Liminal Coaching Newsletter August 19th 2024
It's Just Your Imagination
It’s Just Your Imagination
This week, we look at imagination and how readily it is dismissed in a culture of transactional functionalism. We also look at one way in which this is having an impact in post-pandemic businesses.
The Significance of Imagination
It is our imagination that enables us to create mock-ups of things and situations that don’t currently exist. It enables us to take what exists and extrapolate from it along multiple lines of possibility. It even empowers us to conceive of a complete change in what currently exists.
Imagination coupled with research is what great designers use to create products that offer groundbreaking, intuitively useable new products.
Imagination is at play whenever we think about doing something, what we will do, how, and where. It forms the basis of a plan of action that can then be carried out.
It prepares us psychologically and physically for negotiating different experiences and circumstances. It creates reality as we go and is ubiquitous in all we do.
Imagination is responsible, at the root, for every development and invention that has produced the modern world. Not all of them are great but, like all fundamental human capabilities, imagination is not intrinsically good or bad; it’s up to us how we use it.
What Helps It Function
The imagination works best when we are relaxed, at ease, and even having fun. When the parasympathetic nervous system is more active, we do our best creative and innovative work.
We do not do it when we are in fear of our lives.
What Kills It
In our culture, we operate most of the time with our instinctual “fight-or-flight” nervous system on high alert for danger. This system narrows our focus to immediate tactical and survival thinking, destroying our imaginative capability.
Yet, many work environments are more or less based on using this fear as an “incentive.”
Considering the necessity of being at ease, relaxed, and free to reflect to do creative work, it is small wonder that people in creative jobs are burning out under the intense pressure to do more with less (“because otherwise AI will replace you”).
Imagination in a Crisis
In a 2020 HBR article, “We Need Imagination Now More Than Ever,” Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller explore the significance of imagination in helping businesses negotiate a crisis (at the time, it was the pandemic they had in mind).
One key point is:
“With imagination, we can do better than merely adapting to a new environment — we can thrive by shaping it. To do this, we need to strategize across multiple timescales, each requiring a different style of thinking. In the current Covid-19 crisis, for example:
The initial emphasis is on rapid reaction and defense.
Then the focus shifts to constructing and implementing plans to endure the likely economic recession to follow.
As the recession abates, the focus shifts to rebound — making adjustments to portfolios and channels as we seek to exploit recovering demand.
Over time the situation becomes more malleable, and imaginative companies shift their focus to reinventing — seeking opportunity in adversity by applying more creative approaches to strategy.
In other words, renewal and adaptive strategies give way to classical planning-based strategies and then to visionary and shaping strategies, which require imagination”.
BCG (Boston Consulting Group) surveyed over 250 multinationals and found that most were engaged in defensive measures, but only a minority were identifying and shaping strategic opportunities.
The same is true whenever trading gets tough, or things look uncertain. The fight-or-flight brain takes over, and anything smacking of creative innovation and optimism is either put on the back burner or eliminated altogether. Discretionary wellbeing initiatives for staff are axed, and often, creative staff themselves are axed.
So, at the very time innovation and imagination are vital resources for navigating trouble, they are stifled. It isn’t anyone’s fault; it’s a natural fear reaction to perceived threats, but that doesn't make it any less destructive.
What Can be Done?
In the article referenced above, the authors offer seven ways companies can develop their organization’s capacity for imagination:
Carve out time for reflection;
Ask active, open questions;
Allow yourself to be playful;
Set up a system for sharing ideas;
Seek out the anomalous and unexpected;
Encourage experimentation; and
Stay hopeful.
It all sounds very positive and sensible. But it won’t happen unless the leadership team can overcome their own fear response and lead the way. That requires more than a few good intentions. It requires self-insight, knowledge of techniques for self-regulation, and the ability to take a calm, reflective view.
Addressing Deeper Issues
Unlike most coaching modalities, Liminal Coaching addresses inner realities as equally important to the external context. We provide the means for anyone to reduce the impact of fear, uncertainty, and doubt so they can access and use their creativity to flourish.
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Kind Regards,
Mike
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