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.
Just This Once
February 22, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
It used to be called “getting over” but you don’t hear that expression anymore. You expect it in the public so that’s not getting over. You join the private to get away from it and resent it when it shows up, which it does, more than ever. Some now call it hustle.
- The moderator continually requests that participants keep their comments within the topic, framework and agenda but the hand keeps going up and the interruption is “just this once”.
- The group’s charter includes never using the group for business solicitation or self-promotion and a new member tries to sneak one in that’s barely camouflaged and the interruption is “just this once”.
- The professional service provider provides free, search-able access to ideas, solutions and content but the uncommitted client interrupts to ask for and discuss what’s already easily available “just this once”.
This self-management technique is the best way to discern if you’re the perp or the victim of getting over. Ask yourself “what would this look like if everyone chose to do this just this once?” The key word is choose. Don’t choose or settle for the wrong hustle, unless you’re Superfly.
How Dare You!
February 19, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
There’s an infinite amount of things about which to be righteously indignant. The ego loves it when you respond this way and rewards you with a jolt of satisfaction in the form of superiority and anxiety relief. Both are very temporary and you want the next hit which is only a mouse-click, channel-change, phone call, mail delivery, argument or interaction away.
Righteous indignation is a massive time-suck and a creativity killing monster. There’s a lot of advice about how to break the habit. But like diet advice and most resolutions, they’re failure methods because they don’t address the underlying intention: resistance.
I prefer this. When you feel yourself getting hooked have a talk with yourself and write it down, by hand on paper.
Ask yourself, how dare I:
- not give form to my ideas, solutions and content that create a positive experience and energy that spreads
- not reach out to somebody who needs my support and understanding
- not still my mind to allow the creative insight and inspiration that is my birthright to come through me
- not trust that there’s evolution happening and its my choice to be aligned with (leadership) or against it
These are suggestions; you get the idea.
When you hold up a mirror and employ a proprioceptive technique you’re much more likely to dislodge the resistance that shows up as the habit of righteous indignation.
I dare you!
Artist credit:
How Dare You
Sankam via deviantArt
Your Day Job
February 17, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
The question I get asked most is: “how do I start/grow my business and still make money to pay my bills?”. Unfortunately, its rarely asked in those simple terms. I hear the craziest stuff including cash flow management, leveraging vendors and long-term exit strategies…but that’s another post.
My answer to the question is simple:
1) Ignore everything you read on this topic because everyone’s situation and circumstance are unique.
2) The only thing you must do is refuse to give away your creative authority.
- You have creative authority in form: your ideas, solutions and content. So get the credit.
- You have creative authority in action: your autonomy. So self-direct.
- You have creative authority in intention: your beliefs. So be mindful and aware.
Your refusal must be absolute so be vigilant for doubts or rationalizations.
Your refusal might result in a so-called “day job” wildly different from your business. I’ve done that. It was good.
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 Golden Tomb
November 11, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
“And you old men love building golden tombs and sealing the rest of us in with you.” — Don Draper
This was a great line from the recent Mad Men season finale. For me, the golden tomb is a metaphor for denial of, and resistance to, the creative power of belief.
That resistance shows up in ourselves as the voice of our ego whose job is to convince us that change is the enemy and that survival and protection is paramount. It shows up in others and in institutions where the job of the collective ego is to strengthen and enforce the status quo.
If we’re not vigilant, we can give ourselves over to runaway negative thoughts (the “old men”) about people, experiences and things that we don’t want or don’t like. The result, of course, is to identify with and bind ourselves to our fears and problems, to add to our stress and suffering and to seal ourselves in the tomb of our unconscious intention.
The way out, for individuals and organizations, is more of a paradox than an effort. The door to the golden tomb immediately flies open with the awareness that we close ourselves off to, in exactly the same way we open ourselves up to, our creative power, greater intelligence, friendly guidance and infinite probabilities for positive change, growth and development.
Intention – It’s Creative
October 24, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Intention: the “I” in DRIVE
One of the 5 elements of the RedShift DRIVE Self-Awareness and Change Leadership Model, and key to shifting identity in the metaphysical dimension, is Intention.
“Be the change you want” is an increasingly popular personal development and leadership intention, in this context defined as where we direct our attention or what we identify with. Its often coupled with “we can change the world” and both relate to thought and action. Consultants often call it some version of “to drive change”.
This approach presumes outward intention, and how to respond in new and sometimes more conscious ways to things that are happening to us and our world. Outward intention is attention directed at form and matter, a tiny percentage of the totality of existence to which we ascribe tremendous dominion and then against which we must endlessly struggle in attempt to control.
The resulting suffering we see all around us is evidence that we also need to go within. To allow ourselves and lead others to shift attention inward, on the formless and invisible, is to relinquish control and to take the hands off the wheel. This creates space for new conditions in which change can take place and for receiving the greater intelligence and guidance that’s always available but rarely has the right of way.
Life is change and evolution. To draw a boundary between us and evolution, accepting only what we think is good and rejecting what we think is bad pits us against life and change. But the proof is getting harder to deny – who knows what’s good or bad?
To paraphrase Eckhart Tolle, life is the driver and you (we) are the DRIVE. Time, distance and the conditions along the way matter less when we let go of the ways and means and will to get to where we want to be. Its not as hard as it sounds if you just live and lead as if you’re already there.
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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.
