The Magic of Fire

It felt late at night, I glanced at my watch to discover that it was only 8:47pm. There was something magical about fire…how it soothes one's soul, warms one's heart and calms one's mind. While it seemed as though I'd been staring into its playful rhythm for hours on end…barely 10 minutes had passed. It was a cold still night, and earlier I'd decided to build a nice campfire to lift my spirits following on from the past couple of days. This trip was supposed to be my chance to get away from it all and enrich myself with the basics, experiencing nature and eating simple food. Instead, I'd spent two days enduring some fierce weather that involved gale force winds, horizontal rain and less than ideal temperatures. Having endured all that mother nature could throw at me, it felt natural to want to enrich my experience by building a fire.

A task I normally take for granted, turned out to be a challenge that I hadn't anticipated. What is normally as easy as striking a match was now being hindered by the environment, a cold, wet and overall unpleasant campsite. I couldn't help but get annoyed with myself as I brought this suffering into my world. As it happened, the holiday I was seeking turned into the challenge that preventing me from experiencing the nourishment that I thought I so desperately needed. How is it that my planned escape from reality would unearth a new level of suffering when I was meant to be enjoying myself?.... Wrong question! At that point, I realised, by questioning why I wasn't enjoying myself I was becoming a victim of the situation, held hostage to the weather. I could only blame myself which ultimately, led me to more suffering. The better question to ask myself turned out to be far simpler. I was bloody cold, my socks were wet and I was getting more depressed by the minute. I really needed to make a fire…but it seemed hopeless. The right question was "Based on this crappy situation where all the kindling is wet and I have no dry wood, how do I get a bloody fire started?" It was at this point…at the threshold of giving up that it clicked for me. I discovered the magic of fire…..even in the absence of a flame.

"The right question was "Based on this crappy situation where all the kindling is wet and I have no dry wood, how do I get a bloody fire started?" It was at this point…at the threshold of giving up that it clicked for me. I discovered the magic of fire…..even in the absence of a flame."

After gorging myself with toasted marshmallows and hot chocolate the night before, I emerge from my not so dry tent to a smouldering pile of ash with no wood to get the fire started again. The reality was, my environment was constantly shifting and there was a rhythm within the complexity of the shift. Once I'd been camping for a week, I finally got into the discipline of searching for wood the day before I needed it, knowing that I'd be able to capitalise on the hot embers from the previous night in order to build up the fire again the following day. My focus had now shifted from creating fire to one of sustaining fire.

A fire has the power to mesmerize the most active mind and inspire hope in those that feel demoralised. The challenge to get a fire started is fuelled by anticipation of what that fire will create for you. I'd argue that one of the most powerful skills a person can ever learn is how to generate a fire both literally and figuratively. It is a fire that provides us with warmth, the ability to cook our food and provide light for us to see. Regardless of what is happening around you, a fire has an uncanny ability to bring people together in a way that encourages friendship and collaboration.

My experience got me thinking about organisational culture and more specifically, how we create that same magic that fire inspires in a business context.

Most organisational change stories can be linked back to a visionary CEO that paved we way through great leadership and a relentless focus on people. Unfortunately, like in the academic world, we don't ever hear about the many hundreds of unsuccessful experiments that never got published but simply hear about the one or two success stories that gain notoriety. Similarly, in the right conditions, the simple flick of a match can set fire to a blaze that can burn brilliantly without much effort whatsoever. The Australian bushland is notorious for its catastrophic bush fires that can even be a result of a rogue lightning strike.

 In contrast, a deliberate and orchestrated change in culture is all too often met with an insurmountable brick wall that further reinforces that change is hard, not for the faint-hearted, fails more often than it succeeds and for most…can't really be changed despite what all the culture change specialists tell us. Culture evolution on the other hand (non-deliberate) simply represents reality, the very nature of how we and the organisation as a system operate. It will change and must change…. regardless of how deliberately we direct or sculpt the shift. The distinction here is that the culture of an organisation is always changing whether we like it or not. The issue with traditional culture change is that it follows a linear ( from x to y, time 1 to time 2) change process for something that is constantly changing anyway. Simply put, if you know it's about to rain do you wash your car? If you're about to move to a new house would you change the layout of your bedroom? If your organisation is about to go through a restructure do you pull everyone together for a team building offsite?

Back to my analogy of fire……too often, culture is limited to a discussion that revolves around the immediate environment and what you get from it…be it experience or tangible "stuff". My desk, my fruit, my massage fairies, my manager, my team, my tasks, my car space, my salary, my processes, my systems…and the list goes on. How we currently conceptualise culture and the change we aspire to create is very much about what people "get" as a result of the change. WIIFM is the approach that most consultancies and HR practitioners use to determine if people are going to jump on board the rusty old change bus they so religiously keep refuelling year after year. The reality is, the sooner that we see the environment as something that either fuels or hinders our culture, the better. In order to create something sustainable, the environment (emotional and physical) needs to be recognised as:

• Constantly in a state of flux and change so nothing stays the same

• A critical factor that influences my mindset, behaviour, and success

• Something that is within my control to enhance

When camping, fire is an essential ingredient to ensure that one returns home feeling fully rejuvenated. Ever tried camping in the rain? More specifically, ever tried lighting a fire when you are camping and it just so happens to be raining? Yeah……not the most fun you've had I'm sure. What's more, is the need for fire when it's raining is so much greater. You are most likely wet and cold and can't find any dry wood….so it's hard to get that first spark going. Even if you do happen to get a flame going, keeping it going is even harder!

Applying this thinking within organisations, we are only ever setting camp up temporarily (ok so I'm sure there are a few ‘lifers' out there challenging this notion, but for most, they join an organisation knowing that it's not forever). We know it's going to be an experience, we know we need to generate a fire and we know we will need to take our constantly changing environment into consideration in order to do so. We also know if we depend on anyone else to build a fire for us or expect that it's already going to be lit and sustained before we get to camp…..we may have made some pretty poor assumptions.

"We also know if we depend on anyone else to build a fire for us or expect that it's already going to be lit and sustained before we get to camp…..we may have made some pretty poor assumptions."

The truth is, before you build a fire, you need to survey the environment when you arrive. Often, we have an idea of what the environment is like but when we finally arrive at our destination, we see it for what it is. Are you experiencing a cold, wet, dark, windy campsite that is positioned smack bang on top of a smelly quagmire? If so, you know that starting a fire is 1) super important and 2) bloody difficult. The first thing you need to do is think about how you can increase your chances of being successful in getting the fire started because another certainty is that anyone else on the campsite is going to be facing the same challenges.

While fire certainly feels magic….there are some tangible steps you can take to build one.

• Step 1- Build a shelter: It doesn't need to be grand, but you do need somewhere that you can get out of the elements and enable yourself to start the process of creating a fire.
• Step 2- Gather some fuel: You need the fuel to get a fire cranking ready to go. Ideally, this is as dry as possible and starting with small kindling, increases incrementally as the fire increases in size.
• Step 3- Create a spark to get things cranking: The first spark is the hardest and will need fine attention to detail to ensure that it takes. This takes perseverance and patients when facing off against the elements. As painful as it is, you can't skip past this step and come back to it later.
• Step 4- Build it up and sustain: Now that you've got a good flame going, you need to carefully stack the wood on (without smothering it) to ensure that it builds up to the desired intensity. It's easy to get carried away at this stage and overdo it….either burning through all of your fuel unsustainably or snuffing it out completely.
• Step 5- Sit back and bask in the magic: Once you've got it cranking and found a rhythm and balance for the amount of fuel you need to keep feeding it, you can sit back relax and bust out the marshmallows. It's time to bask in the warmth that it throws offs, stare into the endless complexity and predictable unpredictability of the flames, share stories, laugh, engage and ultimately nourish yourself.

Rather than seeing the responsibility of culture as an HR thing or something that the CEO has to drive, think of culture as a whole group of people collectively taking responsibility for their own campsite, knowing full well that if they don't take the necessary steps to ensure they can build a fire in their current environment, they are likely going to get cold, have no light and nothing to eat. Having said all of that, if someone is in despair, there is usually a few free spots around the campfire for those in need. It takes nothing away from the fire to have an extra person experience its warmth.

My challenge to you…..take a look right now at your environment. What's the lay of the land….is there a storm coming? Are you experiencing a considerably frosty winter? Or is the environment more like the Australian bushland in the middle of January, hot dry and ready to burn? Regardless, you need to take the necessary steps to identify what it will take for you to understand your current situation, search for the necessary fuel and shelter, create the spark that takes you from the hope of generating fire to the reality of sustaining the level of light and warmth that you need. This is not a set-and-forget exercise but something that you need to adopt as part of your daily discipline. If you don't continually monitor your fire, you'll either end up burnt or your fire will simply flare up and go out.