Listening For Different Ideas
E110: In Tech, Climate and Politics, let's listen to and for the Other
“Be Curious. Not Judgmental.”
Walt Whitman (via Ted Lasso)
I’m sporting a matching pair of jabs. I’m grateful to technology because these vaccines provide me with a protective cloak. I have bigger essays on the back burner, but at this moment I’m wrapping myself in grace and a duvet.1 [Tip for all the emerging writers in WoP11].
Today, let’s focus on the value of healthy, respectful conversations within communities. I invite you to engage in an exercise: ‘Listen’ to a voice with a different viewpoint.
As Our Tribe Tilt Grows
Our Tribe has grown in size these past few weeks. Names are now appearing that I do not recognize. Yet. (I hope you will DM and introduce yourself!) We’ve all joined this Tribe because we care about Raising Future Ready Leaders, and because we each believe in our own ability to effect change.
I designed Tribe Tilt as a safe space. Originally called The Karena Arena, I imagined an engaged community of curious participants, encouraged to share their thoughts, kneeling down on the sawdust to scribble a quote or play with obscure ideas as if they were marbles, watching the vector as two imaginings ping into each other. I would have picked “Imagineers” as our name, but Disney beat me to it!
We need adjacent and disjointed conversations to happen in the same room. We need half-baked ideas that get slept on and spark new thinking. We need a fistful of new ideas. Because many of the old ones are not working.
At Canada’s AI hub MaRS Discovery District, I heard about Mignon.ai from the UK. They are asking different questions around the design of neural networks as they develop a much more energy-efficient chip to support the productivity tool at our fingertips. The original way doesn’t have to be the only way.
As I mentioned in E100: Just Write, these are the drivers that support our Tribe:
That the best idea can come from anyone, anywhere, at any time. No idea is too small or simple. And you have permission to voice it.
We can solve for not knowing everything about everything (FOMO) if we connect to diverse thinkers giving us access to a collective consciousness E26: Permission not to know it all
“See a problem. Solve a problem.” There are more jobs available than we can imagine. E37 Niche: One of a handful
Ideas Matter
As a Futurist, my own ideas need to see the searing fire of the forge. The context and details need to be repeatedly debated, beating them into a useful shape. Then finally they need to be plunged into icy cold water before being polished and presented.
Tribe Tilt is my forge. We are a tight group of intelligent minds. Some of you find the courage and challenge my thinking. This hammering around the original concept is an act of generosity. By working through my blind spots, and improving the idea with alloys/topics where I am not a subject matter expert, we create a stronger tool, better positioned to have an impact. Many of you were generous with your feedback on last week’s edition. Your comments, personal emails, and DMs lit up my inbox!
I don’t predict. I play with possibility. If a crazy concept voiced in the comments here bumps into an idea that you read somewhere else and through a discussion creates a viable solution to one of our many problems, then I consider that a job well done. “Huh?” and “You made me think” are some of the highest compliments you can give me!
Identical Sounds Create An Echo Chamber
I enjoy Ozan Varol’s newsletter Ad Astra. Ozan has published a few books - my favourite is “Think Like a Rocket Scientist”. The newer “Awaken Your Genius” teaches us how to jettison what no longer serves us - a key skill for the 21st century. For context, his bio reads like a polymath:
A native of Istanbul, I grew up in a family of no English speakers. I moved to the United States by myself at 17 to attend Cornell University, where I majored in astrophysics. While there, I served on the operations team for the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers project. I later became interested in the physics of society, went to law school, and became a law professor. After getting tenure, I left academia to become a full-time author and speaker.
This excerpt from his post “Great Minds Don’t Think Alike” encapsulates the concept - our collective wisdom grows exponentially when we tap into a diversity of thought, and a generosity of listening.
Identical ingredients create boring dishes—just as identical sounds create an echo chamber.
The same is true for people. I have nothing to learn from someone who thinks exactly as I do. It’s like two mirrors reflecting each other into infinity.
Think of humans as individual ingredients, building up to a beautiful collective dish. Each part is important. Each part is idiosyncratic. The dish wouldn’t work if all the ingredients were the same color, shape, and flavor. What makes each ingredient different is also what makes it valuable.
If you suppress the other ingredients—or if you suppress your own self in an attempt to conform—the world loses its full flavor.
The cliche is wrong. Great minds don’t think alike.
And difference is not a problem to be fixed.
It’s a curious delight to learn from.
Permission to speak up.
If you’ve seen Oppenheimer, the movie, you see some of this in action. It wasn’t a class of students copying what the lecturer put on the board. It was a collaboration. It is the collective exploration of math and physics by brains on both sides of a wall, on both sides of the Atlantic. They test and push the math on the blackboard. They don’t think alike. They are willing to speak up when they have a different, challenging opinion. The first way doesn’t have to be the only way.
Listen for Other Solutions
There have been many moments in history where a new piece of “technology” — the wheel, the plough, the printer, the bicycle, the plane — has given humans access to another dimension of possibility.
A climate consultant shared one of my favourite stories about climate hope. “The first urban planning conference was held in 18982 - to deal with the amount of horse manure littering the streets of New York, London and Paris as more people benefited from Industrial Era wealth and took to horse and buggy. Enter … the car. A completely new way to think about transportation. The old ways do not have to be the only ways.
(Yes. That solution is our “today” problem, just as our solution to carbon emissions will probably create its own set of problems in the distant future.)
It is clear that the way we have been doing things for the past few decades doesn’t always work. So, permission to do something different. It is moments like this that invite us to seek the other. And listen with respect and humility. And suggest alternate ways forward.
In climate.
In technology.
In geo-politics.
Keep what is relevant. Jettison what does not serve.
And use the conversations to imagine a new way forward.
Find someone whose opinion challenges yours. Understand their perspective. Develop your point of view to include their concerns.
“The best idea can come from anyone, anywhere, at any time.”
Let’s hush. And listen for it.
Thank you, Innovation and Entrepreneurship professor Brooke Smith who writes
and Hussam Zaghal who writes a punchy for your recommendation to include clear examples in this essay. Your editing is another example of an act of generosity that creates better. The original way does not have to be the only way.Join me in welcoming seven new members to Tribe Tilt - from the UK, Botswana, and the USA.
Our small community believes in the best of humanity - connecting people, sharing ideas, and exploring thoughts respectfully. We support each other. We believe we can make a difference to the people and places that are precious to us. And that the best idea can come from anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Is this your first visit to Tilt the Future? Come join our Tribe Tilt by hitting this button below:
I offer live and virtual keynotes on the Future of Work, and how we raise the leaders of 2050 and 2070. DM me if you are curious.
See you next week. Stay healthy. From there all else becomes possible.
Karena
PS. Taylor Swift released “The Eras Tour” concert movie for distribution in a deal directly with AMC. Bypassing all the studios. Making it available to all the fans who got caught in the TicketMaster fiasco. The way things were does not have to be the way things will be.
A tip for all emerging writers in WoP11 who have joined us in Tribe Tilt. What to do when Life interrupts. It refers to an essay/YouTube playlist “When the Muse Refuses to Speak To You” on how to create a sustainable publishing practice, without burning out.
Here, here, another fan of half-baked ideas 😂
you had me at The Karena Arena 😆. Amazing piece, such a valuable point to lean into the perspective of those with an opposite opinion