Fix, control, or explore?

The problems that pop up daily, often unexpectedly, in life and work can put us in perpetual reactive mode – perpetual whack-a-mole.

Conversely, proactivity – the ability to take control rather than just responding, acting in advance of future situations, is a much admired and often required quality in the workplace.

Yet is it possible to be consistently proactive in the uncertain and ambiguous conditions most organisations are forced to operate in? Proactivity requires foresight and the problems that confront us to fit neatly with both our skill set and our back catalogue of experience. Very often those pesky problems refuse to conform.

Somewhere between reactive and proactive, and at a higher point, sits a quality and capabilities that are surely more suited to our times, those of creativity.

As we embrace our fundamental creativity – and yes, we all have creative ability of one form or another – we get beyond needing to rely on past experience and neat, tried and tested solutions and into the more experimental mind-set we need to deal with uncertainty.

If we are prepared to move boldly into this space, letting go the need to control and, equally profoundly, the need to know or have all the answers, and trying the new, novel and different solutions start to emerge and, in the process, we learn much about what’s possible and ourselves.

When we think about the mind-sets in these three stances reactive is fix-it (and probably fearful), proactive is get ahead and control it and creative is open to possibilities and explore it. In the turbulence we face cultivating our explorer is a gift to ourselves and those we lead.