I recently became aware of how often I use the word “flow.”
I try to be vigilant in my word choice and specifically to avoid using jargon or buzzwords, so I started to bring more awareness to where and how I was employing this term.
The first thing I noticed is that I was using the word flow to describe a critical inflection point. I discovered myself evoking the concept of flow as a bridge between flashes of insight and their ensuing tactical implications.
Here are two recent examples from a:
Prospective Client
When speaking with a prospective client who was looking to start creating thought leadership content for lead generation efforts, my suggestion was to begin with a clear articulation of their unique value proposition. “Once we’ve synthesized and simplified the benefits of your offering and distilled your perspective on why legacy solutions are inadequate,” I told her, “that should flow directly into a keyword strategy which will then inform your content prioritization plans.”
Recently Laid-off Colleague
A recently laid-off colleague asked me for feedback on her resume, and I urged her to resist the draw to dive into applications right away. Instead, I advised, “let’s start with a clear description of what makes you uniquely valuable.” I encouraged her to spend a week doing some reflection and introspection, including asking past colleagues to answer a few questions about their work with her. “After you hone in on your superpower and how to put it into words,”I explained, “that clarity will flow naturally into how to structure your resume and what to highlight in an outreach email or cover letter.”
Again and again, my use of the word flow followed an initial suggestion to take a step back from tactics and to sit with strategy. In each case, I didn’t know what the right specific actions to take were; I wasn’t using a Socratic method to lead them to some foregone conclusion. I did not know the answers to the questions they initially asked – which content to create in which medium or through which channel, or what accomplishments to highlight on a resume. What I did know, with total certainty, was that the answers would become clear, almost obvious, after an initial phase of deep exploration.
I was using the word flow almost as a promise.
A promise that once you do the upfront work and challenge yourself to look inward, the effort of introspection will lead to clarity or insight that automatically illuminates the path forward. What I was proposing was more than just an order of operations or a phased plan-of-attack, it was an appeal to trust in the natural consequences of deep thinking as the way to arrive at the optimal solution.
It was a bold claim I was making, and one that is seemingly counterintuitive. Essentially, I was telling people that their initial questions were the wrong questions, and that the way to find what they are looking for is to look somewhere else. I was asking them to trust me that by shifting their focus to a different area of inquiry, the momentum of that effort would then effortlessly flow into the answers they were seeking.
How could I justify making such a bold promise (especially given my aversion to hyperbolic or overstated value propositions)? I knew this process worked, and I realized that I didn’t understand how or why. To really stand behind my recommendations to find a state of flow, I needed to internalize its mechanism.
Join me in exploring the path of the longer, shorter way to finding more flow. First we’ll reflect on the nature of questions before unpacking the word flow as a metaphor for the behavior of water and electricity. Spoiler alert: there are no 5-step guides or tips and tricks to achieving more flow in your work here, just the encouragement to spend more time asking yourself the right questions.
Looking for the right questions leads to the right answers
Fortuitously, while thinking about this concept of flow, I ran across a relevant quotation from Einstein: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spent 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
Admittedly, discovering that my method was also Einstein’s approach to problem solving was validating. The question remained, “why?” Why does this approach work when it is quite counterintuitive? How is it that spending more time thinking about “the problem” in isolation leads or flows into better solutions than just focusing on the solutions from the start?
To address this, I spent some time ruminating on the nature of questions.
Asking a question presupposes the existence of an answer. We know that there is some information out there that we do not yet have, and so we quest outward with our minds to seek it. In that way, questions represent an almost negative form of knowledge; in the vast realm of possible answers, we ask questions to delineate and begin to demarcate the space where our answer could be.
As we ask further, deeper questions in our search, we progressively start to draw the boundaries of the eventual solution to our problem. Like a mental form of echolocation, our questions rebound in the darkness of the unknown until they create a gradually clearer picture in the mind of what's out there. Once we’ve found the intellectual handles of the idea we’re seeking, the mind can then fully grasp this new concept and probe its depths, encircling it from without and filling it from within until it becomes one with the idea.
This process of discovery, whereby we can truly internalize and learn something new, requires that we come from a place of humility. Genuine questions demand that we acknowledge what we do not yet know. Similarly, asking thoughtful questions requires openness to whatever the answer might be; if we’re limited in what we’re willing to hear or harbor resistance to entertaining new ideas, it will limit what questions we ask. If we don’t hold open space for a new idea in the mind, we might stumble into something but won’t be able to internalize it, to know it and the implications this knowledge suggests.
When we conceive of questions in this way, it becomes clearer why making a direct beeline to answers doesn’t make sense. How can we search for something when we don’t know where we’re looking or where to begin? We could do an exhaustive search – boiling the ocean, so to speak. That would be spending 55 minutes looking for solutions. Or we could spend our time progressively honing in on our solution by ring-fencing it through more narrowly tailored and specific questions.
Questions of identity
This is why in the examples I gave above and in the commercial strategy work that I do, I ask my clients to begin with the broadest questions. Questions of identity are the best place to start, namely the question “who are you?” When you first have a clear sense of who you are, or in the case of my work who or what your brand identity is, you have a reference point from which you can triangulate. By then defining your company or brand’s identity in relation to a clear description of an ideal client and their feelings about a problem you solve, you’ve added another coordinate.
This invested energy into who, what and why, outlines the space in which the “how” can be found. Once you’ve asked the right questions and framed things the right way, once you’ve aligned and oriented your understanding of yourself in relation to the clients you aim to serve, the vacuum of space between the two should pull out of you whatever needs to happen to make the connection between you. When you see clearly where you are and where your clients are, you’ll also have landed upon what to say (and where and how to say it) to chart a path and bridge the gap.
In other words, asking the right questions will lead you to the best solutions. Why, though, is the word “flow”such an apt metaphor for this process? What is it about the imagery of water or energy moving with a current that so accurately represents the process of solutions evolving from problems or tactics springing forth effortlessly from a well-defined strategy?
Physical flow as a metaphor for channeling creative energy in our work
It is the nature of water to flow to the lowest place and to fill available empty space. Nothing about the water changes as it does this, no energy needs to be put into it to make it flow and it doesn’t lose anything in the process of flowing. When the conditions are right, which often does require an input of energy to make happen by removing a blockage or digging a channel, the water just moves effortlessly.
The same idea applies to an electrical current. Once a circuit is completed, the electrons instantly start to flow through it. Again, nothing about the electrons themselves is changing, it’s simply that certain contexts or circumstances reveal what was always a hidden potential in them to flow.
Flow can therefore be thought of as a state of doing by being.
In both examples, the water and electrons are simply being water and electrons in their natural state. In our work, when we’re “in the zone” and the work just flows out of us, it’s because we’re filling in the outline of something we’ve already defined. After we’ve invested the energy and exertion into framing and contextualizing, carving out the space for something new, then we experience the effortless flow of creative energy to bring it to life.
When we're crystal clear on who we are and what we do and for whom – when we’ve defined the nature of our identity - this clarity evokes the requisite action to authentically express that nature.
It is worth mentioning that I tend to work with companies that are either creating a new category or a new technology or way of working, and the challenges they face are educating their market to think differently about the problems that they aim to solve.What’s needed to develop their go to market strategy is creative energy, and the best way to channel that energy is to find a state of flow.
When the problem you’re facing is instead refining a sub-optimal process or eliminating harmful behaviors, you need to face reality as it is head-on and change it. To make that happen takes a different kind of energy, an energy of transformation. Where as creative energy flows effortlessly from the hard work of introspection and self-discovery, transformation energy takes brawn, grit, and determination.
Transformation is usually painful because you’re trying to make something new occupy the space where something else already is, and the tension of the old giving way to the new can hurt. When you're fighting an uphill battle, you need to re-shape reality and overcome inertia. This type of work and channeling this type of energy is necessary in some contexts and situations; I tend to think of people who are really strong at operations as being experts in wielding transformational energy.
Too often, though, I find leaders trying to change reality when what’s really called for is creating a new one. For most issues related to commercial strategy, the reflexive framing tends to be answer-first when what's really needed is question-first creative energy. When the “question” is “how do we 2x revenue next year” or “how much can we increase pricing without losing customers,”it is indicative of a brand or company identity problem. These aren’t questions – they're answers – someone has already decided that this is what needs to happen and is now asking someone else to go make it happen.
Sustainable growth is a result of finding the connection between your business and your clients and should naturally flow from communicating the value of that connection while consistently delivering on that value. To drive stable growth in a state of flow therefore requires vigilance in deepening and broadening the synchronistic connection between you and your clients and in discovering new ways to authentically express that connection.
There are many growth leaders who would disagree, saying that when there is a fixed total addressable market (TAM) and a crowded field of competitors, you have to fight and hunt and win for market share (I really dislike military or violent metaphors for sales). In some cases, and with some product offerings, that may very well be the case. Again, in full transparency I don’t tend to work with companies selling a marginally better mousetrap or a discount offering. In my work, I embrace an abundance mindset instead of a scarcity mindset and believe that the creative process I’ve described here works by bringing into being something new that is tailor-made for you, by you.
To return to my original question – is flow a word worth using in the context of my client work – I'm convinced that that the answer is yes. When embarking on doing something new, or entering a new stage of growth, the answers to “what should we do” and “how do we do it” should always flow from “who are we” and “why do our clients benefit from our goods or services?” Aside from instances where transformational energy is called for, finding or implementing solutions shouldn’t be a strenuous or painful experience.
The Tiferet Approach
The work of building a go to market strategy or a new sales process or marketing campaign is the hard work of therapy: therapy for your business. As in life, when you’re feeling stuck and find yourself in a loop, harping on the same thought patterns again and again, looking inward is the key to removing the mental blockage and getting things flowing again. So, the next time you find yourself struggling to communicate your value proposition or to prioritize your time or allocate your resources, think about putting your business on the proverbial therapy couch.
Ask yourself the tough questions, hold open to uncomfortable answers, and fight the temptation to just be busy or to increase activity volume. At the very least, think very hard before trying to delegate this critical work to someone else. While any of those will give you a short-term feeling of accomplishment, the best long-term strategic investments you can make are in the deepest questions of identity and purpose. The reward is the state of flow – and the feedback is instant; when you’ve figured out your brand’s identity, you’ll know because the answers to your original tactical questions will become obvious. Give it a try.