Finding Authentic Reinvention

Across one's lifetime, what makes a reinvention authentic? In Doris Kearns Goodwin's long-winded interview with President Obama in September’s Vanity Fair, what most stood out to me was that the President will be 55 when he leaves office. 55! That is 14 and 15 years younger than the two current candidates for his job, and that is after serving two terms. What does reinvention look like for a person like President Obama? What is authentic, and what would be seen as out of character– from his perspective, or from ours?

The same challenge holds for organizations. When JC Penny evolved from discount retailer to ‘fast fashion with transparent pricing,’ their loyal coupon cutters saw it as out of character and thus defaulted. Unfortunately for Pennys, they also were unable to pull in new customers. For these shoppers, they remained a case of fashionista wolf in (discounted) sheep’s clothing. 

One particular story in this week's New York Times stood out in relationship to reinvention-- a piece in the magazine on the changing of the guard at NPR’s “Prarie Home Companion.” Garrison Keillor’s long-running radio hour chronicles life around Lake Wobegon. It is also about to lose its beloved host. The future of PHC will be a product of the transformative vision of a new leader-- 35 year-old mandolinist and MacAurther Genuis Grant winner, Chris Thile.

Here is Thile on the move:

"Thile sees the great possibility of “Prairie Home” as presenting a vital and evolving American songbook. He doesn’t share Keillor’s musical nostalgia. “Tradition matters,” he says. “To me it’s not a limiting force; it’s a springboard.” As a composer and songwriter, he prefers work that pushes ever forward, and he envisions a show in which great performers interact spontaneously, creating a thrilling blend. “Damned if I’m not going to ask Kendrick Lamar to be on the show if I get an in there,” he told me. “God, what if you were in the same town as the Berlin Phil, and could get them on too? Are we going to not do that? Of course we’re going to do that!”

But as the show evolves, will this change be seen as authentic by its current audience and those who might be drawn in anew? The article continues:

If Lamar, the Berlin Philharmonic and Thile perform “King Kunta,” does the crowd roar, or do hordes of Keillor fans decorate a stage with deviled eggs? A show peeking inside the mind of a virtuoso might be catnip for record-store cashiers, and it will certainly be entertaining live — Thile is probably incapable of putting on a boring live show — but adding two million listeners while dropping only one is another matter. When I asked Gillian Welch what she and her peers thought of Thile’s ascension, she confessed to some anxiety. “I have total faith in his artistry,” she said. She also told me, “I can’t tell if the audience is going to be able to take the leap."

One way to think about reinvention is as a process of value reordering. JC Penny raised the value of fashion while reducing the priority around discount shopping. Thile prioritizes musical experimentation while deemphasizing regionalism and a focus on small town America. In many ways, we judge the authenticity of transformation based on whether this shift of values makes sense given the given the life from which it emerges. Consider the following. There is a rumor going around that President Obama is thinking about a role in technology and innovation as a venture capitalist investor. I tend to see this as an authentic transformation because it continues with the theme of making a difference through behavioral modification, albeit through a slightly different route. Others might see this as out of character in its drastic shift away from a political mechanism for impact. We judge the new based on fit to the old.

A few years back, writer Andrew Sullivan started his own sort of reinvention. Shutting down his independent writing project, "The Dish," Sullivan made a drastic movement away from his public role of daily political and cultural analysis. But before he moved into the next big thing, Sullivan took some time away. It was a time meant for emotional recovery and preparation. In an extended essay over at New York Magazine titled "I used to be a human being," Sullivan speaks of the dramatic burnout he faced and the need to get away from day to day technological immersion and the rapid unending pace of a 24 hour news cycle. For Sullivan, this escape involved moving into a mediative retreat rooted in Eastern practices and uniquely shaped by his deep Catholic faith. Of this experience, he writes:

“I decided I would get some distance by trying to describe what I was feeling. The two words “extreme suffering” won the naming contest in my head. And when I had my 15-minute counseling session with my assigned counselor a day later, the words just kept tumbling out. After my panicked, anguished confession, he looked at me, one eyebrow raised, with a beatific half-smile. “Oh, that’s perfectly normal,” he deadpanned warmly. “Don’t worry. Be patient. It will resolve itself.” And in time, it did. Over the next day, the feelings began to ebb, my meditation improved, the sadness shifted into a kind of calm and rest. I felt other things from my childhood — the beauty of the forests, the joy of friends, the support of my sister, the love of my maternal grandmother. Yes, I prayed, and prayed for relief. But this lifting did not feel like divine intervention, let alone a result of effort, but more like a natural process of revisiting and healing and recovering. It felt like an ancient, long-buried gift.”

While Sullivan speaks less of the vocation he is shifting into, I anticipate it will be deeply informed by this experience. As he re-orders his values, this shift cannot help but be informed by the self-knowledge that comes in the terror of peace and quiet with our own existence. In this peace we can discern whether our value-ordering is merely the projection if institutional constraints and perceived social pressures, or whether it is authentically us.

You have to imagine that the pressure of being President makes it hard to understand what should be one's unique imprint on the world, and what is just what others hope for him. Maybe Garrison Keillor has wanted to push the show in drastically more experimental ways for years— he did select Thile to follow him after all— but felt like he couldn’t do it himself. Sullivan reminds us that when we fail to escape the noise, it is hard to listen to figure out what kind of value prioritization is personally authentic. 

Over at the Brain Pickings, Maria Popova described a related process using a quote from Nietzsche on education. He writes:

“Your true educators and cultivators will reveal to you the original sense and basic stuff of your being, something that is not ultimately amenable to education or cultivation by anyone else, but that is always difficult to access, something bound and immobilized; your educators cannot go beyond being your liberators. And that is the secret of all true culture: she does not present us with artificial limbs, wax-noses, bespectacled eyes — for such gifts leave us merely with a sham image of education. She is liberation instead, pulling weeds, removing rubble, chasing away the pests that would gnaw at the tender roots and shoots of the plant; she is an effusion of light and warmth, a tender trickle of nightly rain…”

What does the tender trickle of nightly rain look like in your own process of reinvention? What masks and false orderings of value keep you from pursuing reinvention in the most authentic way?