The Settle
April 18, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
My business is change facilitation and my sport is rowing. I’ve learned a lot about both from cox’ns who provide the inspiration for this 4th in a series of four posts about change leadership using social business initiatives as an example.
The first 3 posts were about:
- Shifting the vantage point through willingness, not willfulness.
- Releasing the fairy tale and attendant story-lines identified with what’s non-integral and non-sustainable.
- Creating the conditions in which innovation and productive friction can take place by embracing different perspectives and individual lenses on the new direction.
This post is about execution and action which require one of the most important parts of a race or practice that the cox calls: the settle. A lot of business leaders get this wrong. They launch a new project with a racing start and push everyone to hold that pace indefinitely. But its the settle that results in purposeful attention, high quality and finding the optimal rhythm together. Just like in the racing shell.
Like cox’ns, business leaders facilitate the shift from urgent desire to unity and trust, through giving the right feedback at the right time. Doing so requires a multi-dimensional awareness, what you and your team sense, feel, believe and embody..not just what you know or want.
The settle can’t be confused with settling for less because its a moment by moment refusal to be less, especially when it hurts. It must be understood as the collective action that creates shared responsibility for aligning with the desired results. In social business, those desired results are some form of creating natural influence in your communities and networks and with your audience.
If you lead like a cox’n, that natural influence could show up as gold.
The Lens On It
March 22, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Its important to understand the difference between shift in belief and shift in perspective.
Beliefs shifts are identity, the “We’re the ones who.. (experience the world and our organization’s place in that world from a single present vantage point of power).”
That shared point of power is the one from which future opportunities, capabilities, culture, innovations, networks, relationships and processes are created. An example could be a shift from a push oriented to a pull oriented belief system from which a social business direction is created.
Team, partner, group, community and organizational members’ ability to shift will depend on both their individual desires and whether their individual complex systems of beliefs, assumptions and expectations align with or contradict the change intention.
But people will have vastly different perceptions about what, why and how. They’ll experience those through a personal lens involving their strengths, weaknesses, talent, skills, personality, risk tolerance, experience, maturity, shadow behaviors and many other factors.
A typical management response is to standardize and control in attempt to neutralize the impact of perception differences but the downside is to stifle innovation and productive friction. Trailer Park Boys provides an alternative.
If you’ve never seen or heard of it, Trailer Park Boys is a Canadian mockumentary about the residents of the Sunnyvale Trailer Park who share a Utopian vision of trailer park community including get rich quick schemes, getting high, circumventing the rules and regulations and staying out of jail. The stories center around three main characters who see the means to their desired fulfillment through different lenses.
Julian is tall, dark, handsome and a natural leader. He also has a glass of rum and coke permanently attached to his hand. A career criminal, Julian is the head of the extended Sunnyvale Trailer Park family and he always tries to take care of the people in the park, especially his best friends Ricky and Bubbles.
Ricky is Julian’s best friend and business partner, grows awesome dope, generally lives in his car, doesn’t always make the best decisions though and the boys often get in trouble as a result. However, Ricky’s heart is usually in the right place, especially when it comes to his family and friends.
Bubbles is the heart and soul of Sunnyvale, not to mention the smartest person in the park. If it were up to him Bubbles would lead a quiet life in the park. Unfortunately, he’s constantly getting caught up in Julian and Ricky’s schemes and is afraid they – or even he – will go to jail again.
Trailer Park Boys web site
There’s seven seasons of problem-solving, decision-making, change leadership, capability building, innovation and creative friction metaphor if you’re willing to think outside the trailer park.
The Fairy Tale
March 15, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Social business is a direction that requires a shifted vantage point, one from which you view the world as it is, not as it was.
Social platforms and technologies are a subset of a bigger evolutionary shift in which economics and ecology are the same and can no longer be at odds with each other. That applies to the ecology of business in exactly the same way as it applies to the ecology of the biosphere. Survival depends, or inter-depends, on it.
The shifted business is holistic, or integral, meaning that everything it does is good for “me, we, you and all”. The shift is easy to grasp when there’s products involved and you’re weighing profits against labor exploited, resources consumed and environmental footprint. In professional, financial, knowledge and creative service businesses many impacts are invisible but infinitely reverberate nonetheless, positively or negatively affecting “me, we, you and all”.
All the knowledge, thought, concepts, ideas, solutions, content and actions (including social direction) initiate at the vantage point, or intention “we are the ones who….”.
How you answer that, and live up to it, and tell your new story, defines your direction and its alignment with evolution, or devolution. Its no longer possible to intend it both ways. It hasn’t been possible for decades but now is the time to let go of the attachment to the old story, which in essence has been a fairy tale. Ending the old story and replacing it with a new one creates uncertainty but doesn’t have to be a dreadful thing. That’s why the tales end with: “And they lived happily ever after.”
The Vantage Point
March 14, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
They’re trying to grow and develop and at the same time protect and survive. They’ll go to great lengths to “sell” me on the rationalizations and justifications for their interruption-based sales and marketing tactics and their reporting-based internal systems, structures and procedures.
I’ve learned its impossible to convince anyone to shift his or her vantage point if that business owner doesn’t sense, is in denial about, or not not able to live up to, a new direction like social business. They’re just not there and can’t make “sense” of it. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re lost causes.
We just have meet them where they are, let them fail and flail without judging them or jumping to unwanted conclusions on their behalf. “If you don’t act now it will be too late” is an example of one of those assumptions (and one that I’m prone to if I’m not vigilant).
Every client has a vantage point: their personal, or cultural, system of beliefs, competencies and desires. Professional service providers have two options:
- Tell them what’s wrong with where they are and what it costs them.
- Meet and accept them where they are if they’ll own it, present the corresponding opportunity and facilitate the shift to a new set of beliefs, competencies and desires.
I don’t know the right framework for the second option, but I know its not a plan.
Do You Care About Me?
February 16, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
So this is what I’ve observed after a few days experimenting with Buzz: very few tech/business people, often referred to as celebrities, dominate the public discussions. The vast majority of those who follow them race to make comments, agree or disagree, troll, rail against, offend, self-promote, cross-promote, ask for something, spam, praise and sometimes add value. This of course, is nothing new in public discussion groups.
What’s different and dramatic now is the scale…something like 10 million Google Buzz posts the first few days. So I followed a few of the celebrities, and observed how they engaged an almost instantaneous swarm of tens of thousands of followers. My sense: a collective need arises that I can only describe as: “Do You Care About Me?”. And I thought…do they care? How? And what does care even mean?
I can’t think of a better starting point for any brand (including global microbrands) to grow and develop in the Web 2.0 and beyond world, than to ask those questions. This is my first pass at a framework to facilitate that process. I followed a model that I created years ago for knowledge awareness, and its been valuable.
Why do it? Because to care is the natural state and point of power. Its also a state tremendously negatively affected by contradicting and limiting complex belief systems that inhibit growth and development.
“I Care” – is there a better way to change the status quo?
The Credit
February 1, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
My granddaughters recently gave me a painting embedded with sea glass that we’d collected together. They know I love to get things they created and this was really nice since they’d made it together.
Emily, who is younger was especially intent on pointing out that she was the one who found the light purple piece in the center and that it was “very rare, Nano”. I remember the day we were on the beach searching and collecting. She wasn’t finding as many as me and Sam, her older sister, and she was getting frustrated. Just before we left she found the purple glass and I made a big deal about it. I was so proud of her for remembering and being sure she got the credit a whole year later.
And Samantha was equally impressive. She didn’t try to upstage Emily. As anyone with kids knows, that’s not how it always plays out. She could have just as likely said “you got the purple but look at all the dark blue I got so I’m even better, ha ha weirdo!” But Sam gave, and Emily accepted the credit naturally and with grace.
Since then I think a lot about credit which I’ve concluded is a greatly underrated factor in the probability of personal or cultural change success or failure. Last week, for example, I concluded that the issue of credit was the singly largest block to any kind of political change progress. Thanks to the girls I now accept that credit is part of a complex system of beliefs with which I’d completely, but unconsciously identified..for most of my life! That lack of awareness, of course, drove many of my responses and reactions to challenging job, sport, school, family and team experiences.
I wanted to share what I’d learned. A new model and accompanying presentation that I was developing for solo professionals and content creators interested in WordPress and innovative business models provided the venue.
Art and Idea Credit: Samantha Wynne & Emily Wynne, Artists / Entrepreneurs
Who Is Your Vantage Point?
December 28, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
The question probably sounds a bit odd to you, like it should be “what”, not “who”.
But the question phrased as is gets to the heart of living up to popular and famous mantras and quotes for change, including:
You must be the change you want to see in the world. – Gandhi
Typical and well-meaning things we do to this end include revising what we do and say in response to change, setting new visions and goals, breaking old habits, trying new things, moving to different places, making resolutions, ending or beginning relationships or businesses, changing appearances, working harder and faster, etc.
Those are all well and good but often lead to frustration and failure when we place all our bets on some combination of our will, skills and knowledge with timing, luck and conditions. Certain people, serial entrepreneurs for example, claim they’re energized by the highs and lows. Others may feel just the opposite, de-magnetized and dejected. But in both extremes, as well as those in-between, the frustration/failure cycle takes its toll in some form of suffering.
Its so ingrained in us, that this is the way it has to be, that over time we’ve become completely identified with the suffering cycle we choose, seeing ourselves in a dog-eat-dog competitive race to survive in a cold, hard, mean world. And the world, which we create moment to moment, has no choice but to give us exactly that experience. Over and over and over again.
I’m always looking for ways to work with people to help them shift out of this worldview concerning desired change in any of the 4 major experience platforms: health, love, supply and (life and business) direction.
Dustin DiPerna, who recently led an Integral Meetup that I attended, gave an excellent, although highly theoretical talk about vantage points of awareness. I’m now integrating a synthesized and more practical version of his theory with the self-awareness cornerstone of my professional services practice.
My purpose is to galvanize my change model to help clients shift their vantage point from:
I am the one who “can or can’t do” things to change the world.
to the vantage point:
I am the one who “is present and poised” in a world of change.
As we grow and develop we may pay lip services to “let it happen” while our actions prove that we still mistakenly believe we can “make it happen”. This tends to happen when the vantage point is “what” and not “who”. In other words its just another concept or strategy used in attempt to hurry things along so we can get what we want or get rid of what we don’t want. But the world is not fooled and we eventually get the message when our cleverness backfires on us that we’re going about change the wrong way.
You can practice this right away with a problem or challenge that’s got you feeling stuck. Try looking at it from both vantage points: from the one who resists things as they are and from the one who accepts things as they are. The second one is your point of power and natural influence.
Photo credit:
Elbert Kennard Gallery
Title: Vantage Point
Photographer: kennarde
Embodied Resentment
December 1, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Graphic credit: ©2008-2009 ~smoweeks via DeviantArt
When I work with people to help them better respond to change, I find there’s zero tolerance or willingness to examine old, embodied resentments and the problems they cause. I’ve learned to distinguish these from the usual, garden-variety resentments, the lingering, angry thoughts and feelings about people or unwanted experiences that provoke, harm or result in suffering. Resentful thought forms that impede personal, professional and organizational growth and development, can be resolved when people are willing to separate and examine facts, thinking and feelings.
Embodied resentments are older, even ancient and always subconscious. They seem to come out of nowhere. You can just be driving along in the sunshine and listening to your favorite music and suddenly you realize that you’ve been fixated for an hour on some old grudge that you were sure you were finished with long ago. You find yourself in a moody funk darkened by obsessive negative thinking, anxiety and a sense of hopelessness. We all know what it feels like to be in the “grip” of the black heart and what it feels like to be around others in its grasp. Its not hard to envision the impact on organizational culture when embodied, contagious resentments surface and get fueled by the rumor and gossip mill.
The desire, of course, is to stop or at least alleviate the accompanying suffering. The challenge is knowing how to work with our own and others’ resentments that are deeply hidden from awareness. When the memories and beliefs are blocked from your mind yet embodied in your cells, how can you examine what you don’t know you know? We’re taught about the pitfalls of the default responses like resistance, denial, distraction, avoidance, numbing and pretense. Those pitfalls include prolonging and intensifying the suffering and contaminating others by projecting it onto, and acting it out against, people you live or work with.
A better response is a friendly curiosity about embodied resentment: where does it come from, when does it show up and what does it want of us? It may be showing up on an anniversary or holiday, or at a place we’ve been before, or in a challenging circumstance similar to a past one we’ve already experienced. Like a disturbing dream, disturbing resentment can be a pointer to something we need to learn to keep moving forward and evolving; or it can be a lead to help us solve a seemingly intractable problem or help us make a seemingly impossible personal or business decision.
It may seem like a stretch that the grip of the black heart and its attendant misery and suffering is a good thing. If so, it may be valuable to at least be willing to accept that its a helluva effective way to stop us and get our attention. What we do with it is our choice.
Defining Moments
November 15, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Something was triggered in me after reading about the trail of evidence on Major Hasan and the Fort Hood tragedy, and how its linked to a growing self-radicalization trend.
It reminded me of a workshop I attended in which Laura Whitworth opened with the importance of the defining moments of our lives. She shared that one of hers was that she ran away from home at age 17. Since I’d done the same I figured we’d have a shared bond but when I talked to her about it there was no spark of shared understanding between us all.
I realized that the big actions and events of our lives, good or bad, affect us but don’t define us. They’re responses to change that happen after we make inner shifts, the real defining moments that take place in a blink of an eye. They’re defining, because we create our reality, making choices to grow or protect and subsequently forming complex belief systems to reinforce those choices, from that shifted identity.
Unconsciousness about, or denial of our free will and responsibility for the defining shifts of our life experience, limit our creative power and reinforce a sense of powerlessness. Its not so difficult to understand the extremes, the distortions and the self-radicalization examples that lead to oppression, violence and tragedies.
The challenge is in sensing it, in ourselves and others, in our everyday personal and business interactions, particularly when we meet resistance to change head-on. If there’s even a slim glimmer of willingness to accept co-creative responsibility then there’s opportunity to examine individual and collective (culture) belief systems to determine if they’re aligned with what is wanted in a changed world.
Clearly, this won’t be accomplished with a stick. What’s not so clear is: what does the new carrot look like?
Embodiment – Its Directive
November 7, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Embodiment: the “E” in DRIVE
One of the 5 elements of the RedShift DRIVE Self-Awareness and Change Leadership Model, and key to shifting identity in the emotional/neurobiological dimension, is Embodiment.
Huge change shifts can create the perfect storm of heightened unwanted feelings combined with an increasingly perceived need to refute emotions. But to put on a false front is to live in conflict with oneself, blocking the motion of being and diminishing creativity, natural influence and personal power. The result is unhappiness, frustration and resistance that spreads when what is denied and can no longer be contained, is projected onto others. In extreme cases, it escalates to a toxic environment, self-harm, abuse and violence.
Feelings freely expressed, on the other hand, are valuable pointers to what people believe, and how they perceive themselves, in relation to change in their personal, professional and organizational lives. Awareness of those beliefs means they can be examined and replaced if they’re not aligned with what’s desired or with a new direction. Its a mistake to create an environment in which change must take place in mind only. That’s because identity, as well as the moment-to-moment choice to protect or grow, is embodied at the cellular level. Awareness includes body awareness. Expression comes through the body as well as the brain. Organizations can unlock institutional culture (collective beliefs) as well as institutional knowledge.
Social tools, computing and networks support an environment in which lasting, multi-dimensional change can occur; in which creative power is unlocked through participation, inclusiveness, authenticity, and transparency and in which leaders will continually sense and re-align the levers of growth and protection.
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The RedShift Web Site Pages and the corresponding Blog: Creating Natural Influence, do not enable comments. I'm more comfortable getting feedback on social sites than here, where the work is so close to who I am, where I've been and where I'm going. If you have a comment or question, or would like to suggest a topic for an upcoming blog article, please contact me. Thank you.
