A Navigational System for Recovering from Covid Interruption
by Dawna Jones and John Caswell
Introduction
In our global context of uncertainty and unpredictability more is expected from decision-makers - anyone in a position of authority. The modern-era leader is expected to have far greater awareness, more compassion and intense curiosity about what lies ahead. They need to constantly practice their role in the shaping of the future, and constantly navigate the challenges to answer increasingly tough questions.
What matters?
What changes - what doesn’t?
Who do they become through the uncertainties they face?
The majority of companies are unaware that their decisions are driven by beliefs concealed beneath the surface of activity. Beliefs are based on the past, recycling what you already know. This leaves you ill-prepared to deal with unpredictable and increasingly complex conditions. In today’s context, it is vital to develop a higher level of contextual awareness, and collaborative capacity to work with complexity. Decision-making must adapt to fit the times.
To set the stage for the evolution of leadership adaptive thinking, questions business decision-makers have asked are reframed into a response that covers meaning (the why), guiding principles to steer the way, and practices to handle yourself and your company in the liminal state between the past, now and what’s next.
Scan, steer and sense your way toward a future you wish to collectively create in your personal and working life.
THE TRUTH ABOUT PRINCIPLES
Universal principles express truths that apply across contexts — trans-contextually.
Situational principles apply in a specific context to fit your unique circumstances. To offer a cohesive approach, universal principles follow, balanced across a range of disciplines. Principles sharpen focus in a decision-making context of uncertainty and ambiguity.
Principles in decision-making serve to anchor and unify unless they are rooted in self-serving or self-righteous motivations which shows when principles are used to rationalize a decision based on a belief. Johann Hari in Chasing the Scream describes a clinic run from the period of 1982-1995 that prescribed heroin for 450 patients. No deaths occurred. Evangelical Christians intervened to stop the prescription based ‘on principle’.
The clinic was shut down. Twenty were dead in six months; 41 dead over two years. Collateral damage to social health was a secondary and wider impact. Dealers stayed in business; financing drug use defaulted back to debt and crime.
Principles can drive ethics when not confused with beliefs. If you stand for making a positive difference then principles can be applied wisely regardless of whether you are in a business context, public policy role, or leading your life.
The guiding principles that follow are drawn from multiple disciplines to achieve resilience, systemic health, optimization, personal mastery, develop adaptive ability and be life-supporting.
R=Resilient: Continuous learning, self-regulation
E=Ethical: Of wider benefit to everything and everyone - including ecological, social, economic systems
V=Vitality: The generative and regenerative energy
M=Mastery: A sustained deepening, fulfilling, self-efficacy
A=Adaptive: To persistently expand intelligence and thinking
NINE PERSISTENT CHALLENGES
Having witnessed countless decision-makers and leaders facing the same challenges they are stated simply here to create the context.
I realise the world has changed but how can we ever achieve ’perpetual reinvention’?
How can I transform when the majority of my investment has been in no-risk (and now inflexible) infrastructure?
My leadership team (and I) have been schooled to think and strategize in a different era. How do we even begin to think about the world as it is now?
We haven't really succeeded in behavioural change in the last decade - how can we achieve it now?
With all this uncertainty and change how can we (even) plan for anything?
We hear all this talk about ’purpose-driven business’ but I have shareholders and the markets to consider? How can I do both?
The pandemic has altered everything in our operation and we've no idea what the new normal will be - what's the best plan for us to survive or (even) come out stronger?
We need to shift our culture to match the operation as we have it now - this has always been a challenge. What can we do to build a culture across distributed teams?
We need to shift our culture to match the operation as we have it now - this has always been a challenge. What can we do to build a culture across distributed teams??
ONE: I realise the world has changed but how can we ever achieve ‘perpetual reinvention’?
Purpose
In climates of uncertainty, volatility and ambiguity there is more than one response and no clear ‘right’ answer. Combined with complex conditions, the best way to perpetually reinvent is to work with what emerges. It means a shift to creative responses. Develop sensory intelligence to work with what emerges through the company’s interaction with the inner and external world.
Humans are naturally disposed to working together and collaborating. Multiplayer video game World of Warcraft has a count of 4.88 million players in 2020. Magnetizing that level of engagement in workplaces will require an inspiring purpose that carries genuine meaning. Increase engagement toward an inspiring purpose, not the next quarterly target.
The resilient response is made of learning from what happens and seizing the interruptions in life to reinvent, adapt, and renew. Learning may be uncomfortable but it rewires the personal and corporate brain. Utilize all events that disrupt or challenge to learn and develop creative capability.
Principles
Perpetual reinvention is guided by self-renewing and self-organizing initiatives to work with emergent opportunities. (R + A)
Learn from what happens particularly where failure is involved so that you rebound, and renew to exceed previous expectations. (R + M)
Gaps between the known and the unknown are places to reinvent, renew and co-create better solutions with a positive benefit for all Life. (E + A + V)
Practice
Rest between stretching into new territory to integrate and embody learning.
Conduct a retrospective to learn from all responses to an unpredictable event. Work with a forward-focused orientation.
Use interruptions to routine to stop, reflect, rethink and adapt to a higher order of thinking, response, and result.
TWO: We've had principles before but they are a bit vague when trying to manage people at scale. How are we going to make more principles work in this new era?
Purpose:
Bring the practical application to principles as a beacon for working with complex, ambiguous conditions.
Root principles in intentional decision-making to steer when things are either ambiguous or need to be in alignment.
Principles:
Pay attention to what has heart and meaning at all levels. (M + V)
Self-reflection reveals insights resting on the edges of unexpected experience. (M + A +R)
Cohesion marks systemic health: team, personal, organizational, societal, ecological, economic, global. (V + R + E + M + A)
Practices:
Align principles with decisions. Have one principle that serves to align all organizational decisions. E.g. ‘Help people be their best’ is a guiding principle for internal transformation in Roche, Sweden. When a pandemic comes along, the temptation to panic and take cost-cutting measures is calmed by sticking to a durable principle under any conditions.
Ask: Does this support the vitality of life at every level? If not, you will be leaking valuable energy in yourself and in the support system that nourishes economic health.
Adapt where needed to fit your particular context while staying aware of the systemic effects of narrowing down thinking to fit the comfort zone of leaders.
Steer clear of staying in your comfort zone. Trust that you can learn.
Share in the meaning of each principle you adopt as it applies to your context. Know what you stand for and what you do not. Give permission to challenge.
Example: One of Google’s principles was ‘do no harm’. With a change at the top, that principle was set aside for a focus on profit over positive impact. Those challenging the actions that ignored the principle were forced to leave. That’s how not to do it.
THREE: How can I transform when the majority of my investment has been in no-risk (and now inflexible) infrastructure? (need a bit more on this john)
Purpose:
Transforming what no longer has value into a new form.
Principles:
To survive and thrive, all life and living systems must be frugal in their use of energy and resources. Everything is used, returned to support the emergence of life. (V + R + A)
One person’s waste is another's resource. (A + E)
Conserve and value redundancy. (A + E + R)
Seek radical solutions. (A +R + M)
Be transparent and look for participation. (M + V + R + A)
Practices:
Seek ways to repurpose. Explore the wider context to identify opportunities to repurpose waste into a profit center.
E.g.
The Kalundborg Industrial park in Denmark is a model for waste exchange.
Ask how the inflexible infrastructure can be redesigned into something of value. Engage the community.
Reboot: Drop familiar ways of doing things and turn it over to fresh thinkers.
FOUR: My leadership team (and I) have been schooled to think and strategize in a different era. How do we even begin to think about the world as it is now?
Purpose:
Adapt strategy to move from time-bound to inspirational purpose.
The goalpost of the future is actualized in a meaningful purpose. Fulfilling that offers a more engaging focus. Agree on a meaningful impactful purpose.
Strategy and implementation are entangled not siloed. Emergent strategy requires full engagement of the entire staff to scan, see and steer.
Expand the thinking of the organization from mentally focused to a better balance between the mental and the intuitive.
Principles:
Shifting perspective transforms perception and how you process incoming information. Insights from outliers reveal opportunities for innovation and emergent risk. (A + M)
Participation in diverse views sharpens focus and shared meaning. Replace conformity with novelty. (M+V+A+E)
The gap between challenge and existing skills is the source of attaining flow. Flow states draw on novelty, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, clear goals, unambiguous feedback. More done in less time with less stress and a greater sense of accomplishment. (M + A + V + R)
Practices
Bring your highest aspirations to strategy. Adopt the mindset of a five-year-old.
Apply curiosity. Ask questions your mind can’t answer.
Listen to the outliers and new hires. They bring shifts in perception although their truth may piss you off.
Elevate strategic aspirations to the global level. Use GapFrame.org to identify where you can move the needle using the ripple effect of leveraged action.
Distribute power throughout the organization to identify opportunities on the perimeter of routine practices.
Develop your collective sensing abilities to see what is emerging.
Used with permission of Jay (Joseph Bragdon) www.lampindex.com
FIVE: We haven't really succeeded in behavioural change in the last decade - how can we achieve it now?
Purpose:
The shift from a traditional way of thinking to a more flexible organic model.
Convert energy absorbed in competitive conflict to work with differences to generate wider benefit and sticky solutions.
Build conflict development skills to work with a diversity of perspective, an essential attribute of navigating complexity. A respectful exchange of perspective sharing.
Perceiving the interaction between the formal and informal systems. Read and accurately interpret the deep dynamics. Steer with information.
Principles:
Listen to what has heart and meaning in yourself and in your people. Deeply listen so it touches your soul. (M + V)
An inspiring 10X purpose/mission brings out the creative genius. Achieving the impossible brings out an intrinsic leap in creativity and design thinking. (M + A + V)
Expression of deep creative talent requires an environment safe enough to try, explore, experiment. Contextual awareness. (M+V+A+E+R)
Practices:
Uncover the beliefs running the results then convert decision-making focus from recycling the past to designing the future (values/principles-driven).
Agree on one unifying principle to anchor tough decisions throughout the organization. E.g. systemic health
Remove metrics that block collaboration, cooperation horizontally and vertically.
Reduce complexity internally. Select fewer results-oriented outcome indicators that have a systemic impact. (OKRs)
Simplify internal layers of complexity originating from a lack of trust in employees.
Engage sensing as a means to scan emergent opportunities.
SIX: With all this uncertainty and change how can we (even) plan for anything?
Purpose:
The shift from planning for predictable outcomes to planning as a series of iterations.
A shift from relying on reductionist/analytical thinking to seeing the wider interactions between the parts that make up the whole.
Replace a lack of trust with safety to iterate and collaborate.
Principles:
The whole is greater than the sum of its part. (V)
Don’t believe everything you think. Always question, explore, discuss. (M+R)
Energy flows where attention goes. (M + A)
Flow follows focus. (M)
Multiple feedback loops vertically and horizontally. (V + A + M +E)
Practices:
Run experiments then build on what was learned and emerges.
Iterate solutions focused on the primary goal/result you seek to achieve.
Replace processes focused on the past (lagging) with actions focused on adapting (future).
Remove barriers to feedback and flow vertically and horizontally throughout the organization.
Remove systems and processes that block human potential.
SEVEN: We hear all this talk about ’purpose-driven business’ but I have shareholders and the markets to consider? How can I do both?
Purpose:
Recognize that the vitality of shareholder returns and competitiveness in the market is a direct and indirect product of connection to affirming the web of life. Realize the same returns that companies who mimic life’s principles deliver to their shareholders and communities. E.g. Novo Nordisk 20 year return (1637%) vs Pfizer (487%)
Attract shareholders who care about the future and bring patience and responsibility to the table in exchange for higher returns and ethical action.
Switch from being a follower to a leader in the market. Revitalize the innovative edge and reputation.
Principles:
Meaning drives engagement, focus and creative adaptability. (A+V+M)
Shared meaning, a sense of belonging and care is the source of phenomenal performance, resilient communities and a healthy economy. (M + V)
Relational equity is a leading indicator of financial equity. (M+A+V)
Engagement drives adaptiveness and inspired innovation. (M+A +V)
The health of a company’s employees determines the health of a company. Healthy companies are open to new ideas. Constantly learning. (A+V+M+E+R)
High performing companies are inspired by an inspiring purpose. (M+A)
Energy flows where attention goes. Is the focus on protecting self-interest, internal politics or on attaining the company goals? (M+V+A+E)
Inspired employees are the most productive, even more than engaged employees.
Practices:
Disconnect executive bonuses from increasing return to shareholders. The practice drives unethical behaviour, disengagement and limits performance.
Widen decision-making focus to see both sides of the balance sheet. Observe the number of times the words ‘cost cutting’ are heard over ‘cost savings.’ Cost-cutting is reductionist thinking. Cost savings is growth-oriented. Subtle but powerful.
Find savings in the money being thrown away through failure to consider the impact, a narrow lens on reality, and the fear of failure.
Explore the hidden costs of disengagement, high turnover, a toxic culture and stress-related illness and determine how much it is sucking off the bottom line.
Seek inspiration from other companies that have transformed themselves to embody a more synergistic approach to managing themselves and their relationship with customers.
EIGHT: The pandemic has altered everything in our operation and we've no idea what the new normal will be - what's the best plan for us to survive or (even) come out stronger?
Purpose:
Shift focus from surviving at any cost to surviving by engaging talent in a higher purpose, participating in creative solutions to perplexing problems. Be transparent about designing the future you want and the company you aspire to be. Aim to become stronger and better through the challenge.
Principles:
Open to outcome not attached to it. (E+V+M+A+R)
Power with others, not power over. (E+V+M+A+R)
Participation and engagement in solutions with a diversity of perspectives creates solutions more durable for volatile conditions. (E+V+M+A+R)
Transparency on what is known and not known settles the nervous system (P+O) and supports moving forward iteratively and confidently. (E+V+M+A+R)
Practices:
Engage employees in conversations about a radical leap in contribution and benefit. Think big.
Collectively identify practices internally that prioritize the existing system over high quality interpersonal communication and focused action. Restore ethics to actions and interactions. (E+V+M+A+R)
Start by identifying practices, processes and systems that do not add value to the customer or to internal quality of relationships.
Look at the quality of communication and the impact of communication styles vertically in the organization, particularly in positions of power. Self-identify if your addiction to power has overridden your desire to contribute in a meaningful way. #courage #transparency #trust
NINE: We need to shift our culture to match the operation as we have it now - this has always been a challenge. What can we do to build a culture across distributed teams?
Purpose:
Develop a shared and unifying picture of what culture you want and what needs to go in order to achieve it.
Understand the underlying drivers from the past culture that hold it in place. Processes, systems, beliefs, values.
Instil practices that generate the culture we want while replacing the habits of the past with ones that affirm the desired culture.
Adapt decision-making from default beliefs about how the world works to an updated set of principles connected to how it is evolving.
Principles:
Networks are ubiquitous. The informal networks have more power than the formal ones. (M+A+V+R)
The performance runs on networks. Networks can be powered by a shared inspirational goal in service to the customer, society or wider benefit or driven by ego. (M+R+A)
The health of the indomitable human spirit is an expression of the initiative, sense of control and outlook on life. (M+A)
Practices:
Ask who the informal networks are and with their permission learn what diminishes the human spirit inside the company and what nourishes, powers and restores vitality.
Reflect when you or your team experiences pain or tension. It will point you to the underlying resistance bonded to the past or to something in the liminal state needing care and attention.
Spot patterns of repetition especially of things you don’t want to carry forward. Look at decision-making patterns, how risk is used, assessed, treated, how diversity is viewed and valued.
Zoom out. Step out. Take the mental focus offline so personal and organizational intuition has a chance to be heard. Make it routine, not a one-time moment.
UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES
Beneath the principles linked to specific questions lie a number of broad principles that are fundamental to vitality, adaptive ability, ethics, mastery, and resilience.
They are:
Openness to learning maintains the vitality of systems. {Curiosity replaces fear from a neuroscience point of view.}
Humans are innately connected to the web of life. [Companies that manage themselves accordingly outperform their peers.]
Transparency reveals the truth. Truth is a matter of perception. Visibility brings clarity and trust.
Connection to meaningful work, other people, important and positive values, nature, other people, status and respect are fundamental determinants of mental and emotional health.
The human brain is capable of self-repair using mindfulness and other memory adjusting methods.
Nature’s technology is more sophisticated and efficient than mankind’s.
Learning rewires the brain.
Bringing your whole self to work (Peter Senge called it spiritual intelligence) is a state of bringing a wider spectrum of innate intelligence forward.
Indigenous wisdom brings wisdom to modern times. “In native cultures, four principles are used as a guideline for leading a life of quality and integrity. They form the core of deep engagement.” Source?
Flow states remove cognitive overload, increase productivity while you feel your best.
“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” - Stephen Hawking
Sources And Further Exploration
Synergistic Life-affirming Principles
Books: Profit for Life and Companies that Mimic Life by Joseph Bragdon, fund manager of the LAMP index
Podcast: Why do Companies That Mimic Life Perform Better Financially? Why Do Companies That Mimic Life Perform Better Financially? with Jay Bragdon | Insight To Action Inspirational Insights Podcast and Do Companies that Mimic Nature Flourish Financially?
Principles of a resilient economy: Manifesto
Quo Vadis: The Biological Principles of a Healthy Economy by Dr. Michael Sontagg QUO VADIS? - THE BIOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES OF A HEALTHY ECONOMY
Reimagining the Future: The Biomimetic Economy by Ksenia Benifand, Nihal Ahmed and Ryan Church
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Benyus
https://toolbox.biomimicry.org/core-concepts/natures-unifying-patterns/
Systems Thinking and Seeing
The writing of systems theorist Ervin Laszlo Podcast: What is Reality? What is Reality? with Dr. Ervin Laszlo | Insight To Action Inspirational Insights Podcast and another podcast episode Toward a New Business Leadership Consciousness Toward a New Business Leadership Consciousness With Chris & Ervin Laszlo | Insight To Action Inspirational Insights Podcast
A Systems View of Life A Unifying Vision by Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi and The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra
Resilience and Human Potential
Applying Resilience Thinking - Stockholm Resilience Center
Grit- The Power of Passion and Perseverance - Angela Duckworth
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times
The Four-Fold Way by Angeles Arriens
Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta How Indigenous Wisdom Can Save the World with Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta | Insight To Action Inspirational Insights Podcast
Applying Indigenous Wisdom to Leading in Volatile Change with Wade Davis. Podcast episode discussion is based on his book The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World
Lost Connections- Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression- and the Unexpected Solutions and Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari
Neuroscience & Flow States
The Neuroscience of Flow States podcast episode with Steven Kotler The Neuroscience of Flow States with Steven Kotler | Insight To Action Inspirational Insights Podcast
Flow, the Secret to Happiness with Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi
https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_flow_the_secret_to_happiness?language=en
Insights from Neuroscience of Your Brain on Uncertainty: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2020/11/18/three-neuroscience-insights-to-help-you-perform-during-uncertainty/?sh=322da82733d9
Other
Principles by Ray Dalio
IDEO- Design Thinking: Some design principles | IDEO | Design Thinking
STILL TO WEAVE
John I didn’t see the illustration in this text. Perhaps this section could be a breakdown of the Mastery, Vitality (synergistic and generative), Ethics, Resilience and Adaptive?
Possible Structure For Articles/Book
Knowledge is not a good thing in ambiguity and uncertainty. - Shifting from knowing to learning
Future oriented decisions…From beliefs to principles
Principled Decisions…From Predictability to Stability in Chaos
The Power of Principles within decisions…From Suppressing Diversity to Unifying Around purpose
”The Definition of principle - a universal truth…”
“To survive in the twenty-first century, we must become more capable of handling change than ever before. Essentially, the challenge in the next century is to become a “change master.” A master of ambiguity and complexity.
The dark side of principles. When a drug policy that saved the lives of users, put dealers out of business, and reduced drug use ran into evangelical Christian who opposed prescribing drugs ‘on principle’. From the period of 1982-1995 the clinic run by John Marks that prescribed heroin for 450 patients had never had a death. After removing the prescription service for heroin addicts, 41 people died in the next two years.
“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”
Stephen Hawking
Power with, not power over.
”Individuals support change and states of health through dreams, images, play, relationships, and acts of creative work.”
”Cultures support change and states of health through these mythic structures and through the institutionalization of art, science, music, ritual, and drama. In cultures that are alienated from mythological roots, renewal requires a return to the basic source from which all personal and cultural myths are ultimately forged – the human psyche.”
”In native cultures, four principles are used as a guideline for leading a life of quality and integrity. They form the core of deep engagement.”
Universally there are three kinds of power.
The Power of Presence.
Each one of us carries the quality of presence. Some have so much that they are described as charismatic or magnetic personalities. We are drawn to them, and they captivate our interest.
The Power of Communication.
Effective communication happens when there’s an alignment of meaningful content, appropriate timing, and relevant placement (media platform). We engage when it ’speaks’ to us authentically.
The Power of Position.
The leader leads. They take a stand. They have the capacity to let others know this and as a result, others will follow.
Principles as applied to decision-making provide calm in a storm, a simple way to anchor. What is a principle? Think of it as a universal truth. The universal principles sourced in indigenous traditions world-wide are an example.
‘Energy flows where attention’ goes is another universal principle that is easily applied to tracking organizational dynamics day to day and over a period of time in a change/transformation process.
Principles that apply to specific situations unite disparate views or activities into a singular focus. Systemic health is an example of a principle that could also be viewed as a value but given the entanglement between values and beliefs, presents a clearer meaning.
Transdisciplinary Principles
Apply across all contexts universally.
Energy Flows Where Attention Goes
Flow follows Focus. Focus filters incoming data.
Follow what has heart and meaning in yourself, organizations, ecological and social interactions.
Life is an emergent property. All that affirms life is an emergent property.
Life is not present in the individual parts but emerges when the parts are assembled together into an organism with an inspiring purpose and intent.
A system is a whole that consists of parts each of which can affect its behaviour or its properties. The parts are interdependent.
All life is organized on network principles. The most efficient networks are decentralized.
To survive and thrive, all life and living systems must be frugal in their use of energy and resources. Everything is used, returned to support the emergence of life.
Openness: All life needs to be continuously open to new information in order to survive and thrive. Free flow of information. Transparency.
The strength of the web of relationships is key to the ability to survive and thrive over time: business, ecologically.
Visionary purpose demands capacity building to strengthen the organization over producing numbers of growth or profit.
Reinvention and Learning: Living systems have the capacity to make and remake itself. Eg. Haier
Self-renewing and self-organizing. Using ambiguity as a canvas, to renew and uplift how things get done to a higher order.
An example - Living Asset Management Performance - The Work Of - Joseph Bragdon.
LAMP businesses are recognised as highly prodigious.
Typically they’re defined as innovators - creators of value. It is because their ‘life-mimicking’ qualities inspire employees to work with their hearts as well as their minds.
Corporate cultures exist that trigger life affirming instincts.
We become more likely to find meaning in what we do.
We become more eager to learn.
We become more likely to access higher thinking capacities.
Our eagerness for learning and deeper understanding ignites our capacities to innovate.
And as a result increase the odds of achieving our outcomes. Whatever they may be.
As the cycle repeats it is self reinforcing.
The conditions for this to exist is best described as a capacity - a skill that’s becoming critical for business as they emerge through times of significant stress and chaos.
For a business to be successful the relationship that exists with its people may be referred to as relational equity.
“Relational equity is the best leading indicator of financial equity I know.” - Joseph Bragdon.
A business like this has several observable attributes -
They are deeply networked both formally and informally.
They are self renewing and self organizing.
They are frugal with all resources.
They are open to new learning and adaptive - synergistic.
They serve the life systems that sustain them
They are highly conscious - intellectually and intuitively
From the work of Joseph Bragdon. http://www.lampindex.com/2011/10/house-of-futures-talk-copenhagen-denmark/
Principles Guiding Personal Well-being When Immersed in Ambiguous and Uncertain Conditions
Balance your physical and emotional body to claim clarity. Means: yoga, meditation, Qi Gong, Conscious breathing.
Being present, in the moment, reclaims control over what you focus on.
Focus on what you want. Flow follows focus. Focus filters incoming data.
Commitment to learning from past disasters, present conundrums to identify skills, outlook, and what you have control over.
Eyes on the horizon of desired future while observing the emerging future.
Look forward to the positive. Claim the opportunity to increase capacity for ambiguity and uncertainty.
Observe what regenerates your heart and what depletes. Do more of what regenerates. Heart energy is the fuel source that informs direction and action: growth or protection.
Principles Guiding Executive Decision-making in Recovering from COVID
Clear simple unifying strategic intent that has wider benefit to the world. One Earth. One World.
Measurement data is clear, transparent and measures what matters. Quality of contribution over quantity.
Rigorously applied decision-making protocols to assess impact on employee well-being, ecological and social health in support of economic prosperity. No shortcuts in thinking.
No colleague hierarchy regardless of position. (Borrowed from https://selfmanagementprinciples.org/principles/) Flattened power structure increases responsiveness, autonomy and initiative.
Clear commitment to communicating and doing what was promised.
Conflict and tension are used to deepen understanding of difference focusing on the best creative solution.
Transdisciplinary over prescribed methodology or fixed beliefs about what is possible. Draw from the diversity in the room, or company. (Adapted from https://selfmanagementprinciples.org/principles/)
Principles to Reinvent How Things Get Done and Why in Companies
Listen to what has heart and meaning in employees, customers and yourself. Follow that.
See and sense the system of interactions and relationships for insights, increasing health and trust.
Weigh impact of any decision on human, social, community, ecological health in equal measure. Align with the ethos of do no harm especially when it is easier.
The character of the context determines the strategy and steps you take. Differentiate between complicated, complex, ambiguous, uncertain. Use all to increase capacity and capability.
Accept responsibility for mistakes, actions, words to gain impeccable trust and grounded strength not borrowed from dogma.
Choose practical over simplifying for convenience's sake.
Engage in self-collective reflection to gain perspective and insights. Allow time for unrelated data points to converge.
Personal Mastery Principles
From Indigenous traditions (universal):
Pay attention to what has heart and meaning.
Show up. Be present. (mind, heart, focus and body)
Tell the Truth Without Blame or Judgement
Be Open to Outcome; Not Attached to It
The Way of the Warrior:
Choose to be present - become visible - through example and intention.
Empower and inspire others by example.
Display honor and respect, set limits and boundaries - align words with actions.
When challenges present themselves, embrace them with full-bodied presence rather than constrict them with fear.
Combine firmness with humility. Appreciating our individual limits and boundaries as well as the limits and boundaries of others.
The Way of the Healer:
Attend to what the heart is saying. Being open to the possibility that there's blocks and obstacles to receiving and giving love. Observe where there is half-heartedness rather than kind-heartedness.
Cross-culturally, there are four universal healing salves: singing, dancing, storytelling, and silence.
“Where in my life did I stop singing?” “Where in my life did I stop dancing?” “Where in my life did I stop being enchanted by stories?”
“Where in my life did I stop being comfortable with the sweet territory of silence?”
The Way of the Visionary:
Tell the truth without blame or judgment. It is important to bring the creative spirit (life dream/purpose to life. Overcome the need for comparison and competition.
Bring our own gifts, talents, and resources with full force to meet tests and challenges.
The visionary brings his or her voice into the world and refuses to edit, rehearse, perform, or hide it. The visionary knows that the power of creativity is aligned with authenticity.
The field of creativity exists within each individual and is freed by moving out of ideas of wrong or right-doing.
”If we can answer “yes” to the questions “Is my self-worth as strong as my self-critic?”, then we are ready to engage in our creative expression.”
The Way of the Teacher:
Be open, not attached to the outcome.
Learning and teaching is universal and wisdom is flexible and fluid, never adopting a fixed position. The human resource of wisdom is accessed by learning how to trust and how to be comfortable with states of not knowing.
Trust is the foundation upon which the quality of wisdom grows. Wisdom comes from clarity, objectivity, discernment, and detachment.
Wisdom is at work when there is non-positionality and openness to options not considered.
Reference - HTTP://www.angelesarrien.com