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Serving a community of private individuals and professionals
who have the desire to cultivate a life of clarity, compassion,
and creativity. We warmly welcome our new subscribers. Thanks
for joining! Your feedback is encouraged. Please feel free to contact us.
1. Introduction
Many people have asked us how Seishindo principles fit into
work in organizations. In order to present you with an article
that is both entertaining and educational, I have teamed up
with my colleague and dear friend Drew Lebby for today's newsletter.
We hope you will enjoy what we have written, and we invite you
to write and let us know how you use Seishindo principles in
various settings.
For those of you not actively interested in organizational
interventions, I believe that this article also has a good deal
of relevance for families and other communities. What you will
want to do in this case is a bit of "translation".
For instance, where we use the term "management" you
can translate this into "parents" and for the "employees"
you can use the term "children" A provocative idea
perhaps, but enlightening nonetheless!
If you would like to learn a bit more about my colleague Drew,
please click here: Drew
Lebby.
In general, we are always eager to hear how people use Seishindo
principles in different areas of their life. So do write to
us. Eventually we hope to create a book that is a compilation
of the emails you send us.
2. The Process of Ongoing Success
By Drew Lebby and Charlie Badenhop
We would like to present you with a radical idea - most, if
not all, of your previous training and experience in people
and process management has prepared you to be effective from
the perspective of the past, and ineffective in regard to the
future. The greater your past successes, the more likely it
is that you will experience difficulties in the future.
Most managers have been well educated in regard to logic, analytical
reasoning, and problem solving. These skills have been nurtured
in the home, stimulated in every phase of education, and further
developed and rewarded in the workplace. All of this learning
takes place at the expense of developing the perspective and
skills necessary for managing people and demonstrating effective
leadership. Truly effective leaders cultivate an intuitive comprehension
of non-rational, paradoxical people and situations, and understand
and respect the emotional and spiritual longing that people
bring with them into the workplace.
Well schooled in "living in our heads", we often
find during challenging times that the body as a whole consistently
refuses to implement actions dictated by the logical mind, just
as employees often balk at directives set forth by management.
While the logical self says "I should and I will"
the body says, "I can't and I won't!" As individuals
we resist all change that does not "feel" right to
us. The same is true of any workforce.
Our work together needs to be about the conscious creation
of high performing, self-monitoring, special purpose communities.
Special purpose indicates that all communities exist
to achieve an end, whether explicitly stated or not. A community
exists only in the actions that it takes to achieve
that end. Organizations rarely explicitly state their reason
for being, except in a nebulous manner. The term community
recognizes that leaders, managers, employees, and customers
seek a sense of belonging and require as a condition of personal
commitment, a supportive emotional environment. The
term business community describes an environment in
which the complex set of organizational and individual behaviors
that result in learning are grounded in actions that signal
dignity and respect both to the customer and to the employee.
A business rarely plans at the start the kind of community
it becomes as time goes by. Rather, a business community evolves
over time in interaction with, and often as the result of, a
broader system. A pattern of effective actions evolves during
lengthy periods of organizational success. We then deliberately
build these effective actions, and the behaviors thought to
produce them, into the community. Beliefs, rituals, stories,
and values communicate them. Methods, procedures, organizational
structures, and the criteria within appraisal and compensation
systems require and reward their use. Over time, the conscious
rationale for these underlying structures fade, and the behaviors
produced become unconscious and habitual organizing aspects
of the system. Community behavior becomes part of the background
and history of the organization. Behaviors become embedded in
the bodies, the biology, of staff. In the process, these behaviors
become disassociated from the effectiveness they are meant to
bring forth.
Typically, most organizations only assess the overall health
of the community they have evolved when a breakdown occurs which
dramatically reduces the organizations ability to continue to
achieve its special purpose. Few organizations have appropriate
robust models of community to model the workplace after. Because
of this, there is usually little patience with the difficulty
and discomfort of the renewal that every organization must go
through periodically. Most companies seek a quick fix of off-the-shelf,
event-based training instead of examining the various threads
woven into the fabric of the community. Companies hope to "fix"
their current difficulties by hiring experts in team building,
communication, or management and leadership development. However,
the actions that flow from these newly developed competencies
rarely transfer from the training room to the workplace. This
is neither the fault of the trainer or of the employees. Rather,
it is testimony to the power an organization's underlying structure
has on influencing group and individual behavior. This underlying
structure seemingly evolves and mutates on its own, without
explicit directives from management.
The overall results an organization achieves are produced by
repetitive patterns of behavior carried out by the individuals
within the organization. These patterns of behavior are strongly
influenced by the underlying structure of values and beliefs
the organization has unwittingly propagated over time. Given
the "chicken or the egg" nature of organizational
development, we find it is most effective to start the process
of organizational review and renewal by examining and bringing
greater awareness to the beliefs and behaviors of individuals,
while concurrently modifying the organizational structure to
reinforce the shifts each individual needs to make.
In the face of this massive, inflexible system we call the
workplace, we need to explore what actions we can take to assist
the process of transformational change.
1. Understand Organizational Change and
Renewal
Make sure that everyone involved understands the process of
change. An understanding of organizational lifecycles is as
critical to the leadership of change as product lifecycles are
to the management of research and development. Facilitating
the waves of change rather than being engulfed by them requires
foresight and pro-activity. Yet change often produces a sense
of loss of control and a mood of fear and resignation signaled
by a slowing or freezing of effective action. Most often people
focus their efforts on keeping change from occurring, or on
returning the community to its previous state of equilibrium
and its members to their previous sense of control.
Most employees believe that management has the responsibility
and authority to eliminate the stress of change and return the
organizational system to "normal." Yet under certain
conditions, management has the obligation and responsibility
to lead the organization into chaos, to increase stress and
disequilibrium so a higher order system can evolve - a system
whose structure cannot be predetermined. It has an equal obligation
to assist employees in determining where the organization falls
in its cycle of growth and renewal and in requesting their assistance
in shifting the behaviors, beliefs, and structures necessary
to renew effective action.
2. Practice, Practice, Practice
Except for businesses, every form of team practices regularly.
Sports teams, orchestras, the cast of a movie, all practice
incessantly; and rehearse daily. Only in business do we form
teams with no opportunity for regularly scheduled skill diagnosis,
learning, and practice other than the economic reality of day-to-day
operation.
In the course of practicing, we can challenge the community
to perform outside the familiar and comfortable in both content
and location, and we offer the possibility of a clear public
and conscious reassessment of the effectiveness of current processes.
We can shift the unit of analysis from the individual to
the community/team and provide a safe place to observe
habitual behaviors and test the effectiveness of new ones.
3. Learn How To Dialogue
Recreating community is different from joining community. We
join communities that have existing values and behaviors, typically
implicit, and evolved over years. Recreating community requires
explicit declarations and commitment to a redefined set of values
and behaviors. Developing these values beyond the vague characteristics
of the Boy Scout-like "friendly, courteous, kind..."
requires practice. Few of us have developed skills at dialogue,
which involves a respectful exchange of ideas and information.
Most of us however are masters at debate, which is
the delivery of sequential monologues on our differing points
of view. Explicit agreements to consciously and continuously
declare, test, and review assumptions about how people think,
feel, and act, as well as the beliefs attached to those assumptions
provide the basis for trust and honesty in community.
There are several ways to provide practice in dialogue that
also further the content of community. Assessment instruments,
using the community as the unit of analysis, provide a non-threatening
content basis to dialogue existing norms and effectiveness.
Content can range from measures of team culture to team effectiveness,
from management style to learning style. The content chosen
for educational purposes is irrelevant to practice in dialogue.
Assessment instruments or content using the individual community
member as the unit of analysis provide practice in dialogue
at a different, higher intensity. An understanding of the basis
for individual differences and the synergy those differences
produce provides an additional basis for trust and honesty and
a context for practicing dialogue. Whether focused on gender,
race, or the more subtle invisible differences of culture, sexual
orientation, personality style, or data collection and processing
modes, dialogue that involves an appreciation of "difference"
invariably strengthens the community.
4. Bring the Community Together to Plan
Change
Event based practice and training may be necessary, yet such
activities are never sufficient in moving businesses towards
becoming a high performance community. There is a significant
distinction between providing competence in new sets of behaviors
and recreating a community in which those new behaviors become
habitual - part of the background and history of the organization.
Outside consultants and trainers can provide the competence.
Only the business itself can take the actions, often counterintuitive,
necessary to sustain it.
Rebuilding and sustaining community requires a multi-step process
that enables us to:
• Bring the unconscious, habitual behavior of both the
individual and the system to the conscious level.
• Assess the effectiveness of behaviors in achieving
the business's current or future strategic intent.
• Identify additional behaviors assessed as necessary
to achieving strategic intent.
• Identify and redesign the underlying structures that
influence and promote effective behaviors.
Organizations must weave this process of strategically rebuilding
community throughout the daily context of their work rather
than view it in isolation as a series of training events. Events
can serve to create the desire and blueprint for change. It
is the work that occurs between events that produces
the momentum for and joy of change.
3. Practice
This is a Practice that you can take with you wherever you
go. It is an every day mindfulness Practice, and it is very
much the same as similar Practices taught in other disciplines.
Giving your relaxed awareness to how you walk can play an important
role in helping you to be more at ease and in tune with your
surroundings.
"Walking
with Grace and Power"
4. Links
Groupjazz.com
This is a link to the site of my current sponsor in Washington
DC. Lisa Kimball is one of the most helpful people
you will ever meet, and she is also a world class networker.
"Group Jazz supports the work
of groups, whether they meet face-to-face, online, or both.
We bring together the best tools, technologies, media, and PEOPLE
to produce great group experiences with powerful results."
5. Suggested Reading
This book was suggested by several friends so I thought I
would pass the information along, even though I have yet to
read it.
"Presence: Human Purpose and the
Field of the Future" Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph
Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers
The write-up for the book says:
"How would the world change if we learned to access,
individually and collectively, our deepest capacity to sense
and shape the future? This is just one of the questions posed
by the authors of a book that combines unusual personal honesty
with rigorous critical thinking.
"Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future"
gives the reader an intimate look at the development of a
new theory about change and learning. In wide-ranging conversations
held over a year and a half, Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, and
Flowers explore their own experiences and those of one hundred
and fifty scientists and social and business entrepreneurs
in an effort to explain how profound collective change occurs.
Their journey of discovery articulates a new way of seeing
the world, and of understanding our part in creating it -
as it is and as it might be."
6. Suggested Music
"Déjà vu" Crosby,
Stills, Nash, and Young (CSNY)
Were you part of the "Woodstock Generation"? If
so you need to listen to this music again!
Not part of the "Woodstock Generation"? Have a listen
and take a journey into being a "wanna be" hippy!
I think this album is a great classic. I guess I am "dating"
myself, huh?!
7. Our subscribers' section
Irfana Qureshi writes:
My name is Irfana Qureshi, and I am a wholsitic therapist and
homeopath in Calgary. I also teach Reiki classes. I believe
that everything, including Reiki is changing and evolving. Part
of my journey is uncovering the different aspects of Reiki and
teaching them to my students. If anyone is interested in learning
Reiki, my website is http://www.thesoulconnection.com.
In gratitude,
Irfana
Marguerite Tennier writes:
I would very much like to let the Seishindo Newsletter readers
know about the non-profit project I recently launched to offer
very low-cost life/business coaching to single parents in Canada.
Four coaches have joined me in this endeavour. The website is:
http://www.probonocoachingcanada.com
Thank you,
Marguerite
***
Every week new people are signing on as subscribers. We are
very glad to meet all of you, and hope that you will feel at
home with us. Our ONGOING growth depends on all of you. Please
help us to spread our life affirming message by passing our
newsletter along to others. Thanks so much!
* * *
If you have a business, hobby, group, or organization that
you would like other members of the Seishindo community to know
about, then please send us a short write-up (two or three
sentences) here.
You don't have a website? Then let us know how other members
might contact you by phone, fax, in person, or in writing.
We also invite you to send in:
A) Questions and comments relating
to what you read here.
B) Experiences that relate to
the "Practices" presented.
C) The names of books/music/services/products,
etc. you feel might be of interest to the Seishindo community.
Please include a short write-up (two or three sentences)
about your selections and send all input here.
8. Copyright
Unless otherwise attributed, all material for the newsletter
"Pure Heart, Simple Mind"(tm) is written and edited by Charlie
Badenhop ©. All rights reserved.
You are encouraged to send our newsletter in its entirety
to anyone you think might like it.
If you would like to reprint our newsletter for other than
your personal use, you are invited to do so, provided you:
a. Receive our written permission (which is likely) b. Attach
the above copyright notice to our material. c. Do not sell
our material to others. d. Keep the content of our material
intact without any editing whatsoever.
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