Hi Pete,

I echo your thoughts on the ‘flow’ in the context of for. One of the things that Bruce and I discussed early on, when we started to talk about the possibility of the Fit Forum, was a belief in the emergence of some-’thing’ that we come to know as ‘fit’. It could be said that what we actually experience is a constant process of changing ‘fit’, as we self-organize consciously and unconsciously around one another.

I would agree that transforming relationships is possible, and that in turns leads you back to the intention and intentionality that the parties come with. To take your example of Jobs & Sculley, that would appear to suggest that the ‘fit’ that was supposedly there was either misinterpreted, and/or in the desire to make the union work (like the classic M&A metaphor) differences in the Bride & Groom were ignored in the hurry to jump into bed with one another. What we do not know the extent to which the ‘mis’-fit was around motive and goal at a business/strategy level, as opposed to their lived experience of eachother.

Hope you can join us tomorrow.

Steve

The process she suggests is, I think, quite straightforward. What I find so encouraging about her view is that she seems to imply that unlike a static situation where two people either fit together or don’t, she suggests that by adopting certain ways of communicating, and in particular stepping outside the relationship to get a meta-level view of it, relationships can be transformed.

She gives the example of Steve Jobs and John Sculley as one where the original appearance of “fit” quickly broke down under pressure.

But my reading from her other case-studies is that it is possible to transform a relationship to a positive one even where some might say at first analysis that there isn’t good fit.

Pete

I haven’t read the book myself, not sure if Steve has though…

That said, I’d certainly see fit as being more dynamic than static in terms of the time perspective one adopts. Single moments in time *might* be subject to a binary view of fit, although including more granularity is likely to appeal to all concerned.

Given multiple data points in time, there is no doubt that fit flows and is much more dynamic. That said, understanding understanding McLain Smith’s process would be good too.

Can you shed any light on this at all?

The reason I raise this is because for me, her book shows that there is a flowing, moving, developing process around “fit”.

Sometimes when I hear the term “fit” it sounds a little like a static thing – like jigsaw pieces fitting together.

Pete