Skiing Through Time
During ski season it’s great to lose myself in the downhill rush, and there’s also satisfaction in the quiet moments afterward, in contemplating what skiing means for me and what we can all learn from it.
Skiing is kind of like taking a ride in a sort of mini time machine. Sure, it’s no big blue box or DeLorean vanishing at 88 miles per hour, but every second skiing downhill is a moment in which you’re hurtling towards the future, toward the bottom of the slope and any obstacles lying in your way. You see the future stretched out before you, while the past vanishes behind.
A skier needs to be very focused on that future. You have to anticipate upcoming events, whether it’s trees, bumps, clips or sudden turns in the slope, so that you can effectively navigate them. It’s a good idea to do the same as a leader. After all, the challenges you’ll face next are the ones up ahead.
But the reality is that we often get pulled into memories of the past that we are reminded of by today’s conditions. We cling to the memory and too many times base our planning on how we dealt with those situations back then, which limits our creativity in these new conditions.
Imagine trying to ski like that, constantly looking over your shoulder instead of ahead. You’d be so focused on the boulder you just passed that you wouldn’t see the tree you’re about to slam into.
This common problem is widely recognized in military leadership, where it’s referred to as “refighting the last war”. From the costly waste of World War Two’s Maginot Line to attempts at conventional warfare in Vietnam, armies of staggering power have brought disaster on themselves by looking back, not ahead.
As I travel through time down that hill, I have two choices about how to navigate. I can focus on comparing my present with my past, or I can navigate from here to the future I want. They are different perspectives psychologically. One involves fixating on where I came from and currently am, the other on where I'll go next. It’s only by looking forward with an open uncluttered mind that we can get ready for the future.
The language we use to talk about time doesn’t help. Sometimes we talk about the future as something ahead of us (“coming up this summer…”), sometimes as behind (“in the following weeks, we will have done this or that…”), and sometimes as a stationary object we move toward (“approaching the end of the year…”). But as the linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson have explained, there’s a fundamental logic underlying all of this, which is that our time machines only go in one direction. From our point of view, time goes past from front to back, whether it’s moving or we are. Like the downhill skier, we need to openly focus on the terrain ahead if we’re going to avoid slamming into it.
If the past so easily invades and clutters our thinking strategies, how can we break the habit of looking over our shoulder and focus on the future?
Gather insights from others outside your habitual circle of contacts and/or industry to discover new thinking strategies that can help open your mind.
Keep exploring ideas for what the future might hold beyond the obvious. Have fun with it! Trust your gut and prepare yourself for a range of possibilities.
Imagine yourself into the future you want, then look back and ask yourself, “What big steps did I/we take to get here?”
Your answers to that question will be very different and much more empowering than asking yourself, “How can we get there?” in which case all of the limiting beliefs and the past take over!
Reliving what we’ve gone through in the past as new situations approach us is so instinctive, we all need reminding to face forward to our best possible future. If you’re looking for a guide to help with that focus and creativity, then take a look at my book Time Machine Leadership, where I tackle planning for the future instead of being anchored by the past.
