I’m an adventurer at heart. I’m comfortable in big cities of the World, but it’s fair to say that the outdoors are my second home.

People who aren’t adventurers, think adventurers must be miserable. And never content with what they have. My view, and I know I don’t necessarily speak for other adventurers, is that adventurers do appreciate the novel and the familiar. We love our families and our friends. So much so that we try to make both groups bigger. We invite others to make new adventures with us. If we’re wise, we accept it, when they don’t necessarily say yes.

The spouses and children of military or emergency services workers, come to accept that part of what makes their father or mother that military or emergency services person, isn’t to get away from those they love. Instead, it’s a deep-seated part of the adventurer’s life to do other things. For their country, for their community, for themselves.

In the last few years, I feel lucky enough to have walked a novel path along the flexibility (FL) journey. Like those who travel to experience other cultures. What I can say is that the further I’ve travelled on the FL journey, the more I’ve found out about flexibility that there is to be discovered, made sense of and described to others who might be interested.

I discovered soon after I started along the FL journey, that it seems to come in two types, twice over. There is business flexibility (BFL) and personal flexibility (PFL). There is also mental and physical flexibility.

I also quickly came to the realisation that flexibility is like maths for an engineer. Language for a lawyer. Health and strength for an athlete. Or a Swiss Army knife for the army and civilian alike. In other words, it’s a useful toolkit to solve multiple problems. Ones that relate to (personal) growth and uncertainty (resilience & risk management) especially. Hopefully, lots of other people have come to, or are coming to this realisation too.

It follows that flexibility thinking is about how you use the FL toolkit. FL thinking can help you get out of a rut. To bypass an impasse. Or to redirect a moving vehicle away from driving over the cliff edge.

By getting into the habit of consciously practising personal flexibility (PFL), it can help you in business. And visa versa. Because many of today’s problems are complex, because the costs of complexity are high, because markets are complex and because bureaucracy often gets in the way of well-intentioned growth, we need to move from not using flexibility or flexibility thinking. To instead use both FL and FL thinking together to solve problems.

Lastly, this collection of blogs concentrates on flexibility in its various forms & applications. Just like with a multi-page food menu at a restaurant, if you’re hungry every day and you like to explore new choices, the ‘flexibility menu’ of these blogs, ought to help.

Simon