At the age of 16, Albert Einstein famously envisioned running alongside a beam of light, which resulted in his Special Theory of Relativity: time slows down. “To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle,” he said, “requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”
March 14 was Einstein’s birthday. It was also Pi day, celebrating the irrational number beginning 3.14 that expresses the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, and this year March 14 was the day the acclaimed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking died. How fitting: a nonlinear coincidence occurring in the realm of science, when we so often rely on predictability and analytics.
This convergence of events has led me to reflect on the often maddeningly nonlinear field of leadership and the ways it intersects with science. As with science, leaders must constantly raise new questions and new possibilities and regard old problems from new angles, constantly drawing on imagination.
In envisioning running along a beam of light, Einstein employed a technique that leaders can use to enhance their effectiveness.
This idea of traveling — or zooming — through time can help leaders immensely. What if you were to reframe your perspective and imagine your leadership dilemma as being resolved, and you are two years down the road looking back on the steps that resulted in that successful outcome? That ability to bend time can open up new creative opportunities. You can imagine what is great about the outcome, how it meets your criteria, and then speculate on the steps that got you there. And then begin implementing those steps real time.
Charlotte, a seasoned manager I worked with, had built strong relationships with her staff. She was feeling overwhelmed and was quite aware that Nancy, her manager and company CEO, was feeling overwhelmed, too. This was making everyone edgy. One of her challenges was being chronically short-staffed. As a result, she described feeling as if she were just grabbing for things like they were flying objects to keep them from landing and breaking.
One of Charlotte’s goals was to be more strategic in her own role and in her relationship with her manager. Nancy had also defined one of Charlotte’s goals as making better distinctions about priorities and urgencies — she shouldn’t consider everything to be urgent. But with the sensation of constantly grabbing for flying objects, Charlotte found that especially difficult.
I suggested that Charlotte zoom out to get a little distance from that feeling by imagining herself at a point in time three months into the future, and I asked her what she saw. She said she’d be fully staffed, would have succeeded in conveying to her staff that they are capable, competent, and they wouldn’t need to come to her as much. She could rely on them more fully. Moreover, since her staff could handle the day-to-day, she wouldn’t feel so scattered and torn and could focus more on being strategic. When I asked her how that felt, she said, “good.”
Beginning from the place of imagined success relaxes the stress that can otherwise accompany big decisions. Stress constricts and reduces our access even to what we already know, and it limits our ability to synthesize and innovate to reach new solutions. Relaxing that by envisioning a successful future allows for new possibilities. Imagining a great future is no more or less accurate than imagining disaster — but it is more generative. It generates ideas, possibilities and enough options to break the decision stalemate that can occur with seemingly intractable dilemmas.
Once Charlotte had surfaced what was on her mind and zoomed out along Einstein’s metaphorical beam of light, she was able to walk through her priorities and options. She had high energy and was able to outline her next steps. Her feelings no longer overwhelmed her in any lasting way but instead provided the impetus for her to recreate what she needed.
This type of exercise not only helps leaders get out of their tried and true pattern of thinking or reacting but also allows them to rehearse the actions and impacts of a potential change, without having to implement them all. Known as “practicing action scenarios,” this technique can help move a leader out of indecision. Practicing action scenarios is precisely what Einstein did in discovering the special theory: He imagined taking an action, first chasing and then riding on a beam of light.
Leadership is both an art and a science. Like with science, experimentation — and failure — is needed for progress to take place. Thomas Edison’s apocryphal story of 10,000 failures before he successfully created the light bulb is enduring and endearing because Edison stuck with it. He learned from each result. Today, we are accustomed to fleeting news, fleeting celebrity marriages and apps designed to dissolve your messages and photos. Let’s revive tenacity, use the ability to reframe and envision a situation on a much longer timeline, imagine a desired future result, then work toward it. That approach is a treasure.
This article originally appeared in Forbes online 04/19/18: