"Tron came true."

Mike Bonifer, a 21 Day Story co-founder and our Chief Creative Officer, was the publicist on Disney’s classic film, Tron. In his role at Disney, he was responsible for sharing stories with the media about how computers and video games were going to change the way we experience the world, and how Tron represented that change. Mike wrote the book, The Art of Tron, and produced a weirdly cool TV documentary, Computers Are People, Too, about computers and the arts, which was released in conjunction with the film, and which he recently learned has a cult following.

“Tron came true.”
 

When it comes to a pandemically-changed world, that’s about as simply as I can describe our new work environments — a quote by my friend Steven Lisberger, who conceived and directed the legendary motion picture Tron.
 

Tron tells a story about a video game designer, Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges, who works for a company called ENCOM. When he tries to recover files for games he designed for ENCOM, he gets digitized into a virtual world. (Sound familiar, fellow Zoomers?)

Image copyright: Walt Disney Company, The Art of Tron by Michael Bonifer

And what does Flynn encounter in this virtual world? Digital versions of every damn thing from the physical world! Same problems, same characters, only now in virtual space! Office cubicles virtualized as a game grid. Security represented by giant oversight drones called Recognizers. The ENCOM corporation that employs Flynn represented by a Master Control Program feared even by its crooked CEO, whose avatar is a hooded villain named Sark.

Tron came true, and what does it tell us about our pandemically-changed workplaces? Our biggest challenges will come from digitized versions of the old status quo that preserve the way things were done in the past. Same damn problems and characters, only now in virtual space! Meetings still cursed by dominant narratives. Status games. Hierarchical processes. Exclusionary tactics. And anyone who, like Flynn, bucks the status quo, scheduled for termination on the game grid.

Image copyright: Walt Disney Company, The Art of Tron by Michael Bonifer

After recently conducting a 21 Day Story sprint with 49 leaders in business and academia from around the world, we can see a generation of leaders who do not want a return to the past in any form, digital or otherwise. Instead, they envision a future built on a more empathetic and inclusive form of leadership.

One leader urged a new call-to-action, “Start every meeting with centering and gratitude.” That sounds different from the way meetings used to begin, with everyone waiting for the highest-status person to be the last one to arrive — often late, unfocused, and ungrateful. Maybe virtual meetings can improve on that.

Image copyright: Walt Disney Company, The Art of Tron by Michael Bonifer

Another aspect of the future our 49 leaders envision is that it will require experimentation for a new world to reveal itself.

“Support an element of play in any explorations of new ideas. This helps to create ‘safe space’ for genuinely new ideas to arise," said one of the leaders.

“We have to make it okay to try new things and fail," said another.

While the group of leaders didn't propose to predict the future, they are clearly intentional about one thing, whatever the future will be, it must be held in different containers — virtual, physical, and hybrids of the two — to liberate us from what contained us in the past.
 

Just because Tron came true, doesn’t make it a prediction. It’s more of a template for how to design and enact virtual worlds that set aside old status quo behaviors to enable fresh connections, reveal new ideas, grow communities, and make new worlds possible.

Image copyright: Walt Disney Company, The Art of Tron by Michael Bonifer

21 Day Story can help you and your teams avoid digitizing status-quo. We offer a new way for a new world. Our virtual sprints empower diverse and distributed teams for times such as these — our framework, powered by principles in Agile and Story, guides teams through structured problem-solving activities over the course of a virtual sprint. Sprints resolve to a co-created plan of action.

Let's build better worlds together — contact us now!