When You Lose the Coordinates

I had a dream recently that has stayed with me because ofone striking detail. I was teaching an evening class at a university indowntown San Francisco. It was late, perhaps 9:15, and the class was scheduledto run until 10 or 11. I decided to take a break and left the building.Somehow, I ended up on a bicycle. When I tried to return, I could not rememberhow to get back. I could not recall the address, and I could not reconstructthe route. I knew the university well enough to be teaching there, yet I wassuddenly riding around San Francisco unable to locate it.

The experience went well beyond confusion. I felt dejectedand increasingly worried. I remember thinking that I was cooked. Even if Ieventually found the building, it would probably be closed. The class would beover. Then I began wondering how I would get home. Home, in the dream, wasPleasanton. I have not lived there for years, but it is the place where I livedlonger than anywhere else, and my mind apparently still carries it as one ofits deepest definitions of home. In the dream, Pleasanton felt very far away.

I asked several people for directions and got nowhere.Eventually, I encountered a group of Latino people who were hanging outtogether. A little boy in a blue shirt, with an extraordinarily bright smile,seemed to understand what I was looking for.

He gave me the exact street address.

He could not speak enough English to explain much more, sohe directed me to an older man in the group. The man confirmed the address, andI knew immediately that it was right. I found my way back to the university. Igot back to base. What I remember most clearly at the end of the dream is therelief. I had been lost, but I was able to return.

Losing Access to WhatWe Know

People get lost in dreams all the time. What has stayed withme is that I had forgotten something I actually knew. My dreaming mind knew theuniversity's address because it eventually supplied it with precision. At thesame time, the version of me moving through the dream could not retrieve it.That distinction seems important. There is a difference between no longerknowing something and being temporarily unable to access what we know.

Most experienced people recognize some version of this. Wecan understand a situation and possess years of relevant experience. We canstill reach a moment when the next step becomes surprisingly difficult to see.The experience can be especially unsettling when others depend on ourcompetence. In the dream, I began inside that familiar role as the professorteaching the class. Then I stepped outside the building and became the personwho needed directions. Nothing had happened to my qualifications or experience.I simply could not find the way back.

Movement Is Not theSame as Direction

The bicycle also seems worth noticing. I was not stranded. Icould move, and I had a means of continuing to travel through the city. What Ilacked was orientation.

Organizations often confuse those conditions. A great dealof movement can occur without clarity about direction. People attend meetingsand complete tasks. They respond to requests and launch initiatives. Directionrequires something different. People need enough clarity to understand wherethey are trying to go and how current activity relates to that destination.They also need to know what to do when the familiar route no longer works.

The distinction becomes especially important when demandsmultiply or familiar cues disappear. Capable people can continue moving whileprivately becoming less certain about where the movement leads. In the dream,pedaling harder would not have solved the problem. I needed coordinates.

When the Person Withthe Answer Is Unexpected

I also keep returning to the little boy. Several adults hadbeen unable to help me. Then a child, someone with no apparent authority in thesituation, knew exactly what I needed.

The detail matters because organizations make assumptionsabout where useful knowledge will be found. We look toward formal authority andseniority. We look toward credentials and established influence. Those sourcesmatter, but they do not contain all of the knowledge available to anorganization. People closest to the work often see things senior leaderscannot. Someone with little positional authority may understand the customer orthe process better than the person responsible for the decision.

Encouraging people to speak is only part of the challenge.Leaders also need enough openness to recognize useful knowledge when it arrivesfrom an unexpected source. The boy in my dream did not appear to be the personmost likely to know how to return a professor to his university. He was theperson who knew.

Knowledge SometimesNeeds Translation

The boy also could not fully explain the answer to me. HisEnglish was limited, so he referred me to an older man who confirmed what hehad already provided. That sequence resembles something I have seen repeatedlyin organizations. A person can recognize an important condition without havingthe language or the confidence required to make the observation persuasive.Someone else may then help interpret or validate what was already present.

Leaders can miss useful information when they expect insightto arrive in polished form. Others hesitate, or they explain an issue throughdetails that initially seem peripheral. The quality of the presentation and thequality of the underlying information are not always the same. In my dream, theolder man did not originate the answer. He helped me trust and use it.

The Meaning of Home

Pleasanton introduced another dimension that I did not fullyappreciate until after waking. I have lived in other places since then, yet thedream identified Pleasanton as home without hesitation. It was simply where Ibelieved I belonged once I had finished what I needed to do.

Long experience creates these internal reference points.Some are places. Others are relationships and communities. Still others arevalues and routines. A few are simply the long-held ways we understandourselves. They provide orientation even when we do not think consciously aboutthem. They remind us where we belong and help us recognize ourselves when theimmediate surroundings become confusing.

The dream did not explain why Pleasanton appeared, and I amnot sure dreams need to. What it did was remind me that before I could thinkabout getting home, I needed to find my way back to base.

Finding theCoordinates Again

The ending may be the most important part. I was not leftwandering through San Francisco. I found someone who knew the address, and hadit confirmed before I returned. That is why the dream strikes me as one aboutrecovering orientation more than about being lost.

There are periods when capable people lose access to thecertainty they once relied upon. They may question their judgment or struggleto retrieve something they ordinarily know. It is easy to mistake thatuncertainty for evidence that something has been lost. Experience does notdisappear because it becomes temporarily difficult to access. The knowledge andjudgment remain, even when the route back to them is briefly obscured.

Sometimes the most useful response to disorientation isremarkably ordinary. Stop assuming you should already know, and ask someone.Pay attention to an answer that comes from an unexpected place, even whenanother person has to help you translate it. Then begin moving again.

I woke from the dream with a vivid memory of being lost, butan even stronger memory of the moment when the address became available again.

Theaddress had been there all along.

I had notlost the destination. For a while, I had simply lost the coordinates.

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