How Big Is Your Radar Screen?

HOW BIG IS YOUR RADAR SCREEN?

One third of a second

As March madness turns to thoughts of baseball, we are reminded of the game's poet laureate, Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, who said he "needed to think that something lasts forever. It might as well be that state of being that is a game, it might as well be that, in a green field, under the sun."

Of course in our world nothing lasts forever. In fact, nothing lasts a minute. Baseball itself is proof of that. If a pitcher throws at 95 miles per hour fastball, it takes a little more than 4/10ths of a second to leave his hand and cross the plate. Science has shown that the human mind and body can coordinate absolutely nothing in the first 1/10th of a second. So even counting anticipation, the batter has exactly one third of a second to meet the ball and drive it somewhere where they ain't-for a hit. Despite great odds, he is successful one time in every three or four chances. We have been doing this since the late 1800s.

We have trained ourselves to adapt to change, at an extraordinary pace. We train, practice, rehearse and react by instinct. We find shortcuts to everything. One such shortcut is omission.

The organizing principle of human relations

Omission has become the organizing principle of human relations. Politicians have been throwing curveballs longer than batters have been training to hit fastballs. In today's instant media exposure environment, they have gone one better. They don't even throw the ball. The motion is there, but the ball, the truth, is not. This has been refined to a fine art and we have all gotten pretty good at it. If you want something, the best way to play the game is to state your case in the most favorable light. Most often, that involves omitting some important bit of truth. But enough- this has been all about the pitcher. What about the catcher?

The radar screen

The message receiver today has a defense as well. It's called a radar screen. It goes up and automatically screens out what we don't want, before the game begins. The width and depth of the screen has a lot to do with what we allow in for consideration. We screen out advertising this way all the time. We screen out options this way when we build plans. We constantly screen out alternatives to save time and effort. We screen out people during the hiring process if they are off our radar screen. The all important radar screen is the message receiver's tool of omission. If you don't get on the screen before the game begins, you are not likely to get on it during the game. You lose. This shortcut does save time, but it is a contradiction to the basic nature of our business. Omission is not how the creative process works and the creative process is the root of our business.

The creative process

The creative process does everything but omit, at least in the beginning and even the middle stages. The creative process has the widest-angle lens possible feeding its radar screen. Oftentimes, its depth supplants the width of the lens. When the subconscious is allowed to help solve a problem, the creative product can be groundbreaking, original and entirely effective. If writers and art directors narrowed their radar screens the way the rest of us do, creativity would disappear from the dictionary.

So this is a plea. For the next plan you write or person you hire, try not to screen out the unfamiliar. Make room for a surprise.. Start sooner and then allow enough time to consider the broadest set of options and give your intuition a chance to work.