Spiralling Up

Re: Avoiding the Cover of FORTUNE

Appreciation

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Re: Back from Holidays

October 15, 2000

I’ve just been through two experiences that gave me new perspectives on who I am and what I do. After eight years, we have moved to a new office: 750, 505 - 3rd Street SW, Calgary, AB, Canada, T2P 3E6 – a great setup, same phone numbers. There’s a new website too: www.catalyststrategic.com. Please update your address books.

The second experience is one I shared with many: going on holidays. We went to Hornby Island, between Vancouver Island and Mainland BC. It has the best beaches in the Gulf Islands, a strong artistic and cultural community and a laid-back style that’s hard to beat.

Both kinds of experiences take us out of our rut, enable us to slip outside ourselves for a while, and to see our lives and work from a distance. Changing perspective can be as refreshing as the time off. What’s different on holidays? We lose our demanding routines, can expand and take a relaxed and appreciative perspective, take time away from constant performance, and just be.

Funny how it’s never hard to go away on holidays – or is it? Most of us do three weeks’ worth of work in the week before we leave. We suddenly get real clear on what must be done and what can pass. There’s already a different perspective afoot. Some never really leave. They take the laptop and call the office all the time. They don’t sever the tie, denying the fresh perspective they need. Is this a symptom of overdependence on work to give structure to your life? Some can’t stand the absence of buzz. Catalyst gets involved in taking companies to the next level, bringing a new and different view, helping people get out of the buzz and their (necessary) perceptual prisons.

There has never been a time when getting outside your familiars and reconceptualizing your business has been more required. You have to be paranoid - to assume that somebody, somewhere, is figuring out how to steal your business by doing it a different way, and is about to eat your lunch. So, even though you live in your business everyday, you must get outside of it and allow someone else to help you see yourself for who you really are and what you really do for customers in your business. An example: Cameron Management provides a suite of administrative support services to clients. They move to become outsourcers of clients’ non-core administration, then they figure out how to do most of that over the Internet.

Holiday time opens up some different channels. On Hornby, it’s different. The days spin by without too much structure or point, and the quality of time and interaction is everything. People are extremely open and kind with each other. Everyone you meet makes eye contact and says "Hi!", even women with men! And each is an opportunity, an opening to engage and experience and learn from another soul. it’s like Ireland - spontaneous conversations are always breaking out. You are drawn into new worlds by the developing course of the day, as you wander over a small domain of some 20 square miles.

And personally, during these breaks, I experience a very different self. I lose my urgent structures, my routines fall away and the lists I carry in my head dissolve. I have a clear mind. I don’t suffer those stress shots. You know: you’re walking along and are suddenly ambushed by a remembrance of something not taken care of. On Hornby, my focus widens, softens and life becomes quality, nuance, delight. Not that I don’t ever experience that in the rest of the year, but not in this particular way - where openness is primary and getting things done is secondary.

On returning, I found myself reflecting on the tools that enact our working frame of reference. What was different when I was away from my work world? Here’s what I noticed was missing:

• Discernment, [critical] judgment. This is the quality of knowing exactly what will assist us in executing our plan, and having disinterest in or discarding all the rest. If something is not germane or useful to the unfolding pursuit of the business, forget it. Entrepreneurs have an acute sense of relevance. It’s not a fault, it’s just the animal.
• Memory. This is the necessary vessel of our plans and routines that allows us to operate according to an intended future, rather than the present. We remember:

1. Lists of what to do and when to do it. We have to achieve coordination since what we do affects many. People meeting together and producing results in concert is essential to accomplishment.
2. Our operational routines. How we perform the working activities that comprise our complex lives.
3. Being sharp. We’re on edge and pushing the future, maximizing every moment: Up and at ‘em!

On Hornby, I found these fading, falling away (he’s gone over to the "dark side", some of my clients will say). Life there provides assets you can’t access when in full busy mode. Like what? How can very valuable tools, when overused, cause us to come up short?

Discernment: Some islander offerings that I found fascinating would not find favor with a Globe and Mail reviewer. Readiness to critique everything is a barrier to involvement. We carry a vague discontent with us all the time and are always ready to seek out the insufficiencies in things offered (or done) by others, to judge their worth relevant to our involvement. Try living with someone who insists on commenting critically. Natural life flow dries up. The price? Isolation. The casualty? Spontaneity. Our involvement with others is traded away for "higher quality".

Memory: Clutter means we do not have clear minds which open to creative impulse. We have mental Post-It notes everywhere (whoops, that’s my website!). Nothing new can float in - creative thoughts for example. There’s no room! Overloaded minds can’t commit themselves to unselfconscious, uninterrupted and absorbed concentration on task. This is the stuff from which all great works spring.

Being sharp: Well, on Hornby, I just wasn’t. Instead, a smooth, flowing and allowing quality crept into my days. I was continually surprised and delighted by small, real, and unpretentious events that visited my very different awareness. The sudden movement of deer in the trees, the gracious waft of the rose in the garden, the distant squabbling of seabirds, the sun on my skin. I was alive in a more full way than my usual focussed, performance-motivated sense. This allowed me to perceive more, to catch the subtle and new - or for that matter - the obvious and apparent things I would otherwise have missed.

When I got back to working out, I found myself trying to remember the combination to my Winter Club locker. It was just gone (Evan saved me). These tools are absolutely required for us to function in our world. We have to remember our combinations, carry our lists, push on, focus, be careful. On the other hand, in a business world being born again in an information revolution, overused tools may be impediments. The ability to spend some time on the dark side (or is it the light side?), out from under the demands of business may just be what is required now. A friend speculated with me as to whether I had a holiday from, or a holiday to … refresh, reload, come back with something new, like a changed set of eyes.

Kevin, a Calgary businessman and sometime Hornby resident, was gazing with me out over bobbing sailboats in sparkling Tribune Bay and said, "When I’m here, I think this is the real world. When I’m there, I think Calgary is." New Yorkers have a version all their own, as do others. None are invalid, and we can learn from all of them.

Hope your Autumn is gracious - and productive. 

Best regards,

Doug Bouey

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