Nothing earth-rattling ever happens at a world café.
No yelling. No double-dealing in the back room. No character assassinations in the media.
Just listening and talking to seek common ground and understanding via a few hours of facilitated conversations in which a diverse group of people come together to discuss a complex issue thoughtfully and then thoughtfully craft some possible solutions that everyone can agree on.
It sounds like heaven, so why the heck can it feel like hell?
Yeah, I know, I’m the gal who preaches ‘Talking to Humans’ and bridging our divides to solve wicked problems. However, I am increasingly impatient with the methodologies designed to do just that because they are missing the one thing I know is essential to innovation: high stakes.
In English, ‘stakes’ describes both the potential risks, consequences and losses associated with an action, and the apparatus people accused of heresy and witchcraft were affixed to as they were burned alive.
That sounds about right.
We have grown so obsessed with ‘cultivating innovation’ that we’ve forgotten what actually converts back of the napkin ideas, of which the world has many, into great world-saving products, services, policies, processes and experiences, of which the world has far too few.
Passion and fear.
Love and hate.
Reward and risk.
Seemingly oppositional forces that, when combined, have the power to move us so we can move the world.
That’s what well-meaning social change advocates are missing when they gather us together in groups of eight: to change the world for the better, we cannot simply stay in the light, talking of hope and better days.
We must recognize the power to propel us forward often resides in the dark.
As I once read on some billboard for a product long forgotten, we change the world with our feet to the fire, not our heads in the clouds.
In the new film BlackBerry, a fictional retelling of the rise and fall of the world’s first smartphone, actor Glenn Howerton plays RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie as a man who isn’t afraid of his dark.
He yells. He glowers. He stares people down, looks at them like they’re idiots and points his middle finger forcefully in their direction.
I loved every minute of his performance.
It was cathartic because he was acting out what I feel all the time as I watch our world burn, literally (Alberta wildfires) and figuratively (divisive political news).
I’m mad as hell, but it’s Howerton’s Basillie who isn’t taking it.
In one scene, he beats the handset of a Bell payphone and then leaves it hanging.
The recipient of that call is BlackBerry inventor and RIM co-founder Mike Lazaridis, played by Jay Baruchel.
This artistic interpretation of Lazaridis is an inward-focused counterpoint to Balsillie’s bold, energetic, outward-facing drive.
Lazaridis’ boldness energizes his mind, allowing him to envision and build the world’s first smartphone, which revolutionized how we communicate.
As Baruchel plays him, the movie Lazaridis is a man constantly thinking, scanning the middle distance as he works through complex engineering problems in his head while other engineers rush around him.
He’s a man who can not only see the future but inspire others to help him build it.
He, too, is someone not afraid of his dark.
In place of hot blasts of rage, he radiates tightly coiled passion, using it to channel his quest for engineering perfection, despite market forces that push back.
If Howerton is the guts, Baruchel is the heart of a film that may not be historically accurate but is pitch-perfect.
In these two characterizations, director and co-writer Matt Johnson has captured the kismet required to spark and sustain the fire of innovation.
An emotional pull that most of us can recognize but few are brave enough to enact.
To stop drawing on the back of napkins and start working to draw a crowd.
To step out of the café and into the fray.
Because when the stakes are high and time is ticking, we must forcefully, with rage and passion, drive the play not because we want to win but because our greatest fear is that we’ll lose.
