ESSAY ON REINVENTION

I believe that as we wake up to bigger consciousness we are better prepared for bigger actions. That’s what reinvention is about: it’s searching, it’s finding, it’s continuity so that we add rhythm to our paths, which in themselves are made longer and fuller of vocations and realizations. 

By Carlota Ribeiro Ferreira, Founder & CEO, WIN World.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Rolling Stones!

30 studio albums, 28 live albums, 120 original singles. An outstanding production that resulted in over 240 million records sold and over 2000 concerts all over the world. And they’re still on the road.

To me, the most fascinating aspect about the Rolling Stones is their talent to create and reinvent themselves along the years. Only those endowed with such aptitudes are capable of constructing a 58-year-long story, which like any other great story is filled with highs and lows, crisis, tensions, inspiration and transformation. While some transformations are slower, we tend to recognize those incremental changes retrospectively, others are more intuitive and disruptive, leading to evident shifting points. Both however, make up the overall story.

Being one of the greatest bands in the world, openness to reinvention and growth is at the core of The Rolling Stones. A daring and rebellious attitude propelled the Stones experiment with vast musical styles, to combine sounds and words that would seem strange to others, and prompted them to invite diverse talents for collaborative compositions. They adopted a posture that has made them stand out from the crowd, thus creating their own culture that continues to inspire millions of people over time, across generations and around the world.

The Rolling Stones story is huge, larger-than-life even, but it can, nonetheless, inspire many other stories, in differing scales and goals – especially with what concerns their attitude towards reinvention.

I tend to see reinvention as the main element of continuity. It is what enables us to continue adding new chapters to our story, be it the story of our lives, a relationship, a business, city, nation or world.

Many thinkers have pondered on the subject of reinvention. Recently, an article by Merete Wedell-Wedellsbord in the Harvard Business Review resonated with me in particular, especially given the times we live in with reinvention being demanded from all of humanity following a global pandemic.

Firstly, it’s worth understanding what’s the catalyst for the desire to change and reinvent. To simplify matters we can say that reinvention either arises from within us, from a certain insatisfaction to a current situation and a belief that there might be someway better, or it arises from some external occurrence beyond our control, which forces us to react, rethink and respond differently.

Throughout our lives, we encounter both internal and external turning reasons that call for reinvention. We must be prepared for these. We can define such reasons as ‘crises’ – these might be big or small, personal or contextual, but crises are what truly wakes us up for change, they are an insatisfaction of sorts which propels us towards the desire to overcome and to claim new victories.

Today, let’s focus on reinvention brought about by external factors, more concretely by the Covid-19 crisis and the new reality it entailed.

Let’s also come back to Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg and her article. Merete, a Danish psychologist, consultant and author of the book Battle Mind: Performing Under Pressure, has a special interest on crisis scenarios and how leaders and teams fare in uncertain and tense situations.

The reason why I enjoyed this specific read was because in it, Wedell-Wedellsborg guides us through the world of emotions present during a crisis. Since reinvention is a consequence of a crisis, it's important to understand the emotional preconditions that challenge and prompt reinventions. Weddell-Wedellsborg presents the psychological states of mind associated with times of crisis, demystifying certain phenomena. Further, she gives readers ideas and strategies that are useful to overcoming moments of frustration and inactivity in order to open way for reinvention. Merete goes on to say that in deconstructing a crisis, we identify three main acts; emergency, regression and recovery.

In the emergency phase, surprise, shock and a sense of urgency lead us towards greater perspicacity, pragmatism, productivity and collaboration. During this phase, leaders are called to action with objectivity, clarity and a focus on priorities. A natural leadership cements and teams respond and align in a strong collaborative culture. There is an unquestionable unity around an urgent mission. Decision-making becomes fast and everyone’s ready to act. It’s an intense phase where we discover new strengths and energies unknown to us before. Motivation is present as well as an increased capacity to manage the crisis and overcome the immediate and obvious challenges.

The emergency phase is followed by regression, the most difficult stage of them all. Fatigue takes over and people start living a new normal. With no new motivations some people start to lose their sense of purpose. In developmental psychology terms, people take one step backwards when it comes to their maturity in dealing with pressure. According to the author, regression is a way the mind finds to defend itself from confusion and uncertainty by remaining in an apparent emotional comfort zone. This phase has none of the combative spirit or grit of the emergency phase. There’s boredom, wait, lack of stimulation, and people generally feel uncomfortable, lost and unfocused.

The regression phase is tough, and it is where many people find themselves currently. It’s normal. It’s a natural part of the psychological cycle of a crisis, but we must however adopt strategies to progressively leave this stage and enter recovery mode. It’s only in recovery mode that we are more open and more physically, emotionally and relationally prepared for structural transformations and reinventions of paths towards a greater future.

How then, do we react and overcome the low and challenging frequencies of the regression phase?

Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg makes three suggestions here, which might be interesting to challenge ourselves with:

1. Dare to create a new ‘day one’ – with new projects, challenges and responsibilities, maybe different to the ones people had before. This will generate new learning opportunities, new senses of purpose that can power a new energy and commitment;
2. Learn how to calibrate your team’s emotions by establishing an open and honest communication about feelings and states of mind. Provide comfort and trust, be understanding and guiding so the team can move forwards together;
3. Aim beyond business as usual. Here the goal is to go from ‘how to manage the crisis?’ to ‘how to leave the crisis?’, in other words to manage to position the organisation as an acting player that creates value to society at large. I see it almost as if you were creating a new stress point, but this time a positive and inspiring one, filled with purpose.

Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg’s article is interesting as it deconstructs certain phenomena and blockages people might have in face of a crisis which leaves them lacking in proactivity and capacity to reinvent.

I believe that as we wake up to bigger consciousness we are better prepared for bigger actions. That’s what reinvention is about: it’s searching, it’s finding, it’s continuity so that we add rhythm to our paths, which in themselves are made longer and fuller of vocations and realizations.

And when do we stop reinventing ourselves? We don’t. Here I’d like to quote the Brazilian writer and poet, Fernando Sabino (1923-2004) who said it all in such simple terms:

“Out of everything, three things remained: the certainty that he was always beginning, the certainty that he must continue, the certainty that he might one day be interrupted before he finished. From the interruption make a new path. From the fall, a new dance step. From fear, stairs. From sleepiness, a bridge. From the search, a discovery.” in O Encontro Marcado.

In this way, when we reinvent ourselves, we find ourselves. We find ourselves.

-

*This article was published in Portuguese at Dinheiro Vivo, May 29, 2020. You can read here: https://www.dinheirovivo.pt/opiniao/ensaio-sobre-a-reinvencao/