Tomorrow Man

If I were a cartoon character, I’d be Tomorrow Man; able to see through the present and into the future;  capable of leaping from what is to what could be.  Yeah – I’d be great and have a very cool suit, kind of like this:

But Tomorrow man has a weakness. His kryptonite is ‘today’.

That’s the issue with my (your) character as Tomorrow Man.  His Tomorrow consumes his Today.  Now that’s not bad when you think about it in perspective of acting ‘today’ in order to create an envisioned ‘tomorrow’.  However it becomes a liability when a leader becomes so consumed with the future that they miss out on ‘today’.  

 

If ‘tomorrow’ consumes today and leaves it wasted and empty, an unrealistic perspective of life and leadership has taken over.  We often hear of the dreamers who are no practical good; of those who are ‘heavenly minded but no earthly good’.  There is some truth to that.

I acknowledge that I have missed out on a lot of the present; the enjoyment of the moment; the dwelling with others (and myself) in TODAY.  As a result I have learned (painfully) that spending too much time on envisioning and living in the future as your current reality will disconnect you from family, friends, hobbies, interests and even from knowledge, because you are so set on getting there you skim the surface of relationships & tasks.

A few thoughts & self-coaching questions from one Tomorrow Man to another Tomorrow Man or Woman:

YOU ONLY POSSESS TODAY.  

No one on this planet has any guarantee that they will have a tomorrow on this earth.  That being the case, take notice of ‘today’. What & who is in it?

• How can you engage with someone so that if today was your only contact with them, they’d value and cherish it tomorrow?

• How will the tasks at hand be accomplished if today was your only connection to tomorrow? 

ONLY TODAY GETS YOU TO TOMORROW. 

• What practical steps need to be taken today that if not done, only postpone tomorrow?

STOPPING TO EMBRACE TODAY MAY HAVE CLUES FOR TOMORROW.  

If you are a leader working on implementing a vision, this is a critical attention-posture to take!

•  Life and leadership is nomadic.  It is not linear.  As the journey progresses, the turns and twists of circumstances and real-time decisions lead to new and sometimes unfamiliar landscapes. 

• Rarely will future plans ever turn out the way they were originally envisioned.  Instead of being frustrated with the changes, could it be that what happens in your today holds some clues/ideas/new contexts to actually create an even better tomorrow?

• How can you create daily space to reflect on how the day’s events influences tomorrow?

Stopping to embrace today makes tomorrow worth it. 

You could lose it all tomorrow.

Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t waste today for a tomorrow that never came? 

Harv Matchullis

The Releasing Power of Constraints

How much is enough to get a great idea going?

The race to be entrepreneurial in our organizations is much like our New Year’s race to improve our personal lives. We see the need for change and then gather all of our great ideas to strategize a way forward.  The possibilities inspire us.

Yet – after the meeting, after the planning and initial buzz, nothing much happens.

In the context of businesses and organizations, whether profit or not for profit - the broad research on entrepreneurial starts (which includes intrapreneurs – entrepreneurs within an established organization trying to launch a new project), indicates they fail more often than not…to the tune of 70-90%.  

The usual suspect is resources:

• Not enough people  
•  Insufficient funds 
•  Lack of organizational support. 

Can I suggest a different angle on this?  

You may be failing at new ideas because you have TOO MANY RESOURCES.

Those with excess or even sufficient resources tend to invest primarily in the familiar.  In part that is to maintain the ‘formula’ that has brought them their current resource success.  Don’t mess with success. So, they may tweak at the edges and call it innovation, but it’s primarily maintenance of the goose that laid their golden egg. Research reveals that compared to resource-rich organizations, entrepreneurs and organizations with truly entrepreneurial practices are innovative in part because of their resource constraints.  

How can that be? 

Counterintuitively, constraints release you because:

• You must now focus on existing advantages.  What have you got in your hand right now without any further investment?  What are you great at?
• They move you to become truly experimental.  Think about the thinking that emerges when you are asking the question: “How could we get this done without any money or other resources? 
•  Rather than focusing energy on maintaining & resourcing the status quo, you are freed up to think about unmet needs, areas your current resources don’t address. 
•  It forces you to take a new look at your knowledge and resource base, and in so doing opens your eyes to new opportunities.

Your idea here

If you have a vision for something, but perhaps not the resources, will that stop you?  

Resource constraints may be the best thing that has ever happened to you.

Harv Matchullis

Visiontracks Facilitation & Coaching

harvey@visiontracks.ca