OPEN

Sometimes when I read or hear a useful insight, I remember to squirrel it away (on my Tumblr, and  – via IFTTT – under quotes on Diigo). This one, from Ed Catmull’s superb book Creativity, Inc., has been in my head a lot recently.

Our mental image of balance is somewhat distorted because we tend to equate it with stillness – the calm repose of a yogi balancing on one leg, a state without apparent motion. To my mind, the more accurate examples of balance come from sports, such as when a basketball player spins around a defender, a running back bursts through the line of scrimmage, or a surfer catches a wave. All of these are extremely dynamic responses to rapidly changing environments.

Balance is a dynamic act.

How wonderful and how true. It’s liberating to realise that all that wobbling you’re doing could just be quick movements you make in staying balanced rather than some impossible dream of achieving balance.

It reminds me of a question a colleague asked me: Do you think the company is heading in the right direction? The instinctive, reassuring answer is “yes”. The more accurate answer is “sometimes and mostly”.

If there’s a direction we should be heading in then, on aggregate we’re going that way. As with all start-up companies – or I suppose on a grander scale, all companies – heading in the right direction is a series of course corrections.