Effectuation = Life (Or At Least, How to Make Things Happen)

In response to Sara Whiffen’s workshop this morning on effectuation, I thought I’d expound a little more on this juicy latinate word and why I think it holds some crucial secrets for how to be a person.

Effectuare, in Latin, just means ‘to cause to happen.’ That’s what we’re working with, and ultimately what we’re doing here: making our ventures happen, making the little things that make our ventures happen also happen, and making life happen along the way and as a result of all of this. (Recall Rick Kulow’s emphasis that this entrepreneurship thing is a really holistic adventure.)

This morning, I sat with three of the Delta group members—Audrey of Imbibe fame, Venductivity’s one and only Ben Chen, and Payam of Agrospheres—and together we plotted our goals, tangible assets, intangible assets, and excess/waste inventories on the board. Admittedly, I only kind of participated since I don’t have a venture (yet…), but still found myself thinking about how all of this applies to creating a life.

Which, it turns out, was actually what Whiffen seemed to be emphasizing: that life itself and effectual thinking go hand-in-hand.

Once our group had covered the board in sticky notes representing our means, Whiffen came over to see what we had written. And after taking a look, she told us not just to consider the means we had in “business” or what we thought of as business. She wanted us to consider items that came from the realm of “life” (because really, there are no separate realms). Things like relationships, houses, or skills we had that we thought had nothing to do with “business.”

In reality, our means are even greater than we think. And when we take all of them--everything we have and know and are--into account, who can say what kind of good and even gorgeous goals we’ll come up with?

The last thing I’ll say is something I thought she did amazingly well: which was to get us, as best she could, to actually do something. (As it turns out, you can’t make things happen—in the entrepreneurial world or in life—without getting out of the building and doing something.) So she gave us the “Ask” piece of homework, that could include action points as diverse and open-ended as asking someone to marry you. And on Tuesday, we'll have to actually give a reckoning of how that went. (Woof.)

For someone who’s as prone to overthinking as I am, this effectuation stuff is good, empowering medicine.