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(((moonshots)))

Patience

To benefit from moonshots and such thinking, you need to commit to the journey, a journey to impact that requires persistence, patience, and belief.
In the beginning, moonshot projects can be weird, extremely fragile, and exotic, and don´t really fit with whatever else is going on, and so they require patience and space to show their full potential.
Moonshots require creating a space with a culture where creativity and serendipity are the norm.

Space and psychological safety

Innovation also requires nurturing a space of psychological safety, where you can float crazy ideas and make serendipitous connections without any other expectations. 
Willy Wonka had to build a chocolate factory new space container to house the Oompa Loompas, because they struggled to survive in the wild. And innovators and dreamers often can’t thrive in typical setups.

Don’t get me wrong — execution matters, especially when you’re operating at scale. But radical innovation needs a different cultural environment that encourages space, a space that is very different than the space that we are typically used to. 

A space of psychological safety is one where people can  wonder, fail and dare. Your mission is to create an environment where innovators can float crazy-sounding ideas which could become boldly creative solutions to tricky problems. You need to protect this space and understand that it’s part of the difficult, emotional journey to build a Moonshot, growing as individuals, and evolve with it, staying true to what is calling at any point, noticing the hidden ingredients (the lights and shadows). It will pay off.

You can also host “bad idea brainstorms” to make it safe to fail. Turn down the volume of that little voice inside your head that makes you anxious about saying “silly” or “wrong” things? Years ago, X’s Rapid Evaluation team, which comes up with new moonshot ideas, started holding “bad idea brainstorms” to help them get comfortable letting their nuttiest stuff flow freely and without any further judgement. 

Claiming Space into the Innovation

At least three different set of attitudes come to me that can be taken with regards to space. One – to hold it, two – to step back to see more of it, and three – to take more space and step into it.  Taking space, the latter one, relates to claiming more space into the emergent relationship, into the in-between the knowing and the not, into the collective arising, into the in-between emerging,.. Taking more space into the togetherness without feeling invasive to the collective, or intrusive the other, limiting, as a zero sum game, but instead being boundless and generative, requires for me sitting in the messy and leading with curiosity, trust and audacity.  For instance, wondering what if? into that new space.  Same goes for innovation. Taking space into the not-knowing to realize you don’t know the answers, starting with the what ifs. Using great questions to take non-invasive space into the new space, taking more space into that new not known, so it can blast you into seeing a new world of possibilities as opposed to vanishing away. what if moving and taking more space into the innovation would be the trigger for the creation? 

Space and What If?

Moonshots often start with a single question. What if? And that requires space to realize that you don’t already know the answers!” 

Leaving space for not knowing how things are “supposed to be” can actually be a secret superpower; your curiosity can lead you to questions that cast everything in a new light. So next time you’re determined to take yourself somewhere truly radical, think about using great questions to blast you out of whatever’s preventing you from seeing a world of new possibilities.

What if you could read a plant like a book? What if your pants could help you up the stairs?What if all of your old plastic could be turned into anything? What if understanding fish behavior could make our seas healthier? What if we could grow a building from a seed? What if a swimming pool could power the entire planet?
What if these questions were not just questions?

Space to find Rejected Ingredients

Space invites to naming ALL the ingredients that we have available to us. When I say ingredients, that means not just what is outside in this world, but also what's inside. Everything that we have at your disposal to innovate (inside you, in society, family, friends, tech, etc).

But ALSO reclaiming ingredients that have been previously Rejected or denied from self, the world, or  alienated from my societal, that we've rejected or denied. The type of ingredients we don't listen to and make us wonder around blindfolded to the next opportunity or disruption.

Its about reclaiming ingredients, all of them, the dark and the light, the parts of ourselves or society that we've previously rejected. That's how we chart the path of what opportunities are here for us, what new moonshots can emerge.

Werner Herzog, a great film director created space while he was shooting in the Peruvian jungle in 1982 to talk about nature and the jungle from a very different perspective. [On the jungle]  Kinski always says nature is full of erotic elements. I don't see it so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and... growing and... just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain. It's an unfinished world. It's still prehistorical.  It's a land that God, if he exists has - has created in anger. It's the only land where - where creation is unfinished yet. Taking a close look at - at what's around us there - there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of... overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle - Uh, we in comparison to that enormous articulation - we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban... novel... a cheap novel. We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication... overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. 

Even the - the stars up here in the - in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.

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(((alchemy of chaos)))

Space & Transformation

You can’t know the shape of your transformation or the alchemy that you’ve undergone and created until you take a step back from that which is molding you. Have you ever seen a painter working on a large canvas? They have to get close and move their hands around and paint and do things in order to create their art, but in order to see it and know what to do next, they step back and observe. They take space to gain necessary perspective they need in order to allow the awareness of their next stroke to settle in. Without ebb there is no flow. It seems like so many of us define our lives by how much we are doing and by what keeps us busy, but I believe that what truly defines our lives is the space we take and create to see and acknowledge ourselves.

We’ve all heard of the concept of the space between the action…but what if we flipped that to be the action between the space? The strokes on the canvas between enjoying the bigger picture.

Why are most of us so uncomfortable with stillness or space, even though in many ways we are all driving towards building a life that is filled with enough ease that we can take the space we need and want?

I desire to recognize the authority in being spacious. So often we define our authority by what we have done or are doing. But what if our true authority was found in our ability to take space? To take up space? To access space and knowing and presence?

The Path of Disorientation

How do you know you’re on the right path? When there is no path.

Disorientation can be good because it keeps us from identifying the norms you’ve become accustomed to, therefore it gives the opportunity to be unattached and to feel more deeply. In that state your own center is all there is to grab onto, rather than exernal things. Maybe it’s the key to redefinition of self.

What if you are being guided away from noise, to remove conditioning, coming back into the self where true alchemy lives? What if your most profound task is to let go of the shore and trust the “no path” path?

Space is disorienting, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Freedom can often be disorienting - that “whoa” moment in a newly perceived space that is undefined and full of so many possibilities. Space is for wandering, and discovering, and not relying upon what we already know. This magically forces us to be more intuitive. Disorientation is connected to wonder if we choose it to be. As you lose wonder/disorientation, you start to orient to new truths and homes, which become static. This serves for a while, but at some point, it starts to create atrophy and stagnation, at which point you must create space to re-disorient yourself.

Space is a departure. It is creating room for a new set of assumptions. As the alchemical life ingredients are reclaimed you have more space to be you, and expand into yourself, literally expanding your metaphorical space.

Space is essential to self understanding, self understanding is essential to self mastery, and self mastery is essential to deeper initiative and creation.

Defining Space

We continued on our path of identifying, pressing into, and reframing understandings of each of our words so far, which as you know by now are each worlds unto themselves. In order to reveal hidden possibilities and come into relationship with each of these, we are experiencing what each concept really is. With Chaos, we opened to being with all of it by creating a new understanding of chaos as the source of all possibility. We also called out that it is a dance, not a result. In Alchemy we dove into the inner world, where we discussed what it might look like to reclaim all of our ingredients so that we can be with what is. In Space, we are exploring what it really looks like to expand into both emptiness and opportunity.

Space, after alchemizing chaos, is a more structured version of the void of chaos. Space is a more contained version of concentrated possibility: the result of the first iteration of alchemy of chaos. What Space has presented me with this week is a contemplation around the fact that we have infinite space available to us, in a physical sense, yet it is in the forms that we are able to create that gives that space meaning, or makes it helpful. Space in its simplest and most obvious definition, is this infinite thing, something that we probably don’t have the ability to wrap our minds around how infinite it actually is. We call anything beyond Earth “Space” and it goes on into infinity. And beyond. I also love to look the other way as well, to understand that inwardly, we are also technically infinite - we haven’t yet been able to fully conceive of what is beyond the quantum field within our cells and atoms. “You are one drop in the universe, and you are the universe in one drop." This understanding of an infinite expanse of space can go both ways. 

strategic Emptiness

The main thing that makes all of our “containers” in life useful is the empty space.

The only way we can pour into a teacup is when it is empty.
A room is not functional without empty space around the various pieces of furniture.
The thing that makes the wheel functional is the empty space in the middle of the wheel around which everything else rotates.
Music is only beautiful because of the space between the notes - otherwise we would hear all the notes at one time and it wouldn’t make sense, as both Vanita and Marques pointed out.
A painting on a canvas is what it is because of the empty space around the brush strokes, and the space between colors that create the dimension of the image.
I am only able to discern the beauty of the sunset because of the space between me and the sun, between the sun and the clouds, between the clouds themselves.
The ability to empty the mind is what creates the ability to be inspired.

Empty space allows us to differentiate. To understand. To perceive. To conceive. We work with being and form, but non-being and energy is what we actually use.

The strategic advantage of recognizing the value of space is very practical, but we can also take it to a metaphysical level and recognize that while the tea cup itself is the container that holds the empty space, and then what is able to hold the substance, this same teacup is also a metaphor for the vessel of awareness and/or consciousness. What is true of the teacup is also true of the mind - it works best when empty.

You are connected to so much knowing already…the art of understanding your own knowing and discernment really comes down to creating enough space for you to receive your knowing.

You experience what you are aware of. We are all making choices all the time. Conscious choices, subconscious choices, and my favorite: super conscious choices. Only 5% of our choices are conscious. So, in order to understand what’s happening in that other 95%, you must become aware of your subconscious and super conscious mind. How do you do this? Space. Stillness.

Without space, all of these minds choose differently, which makes for mixed and/or confusing results.

In my opinion, Space is the #1 strategy for everything.

What situations or experiences have you been able to understand, differentiate, or perceive differently as a result of Space?
If you were able to complete the pre-work experiments, which ones struck you (if any), and why is that?

Space, Trust, & the Unknown

Human change - or systems change - begins with learning new information, but change is brought to a resolution once enough space has been infused to be able to glean the new results or actions from the new information.

Synchronicity happens, in my experience at least, when I am wandering without an agenda in the spaciousness of time. When I stay with my minute to minute experience in a conscious way, I create new understandings of the opportunities in front of me. Even the smallest opportunities can become life giving, but I first have to give those little baby opportunities the space to grow.

You experience what you are awake to. Continually raising your awareness of self, others, and possibilities is the art form and practice that ultimately enriches your experience of your life. And how do you continually raise your awareness and wake up to your life? By creating space to do just that.

The ability to be still with what is (after alchemizing the chaos of course), with a vantage point of understanding how productive it is to not insist on “doing” all of the time, is what can create the most aligned opportunities, ideas, and initiatives. For instance, this program itself wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the 3 days of empty space I found myself with after an executive offsite had been canceled due to covid.

How has Space benefitted you as a strategic step?