Leadership & the Creation Mindset: There are no problems, only evolution inviting us to create the?new.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
— Bucky Fuller
There is one epiphany which I witness in the high-impact leaders I am privileged to sherpa, that births the most spectacular innovation, impact, and cultures.
It is the awareness that in ultimate reality, there are no such things as “problems”, there is only evolution giving us invitations: “Now it is time to make something new.”
To put at ease the skeptical aspect of “leadership mind”, what follows will have the requisite intellectual tenderizer throughout: studies by organizational transformation professors at Stanford (the innovation renaissance at Microsoft), research by neuroanatomists from Harvard (comparative fMRI imagery), real-world executive case studies, illustrative quotes from today’s most revered innovators, etc., etc.
That’s fine. Air-cover.
But in the end, victory can only happen on the ground.
You. Where you are right now. Posing and answering the question, “Am I willing to see my world as if this was true? What do I see as my biggest problem and what happens when I see it as evolution prompting me to create the new?” — if even for a moment, as a thought-experiment, knowing you can always go back, at any time, to the world of “Problem”.
Should you chose to summon willingness, the next few minutes might contain one of those profound “before/after” experiences that might change your life, your vocation, your relationships, your team’s innovation scores, your family’s success over adversity, your human experience period. All can become prolific places of creation from default places of “problems”.
It would be understandable if there is now the feeling of resistance instead of willingness, as this new understanding can come in existential conflict with one’s very framework of reality and even one’s identity (“I’m a problem solver.”).
But an entire new world is just one thought away.
Here it is:
A relentlessly objective look at the universe, at nature, at universal natural systems, at reality before the ego-mind skins the fiction of meaning upon it, reveals there are actually no such things as “problems”, or even that “something is wrong”. Not in original naked reality. When a limb of a tree withers because another tree has grown near and put it in shadow, the tree, nature, the universe, does not stop everything and scream “PROBLEM. SOMETHING WRONG.” and try to undo or “fix” it. Instead, more limbs simply get created on the sun side of the tree which thrive (and create a bridge for a hungry family of squirrels to access its nuts and spread the tree’s next generation all around the forest) and thereby have the tree thrive as well.
When you look “out there”, beyond the window of the room and the mind’s perception, and absolutely interrogate the true natural world, you may see, surprisingly, there are no problems in the actual and real universe, just moments in which evolution asks for new creation.
In fact, the only thing ever taking place in the universe is creation in service to evolution.
We make up everything else.
The concept of “problem” is a very recent illusory construct of the human ego-mind. The ego-mind becomes attached to an outcome, a preference, a way things should be. When reality goes a different way, a way that is not exactly the ego-mind’s preference, it projects the made-up construct of “problem” onto that occurrence. It then feels like a real thing to us. As a result of buying into all of this, we end up having a negative experience. And because very often our mind’s preference (in job, money, relationship, heath, family, etc.) is not where the universe goes, even if it goes in a direction with even greater potential things emerging, we don’t allow ourselves to see that. We delude ourselves into having more and more “problems”. We then have an enduring and recurring negative experience of life. Unless the “problem” is “fixed” (yep, another made-up construct) — only then can we allow ourselves to resume having a “good” experience. Which lasts exactly one second before the universe doesn’t meet our next preference precisely. Problem, fix, repeat. Problem, fix, repeat.
Unless we choose to stop, step back into reality, pierce the veil of thought that made “problem” and say, “The universe, evolution itself, is asking for something new to be created here, through me…what might that be?”
Curiosity replaces resistance and begets limitless possibility.
A recent article in the Harvard Business Review, by Behnam Tabrizi, who teaches organizational transformation at Stanford, illuminates the current innovation renaissance at Microsoft. He refers to his team’s recently completed study on companies who are achieving “perpetual innovation” — continued innovation after an initial success. He speaks to it being no surprise to see Apple, Amazon, Tesla make the list, but unexpectedly, Microsoft emerged there when Google/Alphabet did not. The study’s inspection revealed CEO Satya Nadella’s taking of the reigns and an abrupt shift from a brand in gradual decline to one in rising success with perpetual innovation built in (latest: 2/7 announcement of Bing and Edge being powered by GPT-4, from partnership with OpenAI, revolutionizing search). Tabrizi’s repeated encapsulation of the inflection point is Nadella’s changing the company’s posture from “defense to offense”, which for me can be seen as going from a “problem mindset” (protect previous success) to a “creation mindset” (create new to generate new success after new success):
“This reorientation was accompanied by a strategic shift. Instead of protecting its assets, in a defensive posture [problem-mindset], Microsoft went on offense [creation-mindset], ceding big investments in existing tech and looking to jump into emerging opportunities.” — Tabrizi
I love this phrase, “perpetual innovation”. In natural systems, again where there is no misperception of “problems”, perpetual innovation is king — the primary directive. In fact, the natural universe is so maniacal about it, that it hasn’t repeated itself once in 14B years. That’s perpetual innovation. Not even the same snowflake twice. Ever. Everything you see is an absolutely new thing. You. Yes, YOU: your form and persona has never existed before and will never exist again. Ever. You are simultaneously ordinary and infinitely unique and precious.
You are the outcome and evidence of nature’s obsession with perpetual innovation. In being a protuberance of the one natural system, you and your entire human experience cannot be an exception to it (despite the mind’s made up lament, “I have a problem!”). You and everything in your life is perpetual innovation happening, of nature not constantly “fixing problems” but undauntedly constantly creating the new.
Such is the world and what we can bring to it when we wipe our perceptual lens free of the fictional smudge of “problem” and look at every moment, and every seeming challenge, just as our universe does: “What new is to be created here?”
In the context of the Bucky Fuller quote we started with:
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“You never change things by fighting the existing reality [problem mindset]. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete [creation mindset].”
In my own practice I have seen “build a new model” in glorious effect again and again. I’ve been sherpa to inspiring leaders consciously making the ascent from problem-mindset to creation-mindset:
The inflection point in every instance above: Continuing to see societal challenges as “problems to fix” doesn’t actually optimize innovation for scaled betterment, but seeing them as evolution asking for the new to be created, surely does. What can we create here that makes a new world?
With that, I can hear the clamor building, so I will do it myself:
“But wait, there are REAL problems out there. Kids with cancer, racist police brutality abundant, LGBTQ communities being gunned down, Ukrainian freedom fighters waking up without limbs, and climate…CLIMATE — how can you not all these problems?!”
I hear you. The horror and pain of what can transpire in reality can be so powerful we can move into a conditioned consciousness of “problem”, “wrongness”, and against-ness to what is. But as once a child with a terminal cancer prognosis, as a member of a mixed-race family, as a proud father of a transgender child, as a man who woke up very recently without a left leg (nothing as noble as fighting autocratic aggression), and as a parent of a family evacuated and displaced by climate wildfires four times in the last few years, I don’t share any of this from a place of utter naivety nor situational ignorance, while recognizing of course I am also a person of privilege. Yet, in all of these instances I found myself often starting with “Problem”, before eventually moving to “What new is to be created, through me, that begins a world where something better resides instead?”.
I offer this shift not for any new age ideal, but because it opens up exponentially greater possibility for how we can respond and create positive change. “What is to be created?” is more practical for positive change than “Problem”:
In the framing of “problem” and needing to “fix” something, we create a stress scenario which is shown to alter brain functionality to the detriment of creativity. Creativity is at its maximum when the brain is in “diffuse mode” and all three (Salient, Default and Executive) brain networks are freely collaborating (a recent Harvard study with fMRI imagery here), as opposed to stress induced “focussed mode”. Also, it literally kills the very neuroanatomy that generates creativity, and therefore our ability to create the new world we seek:
“The hippocampus also allows us to imagine the future. Long-term stress is literally killing the cells in your hippocampus?… zapping your creativity.”
— Dr. Wendy Suzuki, NYU Neuroscientist
In that moment-to-moment choice between problem-mindset and creation-mindset we create an experience called “our life”. The forcing function early in life (eighteen years old) that directed me toward “What is to be created?” was a terminal prognosis. Life became too short to be in “Problem”. A “terminal prognosis” is, in fact, another made-up problem construct. It concocts the misperception of a special circumstance we are uniquely doomed with. The truth is, we are all living with a terminal prognosis. Not figuratively. Literally. It’s another absolute truth in the natural universe and in natural systems. Everything and everyone is evolution happening, simultaneously in the process of dying and birthing the new through what we choose to create.
Given that truth, it seems this moment is as good as any for 21st century leaders to ask, “Is my leadership and contribution being best served by an orientation of “Problem”, or by orienting as a catalyst of evolution in “What is to be created through me?”.”
From the microcosm of one’s life, to the macrocosm of one’s vocation, to the planetary reality of climate change, don’t all of these deserve the kind of wide open aperture of possibility and innovation that can only come from a creation-mindset as opposed to a problem-mindset?
Imagine if leaders in business and government replaced the phrase “What is the problem here?”, with “What is evolution asking us to create here?” or “What new world are we being given the opportunity to create here?”. How would that impact choices and imagination on bringing us into a vibrant, thriving and healthy future.
I witnessed a microbiologist founder of a biodegradable shoe start-up recently say, “We are not going to create change by publishing yet another paper defining yet another problem — we have to stop making problems and start making products.”
When we really look at it, “Problem” has as its north-star of success somehow getting us back to the relative familiarity of what was. To “fix the problem” is to get us back to how things were. Whereas “What is evolution asking to be created?” is aspiring to the next better place. When we think about globally impacting events like climate change, it becomes a true imperative to no longer orient on solving to “get back to what was”, but instead orient on creating “what can be”.
In service to your business, your team, your own very life, aren’t they all worth it to least run the experiment?
Gather the team. Take what you’ve been currently seeing as “a problem”.
Have everyone consciously leave that orientation and move into:
“What might evolution be asking us to create here instead?”
Have a clean whiteboard and plenty of fresh markers.
“Our words become the house we live in.” — Hafiz
You. Here and now: “What house do I want to live in — a house of problems, or a house of limitless creation?”