I don’t know about you, but some days my little monkey brain has about had enough. Enough change, enough global anxiety, enough information, enough speed of business, enough of being under the fire hose. Then I meet someone who doesn’t even have a cell phone, e-mail, or internet access.
Sounds like whining, huh? Or a grass is always greener talk. Not at all. When I meet people operating in such a different information space, I see it as evidence of the great global transition we are experiencing.
Recently, I’ve been watching this new show on BBC called “Victorian Farm.” In the show, two archaeologists and an expert in the history of domestic arts spend a year living on a farm 1880’s style. They live as authentically as they can, even down to the breeds of animals they tend to. I know what you’re thinking - but it’s not one of those “20th century family meets old way of life and complains about it” shows. These people are excited about viscerally experiencing the life of victorian farmers from a scholarly perspective. They nerd out on everything from original nails to using milk to shift ink stains to playing victorian parlor games.
According to the show, the 1880s were a period of great transition. Society was changing from an agricultural one to an industrial society. During this period, people were discovering new ways of mechanizing labor while still using ancient techniques. These two ways of living were co-existing. Consequently, it was a time of liberation, social change, uncertainty, and great upheaval.
Sound familiar? It seems we are in our own version of the 1880s, with huge changes afoot in all aspects of our lives: social, intellectual, spiritual, and economic. It means we are both being liberated and thrust into a sometime overpowering sense of instability. Uncertainty and anxiety rule the day. We need turn on the news, talk to our friends, or even listen to our own heartbeat to know that’s true.
Sometimes, when I am watching Victorian Farm, I wonder if the people felt a similar sense of fear and anxiety or were they relieved to have these labor saving devices emerge? Were they worried about where the world was going, what it all *meant,* the way we seem to? Probably. But my sense is that they were still so tethered to the grind (literally) of daily life — four days to do laundry from start to finish *including* help from a machine — that most farmers didn’t have time to stop the show for an existential crisis.
As a society (in global terms), we are in a huge transition. Sometimes its hard to see where we are going or imagine what our future will look like. We have a little time for an existential crisis — thanks forty hour work week! — but what I believe is needed is creative leadership. Tolerance for ambiguity, willingness to take risks, willingness to ask challenge assumptions plus a set of problem solving techniques and methods are the design leader’s toolbox.
For creative people, it is our time to be leaders, to wear the headlamp into the dark cave, our clients tethered to our waists, and take one step at a time towards an unimagined future.
