How to get unstuck?

Photo by Jonathan Farber on Unsplash

"No matter what we do, we are stuck!" 

Welcome to the Innovators' Drama. You want or need to move forward but find yourself stuck. 

Whether you are stuck in the fog, mess or mud**, the innovators' drama is a significant discomfort that indicates a slowdown instead of acceleration. 

I often hear entrepreneurs or other change agents say that they feel stuck, and confront all sorts of undesired delays.  

Usually, the conversation revolves around a similar pattern. "Are you stuck?" -> "Yes" -> "do you know why?" -> "Maybe" -> "Does it help you to get unstuck?" -> "No" -> "So lets see what's the real show stopper, because its obviously more than what you consider" -> "ahh, Of course, there are also these issues, and that issues, and then……" -> "and how are you going to decide where to start?" -> "Don't know…" -> "so let's see how to untangle this constraint." 

Why is it so hard to find what's slowing us down? 

While we are very good at determining that we are stuck and stating why we are stuck, the reasons we identify are rarely the real frictions that slow us down, which get us to digging further into the ground and getting even more stuck. If the reasons for being stuck were obvious, then we would have been able to resolve them quickly and effectively with minimal ramifications. However, since we are still stuck, we probably haven't identified the real reasons. Is it possible that the thinking that got us to become stuck is also the same reasoning that states the reasons for being stuck? It feels like a loop. 

Einstein's' famous quote about trying to solve a problem with the rationale that created the problem is precisely that. The alternative will be to ask for advice, which means we will need to give someone the honor of leading us to admit we are wrong, guide us through the discomfort of admitting failure or ignorance and then lead us to resolve the situation. The privilege of letting someone tell us we are all wrong is not something we will give easily to other people, and it will depend on strong relationships or trust that are both hard to establish or expensive to buy. Moreover, even then, admitting we are wrong or lacking knowledge won't be embraced without a fight. 

Understanding the innovators' drama allows us to develop the mindfulness that's required to trigger paradigm shifts on our own, or at least, collaborate more actively in an enlightening dialogue, that is emotionally and economically less expensive 

How is this possible?

What we discover on our own is far more educating than what we learn from lessons of others, and this is the reason we need to live the dramas to learn real-life experiences. However, living the drama is uncomfortable, and we'd rather avoid it. 

The solution to this is creating skills that are easily applied and swift to process in order to understand the drama without it becoming too burdening.  

These tools must be suggestive, to allow us to think outside our rationale,  communicative, to enable us to stretch our internal and external dialogues and enable quick communication so we won't get lost in analysis paralysis.  

Using the things to be done approach, I've helped innovators who got stuck, to pull themselves out of the mud quickly. Think of it as a winch attached to your car, that with it you can pull yourself out of being stuck. 

You can always wait for a tow truck, but that's going to take time and be expensive.