#ThinkfullyHabit: Improvise
Sometimes the tried and tested responses and the ‘typical’ ways don’t work. There are times when loosening the reins on your existing habits and established ideas are essential, particularly in fast moving and changeable environments. Sticking to the 'usual' plan may be the worst thing you can do. Sometimes a new idea that crops up is exactly the right idea to follow. Getting ready to improvise is about getting ready to reinvent new combinations from what you already have or know. And sometimes it can even be a life saver.
“One of the things I learned from improvising is that all of life is an improvisation, whether you like it or not. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century came out of people dropping things. ”
WHY?
On 5th August 1949 a forest fire started to spread in the mountains of Montana in a place called Mann Gulch. The forest service sent fifteen specially trained wilderness fire fighters to tackle it. The standard approach at the time, was to starve fires by simply digging away and removing all things that could burn within its perimeter. The crew arrived at the opposite side of the ravine to where the fire was burning. It looked like a typical and manageable fire and they started to head towards it to start using their shovels to dig out the ground around it. However, the crew foreman, Wagner Dodge, spotted that the fire had suddenly jumped across the ravine and was starting to spread uphill towards them. They had been heading towards the fire, now it was heading for them.
Wagner Dodge yelled at the crew to turn around and run from the fire. However, he soon realised they wouldn’t be fast enough. He estimated that the fire was going to hit them in about 30 seconds. He did something no firefighter had ever done, seen, or heard about before. He stopped running. He took out his matches and started to toss lit matches into the patch of grass surrounding him. The rest of the crew thought he’d gone mad. Why stop? Why light another fire? His behaviour made no sense. He shouted at them to come and join him, but they continued to run upwards. When the main fire hit, it parted around Wagner Dodge who remained unharmed, and afterwards he walked out of the ashes. Amazingly, two of the crew managed to outrun the fire up to the ridge, but the rest perished as they tried. It was improvising that kept Wagner Dodge alive. In that moment, to escape the fire, he actually started a fire. It's hard to imagine now, but at the time this strategy had never before been conceived, taught or trained. Dodge had used a brand new tactic. He used his knowledge to quickly bring existing ideas together in a new way - he knew how fires behaved, he knew about the principle of starving a fire and he knew that he had matches at his disposal.
When you’re in unpredictable and complex situations, it’s being ready to improvise with what you already have that can make the difference. You don’t need extreme situations to force you to improvise, you simply need to work out what component pieces you have available and then explore what new options emerge if you re-arrange them in different ways. Improvising to make new combinations from existing ideas can lead to sudden and spontaneous breakthroughs.