Randomness
The other day on a partly cloudy summer night, I was riding my bike home from a relaxing session of Yin Yoga. I live about 6 blocks from the Yoga studio. During the ride, a calm, pleasant breeze picked up as I turned the corner to enter the alley to my garage. WHAM! There was a lightning and a thunder crack right over my head. Frankly, I do not know how I didn’t get struck. I looked back and straight up, and sitting over my head was one cloud surrounded by the blue/night sky. There was no other thunder or lightning prior or after this initial strike. I continue on the 20 feet to my garage in shock. I walked into my back door, then into my living room and finally sat on my favorite red chair. Sitting on the couch next to me, my wife said, “Wow, did you hear that thunder!” At first, I just looked at her in shock, then proceeded to explain how close the lightning was to my head. And then told her no less than 5 times how it came without warning, on a partly cloudy night, with essentially one small storm cloud overhead. The randomness of the situation put me into shock. I kept asking myself, why and how could this happen? What was the message…because it truly felt like there was a message being sent to me. Yes, I am that ego-centric that there needs to be some meaning behind this. It had to mean something. Nothing happens so randomly…right??!!
Wrong! Randomness happens. I have spent a lifetime trying to control for randomness. And now when it hit, I am so ill prepared to deal with it. No matter how much I like to believe I can control my environment; control my destiny; control my life - I will be struck by a random lightning bolt. And the more I deny this fact, the more I will be unprepared for when it happens. It reminds of the Nassim Taleb’s book…Antifagile. In it, he describes Antifragile not as robust, but something that actually gets stronger through stress or random events. Our immune systems, for example, are built up by fighting antigens in our system. Our muscles are strengthened by stress, whereas a dam, which is robust, is weakened by stress and will break over time.
A “guarantee” in this context is synonymous with the dam above: something we believe protects us but also sets us up with the false belief of safety. Sometimes within organizations, we enjoy hearing how doing X will result in Y outcome…guaranteed! Whenever I hear “guarantee” I should shudder and run away. What really is a guarantee? Who has the ability to guarantee anything? The guarantee is bullshit and when I accept a guarantee, I am accepting a lie just to feel good (or safe). And even with this knowledge I still can’t help myself at times – because I want safety. For example, here at NIMBL, we have been dealing with a drainage problem in our parking lot. No one here wants to deal with it, especially l me. It’s water and gravity I tell myself. I accepted the contractor’s “guarantee” that his solution would fix the problem. It didn’t. It actually made it worse. There were “unforeseen” circumstances he said. But really, I should know better. I wanted to hear “guarantee” and was praying the problem would just go away. Guarantees set us up for worse problems. Dam’s will fill up and break. Life’s events often are random and outside of our control.
Embracing the randomness, the unknown, as real seems like a step towards creating more “antifragile” organizations. How do we build organizations that actually strengthen with stress? I am not really sure all the steps. I do think, being as realistic as we can with our environment is a necessary (although not sufficient) step. For me, it’s not a matter if I will be struck by lightning… it’s a matter of when. Owning, embracing, being real about this fact (instead of denying), will hopefully better prepare me for the randomness that will happen. Maybe, just maybe by continuing to remind myself that randomness happens, regardless of how much I want or try to control it…will better prepare me for dealing with it when it does happen. Maybe, the lightning bolt was a reminder to embrace and appreciate the moment. It’s really all we have.