Match Ready Life
A new corporate buzzword is agility – we are supposed to be agile in all our dealings. In a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) we are invited to understand our only footing is through our ability to be adaptable and agile. To a certain extent, what we are seeking is balance of some sort, and on constant pitching deck, this is challenging.
In Werner Herzog’s documentary, “Happy People: A Year in the Taiga” (2010) he follows lives of the indigenous people in the village of Bakhtia along the Yenisei river. The movie follows the course of seasons, the descent of harsh winters and the volatility of survival in savage conditions. One story follows that of a trapper, who follows the thaw north. At each camp where he stops, he has shelter set up: a simple hut that he has thoughtfully stocked. At each encampment, he spends a few weeks trapping and hunting. He stores his furs, replenishes his supplies, and leaves a fire, ready to be lit with one match. He leaves each of these primitive camps stocked and restored and ready for his return.
As the thaw continues, he makes his way to his northern most encampment. By the time he gets there, he has reached the outer-limit of the season and it is time to head back south. This time, as he makes his way south, he returns to each one of his camps. As the weather catches up to him, he has what he needs at each cabin. There is wood; there is water; he retrieves the bounty he stored from when he was last there. As he outraces winter, he returns each cabin to be “match ready.” A fire is laid; food is stored; the basics of survival are left behind. In this way, he returns to his village at the conclusion of hunting season with a full season’s worth of furs, and he is ready to wait out the winter again in Bakhtia.
The beauty and economy of his motions are borne of years of living in his own version of a VUCA world. These traditions that are ancient, and rooted in some timely wisdom. This got me to thinking about living a “match ready” life. How does this ripple outward into life in a modern world, one rife with turbulence and change? How do we live a match ready life?
In the world of work, this translates to rooting through your own toolkit and finding the tools you need to live a match ready life. This is more than being agile and adaptable, this is living life with the wisdom that change will happen. Forget about “Winter is Coming”-- winter is here.
Living a match ready life requires the creativity to anticipate the very basics needed for survival. So think about what’s in your toolkit. How have you expanded your network? What pockets of oxygen and mini-encampments have you set up in your world? How are you set up to travel just ahead of turbulence? How will you care for others?
Sorting through our own basic needs and determining what is essential to get by helps us find the balance we need – not based in scarcity, but the abundance that comes from planning far enough ahead to have multiple options, many encampments.
For some of us, this means having the adaptability to build encampments among people: when things turn harsh, where do we turn? How do we “light the match” we need to keep us all adaptable and with “just enough” to weather the storm? How do we leave these encampments behind for others who might get stuck in a storm?
Agility comes in many forms. Recognizing what you truly need and anticipating how to meet that need comes hand in hand with living a match ready life. It takes some thinking to get to the root of what are your basic needs to get by. It comes from being rooted in the fact that your own scenario planning is also deeply meshed with creating wins for others and helping those around you.
Here’s to economy, principles, and realizing that at the very root of our nature is the need to create options, not only for yourself, but for those in your circle as well. And that’s the really neat thing about circles – they expand outward. If more of us live a match ready life, that’s an awful lot of cabins in a lot of different places, ready for whatever storm finds us.