I used to think that movements were these really big, full expressions of just about anything — ideas, music, business, people. Like rallies, crusades forums that tackle culture-shifting topics. They’re almost too big to grasp. In many cases, that’s true. BUT. They’re also really simple. They’re one person tuning in to a gut feeling, and taking the responsibility to do something about it. How any one business or idea got anywhere was most likely because of one person.
It’s a simpler than that though. I think it’s fair to say that movements happen when one person chooses to listen.
Listening is a damn hard thing to measure. It’s also become a rare and mysterious skill. In America, especially, we’ve morphed into creatures with two mouths and one ear oddly reminiscent of a character from The Phantom Tollbooth.
Listening is actually a three-dimensional experience because it requires two additional skills: paying attention and seeking to understand. The three optimize and support together. It’s listening that opens the door to the other two, and all that’s possible.
This is all true for one of the business world’s favorite words these days — ecosystems. In the early 20th century, we started to use the word ecosystem to describe how nature cycles and flows. Really, how nature listens to…
