In my conversations with other social venturists, one of the fascinating themes that has emerged is that the innovations we develop can be hard to communicate to others. When we are on the edge, creating something the world has never seen before to bring about a better world, we’re often working so outside the box of everyday conversations that people can’t make sense of our work, therefore their minds ignore it because they can’t ‘see it’.
My own experience of creating and teaching Collab, our collaborative leadership system, is a bit like the experiment on visual processing which involves asking people to watch a video of 6 people passing a basketball, and press a button every time a particular team has possession. Invariably only about half the people tested ever notice a woman in a gorilla suit walking across the middle of the screen during the game. Our minds don’t see or make sense of of things that fall outside of what we assume and expect for our lives.
The exciting opportunity though, is to discover what our assumptions are, and to which we could be paying more attention… being able to “see the gorilla” might just make sense of everything else!
In our social innovation experiments, we’ve discovered that there are 3 key assumptions that people tend to make about what it takes to operate collaboratively, and if we can let go of our assumptions, see what’s really going on, and what is possible then we can really make a difference.
Join us for an experiential lunch hour webinar on July 21st, The 3 Essential Elements of Fun and Effective Collaboration, for a chance to see the gorilla!
Looking forward to the conversation!
Cecile Green
Co-Founder, Round Sky Solutions