Freehold Engagement

Have you ever noticed how small children are “freeholders”?

They engage with everything; they are insatiably curious, inventive and creative. They have no sense of failure, they just learn. They approach whatever they are doing on their own terms. They buy into whatever they do.

And then – they start school, and begin to learn failure, and to measure themselves against someone else’s criteria. When we were in the industrial era, this was understandable – we needed compliance and capability more than creativity. A good career could be carved out of learning a fixed set of skills.

We rapidly sacrifice our curiosity for well rewarded compliance. The further we go, the more "rent" we pay. We move from being freeholders in our lives to tenants. The rent we pay is what we give up to meet the requirement placed upon us by our erstwhile landlords. Those who we allow to assess us.

Up until the mid 1990’s, children’s IQ and creativity increased with each generation, but at that point diverged. IQ c…