Are You The Kneader, the Dough or Both? A Recipe for Shaping Serendipity

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Marion

Serendip­ity has been on my mind for a long time. It has shaped my life in many occa­sions and I always wel­come and nur­ture Serendip­ity every time I come into “her”. It has no trans­la­tion in French, apart from the neol­o­gism serendip­ité, “heureux hasard”, “trans­ac­tions for­tu­ites” (from the latin for­tuna, luck). I pic­ture “her” as this young woman, hap­pily mix­ing fresh dough. Where am I in the pic­ture? The Dough! But what if I could also be the one who kneads the dough, the Shaper?

  • What is exactly serendip­ity? How dif­fer­ent is it from syn­chronic­ity, coin­ci­dence, haz­ard, or even intuition?
  • Can we shape serendip­ity? Isn’t it a paradox?
  • And if we can actu­ally shape serendip­ity, how would the recipe look like?

Let’s look at the metaphor of the young woman hap­pily knead­ing dough. Imag­ine 2 per­sons next to each other, with sim­ply flour, water, a lit­tle salt and some yeast in front of them. How one will be able to shape a beau­ti­ful bread out it and the other almost noth­ing but a waste of time. What will hap­pen? In one case, the per­son stares at the ingre­di­ents and does noth­ing, just wait for some­thing to hap­pen. Guess what? Flour, salt, yeast and water will ulti­mately become dust. The other per­son feels a strong will to put her whole self, hands, heart and soul into the mak­ing, knead­ing, mix­ing of the ingre­di­ents. Rest, bake and pro­duce a mag­nif­i­cent piece of bread.

  • It requires a leap in faith, or rather in inner trust that good will come out of this experience.
  • It requires div­ing into the expe­ri­ence. You get messy when you knead bread, your fin­gers, your hands, your arms, (some­times your face too if you’re like me!) get sticky and cov­ered with flour.
  • It requires antic­i­pa­tion and prepa­ra­tion of course. Gather the right ingre­di­ents, be at the “right” place, at the right time.
  • It requires hard work and dura­tion too, quite exhaust­ing. You must be ready to com­mit to it in the dura­tion, it isn’t instant mirac­u­lous insight.
  • It requires being extra-sensitive to the whole expe­ri­ence, with its fine range of sen­sa­tions. Being “per­cep­tive”, devel­op­ing aware­ness, pres­ence and mind­ful­ness. A kind of Zen experience.
  • It requires an open mind, curios­ity and mindfullness.

Good bak­ers, like sculp­tors, have an inti­mate con­nec­tion with the ingre­di­ents, the raw mate­r­ial in the process of grow­ing it into their cre­ation. I imag­ine this young woman is putting her­self into the dough, her enthu­si­asm is tan­gi­ble. It reminds me how I feel when I am bak­ing, espe­cially this week where the mean­ing has shifted dra­mat­i­cally with the events that shaped our fam­ily. It’s an act of TRUST. What is Serendipity?

  • The Three  Princes of Serendip, once the name for Sri Lanka.“Once upon a time, there existed in the coun­try of Serendippo, in the Far East, a great and pow­er­ful king by the name of Giaf­fer. He had three sons who were very dear to him. And being a good father and very con­cerned about their edu­ca­tion, he decided that he had to leave them endowed not only with great power, but also with all kinds of virtues of which princes are par­tic­u­larly in need. He thus sent them away from the land, to test their virtues far away from the shel­ter of his kingdom.”

This is how this Ancient Per­sian fairy tale starts and , serendip­i­tously, guides us to the word and its mean­ing today. Mean­while, dur­ing the 18th Cen­tury in Great Britain, Sir Horace Wal­pole came up with the word Serendip­ity. Here’s an extract from a let­ter he wrote in 1754 to Horace Mann, an Eng­lish friend who lived in Florence:

“It was once when I read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their high­nesses trav­eled, they were always mak­ing dis­cov­er­ies, by acci­dents and sagac­ity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them dis­cov­ered that a camel blind of the right eye had trav­eled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right—now do you under­stand serendip­ity? One of the most remark­able instances of this acci­den­tal sagac­ity (for you must observe that no dis­cov­ery of a thing you are look­ing for, comes under this descrip­tion) was of my Lord Shafts­bury, who hap­pen­ing to dine at Lord Chan­cel­lor Clarendon’s, found out the mar­riage of the Duke of York and Mrs. Hyde, by the respect with which her mother treated her at table.”

SERENDIPITY (from The Amer­i­can Her­itage Dic­tio­nary of the Eng­lish Lan­guage, 3rd Edition)

“The fac­ulty of mak­ing for­tu­nate dis­cov­er­ies by accident.”

As you can see, def­i­n­i­tions of serendip­ity are mul­ti­ple, but I believe Serendip­ity is much more than a happy acci­dent, a sim­ple haz­ard or a coin­ci­dence. There needs to be some “sagac­ity” into it… It’s also dif­fer­ent from syn­chronic­ity, as clearly explained in Max­imis­ing Serendip­ity , the art of recog­nis­ing and fos­ter­ing unex­pected poten­tial — A Sys­temic Approach to Change by James Law­ley and Penny Tompkins.

The dis­tinc­tion between serendip­ity and syn­chronic­ity is a mat­ter of time.  With syn­chronic­ity there is an imme­di­ate recog­ni­tion of the ‘mean­ing­ful coin­ci­dence of two events hap­pen­ing close in time’.  Serendip­ity, how­ever, can­not be assessed until later when the con­se­quences of events are eval­u­ated. Syn­chronic­ity can become serendip­ity if the effects of the coin­ci­den­tal events have large pos­i­tive sig­nif­i­cance over time. How­ever serendip­ity can also arise out of events that are not syn­chro­nous. This gives four possibilities:

  • Syn­chronic­ity lead­ing to serendipity
  • Syn­chronic­ity lead­ing nowhere
  • Ordi­nary events lead­ing to serendipity
  • Ordi­nary events lead­ing nowhere

The Serendip­ity Para­dox. If we have absolutely no con­trol over acci­dents, haz­ards, coin­ci­dences by def­i­n­i­tion, how could we “dare”  “shap­ing serendip­ity”? Isn’t it god’ will or fate that cre­ates this series of events? The answer may come from embrac­ing other aspects of serendip­ity which are more related to “sagac­ity”, and ulti­mately to intu­ition, in the Bergson­ian under­stand­ing of it. Sagac­ity:

From French sagac­ité < Latin sagac­i­tas (“saga­cious­ness”) < sagax (“of quick per­cep­tion, acute, saga­cious”) < sagire (“to per­ceive by the senses”). Wiktionary

Intu­ition:

Intu­ition there­fore is a kind of expe­ri­ence, and indeed Berg­son him­self calls his thought “the true empiri­cism” (The Cre­ative Mind, p. 175). What sort of expe­ri­ence? In the open­ing pages of “Intro­duc­tion to Meta­physics,” he calls intu­ition sym­pa­thy (The Cre­ative Mind, p. 159). Bergson­ian intu­ition then con­sists in enter­ing into the thing, rather than going around it from the out­side. This “enter­ing into,” for Berg­son, gives us absolute knowl­edge.  In any case, for Berg­son, intu­ition is enter­ing into our­selves – he says we seize our­selves from within – but this self-sympathy devel­ops het­ero­ge­neously into oth­ers. In other words, when one sym­pa­thizes with one­self, one installs one­self within dura­tion and then feels a “cer­tain well defined ten­sion, whose very deter­mi­nate­ness seems like a choice between an infin­ity of pos­si­ble dura­tions” (The Cre­ative Mind, p. 185).

So what’s the recipe for shap­ing serendipity?

Three inter­pre­ta­tions and my conclusion.

  • Actu­ally, the first time I came across this expres­sion, “shap­ing serendip­ity”, was thanks to John Hagel’s blog, Edge Per­spec­tives. In The Power of Pull, he devel­ops with John Seely Brown this provoca­tive idea and how each of us could apply it into our work. Here is a bril­liant extract, “Serendip­ity Pull Fun­nel”. You can also down­load the HBR arti­cle here. You can even watch the con­ver­sa­tion between the “two Johns” in this video, posted on face­book. Accord­ing to John Hagel and John Seely Brown, there are three choices which deter­mine how we can shape serendip­ity in our rela­tion­ships at work:
  1. Where we spend our time. Peo­ple are spend­ing more time in vir­tual envi­ron­ments, espe­cially social net­work plat­forms, because they instinc­tively sense that these envi­ron­ments are often rich cat­a­lysts for serendip­ity. At the same time, peo­ple are mak­ing choices about where they spend their time in phys­i­cal envi­ron­ments that also shape serendip­ity. While the world is get­ting flat­ter due to tech­nol­ogy advances, peo­ple still move to large urban cen­ters, fre­quent con­fer­ences, and par­tic­i­pate in insti­tu­tions which increase the like­li­hood of unex­pected encoun­ters with peo­ple rel­e­vant to their inter­ests and needs.
  2. How we spend our time. These phys­i­cal and vir­tual envi­ron­ments attract a large num­ber of peo­ple. How do we stand out and get noticed so that we attract unex­pected encounters?
  3. How we max­i­mize the value of the unex­pected encounter. If we are not pre­pared when the unex­pected encounter finally occurs, it will not yield much value. Lis­ten­ing deeply, being atten­tive, and under­stand­ing what the other per­son is involved in prove invalu­able in con­vert­ing a chance meet­ing into a more valu­able sus­tained rela­tion­ship that keeps on giv­ing. Bring­ing mind­ful­ness, intu­ition and “seiz­ing one­self from within and with the oth­ers”, as Berg­son would say.
  • Sec­ond source of recipes, in max­imis­ing serendip­ity, devel­oped by James Law­ley and Penny Tomp­kins, in A Sys­temic Aproach to Change.
A pre­pared mind.
An unplanned and unex­pected event happens.
There is a recog­ni­tion of the poten­tial for pos­i­tive sig­nif­i­cance in the future.
At some point this is fol­lowed by an action which aims to amplify the poten­tial for pos­i­tive significance.
Over time there are con­se­quences of the action, and of other things that are hap­pen­ing, which fur­ther amplify the ben­e­fit of E.
The value of the orig­i­nal event and the sub­se­quent effects becomes appar­ent — at which time serendip­ity can be said to have taken place.
  • Thirdly, I will call on the French philoso­pher Berg­son, who sug­gested a “method” to expe­ri­ence intu­ition, which res­onates with serendipity.
  1. The first act is a kind of leap
  2. Then one should make the effort to dilate one’s dura­tion into a con­tin­u­ous heterogeneity
  3. One should make the effort to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the extremes of this heterogeneity

“Because intu­ition in Berg­son is “inte­gral expe­ri­ence” (The Cre­ative Mind, p. 200), it is made up of an indef­i­nite series of acts, which cor­re­spond to the degrees of dura­tion. This series of acts is why Berg­son calls intu­ition a method. The first act is a kind of leap, and the idea of a leap is opposed to the idea of a re-constitution after analy­sis. One should make the effort to reverse the habit­ual mode of intel­li­gence and set one­self up imme­di­ately in the dura­tion. But then, sec­ond, one should make the effort to dilate one’s dura­tion into a con­tin­u­ous het­ero­gene­ity. Third, one should make the effort to dif­fer­en­ti­ate (as with the color orange) the extremes of this het­ero­gene­ity. With the sec­ond and third steps, one can see a sim­i­lar­ity to Plato’s idea of dialec­tic under­stood as col­lec­tion and divi­sion. The method resem­bles that of the good butcher who knows how to cut at the artic­u­la­tions or the good tai­lor who knows how to sew pieces of cloth together into clothes that fit. On the basis of the divi­sion into extremes or into a dual­ity, one can then con­front our every­day “mix­tures” of the two extremes. Within the mix­ture, one makes a divi­sion or “cut” into dif­fer­ences in kind: into mat­ter and spirit, for instance. Then one shows how the dual­ity is actu­ally a monism, how the two extremes are “sewn” together, through mem­ory, in the con­tin­u­ous het­ero­gene­ity of dura­tion. Indeed, for Berg­son, intu­ition is mem­ory; it is not perception.”

I love here the metaphors with the “good butcher” or “good tai­lor”. Con­clu­sion, for a very long post. For me, shap­ing serendip­ity is like knead­ing dough and accept­ing to put your­self totally in the expe­ri­ence, into the dough. You become the dough and the kneader simul­ta­ne­ously. It’s been a very long post and I know it will need edit­ing, for­mat­ing and mak­ing it shorter and clearer. I needed the process of writ­ing it though, before I could again sep­a­rate it and pro­duce the Serendip­ity whole grain organic bread :-) The best per­sonal exam­ple of serendip­ity was just given to me one hour ago on Twit­ter and I have dozens of sto­ries like that, if not hun­dreds… I retweeted a post about story telling and Lead­er­ship by @Storyteling (Limor Shiponi). When Limor kindly thanked me, I responded imme­di­ately, “yes, great post but why did you pic­ture only male heroes?” Limor answered right away and we started a quick pas­sion­ate exchange of tweets which nat­u­rally led us to skype (not even going through the hid­ing closet of DMs!!!). I just went off the skype con­ver­sa­tion and had an amaz­ing time, hear­ing the deep and pow­er­ful voice of Limor, telling me sto­ries of the Ladies of the lake, in Arthurian tales, of early Sion­ism hero­ines, of a woman pirate in Eliz­a­bethan Period and we also shared our per­sonal sto­ries and our own heroine’s jour­ney. We dis­cov­ered many com­mon inter­ests and also pat­terns in our lives (the 3 daugh­ters…, the role of the strong heroic female pres­ence in our fam­i­lies) She helped me make sense of per­soanl and pro­fes­sional sto­ries in my life and we built many bridges for future col­lab­o­ra­tion. Isn’t it Serendip­ity? Did it meet the recipe for shap­ing serendip­ity? Absolutely! Every sin­gle step! A leap of trust in the twit­ter stream, mind­full­ness and dilata­tion of expe­ri­ence, using the radar of intu­ition, send­ing and smelling the storytelling’s pheromones, bring­ing fun, enthu­si­asm, vital­ity and pas­sion­ate knead­ing of the dough! What does it mean for you? How did you achieve to cre­ate it in your life, in your business?

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37 Responses to Are You The Kneader, the Dough or Both? A Recipe for Shaping Serendipity

  1. Janet Vanderhoof says:
    June 21, 2011 at 1:59 pm

    I don’t know if I could cre­ate serendip­ity or find it some­where, I do love Oprahs quote though “luck is prepa­ra­tion meet­ing oppor­tu­nity”. We do have to put invest­ment of time and work to allow serendip­ity to appear more often. Prayer and med­i­ta­tion is also impor­tant so that you stay con­nected to the Serendip­ity Source. Your dough image also reminds me of the quote “You are the pot­ter I am the clay”, it takes a leap of faith to let go and allow the pot­ter to turn the clay into its ulti­mate form; co-creating with the cre­ator.
    Also, I believe it is impor­tant to real­ize that unless you are pre­pared to receive, that win­ning per­haps the lot­tery could turn out dis­as­trously. We may feel for exam­ple that we are not wor­thy and no mat­ter what we receive we end up sab­o­tag­ing our­selves.
    Another aspect is the big pic­ture. What we imme­di­ately believe maybe of ill for­tune, may end up being for­tune. For exam­ple the per­son who broke his leg and can­not take a plane trip, then to finds that the plane crashes and it becomes good for­tune.
    Trust, lis­ten­ing to the whis­per, allow­ing, receiv­ing, co-creating all part of for­tune. Some­times the lit­tlest things, the mun­dane moments, become what we cher­ish the most and we real­ize that we were lucky all along, we just had to notice.
    Loved your blog, you are an amaz­ing writer. Hugs, Marion

    Reply
    • admin says:
      June 21, 2011 at 3:54 pm

      Thanks for such a bril­liant and long com­ment, Janet. I must say my post was also quite long and I maybe should have bro­ken it into 3 parts…but I strug­gled to keep it together…“The Whole pic­ture”. Yes, I like that.

      And I love your quote and metaphor about the pot­ter and the clay. Exactly! Co-creation.
      You bring much peace and wis­dom into your com­ment and sug­ges­tions. I guess that must be the way you are, in real life too, at home, with your chil­dren, with your friends.
      Bless­ings to you and your, Janet.

      Reply
  2. Ellen Weber says:
    June 21, 2011 at 5:34 pm

    Love your trig­gers for won­der here Mar­ion. You are right — it takes a few of us to pas­sion­ately exchange ideas that grow and fly and become real­ity! Great entry points to inno­va­tion here too! Keep lead­ing friend — and many will join into these direc­tions — until we find that new path­way many crave. Great stuff!

    Reply
    • admin says:
      June 23, 2011 at 10:51 am

      Ellen, thank you for pass­ing by and shar­ing your thoughts about serendip­ity. Key words in your com­ment: Pas­sion and Inno­va­tion, which are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a Serendpty adven­turer…
      “Trig­gers for wonder”…what a beau­ti­ful expres­sion! Thank you.

      Reply
  3. Helene Finidori says:
    June 21, 2011 at 10:22 pm

    Mar­ion, this is a won­der­ful post! I’m think­ing of serendip­ity all the time. I dis­cov­ered the true mean­ing of the word not so long ago. Serendip­ity, like par­a­digm, pre­pos­ter­ous or obnox­ious was the kind of words that I filled with intu­itive sig­nif­i­cance, with­out know­ing what they meant exactly. I used to call my expe­ri­ence of serendip­ity the ‘gift’ that trans­forms an encounter, an oppor­tu­nity into some­thing mean­ing­ful and fruit­ful. And I must say that I have been blessed by many of these gifts in the course of my nomadic life… It reminds me in a way of Eliz­a­beth Gilbert’s ‘genius’, that comes, out­side of your­self, to inspire you…

    Reply
    • admin says:
      June 23, 2011 at 10:59 am

      Incred­i­ble, Hélène!
      Ok, I am not sure you are aware of my sec­ond blog, which is on Pos­ter­ous? The descrip­tion I give about it is “Hi! I would like to share here with you the kalei­do­scope of what’s going on inside my mind.The “Sparkle of God”…or when Dobby, my per­sonal house elf vis­its me :-) “, directly inspired from Eliz­a­beth Guilbert’s talk, which I also “analysed” in this other post…http://geronimocoachingnow.com/?p=92 Olé to You! Don’t be afraid, just do your Talk!
      If that is not serendipity…a won­der­ful gift you gave me by com­ment­ing here, Hélène (which is my sec­ond sur­name and also the name of my per­sonal role model, Mrs Helen Parr, alias Mrs Elas­tic Girl!!!)

      Reply
  4. Steve Finikiotis says:
    June 22, 2011 at 2:08 pm

    Thank you, Mar­ion, for rais­ing thought­ful and provoca­tive ques­tions. You’ve framed the con­ver­sa­tion skill­fully as usual.

    Reply
    • admin says:
      June 23, 2011 at 11:02 am

      Steve, thanks to you for read­ing this very very long post and tak­ing also the time to stop by and say hello. You are always wel­come here, drop any­time!
      It will always be a “mean­ing­ful and fruit­ful encounter”, as helene says…

      Reply
  5. Ann Lewis says:
    June 22, 2011 at 3:36 pm

    A won­der­ful post, Mar­ion. Some of my per­sonal expe­ri­ences on Twit­ter have led to true serendip­ity in the way you describe it, and I trea­sure the clar­ity with which you’ve writ­ten about it here. Thank you.

    Reply
    • admin says:
      June 23, 2011 at 11:05 am

      It does not sur­prise me, Ann, that you have been able to shape seren­di­tious encoun­ters on Twit­ter. You con­nect with such deep desire to under­stand, lis­ten and care. Cheers to your many many more fruit­ful encoun­ters, Ann and to us meet­ing one day IRL…Thank you for your lovely com­pli­ment too, clar­ity in com­plex­ity is what I strive to achieve thanks to metaphors, images. For the rest, I don’t know, but thank you!

      Reply
  6. Robyn McMaster says:
    June 23, 2011 at 2:31 pm

    We can choose to shape our world and expe­ri­ences as you so well point out, Mar­ion, or else our world shapes us. How we man­age and spend time, where we choose to live, the work we choose to do and the places we mix with oth­ers helps us to cre­ate our world and expe­ri­ences in part. We never have com­plete con­trol, but at least we can shape the dough as best we can. You give us many thoughts to “chew on” here.

    Reply
    • admin says:
      June 26, 2011 at 4:49 am

      I love your play­ing with words and images, Robyn…Yes, food for thought…especially when we go through stormy times when we pic­ture our­selves like small paper boats on a raged ocean..
      From your writ­ings, your work and your shar­ing, I knwo that you have shaped your life in a won­der­fully cre­ative and bril­liant way. Bravo et merci Robyn!

      Reply
  7. Steve Ardire says:
    June 23, 2011 at 5:33 pm

    I like the term ‘Shap­ing Serendip­ity’ with key ingre­di­ents of being “per­cep­tive” (aware­ness + antic­i­pa­tion ) curios­ity, mindfulness.

    Yes indeed it’s very hard work that you have to prac­tice on daily basis ( which is why most peo­ple can­not do well )

    Allow me to add that it also requires the abil­ity to inter­ro­gate real­ity which is Prin­ci­pal #1 of Fierce Con­ver­sa­tions http://bit.ly/iVqyZx

    Reply
  8. Michael Palko says:
    June 24, 2011 at 1:56 am

    My grand­mother (Baba, to me) made the most won­der­ful bread. I can still remem­ber how her kitchen smelled when she baked. As she got older, her daugh­ters and nieces asked her for her recipe. They wanted to keep it safe, copy so it would never be lost and share the end result with their fam­i­lies. Much to their sur­prise she didn’t have the recipe writ­ten down. When they asked her to tell it to them, her mea­sure­ments of the ingre­di­ents were in pinches, hand­fuls and “lit­tle bits.” They con­vinced her one day to allow them to video­tape her mak­ing the bread. Instead of throw­ing the hand­fuls of flour directly into the bowl, they per­suaded her to first drop them into mea­sur­ing cups while they scur­ried to scrib­ble down the true mea­sures. Try as they might they could never recre­ate exactly the same fla­vor or tex­ture of the bread.

    Your post, Mar­ion, comes at a most serendip­i­tous time for me. I am con­sciously mak­ing changes in my per­sonal and pro­fes­sional life. It reminds me that while many times we know the right ingre­di­ents, we some­times strug­gle to get the mea­sures just right. What we must do is to enjoy the end prod­uct of our labor, and even the labor itself, even if it is not exactly what we hoped for.

    The bread that my aunts made wasn’t awful. In fact it was VERY good, but they were always dis­ap­pointed because it just didn’t taste the same as Baba’s. We should take time to savor our bread, share our recipe with oth­ers and col­lab­o­rate with them to make some­thing our fam­i­lies, our neigh­bors, our world will want a piece of.

    Reply
    • admin says:
      June 26, 2011 at 4:57 am

      What a “deli­cious” story, Michael!
      It could stand as a Russ­ian fairy tale, with your Baba grandma…
      We so wih we could cap­ture people’s essence like per­fume in a bottle…Hélas (and good news too) it’s not pos­si­ble, there are some miss­ing secret ingre­di­ents that pre­vent us from catch­ing that butterfly…Your aunts and siters had very cre­ative ideas (I love the video­tape part!!), and sure their own breads must also have been quite good.
      The idea is to cre­ate your unique bread out of your gifts and your life, isn’t it?
      I wish you a won­der­ful tran­si­tion into yur new per­sonal and pro­fes­sional life, Michael. You seem to have grasped thanks to this story, the very essence of how you will achieve it. Such a plea­sure to con­nect, share and grow with you.
      Merci.

      Reply
  9. Deb says:
    June 25, 2011 at 12:13 pm

    Mar­ion, thank you for another beau­ti­ful piece of your­self, your writing.

    I think that one really has to be open to the moments of serendip­ity, and trust to take them for­ward for they can reveal parts of our­selves we are yet to dis­cover, meet. Your post reminds me that I need to be much more open, more trust­ing to allow myself to grow in new ways.

    Keep writ­ing us and feed­ing us with your won­der­ful perspectives.

    Reply
    • admin says:
      June 26, 2011 at 5:01 am

      What strikes me in your com­ment, Deb, is “they can reveal parts of our­selves we are yet to dis­cover”. Beau­ti­fully expressed and it takes us to another post, I am actu­ally work­ing, chew­ing, knead­ing :-) The notion of mul­ti­ple selves and how we can, thanks to the work around the arche­types, “dis– cover” them and let them flour­ish.
      Your com­ment is delight­ful for my ego and made me deli­ciously blush! Thank you Deb, and cheers to our growth!

      Reply
  10. Bob Littell says:
    June 25, 2011 at 6:53 pm

    A sim­pler term for ‘serendip­ity’ might be ‘good luck’ and in my opin­ion, the best book ever writ­ten on this topic was by AHZ Carr, “How to Attract Good Luck”. With some slight mod­i­fi­ca­tion, here’s a quote from the book: “The first step in attract­ing good luck is to rec­og­nize that most of our good luck — the ben­e­fi­cial effect of chance upon our lives — comes to us through other people.…Between our­selves and those who cross our path, chance spins an invis­i­ble thread of aware­ness — a Luck Line. To expose our­selves to luck then means, in essence, to come into healthy human rela­tion­ships with more people…The more Luck Lines you throw out, the luck you’ll find.“
    One of the best tools for cre­at­ing more good luck is some­thing called “NetWeav­ing” — a Golden Rule and “Pay It For­ward” form of net­work­ing. Just ‘google’ the word to see the many dif­fer­ent ways peo­ple are using it to become ‘knead­ers’ rather than just a lump of dough.

    Reply
  11. Bob Littell says:
    June 25, 2011 at 7:02 pm

    I spot­ted two typo’s after I sent this: the word rela­tion­ships had an “n” miss­ing and in the last line of the quote, it should have said “the more Luck-Lines you throw out, the MORE luck you’ll find.” the word ‘more’ was omit­ted. Please cor­rect is you do post.

    A sim­pler term for ‘serendip­ity’ might be ‘good luck’ and in my opin­ion, the best book ever writ­ten on this topic was by AHZ Carr, “How to Attract Good Luck”. With some slight mod­i­fi­ca­tion, here’s a quote from the book: “The first step in attract­ing good luck is to rec­og­nize that most of our good luck – the ben­e­fi­cial effect of chance upon our lives – comes to us through other people.…Between our­selves and those who cross our path, chance spins an invis­i­ble thread of aware­ness – a Luck Line. To expose our­selves to luck then means, in essence, to come into healthy human rela­tioN­ships with more people…The more Luck Lines you throw out, the MORE luck you’ll find.”
    One of the best tools for cre­at­ing good luck is some­thing called “NetWeav­ing” – a Golden Rule and “Pay It For­ward” form of net­work­ing. Just ‘google’ the word to see the many dif­fer­ent ways peo­ple are using it to become ‘knead­ers’ rather than just a lump of dough.

    Reply
    • admin says:
      June 26, 2011 at 5:38 am

      Inter­est­ingly, weav­ing and knead­ing are two very ancient human crafts, with very sim­i­lar characteristics

      “In pre-Dynastic Egypt, nt (Neith) was already the god­dess of weav­ing (and a mighty aid in war as well). She pro­tected the Red Crown of Lower Egypt before the two king­doms were merged, and in Dynas­tic times she was known as the most ancient one, to whom the other gods went for wis­dom. Nit is iden­ti­fi­able by her emblems: most often it is the loom’s shut­tle, with its two rec­og­niz­able hooks at each end, upon her head. Accord­ing to E. A. Wal­lis Budge (The Gods of the Egyp­tians) the root of the word for weav­ing and also for being are the same: nnt.“
      Weav­ing is such a rich con­cept, inti­mately linked to mythol­ogy and sto­ry­telling. Don’t we say “weav­ing a story”? It’s also inter­est­ing to see the mas­cu­line and fem­i­nine dimen­sions of weav­ing. Although Weav­ing has long been asso­ci­ated with the Fem­i­nine (“When Adam delved and Eve span…” , Athena the weaver God­dess, Pene­lope, Valkyries weav­ing on a loom, Grimm’s fairy tales, etc…), among Egyp­tians it was the men who wove.
      Very curi­ous about your work with Netweav­ing, sounds fan­tas­tic.
      Thank you so much for stop­ping by and adding your weav­ing to the dis­cus­sion. Made me want to explore more about the weav­ing mythol­ogy, the inter­lac­ing of the “warp and the woof”, of the fem­i­nine and the mas­cu­line in ourselves…

      Reply
    • Burchard says:
      October 8, 2011 at 1:54 pm

      The pgaroan of under­stand­ing these issues is right here!

      Reply
  12. Chris Jones says:
    June 26, 2011 at 12:04 am

    Mar­ion,

    Another excel­lent post! But all this talk of home-made bread has made me hungry!

    I agree with you, I believe you’ve set a record for length. If not, you at least allowed me to set a new per­sonal best: ‘Longest blog I’ve read straight to the end’. Much here that I didn’t want to lose. So I vowed to cir­cle back and reply to as many points as pos­si­ble. I find I learn more that way, putting a lit­tle more of my own yeast or salt into the recipe to taste, hop­ing, of course, not to impede the baker!

    In this case, I’ll be look­ing through a fil­ter of how the idea of ‘shaped serendip­ity’ might show up in the work­place, and be inten­tion­ally influ­enced, per Mr. Hagel & Mr. Seely Brown.

    On the seman­tic aspect (always the best place to start!) — there is dan­ger of a tau­tol­ogy creep­ing in if we try to bring inten­tion to some­thing that is by def­i­n­i­tion unin­ten­tional. But I think we’re okay here, because it’s a sit­u­a­tion for oppor­tu­nity we’re shap­ing, not the serendip­i­tous occur­rence itself. Do you agree? Wal­pole (who coined the term) says to Mann in his let­ter “you can’t be look­ing for it” — but he doesn’t exclude efforts to open our minds and pay more atten­tion, which is your ref­er­ence to sagac­ity (‘keen dis­cern­ment’) or mind­ful­ness. In short, it’s about pay­ing atten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing around us, and watch­ing for the unex­pected insight.

    I like how you’ve pulled both Berg­son (Fr. philoso­pher, sorry I missed him in my Philoso­phers post!) and the Hagel/Seely-Brown dia­log together, to build on this idea of inten­tion, fus­ing ele­ments of pur­pose­ful immer­sion in oppor­tunis­tic places and times, hav­ing an open mind­set, and ulti­mately, being pre­pared to act.

    I think intu­ition, how­ever, is a fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent (and more com­plex) trig­ger than sim­ple mind­ful­ness or action. It sits at the cusp of (and some­times in advance of) clear recog­ni­tion that some­thing may be of value. We often react emo­tion­ally to a sit­u­a­tion that we think might yield ben­e­fit, or may, alter­na­tively, have a men­tal heuris­tic trig­ger that tells our reflex­ive selves to act imme­di­ately, based on instinct. I view intu­ition as the abil­ity of the human mind to do com­plex gyra­tions and break­neck speeds to map sen­sory pat­terns with expe­ri­ence and ‘sens­ing’ the right thing to do.

    Seems to me the triad of emo­tional forces, intu­itive sens­ing, and men­tal heuris­tics play pow­er­ful roles in our abil­ity to con­nect quickly (using our senses, focus­ing on top­ics, par­tic­i­pat­ing in con­ver­sa­tions, or engag­ing with peo­ple), which is the magic final stage in the serendip­ity process. It’s that key step that enables the unex­pected value to have a chance to get real­ized. No real­iza­tion (emo­tion, intu­ition, reflex, etc.), no serendipity.

    What you’re left with is just another missed oppor­tu­nity. And those, of course, hap­pen all the time.

    I think the strongest mes­sag­ing of your post came at the end — and so glad I was to have made it there! — when you sum­ma­rized the key stages of ‘cash­ing the serendip­ity check’ like this, para­phras­ing Berg­son and Hagel —

    — bias for trust
    — mind­ful­ness
    — dila­tion of focus
    — intu­ition (which I expanded to emo­tion, intu­ition and instinct)
    — action

    I actu­ally find this out­line par­al­lels well some work that’s being done on the topic of engage­ment, which, if you think about it, is the same idea in the con­text of lever­ag­ing serendip­i­tous human relations.

    If that con­nec­tion works — !?

    Let me attempt to extend your ideas in the work­place con­text, to talk about how orga­ni­za­tions can cre­ate ini­tial con­di­tions for more serendip­i­tous out­comes. I’ll fol­low the same out­line as yours —

    — fos­ter a cul­ture of trust
    — pri­or­i­tize and allo­cate time to the unplanned and unex­pected
    — give per­mis­sion and empower peo­ple to ‘run with ideas’
    — train/hire to acquire tal­ented thinkers and prob­lem solvers (“crit­i­cal thinkers”)
    — action (that one’s com­mon to both lists!)

    It’s really the same activ­i­ties you out­lined, but at a macro level and in the orga­ni­za­tional context.

    I’ll close with an obser­va­tion from a famous Amer­i­can who I believe spent a few of his hap­pi­est years in your neck of the woods (France), a few short cen­turies ago.

    “I’m a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it.“
    –Thomas Jef­fer­son

    Kind of puts a point on it all, which T.J. was usu­ally pretty good at doing. I hope this helps rein­force and amplify the core con­cepts a bit. Per­haps we can take these ideas fur­ther still. I can’t help but feel we’re still — as a soci­ety — leav­ing most of the oppor­tu­ni­ties on the table. Or to fol­low your metaphor, on the kitchen counter.

    Now, about that bread — is it about ready? It smells great, but I’m starving.

    See you online —

    Chris @sourcepov
    Char­lotte NC USA

    Reply
  13. Nilofer Merchant says:
    June 26, 2011 at 3:53 pm

    Mar­ion–
    So many good con­tri­bu­tions thus far cov­er­ing Tim Brown, John Hagel and Eliz­abert Gilbert. What more to add?

    So many peo­ple go to events and con­fer­ences but then hang with peo­ple they already know. How about we (even intro­verts like myself) find new peo­ple, and be curi­ous? I find it helps me so step out­side my own story…to see and hesr…their story, their per­spec­tive, their questions.…That seems to me, also, the key to a suc­cess­ful twit­ter expe­ri­ence. Curios­ity. I can learn, ask, explore, and be exposed to so many ideas just by notic­ing on twit­ter. It’s not just pub­lish­ing my ideas but to explore oth­ers’ … In all things, we can see what we have not yet seen.

    It is to say, I do yet know…and I am curi­ous. In my expe­ri­ence, this stance makes me for ever the novice, and open to see­ing with a begin­ners mind. Soci­ety as a whole does not seem to rein­force this. When I spend time being curi­ous and ask­ing ques­tions, I am not pro­mot­ing my know­ing­ness. I am show­ing my unknow­ing­ness, and in that, not focus­ing on impress­ing but on being present. I find peo­ple are some­times more con­cerned about being seen as smart rather than learn­ing what they do not yet understand…

    Inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion you’ve started.

    Nilofer

    Nilofer

    Reply
    • Chris Jones says:
      June 26, 2011 at 5:43 pm

      Great points, Nilofer. I made a quick leap from work­place to soci­ety in my post above, but you took the social aspect fur­ther, talk­ing about fac­tors (I’ll attribute them to cul­tural influ­ences) that pro­mote appear­ances and sta­tus and ‘look­ing good’ over a true, more valu­able pur­suit of insight.

      There’s a great book on this called “Mind­set” by Carol Dweck. She splits the world into two pre­vail­ing views

      Fixed — the world and our capa­bil­i­ties are lim­ited, so fight to keep what you have (Nilofer — I think this aligns your point, above)

      Growth — the world and our capa­bil­i­ties within it can be expanded, pro­vid­ing a foun­da­tional per­spec­tive for knowl­edge shar­ing and learning

      Agree, great con­ver­sa­tion. Much more to come -

      Chris

      Reply
    • admin says:
      June 26, 2011 at 9:16 pm

      Nilofer. I like the sim­plic­ity and hon­esty of your input.
      When I wrote this post, part of me wanted to “impress” (maybe even myself) and search for as many impli­ca­tions, mean­ings and inter­pre­ta­tions of this word. The Berg­son piece on intu­ition has still got my mind bub­bling and I’m not quite sure what he exactly meant. I just knew I wanted to make sense and con­nec­tions with the serendip­ity pat­tern.
      What I truly wanted to express was con­tained com­pletely in the image of this young happy girl knead­ing and in the two first para­graphs I wrote. The rest is mainly copied and pasted from every­thing that I read and absorbed, digested the best I could.
      Yet, I could not decide on leav­ing just the plain image and my lit­tle story. It didn’t look “smart” enough. :-)
      Let me just quote what you’ve just said and made a big impact on me:
      “I am show­ing my unknow­ing­ness, and in that, not focus­ing on impress­ing but on being present. I find peo­ple are some­times more con­cerned about being seen as smart rather than learn­ing what they do not yet under­stand…“
      Nice piece of advice, good reminder, Nilofer.
      Also read some­where , either at Cat­a­lystInc or one of the HBR stud­ies, (and I’m not going to search it to impress you :-) that women tend to ask much more open ques­tions dur­ing meet­ings, at the risk of show­ing their igno­rance. It also gives them an incred­i­ble free­dom, the free­dom of an out­sider.
      The novice. The begin­ners mind.
      Yes, the con­ver­sa­tion has just started…Many thanks for play­ing your part in the game with your nat­ural ease & gift of sim­plic­ity.
      Marion

      Reply
      • Helene Finidori says:
        June 27, 2011 at 9:29 am

        Nilofer, Mar­ion,

        It’s so won­der­ful to have a beginner’s mind, to feel like a child in a dis­cov­ery process… This is when you learn the most! When your ideas can col­lide and cre­ate sparks. Indeed Twit­ter, and any medium that don’t “box” peo­ple or ideas into pre­ex­ist­ing cat­e­gories are a per­fect medium for cross-pollination.

        In some forums peo­ple think I’m just a silly girl ask­ing dumb ques­tions… I’m old enough to take that a com­pli­ment :) I’ve been for­tu­nate enough to get some “train­ing” though, as I’ve had the oppor­tu­nity in the past fif­teen tears, to dis­cover new cul­tures and coun­tries every three to four years. In new envi­ron­ments you are bound to ask silly ques­tions and in a way you learn to get bolder at it… I don’t know why this reminds me of Rica and Usbek, and the “Let­tres Persanes”…

        Let’s con­tinue girls!

        Mar­ion, if intu­ition con­tin­ues to bub­ble in your mind, please make us some meringue!

        Reply
        • admin says:
          June 28, 2011 at 5:21 am

          Hélène,
          You made me laugh with your last sentence…Yes, I could surely make some meringue with my bub­bling mind! Lovely metaphor which is dear to my heart…
          Twit­ter as a cross-pollination facil­i­ta­tor, as a col­lide & spark of elec­tronic & fleshy ideas…Love it!
          Your ref­er­ence to Let­tres Per­sanes made me want to read it (I just stud­ied it while in high-school and didn’t grasp the true mean­ing then). So many nuggets of knowl­edge and learn­ing in lit­er­a­ture, in all forms of arts.
          When the dis­cus­sion opens on very dif­fer­ent lev­els, not only cog­ni­tive, intel­lec­tual, but also emo­tional, sen­sual, spir­i­tual, that’s when beau­ti­ful crazy shaped shiny Meringues can be baked!
          When do we meet for an inter­na­tional cook­ing, read­ing, knead­ing and weav­ing event? Oh oui, j’avais oublié!
          You already have cre­ated one, with Gath­er­ing 2011 in Aus­tralia! :-) )
          Maybe next time in our old Europe?
          Love to see com­ments inter­weav­ing with each other, tak­ing the con­ver­sa­tion from here to Twit­ter and back here and then tak­ing off in a flut­ter of feath­ers who knows where?

          Reply
  14. Brittany Laughlin says:
    June 27, 2011 at 12:19 am

    Great piece! I’ve never thought about the ori­gin of the word serendip­ity — very cool to learn more. I’ve often been lucky to find serendip­i­tous sit­u­a­tions. I travel a lot and there is noth­ing cooler than run­ning into an old friend in a small town, half-way around the world. This has hap­pened time and again and I feel very for­tu­nate for it. I was so fond of it, I actu­ally built a web app to help speed it up! I founded gtrot.com a year ago to find friends while on the road. [Didn’t mean for this to be a sales pitch] but it’s a great way to expe­ri­ence the world — with peo­ple you share some­thing in com­mon with.

    Reply
  15. Roy Atkinson says:
    June 28, 2011 at 12:48 am

    Mar­ion,
    Thanks for this expan­sive post. I have always agreed that oppor­tu­nity knocks once, but I also think that we can­not only be pre­pared to answer, but, if we knead the dough of serendip­ity, we can have cookies–and per­haps a lovely cup of tea–ready for opportunity.

    Reply
    • admin says:
      June 28, 2011 at 6:53 am

      Oh Roy!
      Not only a cup of tea, but also steam­ing hot choco­late, Ital­ian cof­fee and best fresh fruit juices flow­ing for our friends!
      Thank you for this lovely com­ment.
      When do you com for tea in France? :-)

      Reply

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  17. Jennifer Sertl says:
    June 29, 2011 at 2:57 am

    Mar­ion,

    While I have writ­ten Strat­egy, Lead­er­ship & the Soul-about inte­grat­ing self-awareness into busi­ness strat­egy. In your pres­ence I am always more aware of the gulf I “knead” to cross as I inte­grate my “life , life” with my pro­fes­sional life. Not only are your a Renais­sance woman with so much inte­gral knowl­edge– you are also so very full of life. I expe­ri­ence you as a Global host­ess with impec­ca­ble taste for peo­ple, wine & choco­late. How for­tu­nate I am to be included. And how much more fla­vor­ful my life is being infused with your raw pas­sion & com­pas­sion for all that makes us human, all too human.
    You teach me to con­nect with myself. For that I am for­ever grateful.

    Love,
    Jennifer

    Reply
  18. John Hagel says:
    June 30, 2011 at 1:15 am

    Mar­ion — A won­der­ful post as indi­cated by the extended and deep dis­cus­sion you have prompted. I have tweeted and Face­booked your post­ing to give it more exposure.

    The only thing I might add is that shap­ing serendip­ity requires us to go out of our com­fort zone, avoid­ing the temp­ta­tion to always hang out with the same peo­ple and explor­ing places that we have not been to before. It can involve very small choices like the choices we make every day on how tightly to sched­ule the day. If we are in back to back meet­ings, we leave very lit­tle oppor­tu­nity for serendip­ity to man­i­fest itself.

    Another choice that makes peo­ple uncom­fort­able is whether or not to share more pub­licly the prob­lems or chal­lenges we are wrestling with at the moment. If we did this, we might invite peo­ple to approach us who turn out to have inter­est­ing per­spec­tives, and per­haps even answers, to the prob­lems we are con­fronting even though we never knew these peo­ple existed. On the other hand, if we just focus on com­mu­ni­cat­ing our strengths and vic­to­ries, we limit the oppor­tu­nity to sur­face peo­ple who could actu­ally be very help­ful in our quest to improve our performance.

    Reply
    • admin says:
      July 19, 2011 at 4:19 pm

      John,
      It’s great to see your com­ment here since you were the one who inspired me to write this post.
      Get­ting out of our com­fort zone?
      I can only applaud and join you to explore that unknown zone of “Edge”, as you would call it.
      Over-achieving busi­ness peo­ple, espe­cially, might find it tough to ded­i­cate some “loose” time in their daily sched­ule.
      This notion of empty space like in paint­ing, of pause like in music, of quiet­ness and silent in our busy noisy lives is becom­ing almost manda­tory.
      The explo­ration of the spaces between the shapes, of moments of iddle­ness makes cre­ativ­ity pos­si­ble and gives serendip­ity a rich soil to grow.
      About shar­ing what makes us uncom­fort­able, the late events and posts I shared here prove you right. I never received such warm, sin­cere and strong sup­port as well as insights , than when I accepted to share my vul­ner­a­bil­ity and sense of being pow­er­less and lost. It has also given me clear focus on where I could stand, thus strenght­ened me.
      Your own last post on the para­dox of Trust demon­strates it beau­ti­fully.
      Many thanks for pass­ing by, John and you’re wel­come to come back when you please.
      Marion

      Reply

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