a world around us which is struggling. And we see evil go unchecked and unpunished. The things we value are being lost. And it all seems to be heading in the wrong direction. What then happens to our hope?
Typically, it retrenches. We still have hope, but within boundaries. And unfortunately those boundaries are shrinking.
The danger is that we have a misunderstanding of hope. That we see it is a consequence, rather than a cause. That we hold onto it as a comfort, not as something that drives us to bravely, creatively and triumphantly fight back. Perhaps we are consumers of hope, rather than its creators?

Creators of Hope

The thing is, someone has to create hope. If all everybody is doing is either holding on to it, or stealing it away from others, how will it grow? True, most of us are not in a position to create hope for the whole world. But we can create hope where we are.
hope - young man staring into sky courtesy myicahel-tamburini-viaPexelsAnd for those of us that lead or influence organisations, we have to ask ourselves, what are we doing to increase hope? Where are our people placing their hope? And what is the role of our organisation in inspiring and channeling that hope? How do we and our organisation become creators of hope?

Hope in Community

Religious groups have long understood the fact that hope is sustained better in community. But, like many communities, they sometimes lose sight of the need to ensure that the outworking of their hope is worthy of that community. That its ambition and adventure brings hope to those around it, and brings growth to the individuals within it.
The same is true for all organisations. If their sense of ambition and adventure is insufficiently large, they will fail to develop and harness the true potential of their people. And they will fail to realise their own potential to impact the world around them. They will function, they may even survive, but they are unlikely to really inspire.

Adventurous Visions

hope - adventurous visions - courtesy lukas_viaPexelsWhat is needed is what we call adventurous vision. A creative expansion of the perspective of the organisation and the people within it. A shared picture of a future that matters, and which creates meaning for all involved in it. Something that makes a real difference for the people within the organisation, and the people they interact with outside of it. A pursuit that offers them a sense of pride in the difference they will make – what they truly, confidently, HOPE to achieve.

Un-Adventurous Visions

Very few people get inspired by the requirement for incremental steps in their performance. 10% here and there is for many simply an invitation to work harder and longer. Normally for somebody else’s benefit, usually for someone who already has more money than they do. Numbers and increments do not inspire – well not unless they really mean something that is. It is the implications of the numbers that matter – the difference they make in the world.
But if it is the implications that matter. If it is the narrative around the numbers that is the real source of hope. Then wouldn’t it be better to cast the vision in those terms?

Creating Adventurous Visions

Hope - awakening adventure - Pixabay-viaPexelsThe two most important things in creating adventurous visions are conversation, and asking the questions ‘Why?’ and ‘What if …?’.
Conversations can help people to understand what is important to ourselves and each other. As a result, they begin to reconcile a narrative around meaning and potential. And they begin to generate deeper and more meaningful relationships.
Key to this is the question ‘Why?’. Understanding the reasons why people do what they do, and think as they think, can build new links between people’s stories. Successive levels of ‘Why?’ can open up new insights, and creative opportunities for doing things differently. Thinking about these opportunities together can generate new sense of hope and optimism. And it can bond people together, and to the organisation, in pursuit of this.

Inspiring Creativity

Asking ‘What if …?’ helps to break down some of the habits and paradigms that hold our perception of the work we do in the routine and mundane. It opens up further possibilities and fires people’s imaginations.
At the organisation level, it can to some extent recast the organisation’s role. It can help the leadership see further than the product or service into the potential impact this is having on their customers, and even their customers’ customers. And the impact it has on society, on the environment, on humanity, and potentially on history.

Dreaming Big

Hope - Adventurous Visions metaphor - person bestriding a mountainHistory? Really?
Most certainly. The people who change history are no different from you and I, except in one thing. In some way, they have the belief, the hope, that they CAN change history. The people who don’t change history are no different from you and I except, perhaps, in one thing. They think that changing history is the role of others.
But who are these others? What if we all think it is the role of others? Who then will shine as a light in the darkness?
At some level, and in some way, your organisation could be the next really big thing. But you and your people have to see it, and believe it, and make that their hope. Then again, is that not the role of a leader?

Dreaming Small

Much of this article has been aimed at organisations. But organisations are simply patterns of collections of people. And it often takes just one of those people to make the change.
If you have felt motivated in some way by what is written here, you might be the one that makes the difference to your organisation, that makes a difference to the world. Of course, your organisation might not move. Or even if it did move, you still don’t believe in what it is doing. If that is the case, them maybe your first move is to move to an organisation that you can believe in.
On the other hand, if it might move, you might find some further help in the articles below.

Related Articles

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#019 – Clues in Timidity – Tapping Intuition

Tap into your intuition and use it to ensure a more secure footing – Use your subconscious to check whether your conscious has the whole picture

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

Benefits of tapping into your intuition

Why take this challenge?

Access deeper levels of wisdom within yourself

Increase your success rate by recognising and avoiding issues in advance

Develop the skills of your team in predicting the future

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

It is a little known fact, but it turns out that most project failures could have been foreseen before they launched. The article ‘Using intuition to predict the future’ tells of a study of failed projects across a wide range of businesses.

The study was undertaken by a large consultancy firm. The interviewers asked those who had been involved a very insightful question. They asked whether, at the point of launch, people would have bet $500 of their own money on the project’s success. And overwhelmingly the answer was ‘no’.

It turns out that, after we have applied all of our logic in planning success, there is still an emotional component within us which has more to tell us. A subconscious sense which assesses things that are too complex and involved and uncertain for factual assessment. One that doesn’t return its answers in words and numbers. But in a sense of discomfort, or disquiet, that is highlighted when we are asked to ‘bet our own money’.

This week’s adventure is all about tapping into that intuition.

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

 

Flamingos taking off - metaphor for the space between one situation and the next

#007 – Using the Third Space

Use small pauses between things to best ready yourself for each challenge and opportunity. Divest yourself of the debris of what’s past and put on your best for what’s to come.

Graphic image saying Power-Up and reflecting the intended advantage to be gained through the adventure

Why take this challenge?

Be at your best for each challenge and situation throughout your day.

Better work-life balance through intentional transitions between the ideal work you, and the ideal home you.

Improved mental health for you and those around you

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

In our second adventure – Fixing ‘ … that’s not me’ – we explored how ‘who you are’ is something you can choose. You can put on the ‘you’ you want. You can choose the ‘you’ that will be best for each situation. Even each moment.

Out of his research into top performing athletes, Adam Fraser has discovered that in many cases our success is determined by something most people take for granted – the transition between one thing and the next. Too often we bring who we were in the last battle into the beginning of the next one. And the fact is, that may not be the best option for us.

Around this idea, Adam has prepared some excellent (brief) resources that I heartily recommend you take a look at. This week’s adventure is about better understanding what happens to YOU in those transitions, and then trying out his simple three step approach.

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

Other resources to help you create healthier environments

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.

Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

 

Picture of painted face - metaphor for making more memorable meetings

#005 – Disrupting the Camouflage

Disrupting the Camouflage; Better Embrace Diversity in your Meetings; Make your virtual meetings a visual feast

Why take this challenge?

To redress the effect that web conferencing (Zoom, Teams, etc.) is having on our ability to remember meeting content.

To make discussion within meetings more memorable, and thereby easier to apply and recall in practice.

To increase creativity and diversity in virtual meetings.

 

Virtual meetings have enabled so much to take place through the Covid pandemic that otherwise would not have been possible.

But there are problems, and one of these is that people are finding it more difficult to remember them. The visual similarity between one meeting and the next (same interface, same room) is limiting the cues our mind uses to connect pieces of information together, and this means we are getting more forgetful.

So this weeks adventure is all about creating new perspectives in your meetings to aid people’s ability to ‘connect the dots’ in their own memories.

 

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

 

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

Useful links:

 

Black paint on face - metaphor for Breaking through the invisible boundaries (paradigms) that confine our potential

Fixing “That’s not me!” – video and transcript


 

Transcript

Rumi, the 6th Century Poet and Philospher, asked:
Why, in all the plenitude of God’s great universe, do you choose to fall asleep in this small, dark prison?
He was speaking to us all. He was speaking of the human condition. There are always prison walls – subconscious patterns that limit our thinking.
These Paradigms are patterns or constraints that have become so familiar to us that we have ceased to be cognitively aware of them. We literally don’t know that they are there, but we behave, automatically, as though they are. And we limit our ‘freedom of movement’ within them.
Early in my thirties, I was blessed to be put on a course by my employer, which was all about identifying and breaking these paradigms.
Leaving a room by the window rather than the door seemed such a stupid thing to do at the time, and I was quite taken aback at the sense of release we collectively felt when we did it.
The point, you may realise, was not that ‘stupid’ things are good things. It was that intentionally doing something ‘stupid’ does something in your subconscious that re-establishes you as the pilot of parts of your life where you had drifted to becoming an unconscious passenger.
It was about walking through an invisible wall. It was about appreciating that there are far more choices around us, every moment, than we allow ourselves to realise.
So, the challenge in Adventure number 2 is about identifying a wall, and stepping beyond it. It is about taking an existing habit, pattern or convention and …, for at least one time…, seriously considering doing it differently. Not conventionally differently, but unconventionally differently, to see how that feels.
To be frank, in practical terms, it is unlikely to improve things. But in spiritual terms I am hoping that it might begin to awaken something new.
It will seem weird. It will attract criticism (albeit probably unspoken). It will likely prove counterproductive to material progress.  But it is not about that.
It is about, for a moment at least, expressing your freedom and seeing the view from that different place – good or bad. It is about saying: ‘Yeah, what I just did may not be me … but this, … this me you think you know, … this is NOT all there is!’
It is about being the pilot again, and nudging the joy stick to the right, just to prove ‘you can’.
And it is about asking your spirit: Are you awake? Are you ready to play? Are you ready to knock down some walls? And about feeling what comes back at you. If only for a moment.
Part of my inspiration for this adventure was a response I received to my request for ideas for adventures. It was from a past client and friend called Dave. Dave has really been through the mill over the past few years. And he has seen a lot of what he previously perceived as his life ripped away from him. He wrote:
‘Sinking to deep lows’ has created a resilience within me, such that I am much more accepting of ‘now’, not concerned too much about what might happen, where I will be, or what I am doing. So that I can enjoy what I have much more, appreciate the situation, and also stand back and do what makes most sense. I feel very lucky in this regard, particularly when I see others who have what seem to be self-generated pressures, and are trapped, by their lack of knowledge, from trusting themselves to let go and come out the other side.”
It strikes me that, here, Dave has captured the essence of an ‘adventure mindset’. His words remind us of the fact that so many people who have been to the bottom, come back up with a more profound sense of life and living. They offer us a means to ‘learn’ without necessarily having to go through the ‘lesson’. If only we can muster the courage to take an honest look at ourselves without the trauma that forces that perspective upon us.
A sentiment from Bette Midler’s song, The Rose, resonates here. Perhaps it is the soul that has accepted death, which really recognises the value of living. The soul that has faced the abyss of all these things, that no longer lets ‘fear of them’ rob it of the journey toward them.
THAT soul knows the abyss can arrive without warning, whatever you do.  It is a soul that has confronted the false logic of: denying itself the experience of ‘living’ for fear of losing that same experience.
“That’s not ‘me’ …”  ???
Is that the ‘me’ that sleeps, in the shadows, imprisoned by invisible walls?
Or is that the ‘me’ that makes my heart leap and my soul sing?
Contrary to popular misconception, my Christian faith teaches that Jesus came that we should “have life, and have it in the fullest possible way”
My hope is that Adventure number 2 in some small way helps YOUR soul along that path.
God bless you.