Gabriel Shirley

So what do you do when the inevitable happens? You’re stuck in a big hole and you feel like you need to fight for your life. This is where training and practice really pay off. You don’t want to find yourself stuck in a big hole before you have the skills to get out of it.

First of all, it’s important to remain calm and stay in your boat. Novice kayakers will bail out of their boats in challenging situations. Once you are separated from your boat, the boat itself becomes a danger that could pin you against a rock, not to mention the fact that you’re now swimming the rapid you were once kayaking — using your body instead of your boat to bounce off of rocks and other obstacles. In business, your boat is whatever keeps you afloat — your team, your partner, your kids. Don’t abandon them when the going gets tough. If you do it will be a bumpy ride and it just might do serious damage to them or to you.

You’re still in your boat and you’re stuck in a hydraulic that is churning you up and down as if you were inside a huge washing machine. You’re stuck in it sideways, so the hole is trying to suck your entire boat under water. You’re not sure what rocks are underneath. You put your paddle out to the downstream side and move it back and forth, front to back to brace yourself and avoid turning upside down. You try to use this feather brace to move to the side of the hole, hoping it will kick you out if you can get part of your boat into the downstream current. But this particular hole is a “keeper” — it’s not going to let you go.

The next thing to try is to “go deep.” Every hole is made up of water that is flowing downstream but has been temporarily diverted into the recirculating hydraulic. If you turned off the flow, the hole would disappear and all the water would flow down hill. So the secret is to find the nearest place where the current is moving strongly down stream and use it to your advantage. Often in a big hydraulic that place is down deep. So you do what feels counter intuitive, you turn upside down and reach your arms down toward the bottom of the river searching for the down stream flow. You feel it instantly when you reach it… it’s the stronger of the fundamental forces at play. Your arms are pulled back and your body and boat follow, pulling you out of the hydraulic. Now you can roll back upright and get some air, safely downstream of the hole.

The keeper hole is a metaphor for a business process or relationship that keeps you stuck in one place, impeding forward momentum. You try to work with it, respecting its boundaries and moving left or right to see how you can get what you want. But ultimately it’s not a good situation to be in and you need to find a way to move on. Look for the downstream current — it may be as simple as articulating your business goal as aligned with the goals of an authority figure in your organization. It may require their direct endorsement. Or you may be able to ally with another effort that has already figured out how to avoid the hole that trapped you. Their momentum could pull you back into the flow. Find a way to make the hole irrelevant by working effectively with more powerful forces going in the direction you want to go.

There are some sections of river that are absolutely choked with boulders, hydraulics, foaming pillows of water and chaotic waves. You can almost always hear them coming and when you do it’s best to get out of your boat, walk down stream and take a look to see what you’re in for. With some perspective you can spot the nastiest holes and other obstacles and plot a course that avoids them. One of the things to look for is the fast water that flows along the side of a hole. If you follow the seam, you can pick up speed to help you move through the places you don’t want to be. In a minefield, you know you will hit some holes straight-on. It’s unavoidable. The best you can do is paddle hard and fast, avoid the biggest monsters, and punch through or hop over the smaller ones with enough momentum that you keep on going to less chaotic waters.

The same is true in business. Every project has its complexity, and there will be points along the way that feel like minefields. You need good fundamental skills and enough momentum to keep moving through the field. It’s only temporary and the very same water will eventually quiet down if you can keep moving downstream.

A big nasty hole might be a challenging customer, employee, co-worker or process. These are situations where energy is focused intensively in one place. If you can figure out how to take advantage of that energy without being overwhelmed by it, you will gain momentum. Follow the seams on the sides of big holes and never stop paddling. Your goal is the same as the water’s — to move downstream.

I just returned from a week of whitewater kayaking on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho. It’s a part of the world that is officially in the middle of nowhere and is second only to the Grand Canyon on my list of rivers to paddle before I die. The terrain surrounding the river is incredibly steep and mountainous. Creeks pour down into the river as cascading waterfalls. Beautiful clear water flows with endless waves that are perfect for surfing a kayak. Mountain goats, mountain lions, elk and big horned sheep do well here. Cell phones and laptops, well, not so much.

A week of being completely unplugged created the space for me to focus on what the river has to teach me at this point in my life. After 20 years of paddling I’ve learned that the river always has something to teach. Sometimes with a gentle reminder, other times with a cold slap in the face. This particular trip was all about “flow” for me. I remember one of my earliest whitewater teachers helping us learn to read the river and begin to dance with it. He would say “See that boulder 100 yards down on river left? I can eddy out behind it in 3 strokes.” He would take off and we would follow one by one, taking as few strokes as possible, and learning to speak the language of the river — current, eddy, pillow, hydraulic — until we could feel it with our eyes closed and our bodies would adjust instantly to meet the water in its fluid dance.

The river is like life. It’s always moving and changing, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. A small number of fundamental patterns combine in an infinite variety of ways to create a complex, living environment that requires the mindset of a dance partner rather than an engineer.

Patterns

Standing waves retain their shape even though the water flowing through them is constantly changing.

Diagonal waves reflect off each other and bounce off the river bed to create a seemingly chaotic maelstrom that can rise up or fall away underneath you.

Eddies are places where water rushes upstream to fill a void, creating an opportunity to rest and assess your next moves… or to head back upstream and try again.

Hydraulics (or “holes”) are places where water flows over an obstacle and creates a recirculating pattern of aerated water. If you know where they are and how to read them you can use them to your advantage — or avoid them completely if they’re too big and hairy. If you don’t know where they are or don’t know how to read them, some can grab your boat and shake it violently, turn you upside down, and then do it all over again. In those situations you need to know how to surf and you need to know how to roll. Sometimes, if you get stuck, you can turn upside down and reach toward the bottom with your paddle. The current underneath will pull you out of the hole where you can roll back up and continue on downstream.

Bringing it Home

As I ease back into my work, these river fundamentals are sticking with me as metaphors. I am thinking of my work and each project as yet another river, each one a tributary to the big stream of my life. There is a general direction of flow, there are big waves and small ones, fast and slow currents, and there are periods where we seem to be stuck going around in circles. Each of these is important to the life of the river and the life of the work. It’s not about trying to change these patterns, but rather learning to work with the current and gracefully move where you want to go with the least effort possible. When that happens, you can feel the state of flow.

I can eddy out behind that rock in 2 strokes.

(Here are some pictures of my recent trip down the Middle Fork.)

Can software express emotion? What about the people who create it? What if a combination of sensing hardware and software could determine your emotional state and respond based on that input?

The concept of Emotional Machines has been around for a number of years. Biofeedback machines have been used since the 70s to monitor things like heart rate, the electrical conductivity of your skin, blood pressure, and sweat. The US Military and scientists interested in human consciousness have used these technologies to train people to master their emotions and change their energetic state when needed. Using these techniques, Navy Seals are able to stay calm under enormous pressure, retaining energy and focus that would otherwise be wasted. Using similar techniques, though generally without the benefit of technological feedback, some Buddhist monks have the ability to sit in meditation and raise their body temperature enough that they can dry out a cold, wet blanket while sitting on a frigid stone floor.

Modern technology such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has helped scientists discover very specific regions of the brain that are active when certain emotions are in play. Imagine wearing a pair of glasses that contains sensors which can scan your brain for this kind of activity, feeding it wirelessly to a nearby computer. If you were playing a computer game, the game might get more intense until your heart rate reaches a certain level. At that point it might ask you to calm yourself quickly in order to be prepared for the next level. If you do, you get to enter the doorway, if not, you go back to another round of heart-pounding action and the cycle repeats until you either wear yourself out or discover how to shift emotional states.

This kind of scenario is being designed today by video game companies and will be on the market within 3 years.

It could also be used to train autistic children to activate parts of their brains that are less active. Or any of us for that matter. Imagine software that lets you pick your phobia, draws you into a heightened state of anxiety, then invites you to try different things to reduce that anxiety. You would in effect be training yourself with new coping mechanisms, new patterns of thought, that would be useful in other life situations.

My description above is a positive vision of how this technology could be used to help us expand our emotional intelligence. It could also be used for less admirable purposes that may not be so healthy. Since this technology is here, it’s time to ask, “how will we use it?” What purpose does it serve? Let’s make sure it serves both people and pocket books.

Nancy White and I are writing a chapter for an upcoming book (The Change Handbook, second edition) about using online environments to support change efforts in organizations. We’re currently playing with various images to represent a complex set of concepts and interactions in simplified terms.

Here is a draft of one I created earlier today, then subsequently used during a client discovery meeting. It represents the pieces that must be balanced in the right proportions to have a successful experience using an online environment. A compelling purpose is at the center — without it, the environment is likely to fail. From the purpose, a set of goals is identified, and from the goals, in the context of the people and organization(s) involved, a methodology is chosen. The methodology informs the kind of facilitation required to achieve the purpose, as well as the kinds of Technology that will support the method. Physical access to technology and ability to use technology comprise the Access cloud. The level of Access informs the kind of Facilitation and the kinds of Technology that will be appropriate.

Every situation is a little different, and the proportions must be adjusted accordingly.