The art of Choosing the Uncertain Path (in Business)

What business innovation is the most important and how will it help us move forward?

Imagine yourself in the middle of a room. There are doors all around you, all identical with no identifying markers and no clear path out. Coronavirus has placed us all here, where we find ourselves surrounded by uncertain futures. Certain only that by choosing one door, we are losing the rest
(Sylvia Plath — The Fig Tree, anyone?).

While it is easy to be paralyzed by uncertainty, feeling like our shoes glued to the floor with fear, now is the time where we need to step out of those shoes and pick a door, any door.

I know it seems overwhelming, how can we focus and provide help on any one subject when it feels like the whole world is burning up around us? Well, the secret to this decision is that there is no wrong answer. At the risk of sounding too philosophical, there exists a dissonance between how we perceive causality and how it actually works. We may believe our specific choices affect the world in a certain way, but in reality, there is no way of measuring the magnitude of effect our actions can have on the world and businesses that surround us.

Anything you choose will help business innovation as a whole. Every one of these innovation paths is interconnected somehow and once you improve upon one, the rest follow. I don’t mean to say that one solution fits all, what I mean is; your innovation could become the catalyst for an even greater solution. There are ways to translate innovation from one field of study to another, so even if you do pick one singular path at first; if you tear open, analyze and translate it well enough your creative innovation can potentially be used as a solution to a different problem.

Creating change within business is always hard, and right now all of the usual hardships are being exacerbated by our current situation. So from now on when approaching change, we need to proceed with intention.

Our intention when staring into the face a constantly changing world should be to change right alongside it. That is the only way to become resilient to problems that will be hurled at us, continuing to move forward on a path of innovation and creativity. If you continue moving forward, even if you stumble along from time to time, some of these problems being thrown at you will inevitably miss you. You will be further along the line of transformation, tackling new issues. Since none of us know where we will end up after this situation passes, we need to prepare for multiple ways out of our door filled room. By using our creativity as a tool during this pandemic, our ideas could become a catalyst to create new and exciting business innovations. Whether that means expanding your product services, creating work at home guidelines or redesigning your approach to customer service, any path you creatively work on to intentionally change will create innovation.

And while our innovations may not all be home runs, or even a run to first base, they are always a step forward. The door you pick becomes a jumping off point for new and better innovations to come.

Now, let’s assume that after all of this we are back in that same room, surrounded by doors of opportunity.

Which path will you pick?

While I may not know where any of your paths may lead or whether they will be fruitful endeavors, of one thing I can be sure of; you will no longer be in the same room as before.