Context is Everything. Or, it’s at least Really Big.
“The present holds the fruit of the past, and the seeds of the future.”
Change agents establish context to bring others along. Taking the time to set a clear context ensures that the people around you see what you’re doing and why, so they can focus on the right things in the environment, set aside distractions, align their plans, and follow the rules of the game.
Being able to see and share “the big picture” matters. When people can continually place their work in a wider, joined-up, interdependent, and dynamic context that has a past and a present, they can work more effectively towards a shared vision of the future.
Context also helps you figure out where you’re going. Continual and repeated attention to the context provides the leader with a fuller understanding of the current situation, enabling you to adjust your plans as needed before moving ahead.
Nevertheless, many leaders tend to gloss over a full examination of the here and now, assuming that everyone understands and shares a single, comprehensive, and compelling view of the present moment. Spending time exploring “what is” can seem like a waste of time when people are so eager to focus on “what should be.”
Many of us are desperately eager to move to the future. Eckhart Tolle wrote in his book The Power of Now: “Your entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself. Yet, people live as if the opposite were true and treat the present moment as a stepping stone to the next moment – a means to an end.”
And here’s a confession: For much of my twenty-five years as a strategic planning consultant, I made this mistake too.
I facilitated many very “successful” planning retreats that left participants feeling pumped with confidence and energy to finally tackle their most pressing challenges. And then they returned to their offices the next day and immediately fell back into the mire of their regular responsibilities and crises – the pile of unanswered emails, meetings they still had to attend, and the reports they still had to write. Their energy suddenly and dramatically waned. Their exciting plans for “the future” were pushed aside by the sobering realities and tangled complexities of the “here and now.”
This isn’t uncommon: The future can seem alluring and sexy, and full of exciting possibilities. Jet packs! Flying cars! It’s exciting to fantasize about the future, and creating a vivid and alluring picture of a desired state is an essential step in creating change. And you definitely need a compelling vision for the future to move ahead with intention; it just it isn’t enough.
That’s why despite all the fancy consultants and planning retreats, most strategic plans gather dust on the shelf without ever being fully implemented. It’s the same reason most diets are abandoned after a few days. And why gym memberships spike in January with New Year’s resolutions, and then quickly drop back to normal as exercise plans fall to the wayside.
In each of these cases, what is in notoriously short supply isn’t a pretty picture of the way things should be: What’s missing is a deep and full awareness of the present. By casting our attention so resolutely into the future, we overlook – to our detriment – the “here and now.”
This insight comes from Gestalt, an approach to creating change that started as a method for individual talk therapy in the early 20th century. In the last thirty years, business leaders have realized that the techniques aimed at helping individuals bring about growth and change can be equally effective in supporting organizations as they grow and change. This makes intuitive sense, because every organization is essentially a structured aggregation of individuals.
Gestalt posits that focusing on the present context is the best way to unlock powerful solutions and unblock people when they’re stuck. Therapist Arnold Beisser called this the Paradoxical Theory of Change, asserting that change happens when we become more fully aware of who we are, not when we attempt to become different. Finding new understanding of the current state opens doors we didn’t even know existed, and unleashes new energy for change.
These understandings of the current state don’t need to be earth-shattering “A-ha!” moments. Even modest insights about the “here and now” can have a huge effect. Dorothy Siminovich likes to cite a Turkish expression: “Küçük ama büyük,” or “small but big.” As she explains in her book A Gestalt Coaching Primer: The Path Towards Awareness IQ, “A small piece of revealed awareness at the right moment is what ignites the most energy for new possibilities.”
Investing time in the here and now seems counter-intuitive. Most of us are convinced we already see the world around us clearly and fully just as it is.
But the fact is that our senses deceive us every day, providing imperfect and incomplete conclusions about what’s around us. Looking at a digital photo in 2015, a portion of the world saw a blue and black dress, while the rest saw a white and gold dress. In 2018, many of us were dumbfounded by a digital recording: How could some of us hear the word “laurel,” and others just as clearly hear “yanny?” Which cohort of people was right? Both? Neither?
Beyond differences in our physical tools, our senses are suspect because none of us is a dispassionate observer. Each of us has developed a wide array of strategies for ignoring or reinterpreting things that are right under our noses. We avoid unpleasant truths. We create self-serving narratives. We blame and demonize. We deflect. We cherry-pick facts to support an existing idea. We wallow in pity or anger. We bend reality to suit our preconceptions, to build our self-esteem, or to protect against threats.
None of this behavior makes us bad; it just makes us human. Every day, each one of us convinces ourselves we perceive the world clearly, despite the fact that we know others see things quite differently. They’re not wrong, and you’re not wrong. Our perceptions are as varied and transitory as images in a kaleidoscope.
As I suggested previously, the point isn’t to discount what your senses reveal, but to hold your conclusions about the world a little more lightly, and to stay curious. It behooves us all to ask more questions, and remain interested in what others perceive. In doing so, you’ll probably find there are people around you who experience the world very differently than you.
Yes, this is a difficult set of concepts. Paradoxes are hard.
And the idea of slowing down to check our awareness of the current context seems impossible. The world is moving faster than ever, and it seems like we have to accelerate our frantic pace every day just to keep up.
In the professional world we are always trying to move ahead, to fix what’s broken, to make things better, and maybe to sell some sneakers or light beer in the process. We’re a big planet in a big hurry. I get it: To busy professionals, slowing down to understand the current moment sounds like a fine idea, but a total waste of time that just can’t happen.
While there is enormous pressure to get moving and focus on the future, we can’t move ahead effectively without exploring and acknowledging the current moment and environment. In short, context is critical to any change effort, and understanding context begins with attention to the here and now.
