entrepreneur | The Direction of Intention

Eat Well

Posted on March 6, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Lovers,” a work in progress by David Robinson

[continued from LOOK BEYOND THE BOX]

I’m looping back to Craig’s questions concerning boxes and stages. I think the next question to wade into is about what I see from my stage and when did I know to create my stage.

This is the view from my stage. It may sound bleak at first but stay with me:

Yesterday I had the opportunity to travel into Chicago and work for a couple of hours with Skip’s class at the Illinois Institute of Technology. They are budding entrepreneurs. There’s lots of energy in the world today bubbling around this word, “entrepreneur.” Accelerators and incubators are popping up everywhere. We are now a society gorging on new technology; since we are modeled on the Rome of the Caesars we have little patience for digestion (it takes time) so we prefer to vomit what we just consumed to make room for the next course. We are living at the time of an idea feeding frenzy and mind blowing technological advances. Folks with resources but few ideas are hungry to link up with folks with ideas and no resources. Everyone is insatiably hungry. No amount of gorging will satisfy the hunger.

In our world of rabid consumption, nutrition isn’t necessarily a high priority. I mean that literally and metaphorically. For evidence, look at what the networks call “news.” Long ago we realized that entertainment is more profitable than reporting so reporting is now entertainment. It matters little if there is substance to the story so long as people consume it. More evidence: one of my favorite rants of the past decade came from Dane, a neighbor, who was sitting on his stoop eating a bag of potato chips. He called me over to look at the ingredients listed on the package. High on the list, in fact the second ingredient listed, was sugar. Dane screamed, “There’s more sugar than salt in my chips!” He fumed, “I’ve been reading the ingredient lists on everything and there’s sugar in everything. It’s more important to get us hooked than to feed us anything of substance!” Of course, the punch line to the story is that he ranted with his mouth full of chips. Another bit of evidence: I stopped counting the times I’ve heard a politician say, “We have to weigh our interests against our values.” You can find a variation of this statement in the news of the day everyday. You can find an example of it in your life each day, too. How do you weigh your interests against your values?

This consumption/nutrition question is the epicenter of confusion for lots of people. It is the reason many boxes and stages are constructed.

Most people that I work with are seeking greater meaning. They want a richer experience of life. They want to fulfill their potential. In the midst of their consumption of time, they feel consumed. They have little time to breathe. They have little capacity to develop deep, meaningful relationships. They are finding that their stuff doesn’t fill the void. They are finding that their achievements are hollow unless they serve the real needs of others. They always find that what they seek is something that they’ve had all along: relationships.

There is no magic to sustenance. Slow down and enjoy your meal: literally and metaphorically. Slow down and make the meal: literally and metaphorically. Slow down and make the meal from food that hasn’t been processed: literally and metaphorically. Care for the soil and you will grow healthy food: literally and metaphorically. This requires slowing down. All of these are about the relationship you have with your world. All rich relationships require lingering and the riches are always in the relationship. Always.

Substance is always about a relationship. Relationship can’t be consumed; it must be entered and/or engaged. Tend the relationships, especially the relationship you have with yourself. In this way, the box or stage you construct will be built from self love and self love is the wellspring of love for others.

I see riches in the relationships all around me and a species (homo sapiens) trying to remember what it means to eat from the tree of life.

[to be continued]

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

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Filed under: Awakening, Emergence, entrepreneur, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: life, relationship, seeing | 3 Comments »

Circle The Nutshell

Posted on January 26, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

An illustration from A Dragon’s Tale by David Robinson

A few days ago someone asked me, in a nutshell, to describe my book. I am a circular thinker and nutshells are generally too tight for me. Also, I tend to rant (my apologies to the many of you who’ve had to sit through my bluster) even when I have no intention of ranting. Fortunately, I made concept maps as support material found at the back of the book; being required to practice concept brevity has helped me find some sense of concision.

Here is my answer to the question: The book is about how to flip into a creative mindset (actually, it’s about how to regain the fantastically creative mindset that we are all born with but that requires some explaining. It’s easier to say, “flip perspective into…” like you can change your clothes and become an innovator. And, actually, that might be true if you assumed the role that the clothes inspired. For instance, Keith Johnstone writes about a “creativity” study done in the 1960’s in which people scoring low on a creativity test were asked to dress and act like hippies. They were then asked to retake the test in their hippie role and scored much, much higher). I warned you – I’m a circular thinker.

The rest of the nutshell goes like this: The book follows 3 cycles and each cycle facilitates a perspective flip:

The first cycle is Pattern: the flip is from needing “to know” to embracing not knowing (orient to patterns of curiosity).

The second cycle is Story: the flip is from “Things happen to me” to “I make things happen” (orient as the teller of the story). This one is the big one: people become capable of fulfilling their extraordinary capacity when they see how they make things happen.

The third cycle is Choice: the flip is from identifying as a witness to life to identifying as a creator of life (orient as a participant – a bringer of life).

And, the meta-flip that runs through it is all: Have the experience first and make meaning second. This is how your brain actually works. When you fool yourself into believing that you bring meaning to an experience before you actually have it, you are either lying to yourself, dulling your senses, or protecting yourself from learning something. Innovators, artists, creators, leaders, seekers, visionaries, and learners make their meaning after they have an experience: they know that the world is new every day.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

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Filed under: Creativity, entrepreneur, Perspective, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Intend The Glitch

Posted on November 3, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

Watching a video on “Glitch Art” the other day I heard this phrase: you have to understand a system before you can break it. A glitch in computer code is an anomaly or mistake that creates a hiccup or break in the system. It is a mistake that can make some very interesting imagery. Glitch artists seek the mistakes. They seek the beauty that comes from what others might view as a problem. And my favorite artistic moment as expressed by the glitch artists: at some point they start creating problems in the code. They intend the glitch (which makes it no longer a glitch).

Penicillin is the result of a process glitch. Science is often the art of surfing for glitches, finding the anomaly within the pattern. The word “experiment” implies an orchard of happy mistakes that reveal new insights. The word “unique” means distinctive, exceptional, singular – something out of the ordinary. In other words, a glitch.

Art and Innovation (in the USA) are equated with the new. Artists and innovators try to help us see the world in a new way – or even better, they help us see the world anew. Seeing anew always requires pattern disruption. It requires a challenge to the assumption set, a smack to the status quo. It requires a glitch.

Consider this: learning – true learning (not the answer driven drivel currently running rampant in our education system) and seeing anew are fundamentally the same thing. To learn is to see the new or to see anew. At the heart of art and science – the reason for math and English, economics, politics, ethics, social science,…, is an orientation to the question (as opposed to the numbing notion of a right answer).

Like the glitch artists, no one simply finds the new. It is not something that can be sought or predetermined. It is something we bumble into. It happens when you one day ask, “Hey, I wonder why that happened?” Or, “I wonder if it would work better if…?” It begins with wonder. Wonder leads to experimentation and questions within questions within questions that lead to more experimentation and more questions. This is also a good definition for being vitally alive. Wonder and step toward it. Orient to the question, do an experiment, and tomorrow ask a better question. Do this everyday and someday, just like the glitch artists, you will find yourself doing what all artists know as life-giving: you will intend the glitch, play with the mistake, and learn to see the world anew again and again and again.

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Education, entrepreneur, Perspective, Play, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Know Your Cue

Posted on October 23, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

[continued from Create Flow]

In my post, Step Onto The Field, I inflected two words against each other. I set the word “protected” in opposition to the word, “inclusive.” I wrote:

Showing up is being present with others. It is inclusive (as opposed to protected).

Skip reflected that, “Protected doesn’t feel opposite to inclusive. Yet it is part of what is opposite. Something is missing here.”

Keeping in mind that the post addressed how entrepreneurs’ pitches are similar to actors’ auditions (though this is not what he meant) Skip is exactly correct. When an entrepreneur or actor enters their arena protected, something very important goes missing and what goes missing is any hope of meaningful connection.

When an actor protects him or herself from the audience, they create separation. Hear it: they create separation. They exclude the audience not only from their performance, but more importantly, they bar the audience from meaningful access to the play. They block the audience from participating. And, since stories are pathways for transformation, by blocking the audience from entry to the play, they prohibit all possible transformation.

Over the past year I’ve watched dozens of entrepreneurs pitch to investors and because they show up in a metaphoric suit of armor, they too create separation. They effectively exclude the investor from their story.

In fairness, an entrepreneur’s task can be more difficult than an actor’s task because often investors also show up in suits of armor; investors demand a higher status position than the entrepreneur (whether it is deserved or not). There is armor all around! No one gets to play in this scenario because both are actively creating separation.

Many years ago with Judy I attended a workshop given by O. Fred. Donaldson. His life’s work has been about play (the noncompetitive variety). More specifically, he’s studied how people and animals “cue” each other for play. The cues are universal. His workshop was fascinating because he demonstrated how play is evoked through non-resistance. Resistance reinforces separation. Non-resistance is and invitation. It is like Aikido: with nothing to push against, resistance has no power. It falls away and in the absence of resistance connectivity is possible. Play is possible.

I know this is a gross oversimplification but people are pack animals; belonging is what we desire. In other words, we tend toward each other. We seek to fit. We desire to play. The only way to remove the armor of another person is to remove the armor from our selves. Armor begets armor. Vulnerability begets vulnerability. Armor is a cue to close. Showing up open and available is a cue to open.

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

Filed under: Energy, entrepreneur, Play, Possibility, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Create Flow

Posted on October 22, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

[Continued from Begin With Yourself]

Continuing with Skip’s reflections from last week’s post about bringing your unedited best to the world, Step Onto The Field, his next question came from this section of my post:

Showing up is not passive and has nothing to do with information delivery. Showing up means to share the quest, to bring others along on the pursuit of a dream. Showing up is being present with others.

Skip reminded me that over the past year we’ve talked much about “presence” and reflected that my statement was similar to ideas found in Paulo Coehlo’s, The Pilgrimage, and other stories from the Camino. In other words, “Showing up is being present,” is the same as inviting others on the journey with you. In reference to entrepreneurs he wrote, “…this is not about presenting (one way), but more about inviting….” What a fantastic reflection!

He is exploring presence as a matter of the direction or flow of energy. Presence is circular and ripples out. It is inclusive. In other words, “to be present” is two-way communication. It is relationship. When one is present, one joins. One connects. Separations disappear. I used to do an exercise in workshops with young actors to show them that the honest pursuit of an intention was the very thing that facilitated an audience’s capacity to join the story journey. The exercise is basically a game and the more honest the game is played the more magnetic the action is to the “observers” of the game. In fact, the “observers” are like sports fans, cheering and contorting and embodying the action on the field. In contrast, pretending to pursue the action of the game blocked the audience/observers from entering the story. Pretending dams the flow. It is an equation: honest pursuit = energy exchange. Honest pursuit creates flow.

Pretending is one-way communication. It is broadcasting. The energy is directed outward, broadcasting to the audience. There is no expectation of dialogue and no capacity for participation. Broadcasting is protected. Experts are broadcasters in that they present what they know and are not necessarily interested in other points of view.

For actors and entrepreneurs, the idea is to create flow. It is to include, not to broadcast. It is to create an energy exchange and provide entry into the story. It is to open to possibility so that possibility can open for them.

[to be continued]

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

Filed under: entrepreneur, Story, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Don’t Give It Away

Posted on October 19, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

[Continued from Paddle Two Rivers]

Following his questions about 1) variability in actor performances/entrepreneur pitches and 2) the fragmenting nature of poor leadership on a team, Skip’s next question referred to this phrase from my post, Step Onto The Field:

Entrepreneurs, like actors, are more likely to meet success when they cease giving away their power and show up as they are.

He asked a question that lives at the center of much of the work I do with artists and clients: What does it mean to give away your power? He wrote, “… it’s like each sentence in this piece [this post] needs a story.”

I laughed because the flipside of this particular question is the reason I started writing in the first place. Three years ago I was working with a corporate team and they asked, “What does it mean to be powerful?” The notion that we explored that day is that power is something that you create with others. No one is powerful by them self. Great teams empower each member. Great leaders empower their community. Individuals become powerful when they offer their gift in service to their world. They empower. Power is created between people.Power is an aspect of relationship. Power is something you bring to a relationship, not something you get from it.

The word power is tricky because we most often associate it with power-over. The idea of having “power over others” is a misnomer because power over others is not really power. It is control. It diminishes. It takes from. These two concepts, 1) power is created with others (and therefore, expansive) and, 2) control diminishes, is what is necessary to explore Skip’s question. How do people give away their power?

If you are telling yourself a story of “I can’t…,” you are controlling/diminishing your potential. You’ve given away your power.

When you think someone else is responsible for your happiness, you’ve given away your power. You are seeking something from another person that you can only find in yourself. You are looking for what you can get. What would life look like if you believed the responsibility for creating your happiness what yours? Happiness follows. It is something you bring.

If you are invested in comparisons with others, you’ve given away your power. In a comparison the other person will always be the standard – and you can’t be them. Power returns when you bring yourself to the game without squeezing yourself into someone else’s identity. Power returns when you are the standard for your self.

If you bite the apple of perfection, you’ve given away your power. Perfection is subjective. Whose standard of perfection are you trying to meet? Most perfectionists will claim that they are the keepers of their own standard but betray themselves when someone criticizes their work. They are invested in the accolades of others. Generally, notions of perfection are really strategies of control. The rule of power-over works the same within an individual as it does within a country or an organization. Wielding the sword of perfection over yourself can only happen if you are already divided.

Another control strategy is to tell your self a false story, like: “I’m not an artist until my paintings sell.” False. Artists make art. The selling of art does not legitimize the artist. Selling is something else entirely. According to this silly scenario, poor Vincent Van Gogh was never an artist in his lifetime. False stories are great tools for justifying the relinquishing of power.

There are many variations on the theme – all apply equally to entrepreneurs, artists, plumbers, CEO’s, and tooth fairies. The general rule is this: you give away your power when you diminish yourself (I can’t), assign responsibility for your feeling to others (I have to, I should do), float through life looking for what life owes you (I’m entitled), or otherwise try and control your potential (how will I look if…). If you’ve eaten from any of the above orchards – and we all have – tell me the story and I will forward it to Skip. He’s correct: each sentence in this blog thread deserves a story.

[to be continued]

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

Filed under: entrepreneur, Power, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Paddle Two Rivers

Posted on October 18, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

[continued from yesterday’s post – October 16, 2013 – of no title]

After reading my post about the similarity in actor auditions and entrepreneur pitches, Step Onto The Field, Skip sent me several questions and reflections. One of my favorite questions from his batch concerned this section of the post:

An exciting viable idea in the hands of a pretender is a useless thing – just as brilliant plays are routinely slaughtered in the hands of fakers.

Skip asked me to clarify this statement relative to two rivers of thought we’d previously paddled. The first river was the notion that a brilliant play is different in every production despite the sameness of the script. How can a single script be interpreted in such vastly different ways? Is it the actor-as-pretender that makes the play useless? Or, is it the second river of leadership, the direction that can dull the brilliant? Skip reminded me of a phrase I like to use: save-your-ass-theatre. It’s a phenomenon that happens when the leadership is weak so all the actors (members of a team) resort to saving their own ass instead of bringing their best game for the team.

Plays are a literary form performed in an arena called a “stage.” A play is like the playbook of a football team. It maps the ideal action but must be executed by the players in an ever-changing context. Actors that pretend to execute the action will kill a play just as fast an NFL player that pretends to play. The pretending eliminates the need to watch. The absence of anything real is as boring and lethal as what is now happening in the public schools. Separating content and method (the equivalent of pretending to learn instead of engaging the unknown) is mind numbing.

Entrepreneurs are great a numbing investors minds because they have confused reading the playbook with executing the play.

The written play is poetry, often a piece of art by itself. It transforms when activated and the variables of activation are endless. Different actors, different cultures, different audiences, different budgets, different stages, different eras, different points of view,…; no play is ever performed the exact same way night to night because the audience is different night to night. Plays are different decade to decade and society to society. It is like the Buddhist concept that you can never step into the same river twice.

Entrepreneurs often confuse their big idea with the presentation of their big idea. The two are as different as a play as literary poetry and as a produced piece of theatre.

As I wrote above, save-your-ass-theatre happens when leadership is weak. The hallmark of weak leadership is the investment in being expert. Great leaders don’t orient according to what they “know.” They orient toward what they don’t know. They can never be expert because they are not trumpeting their past experiences but are engaging with the mysteries of the moment. Great directors of plays, like great leaders in organizations, facilitate the gifts of their team toward a common intention. Great leaders serve the story, the intention, the ideal, the creation, the business – something bigger than themselves. That’s why experts make lousy leaders: experts by definition serve only themselves. Experts, by definition, need others to be beneath them.

Skip and I have watched accelerator cohorts sadly devolve into isolated islands lost in pitch mania. The partners in the accelerators (experts all) look high and low for an explanation for the lack of clarity but rarely have the capacity to look at their leadership. Cohort members know, like actors know, that there will be an opening night, a moment when they will step in front of an audience and need to be seen. If they have had strong guidance, they will show up as members of a powerful team in service to a big idea, ready to step into the great unknown (also known as potential). If they have had experts all along, they will have become pretenders just like their leaders, invested in looking good and eager to tell you what they already know.

[..to be continued]

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

Filed under: Art, entrepreneur, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Posted on October 17, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

[Continued from Know Your Net]

In addition to using the phrases “honest moment” and “honest action,” I used the term “honest pursuit” and Skip asked, “Pursuit? Same or different from honest action and honest moment.”

One of my favorite terms from the theatre is “split intention.” It has come in handy most of my life and is useful in all settings from corporate to non-profit to education. Viv gave me the perfect shorthand definition for a split intention. It’s from a Chinese proverb: chase two rabbits and both will get away. Chasing two rabbits splits your focus and confuses your action. For actors, a split intention happens when the actor believes they can determine what they audience will think of their performance. They focus on audience response rather than pursue their intention on the stage. The split focus also splits the audience from entering the story. The actor engages in a power game by trying to please or be seen as…. The performance experience for all concerned becomes a lie rather than an opening to a deeper relationship, a shared moment of truth. The pursuit is a false.

In my past life facilitating change processes in education and organizations, I often used two related phrases that are aspects of a split intention: circumstance driven and intention driven. Organizations spend oodles of time defining their values with the notion that they are driven by a clean set of aligned values. It’s nice on paper but falls apart when the money dries up. Nothing goes out the window faster when the economy tanks than the phrase, “We value our employees.” If you want to know what an organization or nation really values, watch what they do when the cash flow disappears. An honest pursuit doesn’t waver when the circumstance changes. This is one reason why I love artists and the artistry in myself: we do the work whether there is money or not. The artistry trumps the circumstance. The imperative runs deep.

Entrepreneurs and artists are a similar breed of cat. Both are marginally feral. They desire artistic/creative freedom. They want their ideas to be manifest in the world and desire to prosper from their efforts. They want to create their own constraints. Usually (but not always), entrepreneurs are trying to fill a need. They are in a service profession (whether they recognize it our not). They have fun creating cool things that make life easier for the user. Entrepreneurs split themselves when they succumb to the illusion that an investor controls their destiny. They split themselves when they give away their intention for investor dollars. They essentially become circumstance driven and, like the actor attempting to be liked by the audience, their pursuit becomes false. They give away the essential for the immediate.

The split becomes visible in their pitches. Are they pursuing the creation of their idea or hunting for dollars? This distinction is a swords edge but the difference is dramatic. After all, a pitch is made to investors. However, in the first case, the pursuit is intention driven and the second case it is circumstance driven. How much of the idea/dream will be sacrificed for the funding? It takes dollars to make an entrepreneur’s idea manifest. It also takes boundaries. Actors succeed when their pursuit is in service to the play and not themselves. Entrepreneurs succeed when their pursuit is in service to their users and not to their funders.

[to be continued]

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

Filed under: Art, Business, entrepreneur, Truly Powerful People | 3 Comments »

Know Your Net

Posted on October 16, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

[Continued from the post Step Onto The Field]
One of the reasons I adore working with Skip in our company, Flipped Start-Up, is that he requires me to look deeper into my assertions. He routinely asks me to explain, expand, question, re-consider, and dive deeper into my thoughts and perceptions. For instance, yesterday he read my post, Step Onto The Field, about actor auditions and entrepreneur pitches. Today he sent a response with 10 questions that made my brow knit and will give me blog fodder for weeks.

For instance, in the post I wrote this:

Auditors want actors to succeed. They want to be engaged, surprised, and swept into an honest moment. They want to meet the actor on the field of possibility. They want access into the story and the door is always honest action.

His questions: What is an honest moment? Is there a difference between an honest moment and an honest action?

I had a few great mentors in the theatre and they taught me that the art of acting was the art of presence. For instance, it is a common misperception that acting is about pretending. It is not. Acting as defined by my masters is the honest pursuit of an intention in imaginary circumstances. An actor that pretends to pursue their intention actually prohibits the audience from participating in the story. It is the actor’s honest pursuit of their intention that opens the story door for the audience. Athletes do not pretend to play the game. They play. They play to win and that is what keeps the fans invested. The game is real. The same is true for actors. The game is real. They know their goal, how to score points, and what they need to do to win. The action is honest.

So my first stab at Skip’s question is this: an honest moment is to be fully present – as an athlete is fully present – within imagined circumstances. It may come as a shock but the world series or the world cup or the super bowl are made-up circumstances, just as is Hamlet’s Denmark. We believe that the made-up circumstance is real when the pursuit on the field is real. Next year there will be another world series winner just as 200 years from now there will be another production of Hamlet.

David Miller takes his student actors to hockey games so they can see honest action in the pursuit of a real goal. Get the puck into the net. The play called “hockey” is about getting the puck into the net more times than the other team (Note: the rules of the game are made up. In the theatre, the rules of the game are called “circumstance.”). David is a brilliant teacher who knows that young actors have been steeped in the language of pretending. Their actions are often dishonest because they are invested in being liked by the audience instead of knowing the power and simplicity of playing to get the puck into the net. The net is not as apparent for actors but no less essential to their action.

Entrepreneurs have the same problem as young actors. They rarely recognize the game and moment-to-moment have no clue where to find their net. Many times they don’t even know how to locate the ice rink. They don’t see that their circumstance is as made-up as any other game. Consequently, they pretend. They play the role of CEO or CTO (made up roles for a start up) and want their audience to like them. Being liked is not the net. They want their audience to think they know what they are doing. Knowing what they are doing is not the net. They pretend to participate in accelerator programming only because that may lead to funding. Their actions are consequently dishonest.

Shifting the circumstance might illuminate the point: I just had dinner with a college student who told me his classes were worthless. He was bored. I asked him why he continued to go to school and he told me that he had to play the game if he wanted a degree because a degree would get him a better job. He thinks the net is a better job and so is dishonest in his action. He thinks the game is “get a degree.” So, he pretends. He thinks his boredom is the fault of the university. It is not. He thinks he is being forced to participate. He is not. College students have been anesthetized to think that a better job is the net. It is not. They think someone else has what they seek and over look the mindset necessary to live a vital life (which is the same mindset required to really learn as opposed to pretend to learn). The net is their mindset. This same concept applies to entrepreneurs. The net is their mindset.

[to be continued….]

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

Filed under: entrepreneur, Gratitude, Play, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Step Onto The Field

Posted on October 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

The first few decades of my career were rooted in the theatre. In casting plays and assembling companies I’ve held and seen hundreds of auditions. Generally, it was my experience as an auditor (and also in managing auditions for others) that in the first round of auditions an auditor can see everything they need to know about an actor in seven seconds or less. Whether the audition is a prepared piece, a cold reading or some form of improvisation, this “seven second” rule seems to hold. For the auditor, the rest of the audition is usually an act of courtesy or spent hoping that they are wrong about what they already know. Auditors want actors to succeed. They want to be engaged, surprised, and swept into an honest moment. They want to meet the actor on the field of possibility. They want access into the story and the door is always honest action.

What can an auditor see in seven seconds or less that inspires them to call the actor back or put their file in the “no” pile? Probably a more accurate question is, “What can the auditor feel that inspires them to call back the actor?” The honest pursuit of an intention is something that can be felt before it can be seen. This is true on or off the stage, isn’t it? Do you feel it when someone is not authentic? Do you “know it” when you are being told a half-truth? How many times have you said, “I knew it but didn’t listen to myself.” Auditioning others is as an act of listening to what you sense in the first few seconds and the scanner is seeking honesty.

In the past few years I’ve been watching entrepreneurs do pitches for investors. Auditions and pitches are surprisingly similar activities! In both cases, the “seven second” rule applies. Investors know, like auditors know, when they are seeing something honest or something manufactured. An exciting viable idea in the hands of a pretender is a useless thing – just as brilliant plays are routinely slaughtered in the hands of fakers. Entrepreneurs, like actors, are more likely to meet success when they cease giving away their power and show up as they are. Showing up is not passive and has nothing to do with information delivery. Showing up means to share the quest, to bring others along on the pursuit of a dream. Showing up is being present with others. It is inclusive (as opposed to protected).

Rule #1 for entrepreneurs is the same as it is for actors: You can’t determine what others (investors/auditors) see or think or feel or value. You can only bring your best game to the field of possibility and love playing it.

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

Filed under: Art, entrepreneur, Intuition, Possibility, Power, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

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