We might interpret gaps as negatives, a lack of, a hole to be filled, a deficit.
Gaps in a usually busy diary might cause anxiety. Am I needed? Working hard enough? Is there a problem? We can obsess when others have knowledge or skills we feel we don’t. A gap.
I am learning to think about gaps in a whole other way – as gifts. Spaces that allow for new possibilities to arise. For old ways of being to dissolve so new ways of being, more suited to our times, can seed and flourish.
For leaders, time to think deeply, to reflect, is often seen as an unaffordable luxury. Creating such gaps (or resisting the persistent filling with activity) too hard. Yet, the uncertainty of organisational life requires this pause for examination.
As a new world emerges around us our organisations are increasingly ill-equipped. Our future is at stake. Shaping a new and better world that serves the greater good the most pressing need.
How we embrace the gap between now and meeting that need calls us to courage, to transform, individually and together.
How are you welcoming the gap?