The Adjacent Possible

Tiny tweaks one after the other that make all the difference.

Kurt retrained as a life coach. A year after he finished the very expensive “Become A Life Coach And Get Clients. Fast!” course he was mainly working in his friend’s restaurant. Turns out the clients hadn’t been that fast, or paid that well.

Sadie became a social media expert and, after moonlighting a bit for small local businesses, picked up enough clients to quit her job and work for herself from home.

Both Kurt and Sadie worked in advertising.

Sadie leveraged the ADJACENT POSSIBLE. She did something for herself that she was already doing at work — she leveraged her knowledge, skills, and experience.

Kurt didn’t. That’s why he’s waiting tables and trying to get back into advertising.

The Adjacent Possible — one of the most powerful ways to innovate at work, and to help you change your own life for the better. To create the ADJACENT REMARKABLE. But let’s talk about the idea of the Adjacent Possible first.

Tiny tweaks. A flower was that brighter shade of yellow compared with its neighbours. The bees preferred it. So it was number 1 in the pollination stakes, reproducing more than the slightly duller flowers. So it created more slightly brighter yellow flower offspring, and so on. The yellow flowers thrive, and the less bright ones don’t. A bit like Sadie and Kurt.

The Adjacent Possible are all the new ideas connected to an existing idea. Once most people owned cars. At some point in the near future most people will rent or have shared ownership. Of a car that drives itself. Bet the big motor manufacturers didn’t see that one coming.

The Adjacent Possible has been described as “a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.”

The Adjacent Possible are all the ways that you can start from where you are and tweak things to get to a better place. Many won’t work but some will. Then you can tweak them again, and see what happens next. And so on.

The Adjacent Possible has a major major benefit at work and in your life.

It reduces RISK.

Sadie worked on her own clients in the time she gained from not watching “Game of Thrones”. She kept her day job until her experiment in the Adjacent Possible of working for herself was paying enough to make it her full time job.

Kurt jacked it all in, blew loads of money on a course, and is now being nice to you to get a bigger tip.

The ADJACENT REMARKABLE. Life is rarely about the grand gesture, the trip of a lifetime, the big shift. Those things rarely happens. What could happen more often is that you encourage your co-workers next payday to go out for lunch. Maybe to that restaurant where that nice young man works. Not much but it’ll make that day a little more remarkable.

If you want to change your life or your business, start where you are now and imagine the short leaps you could take. The ones with minimal risk that you could try quickly and easily. That one work? Then take another short leap, and see what happens. In no time you’ll find yourself in a more creative, more differentiated, and happier place. Whether that’s with better products more people want, or doing what you want for a living, rather than what you have to do to pay the bills.

All because you experimented with the Adjacent Possible.

— 
If you’ve enjoyed this post, please share it.
Read all my posts at zombietoremarkable.com/blog
#IAmRemarkable #BeRemarkable

#adjacentpossible