Act As If

What do you do when you don't know what to do?

Happens alot, actually.  You're in a meeting and people are floundering, the project has stopped, key input hasn't arrived. Resources are dwindling, and pressure is rising.  And the moment that you know is coming, arrives.

Everyone looks up, simultaneously, and stares at - YOU.

You're the go-to guy, the girl with the answers.  Except you aren't, because you can't, or don't want to, or don't have any.  At this exact moment you wish everyone would just figure it out for themselves. You want to indulge your little itty bitsy 6 year old, and just throw a wild tantrum on the conference table.

But you don't, because you can't.

And you do what you always do, make a few suggestions, get people unstuck from the rigidity of their positions, and mostly hope that no one knows that you pulled a "PIOOMA-MIU." (For those of you in the dark about this phrase, it stands for, 'pulled it out of my ass, made it up.'  It sounds Hawaiian when you pronounce it:  PIE - u - ma, MY - U.  Cool, huh?)

Instead of seeing it as a 'wing it' situation, see it as an opportunity to 'act as if'.  Act as if you knew the answer, as if the next course direction is assured, act as if innovation and creativity do in fact lead to greatness.  Step into the shoes of the Wright Brothers, the Gates garage gang, the 3M scientist inventor of sticky notes. 

They did what was required, what was needed, what made sense.  In the process they created something out of nothing.  Acting as if, beats the heck out of the alternative, and might actually create the ground work for a new culture, a creative culture. 

And wouldn't that be a cool place to go to work everyday?