It's a Fake New Year

I recently learned that back in the days of the ancient Romans, the year was divided into ten months, and the new year began in March. This ancient decimal calendar is why some months like October (octō is latin for eight), November (novem, nine), and December (you get it by now) are labeled as such - to reflect their position in a ten-month system.

Although this system was working pretty well for a long time, in 153 BCE the empire needed to appoint some people to manage a revolt in Spain, and could not wait for the traditional start of the year so, the “New Year” date was shifted up a few months to January 1st.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, the New Year was being celebrated on vastly different dates. For example, England celebrated the start of the year on March 25th, while in France, the year began on Easter, and Russia historically recognized the beginning of the year in September.

It wasn’t until the standardization of the Gregorian calendar in the 1750s (triggered by an increase in travel and trade) that the January 1st date, that was just kind of “invented” for administrative convenience by the Romans, became a global standard.

Now, maybe you’re thinking: cool, but what does this story, and the Romans, have to do with entrepreneurship?

Well… if something as conventional as the first day of the new year was just arbitrarily invented, we probably need to start reflecting on everything else that we assume is meaningful, but might be based on some guys in tunics calling the shots.

In the last post, I talked about why breaking down bias is essential to innovation, and as we embark into a “fake new year”, if you’ll share a few minutes of your time with me over the nexts few months, I’m going to lean into this and help you become a more adaptive and reflexively-grounded entrepreneur. Specifically, we are going to learn about and draw some relevant entrepreneurial-practice connections to the following:

1. How language (discourse) informs the possibilities that are available to us. By language, I don’t just mean phrasing when it comes to communication between our teams and giving feedback, but the real power behind the language we use.

2. Why culture might not actually eat strategy for breakfast, and what potential is being under-stimulated from our current ideas about what culture “is” in and outside of our workplace.

3. Finally, my favourite and the culmination of the last four years of my PhD - identity, change and the stories we tell ourselves.

   
   

I hope you’ll join me?! Until the next time,

Helena

The quick n’ dirty?

This Christmas break, I read an 800-page fantasy fiction book in 3 days. Despite never reading fiction, I was so engrossed in it that I felt completely transported into the world the author created. I felt like I was the main character and I refused to leave the house because no reality could beat the content of the pages… I was even dreaming of dragons at night (IYKYK ;). This little anecdote is a reminder that our minds developed around stories; language and the stories we tell shape our realities and the more we can understand them, the better authors we become in our lives, in our business and, hopefully, in our contribution to the world.