Lightening the Load: Lessons on the Road to Unencumbered

The first leg of our adventure of leaving our home in Brooklyn in search of a new and more fulfilling life is coming to an end; it's time for the next phase of our exploration. About 8 weeks ago, my wife, Stacey Goldman-Laughter and I sold our home and set off to find a new home, one that was better suited for who we are and what we desire to grow into. As we get ready to explore a new location, we find ourselves in a time of reflection about what is truly necessary in our journey and what else we need to let go of in order to become unencumbered.

In the weeks and months before we moved, Stacey and I gave away most of our possessions and threw out most of what was not wanted by our neighbors. We paired all our possessions down to what can fit in a 10 by 20 self-storage unit (which is only about 75% full). The things we thought we would need for our life as nomads were hastily packed and thrown into our car and newly purchased rooftop car storage box. We stayed in New Hope, PA for the past 8 weeks to reset and recover from the frenetic life we left behind.

As we prepare to move on from Bucks County, PA, we are planning on moving more frequently, checking out towns around Boston. We plan to stay in any location for about two weeks at a time until we find a place where we want to stay and explore. It has me thinking about what is really necessary for us to bring along. When we were leaving Brooklyn, I had no idea what we would really need, and I ended up packing a lot of excess. Now, with the benefit of time, experience, and without the stress of a move, we are once again getting ready to cull what is not necessary so we can be nimbler. We could not possibly know what we would need for our journey before we were on it. I have never lived as a nomad, and frankly, with the rush and pressure of moving, could not have imagined what would be truly necessary.

As I look around the house we rented and have called home for the past 8 weeks, it is pretty clear that we have some choices to make about what to keep. Either that or get a bigger car. Some things are obvious; the things that we brought and remained in our various boxes and suitcases are the first to go back into storage. Others required a lot more thought. In my experience, Airbnbs usually have terrible kitchen knives, so I brought a bunch. But do we really need them? Sure, we cook at home a lot (home is now wherever my wife happens to be) but do we really need good knives in our limited packing space? It is an interesting exercise. I also recognize that the constraints of not having what I used to have can provide surprising benefits; the place we have been staying doesn't have a dishwasher, and the ritual of hanging out together in the kitchen after dinner while I wash the dishes ended up extending our dinner conversations and have been quite joyous. Ultimately, the old "less is more" adage rings true for us.

As I explore the concept of becoming unencumbered from my previous life, I am also exploring how I can help organizations to become unencumbered from the dictates of the command-and-control orthodoxy that is incompatible with the age of progress and disruption we have just entered. There are some interesting parallels to my second round of culling and lessons for leaders to learn.

About 10 years ago, I had a set of remarkable experiences that showed me the power of adaptive leadership and showed me what it actually means to lead. I understood leadership to be about being the one with the vision, understanding, answers, and direction. But when pushing a particularly stupid and difficult to implement solution I had to address a problem, a wise and brave employee got in my face and said, "Peter! What you are proposing is a violation of our core values." I was forced to go ahead with her solution even though I didn't think it would work and intended to implement my flawed solution as soon as hers failed.

It didn't fail. In fact, it was a rousing success. More importantly, it showed me what leadership really was – not having the answers, the vision, the plan. Not being the smartest person in the room (something that was never true for the rooms that I entered) but rather, creating the space for others to be creative, to be able to express ideas, have them heard and improved upon by colleagues. This was a lightbulb moment for me – the pressure and imposter syndrome of my previous and misguided understanding of my role as a leader was unbearable. Contrasted by the absolute joy of walking into a meeting to discuss a critical problem that I had no idea how to solve and at the same time with absolute confidence that the answer would be revealed by my brilliant colleagues was a huge relief.

I proudly considered myself an adaptive leader. I was wrong.

Right before I sold my last staffing firm, Spartoi Group, we were having another wicked problem; the quality control position we had was having horrible turnover. We had a team in India who did the first round of recruiting and screening, and then the quality control person would confirm that the candidates our recruiters in India identified were likely capable of passing our assessments. It was a horrible job, but one, for various reasons, I thought was necessary.

Again, I was dead wrong. Our team lead, Dyvia, pointed out that the actual problem was my distrust and disempowerment of my team in India. She said it with a lot more poise and grace than that, but it was clear that the solution didn't lie in "fixing" this role, but rather giving the recruitment team more authority and putting them in charge of quality. So we did that. Results skyrocketed, and we were getting good candidates in front of our clients so much faster. More importantly, I realized something important about myself: I thought I was well versed in the principles of Adaptive Leadership, but I was so immersed in Command and Control, I couldn't really see how I was still holding on to the vestiges of a system of management that I KNEW was ineffective.

It was a huge blind spot, and I was lucky enough to have a team who could see the truth and communicate it to me in a way that I could hear.

As I go through another round of culling physical possessions that are not essential, I am reminded of that moment and how difficult a huge change can be. Old ways of thinking are perniciously stubborn and tend to lurk in our minds unnoticed. In the last 8 weeks, I have had several moments where I acted or made decisions out of fear and stress, only to remind myself that I set off to live a vastly different life. My goal is to live a life guided by my purpose, not by my old ambitions and insecurities.

Similarly, the vestiges of our command-and-control are equally pernicious. The only style of management most of us have experienced is command-and-control: It is how our schools are run, most of our civic organizations, and our past workplaces have used command-and-control to operate. And much like I could not have imagined what a nomadic life would look like and couldn't really imagine what I would actually need during my life as a nomad, in this new and disruptive age we have entered, we can't imagine what we need to let go of and what we need to take on to thrive in this new fast-paced age of innovation and disruption that our species has just entered.

What's more, corporate leaders cannot imagine life outside of command-and-control, even though we know that it is not serving us. Much like the situation with my recruiters, we often think of ourselves as open to ideas and suggestions, but really we are not. Much like many social norms that plague our society, our intense exposure to the status quo keeps us from seeing the truth. We inadvertently perpetuate a system that is not serving us.

And this is totally normal; it is exceedingly difficult for us to see that which we have never experienced nor imagined. But if we don't take steps to expand our vision, if we don't have people in our organization who will show us the truth on the ground, and if we do not have a capacity to listen to them (especially when they are questioning our closely held assumptions), we will not evolve and will be crushed by the coming speed and exponentially increasing complexity of this new age we have entered.

The trick is to proactively expose ourselves to environments that are devoid of command-and-control, like the Strategic Doing Community. Those environments call on curiosity when faced with things we don't understand or question our deeply held beliefs and assumptions. Much like I would never have been able to stop and empower Dyvia's questioning of my understanding had I not had the experience years before, as leaders, we need to expose ourselves to those environments so we can practice curiosity in the face of frustration.

The fact is that the world has shifted dramatically. And this is just the start. We are facing the rise of technologies that will change our very understanding of reality. If we enter this time without practicing questioning our beliefs and assumptions, we will end up being crushed by them.

As I continue this journey of personally becoming unencumbered and looking at how we can transition to what is next and become unencumbered from the constraints of command-and-control, I hope you will continue to walk with me. And in doing so, begin to explore how you and your organization can gain the capacity to thrive in the difficult and exciting times ahead.

PS - we are taking the spare kitchen knives with us. Life is too short to cook with dull crappy knives