* "Unfortunately I can’t travel back in time yet, but at some points certain rifts in the timeline open up, allowing you to witness the gaming splendors of days gone past.." - Martijn Arthur Willemse (The Video Game Historian).
Travelling back in time is often not a very palatable thing, especially if you have already had a distasteful experience.
The main question here, I think, is not about whether you can travel back in time, we all do. Being a process, you sometimes just find yourself swept off your feet. So, it is more about recognising when we are in it, and much more importantly, understanding its implications as well as knowing what to expect next.
Knowing what to expect NEXT, helps us prepare for it's challenges. And with such awareness, ride the waves, through to shore.
But although Martijn Arthur Willemse deals with games, my purpose here is to apply retro experiences to leadership, using his quote, in the hope that my definition, and application to subject are understandably relatable.
In `UNMASKED', I had since written an article on `retrogrades', and later, on `backward walking'. I dwelt on, and talked about, how they occur - and are taken advantage of - by those who know `how'.
I am only going to apply the two concepts to leadership and by so doing, hopefully create the necessary platform that offers useful clues to leaders.
A few lines above, I mentioned that travelling back in time is a process. I suppose I have to explain further that sometimes, you can actually start the process, whereas at other times, you find yourself thrown into it. The later is more relevant to this discussion.
For example, when you sit down, try to relax and reflect on your past, you have control over starting the process. You decide when to take a break and sometimes, you even decide where to start. Being in control, you can further decide what are relevant and what are not.
When you find yourself thrown into elements of your past, some of which are so distasteful and unappreciable that you would rather not revisit them, there is cause for concern.
So my purpose here is to discuss retro situations over which we have little control.
Personally, you would have had people in your past so `selfish, brutish, crude, vindictive, deceptive, abhorable, abominable, intollerable, greedy, inconsiderate' ( hahaha..should I hold back? Oh yeah, my group are `Cronies' not `Wailers'), that given the choice, you would rather not meet again. Yet you do, and every single time, you always ended up hating it.
But leadership is a role whose objectives must be, skimmed of personal agenda and, aligned with the corporate objective.
There are also situations, during which leaders did what they genuinely believed was in full consonance with their personal and organsational values, as well as complying with company's policy, but whose result turned out wrongly, and left them with unpleasant tastes, displeasing memories and discolouring their leadership credentials.
It's perhaps only in football that Managers/Coaches have their worst and best experiences - almost simultaneously. Fired today and rehired tomorrow, evidently obscuring their most recent agony. And unless they are serial disappointers, they would look forward to making a better history.
Well, you get my drift then when I talk about retrogrades and how they affect human, and by implication, leadership experience.
As a leadership enthusiast, my concern here is on how leaders can recognise and handle retro-experiences analogous to `tragic' organisational experience.
Some retro-experiences afford leaders the chance to right a wrong, or better put, retrace their steps, locate the point of digression and get back on track - picking up from where they veered off. Others however, are eminently distructive, particularly if the leader had not been analytical enough or mistakenly relied on a wrong data.
Retro-experiences, that occur sometimes, if we must insist, beyond human control, are caused by `retrograde'. This is when the rotational and orbital motions in the solar system are in clockwise direction.
Generally, scientists have since found that all or most (except three) of the planets revolve eastwards.
Courtney Seligman wrote that “most of the rotational and orbital motions in the solar system are in the same "eastward" direction, and motions in this direction, are referred to as direct motions.”
But when when planets are in westward motion, they are considered as travelling in opposite direction and therefore referred to as a retrograde.
Retrogrades negate or contravene the natural order of flow, except for the three plannets known to revolve backwards - naturally. When this happens, you notice that suddenly, things that have happened to an individual in the past, begin to repeat themselves and they begin to have `retro-experience'.
So retro-experiences `pull you back' through old events or occurences. On the plus side, optimists argue that retrogrades point to the evidence that the universe can, and does, control human excesses.
They may yet be right but my purpose here is to discusse how leaders can manage the effects of retrogrades. Below, I list some guides to understanding and recognising retro-experiences.
Ways To Recognise Retro-Experiences:
(A) If you were expecting a paper to be signed, it could meet with an obstacle.
(B) If you were expecting the release of the next instalment for a project, it could stall.
(C) And if you had successfully negotiated a new deal with your creditors, you could be recalled to the negotiation table.
(D) Contracts already signed can be delayed or even cancelled.
(E) Even some anoying people from your past will start reappearing - and worse, they would probably be ready to anoy you again.
Understanding this important natural - and manipulable - phenomenon help the leader navigate some of the tempests facing leadership because it has the potential to halt projects; disorganise group activity and slow the journey; as well as put a question mark on the credibility and proficiency of his leadership.
Regrogrades are manipulable and below, I explain how leaders can manage its effects on their organisations effectiveness.
Overcoming The Challenges of Retro-Experiences:
(1)Awarenes is key to managing retro-experiences. Understanding it's nature and be alert to spot it when it starts, is an invaluable skill that leaders can't ignore.
(2)Do a little research to find out if some other natural phenomenon - like an eclipse - is due soon and how many are expected. These are natural, and may seem beyond human control, but their effects can been cushioned.
(3) Analyse its potential impact. This is like determining what happens next and how it will affect the group or the organisations operations.
(5)Plan for it. Developing contingency plans helps leaders respond appropriately to retro-experiences. When they say "I knew it", or "I was expecting it", it shows awareness, through conventional communication or intuition.
(6) Communicate expectation and plans to important surbordinates.
(7) Implement plan as meticulously as possible, when conditions for its development arises. Here, the leaders organisational, managerial, control and leadership proficiency is tested. A leader who can ride the waves and manage crises triggered by retro-experiences effectively, is already proving his mettle.
Have you had a retro-experience in your leadership capacity that threatened to derail your project? How did you handle it?
Please, feel free to write in and share your experience with me and my `Cronies' on Leadership Lane. Feedback is essential and we would love to hear from you.
Thank you for visiting and please do return.
* Twitter: @bensonagoha.
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* Courtney Seligman, is a Professor of Astronomy and Science at Saint Mary's University, Nova Scotia, Canada [ http://cseligman.com/text/sky/retrograde.htm ].
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