Where are you?

Zooming in and zooming out

One of the fundamental leadership competences for managing complexity is seeing patterns. Do you see patterns or do you see isolated events?

In order to see patterns we need to be able to zoom out. When we zoom out we may see what makes everything part of the same whole. It is not some kind of new age thought. It’s just very practical. Take anything: two objects, two people, one object and one person, two ideas, and zoom out. How are these two seemingly different things essentially similar? 

Patterns are threads of interconnection. They bring together what looks different. They reconnect what a trick of the mind separates. They help you spot what is emerging. And the future is emerging fast, seeing patterns keeps you on the crest of the wave.

For the longest time, I could not make sense of an uncomfortable feeling that has been with me forever. I never saw things. I never saw individuals. I never even saw me. I didn't see disciplines or concepts. I could not dive into one subject alone. All I saw were relations. More precisely I saw threads. Threads within a person and between people, between people and things. Threads between things. Between ideas. Threads between present and future, past and present. Can you imagine what life looks like when you see it from within a network of interconnections? 

I only relatively recently understood that those threads were relations, not a way to deceivingly simplify reality thinking it was all one, it is all one. And it is complex.

As long as we can zoom out enough, we see it. 

Seeing patterns is my natural way of relating to life and to people. I not only recently discovered that it’s a quite ok way of seeing life, I also discovered that for most people it is not the natural way, it’s not even an accessible way. I have felt huge grief. How lonely must it feel not to see ourselves in relations to others, to all? It also creates huge blind spots. Can you imagine the possibilities when you can connect what nobody else has connected?

A while ago I decided that what I wanted to do was to create conditions for others to see interconnections. I realized that people are guided by different questions. For some the question is What? For others it is Why? For some it is Who (am I)?

For me the question from which it all starts is Where? From there, where things interconnect, it all makes sense, it is all possible. This is the beginning of creativity, of innovation, of depth, of connection, of aliveness.

Because the wider and more complex is the network of interconnections and patterns and relations that we sense, see and feel part of, the richer is our experience of life. And the least lonely we are. The more creative we become. The least self-preoccupied we can afford to be. We become capable of an eco-system instead of an ego-system awareness.

But seeing the interconnections, zooming out is not enough. If we only see the interconnections, we may not see others in their authenticity, in the depth of their longings, in the tragedy of their losses, in the brittleness of their lives, in the beauty of their uniqueness. We may not find the depth of an idea, we may not build the solidity that mastery gives, we may become scattered and unable to crystalize possibilities into actions.

Zooming in again. Training the attention to get narrow. Sharp. Spot the differences. So that anyone will feel seen. You see, as a pattern person, the risk I’m constantly aware of in my work and in my personal relationships is to abstract others, make them part of a pattern. A It. Not a Thou. The risk is that we sever the relational thread by objectifying the person. 

This work of zooming out and zooming in is not just about our personal growth or interpersonal relationships. It is the same journey we take to innovate: we diverge and then converge. It is the same capacity of the mind we train in meditation when we go from open awareness to focused attention. It is the same consciousness development through the chakras, as we expand into the possibilities of a teal consciousness and then ground back into new realities. It is the same journey of transforming organizations in more spacious and fluid containers and then narrowing it back down to functions, the centers where energy flows. It is the same journey of sensing into the field and then crystalizing through prototypes. It is the same journey through the rhythms of energy that awaken and increase, then contract and find completion. Zooming out and zooming in.

Expansions and contractions. Disorder and order. The waves of anything that grows, anything that is alive.

If we only could zoom in and out, become flexible that way, then life could be brought out from within, we would not need to force it. It would flow through, like that life inside the marble piece from which David was sculpted. Like life inside a town in which you just know you want to live. Like life inside an immortal building. Inside a tree. Inside a loving family. Inside an innovation that makes sense. Harmony of patterns in which uniqueness is celebrated and has a clear function. 

Then only one question is left, that in which all blends: How?