“We have been trained to think of situations that are inadequate for our aspirations as problems. When we think of them as problems, we try to solve them. When you are solving a problem, you are taking action to have something go away: the problem. When you are creating, you are taking action to have something come into being: the creation.” [1]

Why is it so misleading to focus on solving problems? Let’s remember that how we label things influences the meaning we attach to these things. Words we use and thoughts we think are not neutral: they directly participate in creating our own reality and influence each one of our actions. When we think in terms of ‘problems’ we think in terms of ‘things’ or ‘situations’ that we want to see go away: we see hunger in developing countries and we send foreign aid to get rid of it; we see water and air pollution and we want the manufacturing companies that are at the origin of the problem to address it, promptly. Of course, when we go to the store to buy the products originating from these same manufactures, we don’t really think about the fact that, through our purchasing, we ourselves become an active participant in the pollution issue. We believe the problem is not ours; it’s in someone else’s backyard.

None of our ‘fixes’ eliminate problems. Most often, they mitigate symptoms. At the best, they alleviate pain and misery for a few, a much necessary temporary relief. Perhaps, they make us feel less guilty. Unfortunately, our solutions rarely attempt to address the root causes of problems. Consequently, our fixes create negative long-term side effects and unintended consequences, which are often worse than the symptoms they were meant to address in the first place. (The list of such examples is long: for instance, the desertification of the Sahel region near the Sahara desert was a consequence of the alteration of the local agricultural patterns due to the introduction of development policies to revitalize the area, after the arrival of the French in West Africa in the late 19th century—policies which included digging wells, conducting veterinary and medical campaigns and opening new markets. Counterintuitive? Indeed it is! [2]

Our realities are not static; the specific issues we deal with are, in fact, dynamically evolving situations, which are under the influence of the complex interactions over time of a multitude of individual actions occurring in diverse entangled systems. The structures of these systems have been developed over decades, sometimes centuries, and are grounded in old worldviews deeply embedded within us. We have become blind men, unable to perceive reality as it really is.

The writing of the physicist David Bohm provides a deep source of inspiration and insights for learning how to see reality with fresh eyes. Bohm explains that because thoughts control us, they are at the origin of all that we do:

“…the general tacit assumption in thought is that it’s just telling you the way things are and that it’s not doing anything—that ‘you’ are inside there, deciding what to do with the info. But you don’t decide what to do with the info. Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives false info that you are running it, that you are the one who controls thought. Whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us. Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally. This is another major feature of thought: Thought doesn’t know it is doing something and then it struggles against what it is doing. It doesn’t want to know that it is doing it. And thought struggles against the results, trying to avoid those unpleasant results while keeping on with the way of thinking. That is what I call “sustained incoherence.” [3]

For Bohm, thoughts and actions cannot be considered separately: together, they make a whole. Consequently, he urges us to take the time to examine our thoughts so that we can start seeing reality as a whole. When we focus on the whole, we start seeing patterns—thought patterns, intangible patterns and physical patterns. These patterns are a source of deep insights into 1) the nature of our current reality (present); 2) how this reality came into being over time (past); as well as insights or clues on what might be done to improve our current reality (future).

The process of focusing on the past, present, and future, all at once, is highly generative: the pattern development history helps us unfold reality from the past and create new understanding from which one can re-interpret the present. When this happens, the original problems we started with dissolve as we now have the ability to uncover the dynamic and complexity of what is. From this place, creating the future becomes straightforward: we know what must be done and what action to take since our mind is now capable of painting a different reality.

Since the mind constructs its own reality, breaking out from our old ways of seeing is an art; it is a creative process. It is what Pierre Wack, the father of scenario planning at Royal Dutch/Shell, called “The Gentle Art of Reperceiving.” As Wack puts it:

“Decision-scenarios, by being alternative “ways of seeing the world,” are a systematic method for breaking out of this one-eyed view. In a proper sense, such scenarios confer a gift of second sight and can achieve something very precious: the ability to re-perceive reality.” [4]

As change agents and leaders, we have the responsibility to learn how to really see patterns and hidden realities as well as create new realities; we also need to help each other do the same. As Peter Senge argues:

“ Leadership is about creating a domain in which human beings continually deepen their understanding of reality and become more capable of participating in the unfolding of the world. Ultimately, leadership is about creating new realities.” [5]

“Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in a nonhabitual way.” ~William James

[1] Fritz, Robert (1999). The Path of Least Resistance: Designing Organizations to Succeed. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
[2] Brough Wayne T. and Mwangi S. Kimenyi (2004). “Desertification” of the Sahel: Exploring the Role of Property Rights, in Perc Reports, Special Issue: Africa. Vol 22, No 2, June 2004.
[3] Bohm, David (1994). Thought as a System. Routledge, London.
[4] Wack, Pierre (1984). The Gentle Art of Reperceiving. Working paper. Reprinted by Global Business Network by permission.
[5] Jaworski J. and Betty S. Flowers (1996). Introduction to Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership. Introduction by Senge, Peter.

In contrast, how often have you been in a situation where participants decided to voluntarily stop the process—not to bring it to an end but to simply take the time to assess the situation and reflect; to evaluate how to take into consideration a new piece of information or an event that just occurred that is changing the current reality; to verify if the team was still focusing on the real vision, the true outcome; or to assess whether the process needed some changes?   Rarely, I’m afraid.  The reason we don’t like to stop is simple and deeply embedded in our Western business culture: whether or not the schedule is a hard constraint, we always feel the pressure to keep things moving along.  Stopping a process creates instability and a sense of urgency—it generates a crisis.  By interrupting the flow of our activities we send a message that something is not right; and this is often perceived as a step back because there is no guarantee that, as we lose our momentum, we will know how to move forward again—and this is scary and stressful.

Perhaps we should remember here one of the main principles of Lean Thinking: Stopping the process to build in quality (Jidoka).  This concept was very foreign to U.S. automobile manufacturers in the 1970’s.  In his book “The Toyota Way” Jeffrey Liker recalls how managers at General Motors “were judged by their ability to deliver the numbers.  Get the job done no matter what—and that meant getting the engines to the assembly plant to keep it running.”  (Sound familiar?)  Stopping the assembly line was something inconceivable for American car manufacturers.  Yet, a culture of stopping the process to fix problems and get quality right first time is essential to Lean Thinking.

While the challenges we face in our society today cannot be compared to the problems encountered on an assembly line, I do believe that Lean Thinking, as a holistic approach to management, is very relevant and applicable to how we manage our projects and initiatives and, learning when to stop to reflect and examine our thoughts, is primary.

In “Thought as a System” the physicist David Bohm states that, “until we can stop and look at thought, we can not halt the ongoing introduction of actions which failed to see the whole.”  There is no point in running fast if we are running in the wrong direction; if the forces that drive us to run are misguided; or if we are focusing on the trees while forgetting the forest.  By stopping the flow of our actions to examine our thoughts and looking deep into their rationale—that is, by defining the mental models that influence our thoughts and actions—one might be able to “see” and perceive our reality with new eyes.  And I believe that when we do so, nothing will look the same ever again.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

~T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets – Little Gidding

Liker, Jeffrey K. (2004).  The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer.  McGraw-Hill.

Bohm, D. (1992,1994).  Thought as a System.  London: Routledge.

I love the World

that is breaking in tears

for the peace of mankind

My colleague Andrew J. Campbell and I just co-facilitated our new Leadership for Emergence course in South of France and we can still feel the energy.  We are excited at the future potential of this unique and in many ways unusual creative offering in the peaceful and inspiring commune of St Jean de Laur, located at the heart of the Quercy.

Imagine yourself going away from your busy professional life to a three-day course.  Instead of booking into a hotel or typical retreat ‘facility’ you find yourself in Beatrice’s own family country property.  Just renovated, it includes all the modern comforts while keeping its original style and charm and still carrying the rich history of her family over the years.

St Jean de Laur Property

Every day, you will share homemade breakfast, lunch and dinner made from fresh local food; you will enjoy walks and hikes on trails lined by centuries old stonewalls and punctuated by shepherds’ stone huts.  Now, see yourself at the end of a warm day, swinging gently in a hammock and gazing on the billion stars that are the Milky Way.  If you are lucky, you may even see a shooting star.

Stone huts, trails, trees and fields

This unique course deliberately keeps the size of the group to six people in order to provide personal attention and the appropriate level of coaching to each participant based on their specific leadership needs at every given moment.  Over three days, Andrew and Beatrice will attend you as you progress through your own creative journey.  One important goal we set ourselves is to create an environment that facilitates spontaneous insights as participants open their senses more wholly moving from double-loop learning to achieve triple-loop learning—that is, learning which comes from the heart and that integrates explicit knowledge (knowledge in the mind), tacit knowledge (experience) and transcendental knowledge (wisdom).  Central to our living design is the belief, based on our experience, that the inner state dynamically balanced with Nature is key to any transformative journey and that all change process must be grounded in our own authenticity.

With the assistance of Nature, Art and Dialogue, we choose to focus on helping individuals connect with ‘source’ that reawakens natural creativity.  Throughout the process we aim at co-generating with participants an unbroken field that reveals their own emergent destination.  The heuristic structure allows us to create a very fluid process, reflecting Nature’s creativity, from a set of activities that are adapted to the unfolding need of each of the participants.  Our intent is to facilitate participants’ reconnection to the very meaning and new purpose of their lives—as Andrew puts it, “with lightness of touch at the speed of light.”

Since a picture is worth a thousands words, here are a few glimpses and highlights in pictures with some commentaries.

Letting leaves, stones and lichen speak for themselves

“I am powerful, but I don’t know how.”

“I am coming from Nature, going to Nature, but I am outside of it”

“I am fragile, of different forms, yet adaptive.”

Stones, Leaves and Lichens

Painting session

One does not have to be a trained artist to fully engage one’s core creative self.  It is sufficient to pick up a brush, open the mind, open the inner eye and paint the vision.  Our sole purpose as creative facilitators is to co-create the space for authenticity to reveal itself.

Wisdom of the Hand

The Body Electric and Deep layers of Cosmic Knowledge

The many authentic lessons that may unfold from the connected body-mind in Nature are best captured in what poet William Blake referred to when he wrote “No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.” One lesson is that the quintessence of emergence is its irreversibility. It cannot be manufactured; like a dream and like a work of art, it contains past, present and future as one. We can choose to live life as in art, creatively, healed, whole, holy: three words, one reality.

Short Poems

Beatrice and Andrew

Poems and paintings by Augusto and Susana Tomas
Photographs by Andrew J. Campbell

The workshop explored the “application of the latest brain research to the qualities of exemplary leadership.”  Blake, who participated in the recent International Neuroleadership Summit that was held this past October, reported that neuroscientists are now coming to accept the until now controversial ideas that “the body is the brain” and that the mind is embodied. (It is important to mention that these ideas have been familiar to consciousness practitioners for a long time and, perhaps, are self-evident to most of us.)

The mind-body dichotomy idea originated from the French mathematician and philosopher Descartes in the seventeenth century with his well-known assertion “I think, therefore I am.”  Descartes argued for a disembodied mind having no influence on the body and vice versa.  This powerful idea allowed Descartes to reject the existence of any subjective reality.  From a Cartesian perspective, the essence of humanity is rationality, that is, our ability to think logically, to set goals for ourselves, to make decisions between different alternatives, and so on.

Following on Descartes steps, the conventional view in cognitive science holds that the mind is only the result of the activity of the brain.  In addition, the process of cognition is considered a process of manipulation of symbols and of representation of an external world.  However, recent experiments have shown that, by bringing our focus and attention to the mind, we can change the brain’s activities.  Also, findings in quantum physics have shown that separation between an observer and an observed phenomenon does not exist when dealing with atomic entities.

Consequently, there is an emergent and growing recognition among scientists that cognition is not “a representation of an independently existing world, but rather a continual bringing forth of a world through the process of living” (Capra, 2002).  From this new perspective, all cognitive activity is embodied and context-specific.  There isn’t a pure objective reality of the world.

What this means is that living systems – and human beings, in particular – select from the environment which information or disturbances to notice and consequently, create information and assign meaning to it.  This is done through a dynamic process called “structural coupling” – a term used to depict a living system that engages with another or with the environment.  Living systems learn through their ability to structurally-couple with their environment or with other systems in order to communicate (verbal and non-verbal communication), coordinate behavior, and adapt.  This learning is embodied learning because it uses the internal structure of the system and the body to learn in order to take action.  (Note that embodied learning is in contrast to the traditional definition of learning as gathering, processing and understanding information.)

When we remove the mind/body dichotomy, we realize there is a feedback loop between thinking and feeling: what we think influences our feelings and how we feel influences our thinking.  As Richard Strozzi-Heckler, President of Strozzi Institute, notes: “When our feeling-self and thinking-self are coherent we are at our most powerful.  When they’re at odds, we’re a train wreck.” [Read his article “A Return to Lovingness”].  Of course, how we feel and think influences our behavior and how we interact with others.   What the workshop’s experiential exercises demonstrated is that language is not necessary to communicate and to influence the feelings and behavior of people around us.  People perceive the energy fields that are generated by our bodies, gestures, facial expressions as well as our thoughts, and are influenced by them.   We all have had the experience of feeling sad or depressed, for no particular personal reasons, simply because we have been around a sad or depressed person.  Keep a frown on your face all day and you will start feeling sad.  Don’t we also say that happiness is contagious? Also, it is well know to call center representatives, that smiling while you speak to someone at a distance changes the tone of your voice.

So, how can leaders retrieve their generative power (by “power” here I mean their ability to act mindfully and in a way that empowers others) and become mindful leaders?

Since the mind is embodied, observing the body – our ultimate instrument of perception and action – is critical.  Mindful leaders are not only intellectually smart, they have developed the capacity to sense and be aware of their environment and of the state of their own being.  Mindful leadership can be regained by observing and monitoring the mind in order to modify its activities.

As Jeff Klein notes in his book Working for Good,

“Our bodies are incredibly intelligent.  While we believe we think with our minds, our bodies are great receptors, interpreters, and projectors of experience.  They continually read the terrain for us and inform our awareness.  They sense our physical orientation and relationship to other bodies.  They sense temperature and sustain our balance, and they can detect when our sense of balance is challenged.  They carry memories and experiences, and without our conscious intervention they respond to subtle signals to protect and guide us.  We can learn a lot if we pay attention to how our bodies feel and respond to our thoughts and actions, and to external circumstances and other people.  And we can apply this intelligence to how we move in our work.”

Learn how to tune in to your sensations and body and lead mindfully.

Resources:

Capra, Fritjof 2002, The Hidden Connections: Integrating the Biological, Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Life into a Science of Sustainability, Doubleday, New York.

Klein, Jeff 2009, Working for Good: Making a Difference While Making a Living, Sounds True, Boulder, Colorado.  (See in particular Chapter 2: Awareness and the accompanying exercises.)