Have you hugged your fears today?

I was in a conversation the other day with many of my peers at an interesting roundtable headed by the Cowen Group. I was asked to help David Cowen lead a conversation about a myriad of topical ideas and challenges that many high-level leaders across a diverse list of industries faced today. As you might imagine, we heard about the challenges of perennial favorites like inability to find talented people, limited budgets, lack of C-level support for projects, and on and on. Naturally, more newsworthy topics like Big Data, social media, DropBox, the Cloud, and consumerization of IT, rightly caused particular concerns for most people due to the perception of loss of control over the network and the Corporate data. What I interpreted as the underlying tone of what most people said, and what hung in the air, though, was a thin, but pervasive mist of fear.

At the end, David asked a select few of us to summarize what we thought the take-aways were. As the speakers summarized their thoughts on what they heard that morning, I quickly rewrote my summation based on a small gem I heard David say earlier in the discussion: ‘encourage curiosity.’ My parting thoughts went something like this:

I have heard talk of a number of new, unknown and unproven technologies like the Cloud, Big Data, and ‘Bring your own device’, that have pervaded (invaded, really) our workplace.  And the common underlying tone that I hear amongst us is one of fear.

Now, maybe because I am a perpetual optimist, and a ‘glass half full’ guy, but I can’t help but suggest that a reasonable, and in fact only possible option is to embrace the fear that confronts us. Encourage the uncertainty. Welcome the Black Swan events that disrupt the melancholy of day-to-day existence.

Why? It is this ambiguity, this insecurity and dissonance to our comfort that otherwise makes life tolerable. Makes it bearable. Makes it worthwhile. The shock to the system of the unexpected and unknown is what drives humanity forward to betterment of us all. It is a cultural cold shower that everyone needs from time-to-time.

In the very beginning of the 20^th century, as new some entrepreneurs thought about what improvements could be made to transportation, the contrived thinking was more akin to ‘building a faster horse’ than to Henry Ford’s ideas of creating an assembly line, interchangeable parts and installment selling which really transformed the industry.

In the early ‘80s, Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America lobbied against the creation of the VCR. Valenti actually said, in front of Congress no less, that the “VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” Yet, what did the VCR eventually do the movie industry? It saved it! Imagine how much better off the industry might be today of the fear of that new and unknown technology was embraced rather than discouraged.

So that is why my parting thought was to say, we should embrace the fear we all fear everyday at work of the unknown. We should also encourage those who work for us who talk of bleeding edge technologies and radical concepts like “I know we don’t do it this way here today, but...”, and promote their curiosity. Reward it, in fact.  If humanity is to be driven forward, it will take more than just a few us.