Activate and Unlock
When Nathan started this research years ago, he wanted to explore how innovators manage uncertainty. But when he talked to innovators, although they expressed enthusiasm about uncertainty, they disliked the word manage. It was only when we came across the work of Roberto Burle Marx that we stumbled upon the right word. Burle Marx was one of the leading modernist landscape architects, whose pivotal insight occurred when he was attending art school in Berlin. He was visiting an exhibit on plants from his native Brazil, and as he wandered through the iridescent tattoo flowers and giant water lilies bursting from their constricting containers, the question arose: What if the real power lies not in trying to manage and control something, the way the narrow pots were doing, but instead in trying to unlock and activate its inherent potential? Burle Marx applied this principle to design over three thousand inspiring landscapes, including the undulating black-and-white stones of the Copacabana boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro. Inspired by him, we set about exploring what other things, including uncertainty, might be better when activated and unlocked rather than managed. We found a surprisingly large number.
In the domain of education, Maria Montessori, the first female graduate of the University of Rome’s medical school, became curious about children with special needs, whom society had consigned to asylums where caretakers controlled their behavior through medication. She wondered, What if these children have inherent capabilities that could be unlocked with more holistic courses engaging their senses and their minds? Her approach proved so successful that these children, whom society had abandoned, learned to read and write well enough to pass the standard state exams. She then repeated her experiment with low-income children (at that time considered incapable of high-level mental work) and found that when engaging their natural cycles of interest, they preferred learning to toys and displayed equally high levels of achievement. Montessori’s approach, focused on unlocking children’s inherent love of learning, has since spread to over 25,000 schools in 145 countries. Montessori, who has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work, observed, “I did not invent a method of education, I simply gave some little children a chance to live.”1
Within the business world, we found similar examples. Years ago, when Microsoft conducted a global software survey, it revealed that the most frequently installed software in the world wasn’t Microsoft Windows, but a video game made by a handful of people in Texas. Gabe Newell, a leader on the Windows team, concluded that if eight people in the middle of nowhere could beat the might, money, and reach of Microsoft, perhaps the business world was doing something wrong. So he quit and cofounded Valve, a software company whose advantage is in trying to unlock and activate people’s inherent intelligence, creativity, and intuition. Valve employees do not have titles or positions, and no one tells them what to do. Instead, the employee handbook instructs them that they have a desk with wheels, and they should move it to where they create the most value. The company’s belief is that it “spent the last decade going out of its way to recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people on Earth; telling them to sit at a desk and do what they’re told obliterates 99 percent of their value.”2
Research seems to support these anecdotes. For example, a study by researchers at Harvard Business School found that when companies in the photography and paint industry implemented quality management systems like ISO 9000, they succeeded in managing for better quality, but actually decreased their ability to innovate and create new growth.3 Likewise, a recent field experiment, also done at Harvard, showed that participants at a hackathon who held more frequent meetings (e.g., stand-up meetings) increased their coordination but decreased their innovativeness.4 By contrast, a separate research project studying the world’s top culinary teams observed that the most innovative ones purposely inject more uncertainty into the process to activate and unlock new ideas.5 Scholars doing work on uncertainty talk about “endogenous uncertainty,” or the idea that new opportunities can actually be created by choosing to increase uncertainty, rather than the more common approach of reducing uncertainty.6 For example, whereas Blockbuster tried to use proven strategies to respond to changing technologies and failed, Netflix actually increased the uncertainty by exploring multiple new options, which contributed to its becoming one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Admittedly, “activating and unlocking” can seem like a somewhat ambiguous concept. Consider that museum designer Adrien Gardère describes it as “releasing” the possibilities that are already there, saying in the context of his own work re-imagining an existing museum: “That is what I love to do, is take what is there and use it, not having to do anything more than use what is there.”7 In other words, the possibilities are already latent in the thing you are unlocking “like the seed of a tree, it has the whole of a tree, … Relieving and releasing [what is already there] is work I find far more exciting than doing my smudge and saying ‘that’s mine.’” For example, when Gardère was called in to redesign the Roman Museum of Narbonne, in France, where centuries of carved stones had been used and reused over centuries of construction and destruction, he asked himself, How do I release them, how do I let them become what they already inherently have inside them? Rather than create one more boring exhibit with tiny plaques labeling lifeless stones, he designed an interactive wall with a robotic arm that lets museum guests rearrange the museum stones in new combinations, just as those stones have been reused over the centuries with each passing civilization.
If Gardère’s approach sounds a bit too abstract, consider the similarity to how Ralph Hamers, former CEO of ING, motivated the transformation of a sleepy brick-and-mortar bank into a global digital one. Hamers recounted, “I went back to our DNA of what had made ING successful over a century … There were two things: innovation and simplicity…. I just had to touch [that core identity] to activate it, and everyone recognized it.”8 By the way, Hamers used the word “activate” unprompted. But he pointed to it as part of the essence of the bank’s successful change.
Ultimately, the real question is, What would it mean to activate and unlock, rather than to manage and control, the uncertainty in your own life? David Whyte eloquently describes having such a moment while working as a marine biologist. “Busyness was an integral part of my identity that year … besieged by what seemed like unremitting and unending deadlines.” One day, with reluctance, he agreed to lunch with a stranger, who asked his advice about restoring a ten-thousand-year-old salmon run blocked by a tidal gate. Whyte recalls, “I was shocked by … the sudden image of the forlorn salmon unable to enter the stream,” guided by generations of chemical memory, to precisely this gate where they would wait and die. “His words had the strange effect of touching me at a level far beyond his immediate practical need.”9
After lunch, instead of returning to the office, Whyte drove home and pulled out a sheet of blank paper to reflect on what was asking to be activated and unlocked:
At this stage it is so easy to want to turn away from our own faculties of attention and turn something else on: the radio, the television, the lawn mower, to want someone else’s voice, someone else’s work, anything but … this invitation to the depths, this challenge to get below the surface … for all people who really want to know what is eating at them, what is asking to be addressed, what lies beneath the surface of busyness.
On the blank page, he wrote the names of salmon, and then the lines “For too many nights now I have not imagined the salmon, threading the dark streams of reflected stars.” He continued writing until, by the end, he came to the realization that “my job was not to abstract the life of the oceans and parcel it up into educational sound-bites, but to make it real for myself and for others in language against which our normal defenses have no power. Writing, in other words.” Over years, Whyte transitioned from biologist to writer and consultant, working with individuals and large organizations. Looking back on the experience, he, like Max Richter, describes it happening as a “conversation” between his existing life and all the possibilities, not as a sudden leap. But he warns against ignoring the invitation to this conversation: “In building a work life, people who follow rules, written or unwritten, too closely and in an unimaginative way are often suffocated by those same rules and die by them, quite often unnoticed and very often unmourned.”10
Reflection and Practice
We can’t activate ideas we don’t care about. Much like finding adjacent possibles, activation and unlocking happens for those who are puzzling over, dreaming of, and envisioning what’s aching to be unleashed. And it won’t work if we force the machinery. It’s more of a coaxing energy that trusts something worthwhile is there.
What should I activate?
- Where do you have curiosities, interest, or talent? What is the need you are trying to meet? Is there a project you set aside that might be ready to be unlocked? Or, as discussed in chapter 17, are you trying to force activation in the wrong direction?
- Where do you imagine change? Tyler Mitchell is an African American photographer and filmmaker. He recounts, “Growing up with Tumblr, I would often come across images of sensual, young, attractive white models running around being free and having so much fun…. I seldom saw that freedom for Black people in images—or at least in the photography I knew. My work responds to this lack.” He activated and unlocked a reality by creating it. “I feel an urgency to visualize Black people as free, expressive, effortless, and sensitive. I aim to visualize what a Black utopia looks like or could look like.”11 Mitchell’s work is “gut-punching in its optimism” and in how it unlocks possibilities for others.12
- What are you doing anyway? Can you elevate a mundane activity? Anything important that has lost its impact (relationships, cooking, sex life) is waiting to be activated! Author Priya Parker puzzled over the difference between the productive conflict negotiations in her professional life and the unproductive gatherings in her personal life. She began to wonder: Rather than plan another “off the rack” birthday party, could she encourage people to activate and unlock gatherings? She says that the more obvious the purpose of a gathering (wedding, birthday, etc.) is, the more likely it is that you’ll fall into the same format you’ve always used. Parker gives guidelines for reinventing such events, energizing participants, and creating meaning in her book, The Art of Gathering.
How do I unlock something?
Managing uncertainty is about controlling, reducing, and containing uncertainty. Activating and unlocking is about allowing, encouraging, and exploring uncertainty.
- Create space to explore. How can you activate something if it is tied down and controlled? You have to create time and space to explore. Valve gives employees freedom to explore how to create value. Likewise, Netflix founder Reed Hastings and INSEAD professor Erin Meyer have written about the company’s culture of “no rules,” which is vital for trying new things and adapting quickly. The same applies in your personal life: give yourself the space to explore. The idea for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton was sparked when Lin-Manuel Miranda read Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton on vacation and wrote a rap about the historical figure. He spent a year rewriting that single song before it expanded into other songs and eventually the musical, which has won dozens of awards.
- Stop busyness. Whyte recounts how, before he realized he needed to change course, his days were obscured by perpetual busyness. One day he charged into a meeting room at work and asked, “Has anyone seen David?” His colleagues laughed at what they thought was a joke: he was the only David working there. But Whyte recognized the symbolic meaning of the slip—how we can literally lose ourselves in tasks.13 In this spirit, Olivier Blum, chief strategy and sustainability officer at global equipment firm Schneider Electric, urged senior executives to find a way to “free up your energy” when the company was facing the need for digital transformation. He pushed them to scrutinize commitments, meetings, and tasks to create room for creativity, insight, and innovation.14
- Inject uncertainty. As mentioned, research suggests that innovators often purposefully inject uncertainty into an activity to increase their ability to innovate. What would it look like to inject uncertainty into your own life? Would it mean to try something new, talk to someone new, or break your routine? Recall CEO Piet Coelewij, who took up a completely new sport—kickboxing—to increase his willingness to take on uncertainty in his career. As thinker and poet Wendell Berry advises those who want to create a meaningful life, “So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute.”
- Trust it’s there and that you won’t mess it up. There might be dead ends and false starts, but the thing that wants to be activated or unlocked isn’t going anywhere. Like Adrien Gardère describes, it’s already inherent (from the Latin meaning “to cling, adhere, or stick to”) in the thing. You do have to invest the energy to explore and get curious, but you don’t need to become a genius to invent it; you only have to activate it. Let that reduce your stress and increase your ability to listen.
- Drop your ego. Often our egos create restricting beliefs that work against our ability to activate and unlock. For example, psychologist Shefali Tsabary describes how parents’ egos have led to the controlling and overscheduling of their children, which actually works against the parents’ goals to unlock and activate their kids’ potential. Tsabary argues that we have to “unfold, and undo” this worldview and then kids “will spontaneously reach for the fullest expression of themselves and find everything they require for this to happen.”15 Likewise, in what ways have our egos led us to seek control rather than activation? What projects have we said yes to that we don’t really care about, or what ways of living have we adopted that limit our ability to activate and unlock?
What will it take and look like?
- Be open to the essence of the thing being different from what is easiest, fastest, or flashiest. What is activated and unlocked may not be ideal or perfect. It may take time and be different than expected. Think of organic apples—they look dull and small compared with the shiny, pesticide-coated ones, but they taste so good!
Sometimes we don’t want to deal with what wants to be unlocked and activated. Our friend Pádraig Ó Tuama, the Irish poet, spoke about how he dreamed of joining a monastery in New York City. After years of preparation he flew to New York, but “within five minutes of being inside the monastery I knew I wasn’t a fit.” Discouraged, he describes how he “got lost on the subway most days. I walked the city alone. And I kept meandering towards a gay bar. I hadn’t ever been inside a gay bar alone before. This was early 2001. I was 25, curious, frightened.”
Finally, one afternoon he went into the bar and bought a lemonade. “I must have been shaking. I got talking with the man behind the bar—he had an Irish grandparent. ‘What’s got you in New York?’ he asked. What the hell, I confessed it all: priesthood; New York City; four years of dreaming; all broken in an instant; surprise—the bad kind; a whole life in front of me now; no plans left; everybody was right: I was an aimless wanderer.”
Having grown up in a strict religious environment that rejected homosexuality, Ó Tuama had never allowed himself to ask to wonder if he was gay until the bartender, in a kind and empathetic tone, asked, “Have you ever been in love?”
Ó Tuama recounts his shock. “Nothing had prepared me for his question. Up until that point, I’d believed such love was neither possible nor permissible. The barman could see my surprise. He was in no rush. I’m guessing I cried, but I can’t really remember…. I don’t remember going back to the monastery.”16
Today Ó Tuama is a conflict mediator, poet, speaker, thought leader, teacher, storyteller, and theologian as well as openly gay. You would struggle to find a more loving, empathetic person or a kinder friend. He spends his time exploring the questions, paradigms, and systems that harm and trap people, whether national struggles like the Irish conflict or individual ones like self-hatred. He is both much happier and more impactful, activated and unlocked to be himself, pursuing his true calling in life, rather than forcing himself to be the New York City priest he believed he was supposed to be.