You step outside to of the pub to go home. And… BAM… it hits you. You’ve seen enough Star Trek to know… you’re stuck in a tractor beam.
You’re not going home… yet.
Inside the space ship… which is somehow much bigger than it appears from the outside, you meet your captor. Without words, it introduces itself to you… in your mind. Edgar. From Mars.
You’re surprised. Instead of it being the slimy, octopus like thing you imagined. Edgar is quite similar to humans.
You can feel it going through your thoughts, like files on a cluttered desk.
Edgar inserts a question in you mind. What is a… job?
You start to explain… to the best of your ability anyway. But Edgar reads your thoughts faster than you can speak. You stop talking.
What is play? It asks.
Hmmm… interesting.
And why do you believe you have to teach people to do it?
What is the purpose of… sport?
It continues reading your thoughts before you can get to them.
Hmmmm. Edgar sighs pensively. You sense disappointment.
You get an idea. You’re quite likely talking to the smartest thing anyone on earth has ever talked to. So you, being a coach, ask it for a strategy to improve human performance.
Do you think your newfound Martian friend, meeting our pastimes for the first time, would come up with the ideas that we did when we first played them? Stuff like… the Statue of Liberty play. Or do you think it would come up with what we currently do? Call Tony Robbins. Perhaps some combination of those?
Or… do you think Edgar, being uncontaminated by ‘the way we’ve always done it’; Unencumbered by beliefs in ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways; And free from the politicking of entrenched interests, would see different possibilities in our pastimes… and come up with something totally different?
My money is on the latter… a true quantum leap in thinking.
And when he gave you his idea, it would be so wild, so radically deviant from the current way of doing things, that you wouldn’t be able to understand it at first. But Edgar, being the patient Martian that it is, would project a power point into your mind and walk you through it.
The lightbulb comes on.
It’s genius.
For the first time you recognize the depth of our servitude to the past. Like slaves trained to serve an abusive master… no matter how bad it was, we won’t abandon it. A tweak here and there will make it better.
Edgar releases you back to your pub. You ask for a selfie… of course. What’s an alien encounter worth if you can’t post it on social media? But when you go to post it… Edgar doesn’t show in the photo. Tricky bastard!
The next day you you bring this quantum leap of thought to your colleagues and customers. (You leave Edgar out. Your solo-selfie complicates things. Also, you’re not sure you want to share credit.)
And what happens?
99.9% of your colleagues and customers will discount your new ideas out of hand. Too radical. Untested. No ‘scientific’ backing. A few will listen. But they will listen through their memory. Your revelation has no chance with them either.
It’s generally believed that people are afraid of failure. This is only partly true. People are terrified of failing in unique ways. Hence the saying ‘you don’t get fired for hiring IBM’. IBM is an acceptable… mainstream way to fail. No dishonor in that.
But if you were to bring in the autodidactic teen prodigy who lives in his parents house and wants to be paid in bitcoin, and it doesn’t work out… you will be crucified. Even if he was the better choice.
Only the GREAT know that… and do it anyway.
That .01% of your colleagues and customers who are open to new possibilities, are the GREATS you’ve been looking for. Those whose sole purpose in life is to discover what they are capable of.
Mastery requires Greatness… we always get that backwards.