Which is a better story, the forest or the tree?

There is a great quote from a book I just bought, but haven’t finished reading yet, by Donald Miller.

The book is called : A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Here is the quote:

“But Victor Frankl whispered in my ear all the same. He said to me I was a tree in a story about a forest, and that it was arrogant of me to believe any differently. And he told me the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree.”

This struck me as particularly relevant to an opportunity we have right now to lean into collaboration.

Have you ever thought about why we are gravitating more and more toward collaboration, toward sharing work and ideas across genres and spaces, across platforms and occupations?

I've been around awhile. In our old paradigms, we didn’t have buzz words like "huddle" or "scrum" floating around outside of their original sports oriented origins....we, as us folk in the southeast like to say, used to just: “git ‘r done.”

Despite the current stark polarization we now feel in some realms of our life, in many ways we were much more tribal, "siloed" and individualistic in our mindsets in the previous century and earlier in this one. Especially around our work and creative offerings.

The old tale we told ourselves was that our audience or our clients had a need and we needed to work our individual tails off to fill it. Often we were at least under the illusion that we were on our own to win whatever the battle was before us, we were on a solo mission.

Often, that mission was either a truly singular effort or the effort of a chosen few, an inner circle of insiders. Sure we pulled on the so called “subject matter experts” for “help,” but that was out of necessity and only when we were forced to "slow down or stop" (insert eye roll here) the critical quest we were on to solve our latest challenge.

…and that was good, wasn’t it? It sure felt good! We felt that our story, the close circle of insiders and the story of those we sought to serve were all intertwined. It was us against the world! It felt local, tribal, kind of like when you have a great local sports team you follow. We'd put on our war paint, our jerseys and we'd scream and shout beside our tribemates until we had achieved a hard one victory.

To add insult to injury, in the previous century and even to some extent the last decade (even last year!,) we were also, more often, in closer physical proximity to one another. We could quite literally and tangibly focus on only those closest to us.

In this global economy, at the time of this writing, one in a global pandemic, with technology urging us into non-collocated spaces, we are also pushed into more and more virtual collaboration, making the huddle, that much more salient and simultaneously more complicated to pull off.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In sport, a huddle is an action of a team gathering together, usually in a tight circle, to strategize, motivate or celebrate.

If we are so acclimated to the local sports team analogy of work or product, why are huddles still so hard in this new environment we find ourselves in? I have my suspicions and if I am correct, the key words that are getting in our way are “local” and “tight circle”.

I already know I may miss some, but here are a few possibilities:

• For some, calling a huddle is hard because it is no longer grabbing a physical "collab" room or huddling in the cubicle next door or the conference room down the hall- huddles require broader outreach.
• For others, huddles feel hard because they feel they don’t have role clarity, ironically so, as getting in a huddle can lead to that, but there is the problem of “where do I start?” Who calls the huddle in the first place? (hint: the answer is anyone can and should) Is that my job?
• In some cases it is because huddles take time and we just got orders that this needed to be done two weeks ago, and if we bring more people in, it is just going to slow us down!
• Here is one, I don’t think any of us want to admit, and it brings me back into the Miller quote, huddles mean collaboration and collaboration means shared credit or maybe being lost in the crowd as the credit is doled out. There is the danger that this will no longer be my mighty idea, championed and fueled by my grit and determination that brings it over the finish line. I will lose the ability to put my stamp on this and someone or some other group will “steal the glory.” In this competitive, brand-oriented world, where is my "click" or "like?"

But… what if “the story of the forest is (really and truly) better than the story of the tree?!”

Those of us that have been around awhile have heard a million buzzwords. We’ve seen flavors of the month come and go. To be sure, this terminology around collaboration and huddles will one day, fall out of favor.

What we can’t deny is that our world has shifted. It has shifted from a whole bunch of small home town teams playing their games in isolation to one big, interwoven organism, like a forest, trying to not only survive but thrive, beyond local barriers to the global and maybe even interstellar stage itself (one day.) (is anyone else thinking of the movie Avatar right now?)

We don’t get to be the booster club for our high school sports team anymore. We get to be global and virtual collaborators. We get to huddle. We get to move out of our comfort zones and traditional roles and do something bigger.

We get to be part of telling the story of the whole forest instead of the story of one tree.

So how do we do this? We push past our fears to huddle, whether those fears are those I listed or they are something else, if we have fears about huddling my friends, we need to push past them.

Whether that is virtual or some day in person again, we need to huddle.

Whether that is within our enterprise or collaborating across platforms, occupations, genres or other functions, we need to huddle.

Here’s another quote from Donald Miller I’ll leave you with....

“A good storyteller doesn’t just tell a better story, though. He/She/They invite other people into the story with him, giving them a better story too.”

I hope you find this valuable and remember if for any reason you don’t…it is all just food for thought (you know, like "who forgot to use their deodorant in this huddle?")

I want to see your soar! #Iwant2CUSoar

I would love to hear your thoughts and comments! Do you have a great way to huddle virtually? (Note: Please don't try to sell me anything as I have absolutely no purse power) Have you seen success crossing the boundaries of platforms or industries or products or genres?

Please engage with me on my various platforms and/or join my email list.

Photos from Unsplash