You know the feeling.
When you are flowing with effortless ease.
When everything is “firing on all six cylinders”
And working in harmony.
Plans and ideas move into place, with no friction
And all things work in the way they were designed to be.
Flow isn’t just a great feeling;
It’s also one of the main contributors to the success
Of any great project, team or company.
The dividends are great for those that design for flow.
They become faster, more efficient, more successful
And out-perform those around them that ignore her.
How can we work better with this mysterious thing called flow?
Flow starts to move in the channel of the listener.
She takes the easy route: the path of least resistance.
Like a stream or river heading down to the sea.
She flows around any obstacle, rock or pebble
To get down to the next pool and onwards to the sea.
Flow is fragile when she appears and is hard to retain.
She can vanish and nobody knows where she has gone.
The strange thing in a business is that no single person
Is responsible for creating or destroying her.
Nor does anyone really have the overall power or responsibility
To get her back when she is gone!
Without flow, everything slows.
Deadlines slip and budgets bloat.
People get irritable and start blaming one another.
Games are played that increase the blockages
Which makes flow vanish even faster.
She is as mysterious and transient as the Queen Bee!
Jazz players call it “being in the groove”. Each player feels the beat
Each one dancing with harmony, discord and periods of silence.
In the moment. There’s no score, just a few hidden rules to be broken.
Performing with no effort, she demands hours of practice.
Whilst listening for the beat, flow rewards those that study her.
Invisible and ephemeral, we love to play with her hidden mysteries.
