We as humans consist of roughly three abstract parts, if you will. Which I would like to translate to the following:
- Hardware: Our genetics and ancestry
- Firmware: Our community and culture and its values
- Software: Our own idea’s, values and morality
There is a temporal element in this analogy which I think is mostly underrated. The temporal element has to do with the rate of change in each of these parts.
The hardware, as you may understand, has always been subject to evolution and adaptation to it’s needs over the course of millennia. You are the result of millions of years of evolution. Which in turn means that any significant change will take many lifetimes to complete.
I believe that a lot of what governs our lives is mostly anchored in our firmware. This is greatly beneficial to us as we have relied on our communities for our survival, our safety and our advancement as species. However this has also meant that our firmware is resistant to abrupt change. For obvious reasons.
And lastly, our own idea’s, values and norms can be changed rather abruptly and radically. This is good news, because this means that we at least have a way of experimenting rapidly locally and then propagate our tested ideas to our communities and eventually make then part of our firmware and thus advance our species.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist and pioneering aviator. And he once famously said:
“If you want to build a flotilla of ships you don’t sit around and talk about carpentry. You set the saws ablaze with visions of exploring distant shores.”
This quote of his has always lingered in the back of my mind since I first heard it. And looking back, it has been the inspiration for a great deal of the things I have done in my personal life as well as in my career.
Thinking back to the last few years of my career I think I owe way more to this quote than I have realized before. Having been involved in many transformations and leading several teams into basically uncharted territory and landing, somewhat bruised but still in one piece, on those glorious distant shores at the end of the journey has definitely felt majestic.
What I have learned is that it is not enough to tell people what the goal is and how to get there, but the trick is to make the hunger for the goal bigger than any of the obstacles on the way.
And the way to do this, especially in our line of work, is to connect your goal vividly to a vision so magnificent, which creates that hunger. And once you can get this software update installed in your organization, slowly but surely this will update the firmware of the teams and you are ready to set sail!
Conclusion
In order to achieve anything great, you must let go of what is holding you back, drastically shift focus and embrace change. At the human software level! And once that is deeply settled in, you are ready to make the biggest leap once you can make that firmware change. However before you can do any of this, you must first have a vision of the future you want to live in. Without vision you would endlessly drift in the ocean of possibility and never get to shore.
