Our Philosophy

As business change accelerates, the interests of organizations and employees converge more and more. Employees want meaningful jobs and great relationships with their managers and colleagues. Organizations that recognize this and are able to create this kind of work environment are rewarded with greater innovation, higher performance, and bigger bottom-lines.   

Power, creativity, and execution lie more and more in the space between people rather than within individuals.

Below are some of the concepts that we draw from to help our clients build this kind of work environment:

Deep Democracy

Deep Democracy is the firm belief that all different voices are important and must be heard (even if not followed) so that the full potential of the team can be represented. It celebrates that the diversity of opinion and beliefs can expand the team. The feel of it is that of the-sum-is-greater-than-its-parts.

Only in a deeply democratic team can there be real commitment and alignment across the board. 

Deep democracy can make allies out of competitors and troublemakers. It understands success as a multi-dimensional, material, emotional, and spiritual peak experience, related to each person’s unique path on this planet. Deep democracy allows us to always remember the larger vision, while at the same time never losing sight of the pragmatic bottom line. 

Bibliography:

1. The Leader as Martial Artist by Arnold Mindell.
2. Max Schupbach
3. Do I dare say something? “Latent Voice Episodes: The Situation-Specific Nature of Speaking up at Work” by Amy Edmondson of HBS.

Meaning

Meaning is a great source of power. Victor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor in his famous book “Man’s Search for Meaning” observed that those who survived the camps were not those physically strongest or with greatest intellect, but those with the greatest meaning to live.

The same applies to organizations.Strategies based on the deep meaning of an organization contain a sense of aliveness and effortlessness. In contrast, strategies based solely on external metrics (such as meeting quarterly numbers) are associated with a sense of special effort and hard work. They also tend to take organizations in ultimately unsuccessful directions.

We have a process for organizations to tap into their deep meaning and greatest source of power in a way that their people can personally connect to it.

Systems Approach

While individual interventions have an important role, we differentiate ourselves by working with the whole system to create change. We have the perspective that an individual's behavior belongs to both the individual himself and to the organization system supporting it. This whole system view is useful in moving us away from conversations about "who is doing what to whom" and into solutions that evolve the whole system.

Organizational Change

Four Principles of Organizational Change:

1. People support what they create. When people participate in the creation of your plan, it is not necessary to try to sell it to them or enroll them in it, they are already involved.
2. Life always reacts to directives, it never obeys them. It doesn’t matter how clear, visionary, or important your message is, it can only elicit reactions, not straightforward compliance.
3. We do not see “reality”, we each create our own interpretation of what’s real. Since no two people are alike, no two people have exactly the same interpretation of what's going on.
4. To create better health in a living system, connect it to more of itself. A failing system needs to start talking to itself, especially to those parts it used to ignore or didn't even know were part of itself.

Bibliography: Margaret Wheatley  http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/life.html

Co-Activity

Co-activity is about doing together.

It views any situation through the lens of humanity’s desire for fulfillment, balance, and processing what’s happening.

It has the following cornerstones:

1. All healthy people are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. They will act that way when you expect it of them (ie. the Pygmalion effect).
2. All aspects of our lives are interrelated (ie. we can’t separate our professional lives from our personal lives).
3. Dancing in the moment. We must be completely present to the moment rather than to what "should" or "could" be happening and is not.
4. Holding the highest agenda. Dancing in the moment does not mean not having an agenda. One must continually hold the highest agenda--that one that will add the most liveliness to life and produce results.

Co-Activity happens within the container of a "designed alliance". Powerful teams and relationships need not happen by “accident”, instead they can be consciously designed.

Bibliography: Co-Active Coaching by Laura Whitworth, Henry Kimsey-House, Phil Sandahl

Self-Leadership

If we open ourselves to the idea that we are not a single consciousness, but have access to different “sides” of ourselves, it becomes possible to expand the range of who we are.

Each “side” of us has its own personality and way of doing things. In this way, management becomes not only about managing and empowering the people around you but also about managing and empowering the “people” within you. This is self-leadership.

There are many sides of you that you may readily recognize. For example: the businessperson,  the regular guy/gal, the explorer, the hero. There are also other sides that are seemingly negative: the overbearing, the coward, the lazy, the mean. Although not always apparent, all of them (both the seemingly negative and the seemingly positive) have something worthwhile to contribute.

Interacting with others knowing that they also have different sides to themselves helps you avoid judgment and condemnation. This means you know what it means to be human, both the up side and the down side, attending to the fact that all humans have parts of them that have heart, skill, courage and sensitivity and that all humans also have aspects to them that are cowardly, lazy, selfish or mean. They all deserve to be treated with respect.

Getting Things Done: Personal Productivity

 There are 3 basic principles that can transform personal productivity:

1. The Collection Habit: You must have a system for collecting and tracking every idea and to-do that you may want to take action on in the future. If you don’t have this, your mind will never rest trying to keep track of everything.
2. The Next-Action Decision: Unless the next action for any project you have is absolutely clear, you are likely to procrastinate.
3. The Ideal Outcome: Articulating your ideal outcome and/or what is really important allows you to work on what truly matters.

Bibliography: Getting Things Done by David Allen