I want to do an experiment that is partially inspired by my good friend Simon Lamb. This experiment I hope will open your eyes to actions you can take to live your life more fully and give you some insight into challenges you face at work.
Years ago Simon taught me a polarity he articulated in service of Microsoft. It was represented as a line with arrows pointing away from each other on each end. The left most end was labeled “Not at your best” and the right most end was labeled “At your best”.
When you are operating “at your best” at work, by definition of the line you cannot be operating on the “not at your best” side. You put yourself somewhere on that spectrum and there is an element of “at your best” and “not at your best” in play. In order to give color, texture, and meaning — both ends need to exist. There is no “best” without “not your best”. Every polarity has its opposite. There is no light without dark. There is no right without wrong.
These are things that are in opposition to each other. To go philosophical for a minute, there must be opposition in all things or else all that we know and love would vanish away.
Now why is this important? You and I are feeling, more often than not it seems, both ends of a polarity at the same time. These feelings contribute to an increase of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. For us to be able to navigate forward with clarity we must learn to work with the dynamics of the opposing forces. We have to learn to collapse these points of opposition and choose how we want to move forward, and then move forward!
My experiment will be to share what I will call a Productive Polarity each week and what collapsing it might look like. Ultimately, I will share how we might be able to experiment our way toward progress and build our capability to grow while we go through challenges.
I’d love your feedback along the way. This will be a learning journey for me as I explore more deeply polarities that I have encountered.
