'unfiltered'
Welcome to what others might call our 'blog'. We prefer to call it 'unfiltered'. We have written a series of essays on topics that relate to the work we are doing. We will feature a new piece every few weeks and you can read archived writings through their links. We hope you enjoy them or at the least they provoke you into thinking about new and different issues.
The Case for Being ‘Unrealistic’:
Transformation Before Incrementalism
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By Ellee Koss and Arati Mithal Nagaraj (based on earlier work by Ellee)
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For more than 30 years we have worked with individuals, teams, and organizations to build and sustain values-driven, high performance. There have been many lessons learned. Yet, one fundamental truth stands out, at this moment in time. To drive transformation one needs vision.
Vision is asking the question: “What do we want?” It is NOT: “Given the circumstances, what can we get or achieve?” The former leads to transformation and change. The latter leads to, at best, very minor incremental change and most of the time it reinforces the status quo.
As humans, our tendency, and the safe route, is to check and see what we think is possible. We may have an idea or even a vision. And, the first thing we do, more often than not, is check reality. At that point we go ‘Oh s#@*’ and we shrink our vision or idea to match the reality of what we think we can attain. We continue to do this at every step in the process of bringing an idea into reality. Sometimes it is conscious often it is not. We then don’t understand why the final result does not match our original ‘vision’ or ‘idea’. Unknowingly, we sell out to the limitations of ‘what is’ rather than create ‘what if’.
Visionaries are visionaries because they maintain the ‘vision’ in the face of reality and continue to press with ‘what if’. They inspire and draw people into their vision rather than shrink their vision to match people’s definitions of current reality. Through this process, from vision into action, and their continued declaration of ‘what if’, they transform current reality.
One of the most famous examples of transformation, driven by vision, in recent history, continues to be the US Space Program. With a simple, yet profound, declaration of ‘We will put a man on the moon within the decade.’, JFK transformed the US Space Program. Had he asked the question: “Given the circumstances, what can we accomplish?” we may never have put a man on the moon….
In conversations around the current state of education, we often hear people talk about ‘change comes from incremental changes’. I assure you that real, fundamental change does not. In our state of accelerated global and technological change, incremental change (if it even happens) will only cause us to be further and further behind. By the time we enact ‘incremental change’ it will already be outdated, irrelevant and there will other pressing needs.
What is needed is transformation - vision - ‘unrealistic’ ideas that have the power to fundamentally reshape and alter reality and not just push the edges slightly.
Call us idealists…so be it. It is the only way we will move to a more just and equitable future.
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