Undressing in Public
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The only valid test of an idea, concept or theory is what it enables you to do. MG Taylor Axiom, 1983
I sometimes stare at the clothes worn by people throughout the ages and wonder what the motive was for such costuming. Corsets, pettycoat hoops around the feet, shoes that bind and distort, armour so heavy that one could hardly walk... and on and on. In the 1920's, Helen Willis, one of the world's greatest tennis players was the first to question the need for long dresses and corsets when playing tennis. She dared to undress in public by trading her dress for mid calf pants of a sailor type style. Follow swimming suits fashion through the ages and you will find the same questioning over time about the appropriate dress for the situation. And over time, new images of what is appropriate dress comes into fashion.
Today, another form of undressing in public is happening. This time it is not about clothes but about expertise. For years and years, we have sought to get our doctorates or other certificates signifying that we have the answers ... that our answers out-trump other answers. We have become so burdened with becoming experts in a single field that it has been difficult to even converse with someone else in another field. Somehow, somewhere we learned our individual answers were final and lasting, no matter what the field.
At last, we seem to be learning that over time, all our answers become someone else's problem. Like nature, answers have seasons. We need to compost them, leaving them to mix with other answers. Yesterday's answers don't fit anymore. This year at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, I watched an amazing amount of undressing in public at the WorkSpace workshops, as participants "dropped" their degrees and status symbols and roles and expose themselves to a new way of working together. Corporate CEO's, NGO leaders, artists, writers, thought leaders, university presidents, technologists, and entrepreneurs played, imagined, and designed together. They let new answers emerge through a rich collaboration and exploration across many fields and disciplines. During one of the WorkSpace workshops I participated in, as we explored and listened and shared, I cannot remember once thinking "this person is a know it all" or "this is one of the world's best known CEOs" or any of those kinds of things. We were co-designers, willing to not know. Ideas were fresh and fun. They had a childlike sense of play to them. The normal armour of degrees or status did not get in our way. Like the tennis champion, Willis, the "dress" this year was appropriate to the challenge put forth by the WEF 2007 Annual Meeting -- to drop the old answers and reach across all boundaries and ghettos to collaborate and discover new ways of solving the world's most pressing problems. There was a fresh willingness to invest in coming to knowing.
From the smiles and laughter and fresh new insights arising from the twenty-plus WorkSpace workshops that Tomorrow Makers co-designed, I think people liked undressing in public. Costuming and dress is always fun and a deep part of each culture so I am not suggesting that we drop this pleasure. Learning is important, degrees give us incredible information and knowledge. But when we dress ourselves in the armour of being the answer, pulling rank on others, the entire world misses out somehow. Perhaps, we are learning to shed some of our intellectual layers ... to feel the freedom of not knowing. Willis knew she would play better with less clothing. Will we come to know that our degrees and status are but a small part of who we are? Can we learn that a much larger part of ourselves is about co-designing with our expertise, about finding the synergies between very different patterns and ways of knowing? Can we take joy in not knowing the answer but feeling competent to be part of finding new answers?