You may be trying to decide what comes next in your career, your work, a relationship or the general shape of your life. You may believe you know exactly what you want. Or you may have no idea at all.
But are you seeing the full range, or just choosing from what you can already see because it’s expected?
Some time back a friend of mine told me that he’d lost his senior commercial role. He was keen to get back in quickly otherwise he’d be less current and then it becomes even more difficult to get back in.
So he did what most competent men do and attacked the problem using all his experience, contacts and language that previously made him successful. Networking, phone calls, pitches - he went harder and harder at it, determined to make it work.
I saw him again a month later and the pressure was mounting at home too. He looked tired.
I normally saw him at the gym but he’d disappeared for a couple of months. So I texted and arranged to meet for a coffee and chat. Nothing had changed except the stress lines and the forced smile. He had been knocking on the same door and was talking about his fear of being yesterday’s man. He wasn’t a client so I just gave him some friendly advice.
I encouraged him to put his name down as a film and TV extra. He thought I was mad and couldn’t see the point. I gave a few short non-reasons and I nudged him a little more. I told him that he had nothing to lose as it was just a shot in the dark. I knew differently.
I nudged him three times by text during that week until he relented and he eventually signed up. 15 minutes - that’s all it took.
He had a booking soon after and went down “...just to change things a little, get some air, you know…”. Afterwards, he excitedly told me that he’d discovered a brand new environment with different people, ambitions, conversations and ideas. Of course I had nothing to do with it.
A few weeks further on and I found out that he’d taken up with a Theatre group running their promotions and doing background acting. By all accounts, life was just peachy for him now.
This is the skill of opportunity exploration.
More specifically, it is an availability action. A deliberate move that makes you available to information, people, connections and possibilities that your directed activity cannot reach.
It is not drifting or waiting for inspiration to happen. It is an active exposure to a wider field.
Directed Action moves you towards an outcome you can already see, whereas Availability Action moves you somewhere from which you could see something else that was previously unavailable.
One pursues whilst the other discovers. But you absolutely need both.
The useful idea within OODA is not the military acronym.
I have a decent quiver of methods and I was quite drawn to OODA. A military method which is a constant cycle of Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. But as you may already know, I don’t like the rigid containment of them preferring instead self-owned principle-led actions.
What I like about OODA is the basic principle that you move, sometimes beyond the boundaries of your current map. It then gives you new information (so long as you are open to it), you reorient and that informs your next action.
I had used the same principle years earlier without knowing about it. Working at an agency, I had all the Mintel and Forrester reports in front of me, but they felt dry. So I left the office and spent hours in shopping malls, bus stations and high streets, watching the audience move, speak and behave. I returned with sensory information the reports could not contain. The connections drove some freakishly successful campaigns. Although, nobody could put “Leo disappears for several hours and leans into the world” into a dependable process chart.
So, when you're facing a block, stymied or you’re becoming tired from not breaking through or not advancing with your goals then you need to challenge yourself to step outside the boundaries. Ask yourself where could I go if I didn’t have to wear my identity or carry a specific purpose? Bear in mind that your action is not a commitment to another world but a commitment only to see what is available.
Sometimes the next useful move is not towards the destination, but off the map for a while, where you can see what the current map can’t show.
