Notable passages from
The Art of Possibility
by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
Harvard Business School, Boston, 2000
Yet it is only when we make mistakes in performance that we can really begin to notice what needs attention. In fact, I actively train my students that when they make a mistake, they are to lift their arms in the air, smile, and say, "How fascinating!" I recommend that everyone try this.
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Strolling along the edge of the sea, a man catches sight of a young woman who appears to be engaged in a ritual dance. She stoops down, then straightens to her full height, casting her arm out in an arc. Drawing closer, he sees that the beach is littered with starfish, and she is throwing them one by one into the sea. He lightly mocks her: "There are stranded starfish as far as the eye can see, for miles up the beach. What difference can saving a few of them possibly make?" Smiling, she bends down and once more tosses a starfish out over the water, saying serenely, "It certainly makes a difference to this one."
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Throw yourself into life as someone who makes a difference, accepting that you may not understand how or why.
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A monumental question for leaders in any organization to consider is: How much greatness are we willing to grant people? Because it makes all the difference at every level who it is we decide we are leading.
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[P]articipate fully. Allow yourself to be a channel to shape the stream of passion into a new expression for the world.
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A little girl in second grade underwent chemotherapy for leukemia. When she returned to school, she wore a scarf to hide the fact that she had lost all her hair. But some of the children pulled it off, and in their nervousness laughed and made fun of her. The little girl was mortified and that afternoon begged her mother not to make her go back to school. Her mother tried to encourage her, saying, "The other children will get used to it, and anyway your hair will grow in again soon."
The next morning, when their teacher walked in to class, all the children were sitting in their seats, some still tittering about the girl who had no hair, while she shrank in her chair. "Good morning, children," the teacher said, smiling warmly in her familiar way of greeting them. She took off her coat and scarf. Her head was completely shaved.
After that, a rash of children begged their parents to let them cut their hair. And when a child came to class with short hair, newly bobbed, all the children laughed merrily—not out of fear—but out of the joy of the game. And everybody's hair grew back at the same time.
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[A] vision releases us from the weight and confusion of local problems and concerns, and allows us to see the long clear line.
… Here are the criteria that enable a vision to stand in the universe of possibility:
- A vision articulates possibility.
- A vision fulfills a desire fundamental to humankind, a desire with which any human being can resonate. It is an idea to which no one could logically respond, "What about me?"
- A vision makes no reference to morality or ethics, it is not about a right way of doing things. It cannot imply anyone is wrong.
- A vision is stated as a picture for all time, using no numbers, measures, or comparatives. It contains no specifics of time, place, audience, or product.
- A vision is free-standing—it points neither to a rosier future, nor to a past in need of improvements. it gives over its bounty now. If the vision is "peace on earth," peace comes with its utterance. When "the possibility of ideas making a difference" is spoken, at that moment ideas do make a difference.
- A vision is a long line of possibility radiating outward. It invites infinite expression, development, and proliferation within its definitional framework.
- Speaking a vision transforms the speaker. For that moment the "real world" becomes a universe of possibility and the barriers to the realization of the vision disappear.
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At that, the man laughed what I like to call "cosmic laughter," because he got the whole thing in that moment—how absurd human beings are, and how magnificent.
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