How do we make “not doing” more common?

As some of you know, my last day at my “job” (you know where an organization pays me, and for my benefits, gives me time off, that kind of jazz). As my first offering in my newly found entrepreneurial freedom, Meghan O’Malley my friend and mentor were offering an inspiration, collaboration and magic workshop called Spark - igniting magic in “the plan.” It was going to be January 3 at 1 pm (TODAY, the day I am writing this post).

Then Omicron hit.

Fast forward to today, I am recovering from COVID, it has snowed here in Asheville and I grateful that we postponed the workshop (indefinitely as we are waiting til COVID feels more manageable).

In between this moment and our decision to cancel/indefinitely postpone, this experience has incited lots of thoughts and feelings (of course, have you met me).

There are several things that came up for me around not doing, some other names for not doing:

• Failure

• Pivot

I’ve noticed that a business is more likely to say that they have pivoted to something else rather than just say “we are no longer moving forward with this project.” I can definitely see how it can be an accurate term. When Google stopped producing Google Glass, they did not completely stop working on it (they later have announced “enterprise editions”). Or remember Google+ their social media site? I don’t mean to pick on google.

Tara McMullin, the podcast host, writer and speaker wrote a fabulous article about entrepreneurs’s experiences mid COVID. She asked them about how they were making changes to their businesses but not because the pandemic forced them — she named this phenomenon the Great Pivot. She charts several different entrepreneurial pivots from 1:1 coaching to group coaching programs, and the pivot from social media to your business website and then back to social media. In this Great Pivot (in 2021) she says “there is zero cohesion about what people are deciding to do next. They’re sick of what they’ve built. They’re tired of being sold on a dream … And they’re exhausted by trying to keep up with a market that is not built for them.”

So we can spin the not doing to pivoting, ok. And, I am struck by two things

1) the systems and structures that we have set up to honor and learn from not doing, failure, and why we pivot AND

2) the massive loss we continue to endure that we lack these systems and structures.

It reminds me of an article that I had to read in my PhD program. I can’t remember the exact article, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with this 2000 article by Jeffrey Scargle where he also cites well known statistician Rosenthal. Scargle (2000) talks about the “file drawer problem.” It’s basically this – peer reviewed articles, hell most published anything are published because they have found something (in statistics they have been able to prove that there is some kind of difference or phenomenon) rather than not found something. Sounds simple, right?This means that we never know about the studies that were undertaken but nothing was found, the combination of variables that didn’t turn up any new results. In other words, we don’t learn what did not work. We only learn what did.

So take this an example, what if you came across a headline that read “Company celebrates cancellation of latest product launch.” Would you believe it? As a researcher, whose job it is to collect, analyze and report data, I cannot count the number of times that I have presented or shared results and someone said something to the effect of “we don’t have to share *that* information.” It reminds me of the difference between armored and daring leadership in Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead and makes me dream of Jess X at Kindred Leaders concept of Radical Transparency.

So why talk about the structures of being able to report out where we fail, where we have to indefinitely postpone? Why does it matter? My experience is that it makes things like failure and not doing feel bad. Yes, we have innumerable Ted Talks on the value of failure, but where are the examples and models that make us feel safe and not shameful?

That’s one of my goals here at context matters, to model and provide more examples of how to be brave, radically transparent, and embrace the holistic nature of being a human who owns a business or works in an organization.

I want to know - what have you made a choice not to do lately? Leave a comment. Let’s celebrate it together.