Evolutionary Provocateur

All You Need is Love..

Dan Bobinski over at www.Management-issues.com just wrote an article entitled, How to kill morale and start an exodus. It is a classic story of what happens when managers forget that love is the most important generator of performance; when data drives action and disconnection to what has heart and meaning prevents clear vision. There are a lot of managers in that boat right now. Managers who  truly believe that it is all about control and all about the numbers.

We focus on the manager but what about the culture that values the numbers over performance. Where numbers do not accurately reflect the real dynamic and way that work gets done. Too often assumptions are made where curiousity would be a stronger ally in seeing the underlying forces.

Tim Sanders, with Yahoo has made the point that it is love, not greed that is the Killer App. Tim learned that the three elemental particles of Love are: knowledge, networks and compassion. That was in 2002. The words are even more true now.

Yet old habits die hard. It is easy to blame the people. The real culprit lies in the embedded habits of the organization which rewards data over intuition insight and wisdom.

Time for a rebirth don't you think?

Do you hear what I hear?

The Institute of Noetic Sciences has launched a wonderful series of interviews with thought leaders one of who was Jim Garrison from www.wisdomuniversity.com. Jim is currently working with Paul Ray of www.culturalcreatives.org to update research on a group who do not know they are a group. They are defined by having shared values, may not all be found at the same coffee shop and who, if their collective wisdom were applied, can move mountains and realign the planets.

So what does it take to unleash that kind of potential into organizations?

It calls for a suspension of judgement for starters. Listening to discussions of Gen Y,  X, Boomers or Traditionalists inevitably draws up character profiles of each group. All of this can be helpful until labels get applied. Labels like, The Entitlement Generation, distract from what talent, mission and purpose lies beneath.

Non-performers are judged as being non-performers rather than taking a more informed view to see that the non-performer is really an unengaged performer. This morning at a business meeting the whole conversation about psychopathic employees came up. Psychopath is a pretty harsh label to apply to someone and does not actually inspire anyone to reveal what they can really do. The word would appear to be closely associated with parasite.

Engaging employees boils down to seeing what lies at the heart of the matter. Earlier posts on this topic speak to the need to have a receptive mind so one can actually hear what has passion, meaning and purpose. Perception shifting as a skill is a huge part of this as is recognizing and eliminating judgmental language, thought and action.

Over to You! Have you ever been in a situation where you held yourself back because the working environment was so loaded with judgment that it was not safe to be you? 

Follow the Joy

This week on www.management-issues.com on the Evolutionary Provocateur podcast is an interview with Nick Zeniuk called Follow the Joy. The conversation is part of a larger dialogue through the recent Knowledge and Innovation Network meeting in Tucson which really points to the imperative to turn the hierarchical organization structures on its side, literally, in order to see the horizontal nature of accomplishment. Dennis Sandow, Anne Murray Allen and Nick Zeniuk have all done or are doing work in this area and are the Inspirators for a different model of supporting and enabling accomplishment or performance.

The implications for executives and managers are pretty clear. It means arriving at a much higher comfort with not knowing. In other words, embracing the notion that you don't know what you don't know. In the gap between knowing and not knowing thrives curiousity which creates a climate where discovery replaces convention or habitual patterns.

This is as applicable to personal lives as it is to organizational dynamics. What drives curiousity in your experience? What is the value of curiousity to eliciting joy?

Your comments are welcome!

2008-Shift in Action

I apologize for my absence. I got highjacked by Christmas holidays, a series of family events, and meetings in the U.S. which took me away from reflection and writing. Here we all are at the start of the new year well in motion along with the reminder that shifts in consciousness, in the evolution of humanity, in how we support and enable performance and people to contribute are at a tipping point.

Each one of you reading this is a part of that shift, otherwise you would not have been drawn to this site.

To start off the New Year's entries I have the permission of Richard Wilson, a brilliant poet/librarian and individual, to reproduce a poem he offered those in attendance at the Knowledge and innovation network meeting held at the Rex Ranch near Tucson, Arizona this past week.

Creating Community

We have an opportunity to create community
find a place for every age, religion, and race.
Humans individually searching for identity
collectively gathered here by design or fate.

Facing an alien future where
imagination dumbs
stagnation comes
abominations numb
sensations succumb.

Each person is vulnerable.
All children are valuable.
How does the future you want feel?
Do you wish for the pursuit of purpose to be real?

Risk your significance
to evoke emotion
provoke potential
give voice to vision.

Heart guides mission
memories teach
dreams reach,
and expectations become.

If it is believable,
then it is conceivable
for sustainable co-existence
to be achievable.

Posted by Richard Wilson Sat. January 19th, 2008

Competition or Collaboration

Tuesday night I attended a Festive Holiday evening made up of two women's groups. One of the activities, in addition to raffling off a huge number of door prizes, was a reverse count down on 40 bottles of wine. Forty bottles of wine is a lot of wine it seems to me, so I found it interesting when many losers later there were 4 women at the front of the room each of whom could potentially walk away with 40 bottles OR they could opt to cooperate and walk home with 10 each...still a good take.

Interestingly, they chose to compete. Down to two possible winner, the option to split the booty was presented again and this time they went for it so each left with 20 bottles each.

It left me wondering when is enough enough? When does the choice to cooperate over ride the need to win. Women pride themselves on being relationship oriented and certainly no one went home grumpy because things turned out the way they did. Yet subconsciously, it does beg the question: have we become so oriented to competition in the workplace that it now shows up in the social space as well?

When facilitating leadership learning programs in the mid-90s, my colleague inserted a simulation game from Thiagi into the program. It involved cash-real cash. Not a lot of it but enough that it revealed some deep truths.

The results were eye-popping! These were managers and supervisors who were pretty good at espousing values and principles that warmed your heart. But when the cash got short and the scarcity mentality grabbed hold, a whole different animal came out. One that was quite prepared to cheat and out manipulate to get the booty.

The good news, in an odd way, is that everyone in the room knew that the word was not to be trusted. Actions said it all. It is really unlikely that anyone in the room was aware of what drove those actions. It is certain that they knew what it meant in terms of their relationship...subject to change when the money, power (or anything in short supply) is at stake.

Since research shows that 86% of fraud is commited by male managers, perhaps playing cash games is not a bad routine test to see how what really motivates action. 

Label-Label-Label

In the original version of Scrooge, at the end of the story, Scrooge searches frantically for something to label his gift with while mumbling label-label-label. Label in that context, has a wonderful meaning. In organizations it has come to mean something else.

Personal assessment tools were originally intended to provide insight into your character. The idea was that by knowing yourself, your preferences and those of others it would be easier to understand one another and so work in diverse teams with greater success.

In companies where the practise is NOT to run around with your hair on fire reacting to each and every emergency there is a real potential that the information can be used wisely. Unfortunately, the sky is falling-my hair is fire approach to day to day corporate survival creates a situation where cataloging human behaviour and intellectualizing emotions has clouded the purpose and negated the value that this kind of information could bring to understanding dynamics of teams or selt.

Emotional connections are critical to being human. They are also critical to any company culture which hopes to retain talent, particularly in workers born between 1975-1995. These workers have zero tolerance for the  notion to 'suck it up' or for any incongruence of emotion and reality.

In the haste to catalog humanity as a label, we miss out on what it means to be human and different. We also miss out on all the creativity and innovation that comes from recognizing the power of that difference to realizing achievements that know no boundaries.

I am not that sure that collectively we can afford to do that. Are you?

Seeing the Whole and its Parts All At Once

A recent blog over at Leadership Now on integrative thinking caught my eye. First, when 92%of executives feel that the challenges they are facing are more complex than ever before it suggests a different approach is required. Steve Roesler's quote over at All Things Workplace, "Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better." -Sidney Harris, pretty much says it all when it comes to recognizing that to make a move, you have to make a move.

Secondly, integrative thinking, as noted at Leadership Now, is about recognizing that it is possible to see the parts and the whole simultaneously without bursting a brain fuse. For some people this comes naturally; for others it must be developed. The delightful aspect of that reality is that no matter what, it requires an expansion of how many ways there are of thinking about any given situation.

The fact that things are more complex creates a wonderful gateway for understanding just how you do think and when the boundaries are feeling pushed. This is typically the spot where rebound takes place, back to that safe place where everything was separated into its nice neat piles with clear demarcation lines. That road inevitably leads back to the tempation to simplify by falling back into rote and reliable thinking patterns that frankly, are not effective when the going gets more complex.

Seeing the big picture and its component parts simultaneously demands more advanced skills to see into the situation, using intuitive insight residing in everyone, and then working with the ability to visualize, also innate to all. The joke is you can't get there from here, where here means relying on the thought patterns and love to sort and catalog.

The first step is to know where logical analysis has become more dominant over intuitive insight. The second step is to know what you trust. When those two are clear, so are the options and a whole new field of choice.   

       

The New Psychology of Leadership

A recent article in Scientific American Mind by the same title presents the dual notion of leader being defined by the circumstances versus the circumstances defining the leader, the latter being more of a situational calling forth higher levels of leadership. It is an interesting question. Group behavior itself is leadership and is drvien by the social identity that helps group's coordinate and take action.

This brings the conversation back to the consciousness of the follower. If the follower follows blindly, then...well history shows us plenty of examples of the results. For many, group leadership is a matter of belonging, of social identity where values are shared and it may or may not include the capacity to stop the bus and make sure there is clarity on the direction.

Corporately, leadership is at an interesting crossroads quite simply because many of the things that we thought leadership was about: tough love, top down, or use of authority, are in question given the divergent range of values. Cooperation and support are the bylines for today's leadership. The characteristics of a leader of the past are not the same as the one's today.

The conclusion of the article is that 'for leadership to function well, leaders and followers must be bound by a shared identity and by the quest to use that identity as a blueprint for action.' This, for some cultures, could  mean a bit of a shift.

How well do leaders in your company embody this understanding and way of thinking?

Power and Position

Power is a word that magnetizes emotional response. Most typically there is an emotional reaction to the word and an immediate association with 'abuse of power'. We seek empowerment, yet shun power. Somewhere we have collectively arrived at a disconnect between the word power and its meaning.

Why is that important? Good question. Look at politics and executive behaviour and the evidence is before you. The majority of ethical breaches are commited by 'a trusted male executive who will carry out as many as 20 acts of serious fraud over a period of up to five years or more'. "Over 60% of perpetrators are members of senior management, whose status in the company makes it easier to bypass internal controls and inflict greater damage on the company" states Richard Powell, KPMG Forensic. 

Politically, when we survey human history there are dictators and democratic leaders who operate pretty much the same. The governance structure is not what defines use of  power. It is the person who does. Take, for example, a look at the film being made on Cyrus the Great who ruled Persia at a time when power was associated with burning, looting, slavery and so on. Cyrus the Great, also known as Kourosh, freed his captives, gave them religious freedom and did not behead the defeated ruler like most did at that time. HIs Charter of Rights became a model for others to follow. His rule from 580-529 AD was the formation of the Persian Empire. A short clip on www.spentaproductions.com or on YouTube explain the significance of his rule.

Cyrus was a dictator. Democratic leaders have behaved far worse. The film maker's imprisonment by the US while filming in Iraq is a first hand account of what happens when group think defines how power is used rather than a solid and sound relationship with power  - the power within that Anthony Robbins and others talk about.

Power of position is a sacred trust... or at least it was. It is not power but ones relationship with it that defines its impact. In company's the use of power is seen as control typically. In leadership development and in management training the reconciliation between power and control is rarely if ever addressed.

How do you see power being used in organizations and what does it mean to you? 

Accepting Human Spirit as Fuel for Results

Steve Roesler has been doing a wonderful series on change over at his blogpost All Things Workplace. The most recent one Change: Does your Spirit Lift You and Others Up? hits on something that appears to still remain relatively dormant - the acceptance of the human spirit as THE fuel driving performance, results, retention, engagement ... you name it. Previous blogposts on this site include Spirit as Energy and Personal Spirit: The Fuel. Personal spirit is measured (to the extent one can measure energy) as outlook on life, sense of control (not over others) and initiative. These serve as the filter for perception and impact.

Yet oddly, at least to me, when I am discussing the need for workers who have been downsized, rightsized and minimized, to reconnect with their hope, their talent and themselves, eyes glaze over.  Talk goes back to the resources for job search, the inability of the workplace to see the value of older workers, known as Prime 50 by Drake International or the inability of the older workers to fit in. All these are negatives as you have undoubtedly noted. Fitting a square peg into a round hole is tough when the only shape recognized is square. OK, perhaps a poor metaphor but the point is that unless the hope, the inner strength and the belief that one has worth is there, zillions of job searches won't clear the self-doubt, or sense of powerlessness.

Reingiting the fuel the inspires personal contribution is a start. The support comes from a working environment that knows how to merge the differences in perspective between individuals and generations into something more powerful. That requires compassion. We don't act on what we think. We act on how we feel.

How is this connection between personal spirit and results, whether personal or professional regarded in your experience?