Tag: Resilience

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Integrated Whole

First, a bit of context. I have spent the summer (July and August 2021) listening to audiobooks and reading a few that weren’t available as audiobooks. Adding to my thinking on Radical KM and filling in some gaps that I have recognised in talking to people over the last year, since I came up with the name. I’ll put a book list at the bottom of this blog post.

The bits and pieces have been interesting and provided new insights and “ah-ha” moments, but I have struggled to make sense of how they fit together, even though it was clear to me on an intuitive basis that they did. Then this morning, upon waking, I had the insight I had been waiting for.

What Radical KM is, is a model for an integrated whole.

Western thought and philosophy divided things up, separated mind and body, the analytical and creative, science and the arts. It was efficient and effective, it was rational to do it that way. Emotions, and intuition didn’t get “in the way”, we could focus on the really concrete things, the things we had data and logic to support. It separated us from nature and has lead to the environmental and climate catastrophe that we are now facing.

In separating these activities and putting them in their own box, we have lost a lot of behaviours:

Sustainable mindset

  1. A sense of purpose
  2. Enlightened self-interest (considering others as well as ourselves)
  3. A Long-term orientation
  4. Presencing (achieving highest potential while staying in the present moment)
  5. Courage
  6. Integrity
  7. Open-mindedness
  8. Transparency

Systems Thinking

  1. See the bigger picture
  2. Appreciate the details
  3. Maintain a balance
  4. Keeping things simple

Relationship building

  1. Understanding across cultures
  2. Appreciate and embrace diversity
  3. Network
  4. Meaningful Dialogue
  5. Empower stakeholders
  6. Measure improvements

These are all behaviours that ideas and models like Agile, Design Thinking, “The New Work”, bringing your whole self to work, and authenticity, seek to re-ignite and bring into the workplace. They are what gets lost when we separate whole into the parts, they are the magic that happen in the space in-between the boxes.

As the world become more VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) these are the skills we need more of.

These are the skills we learn by tapping into our inner artist, whether that art is painting, or cooking, drawing or gardening, theatre or jogging. Art helps improve our attitudes around being curious, what we are passionate about, our confidence, and our resilience. By having an artistic practice our abilities to perceive, reflect, play, and perform are all improved.

Radical KM is about tapping into our inner artist to re-ignite these skills and abilities that have been ignored in favour of focusing on the concrete and rational. It’s about making us, our organisations, and ultimately our Western society whole again. It’s about making an integrated whole.

Appendix: Book list

  1. A New Culture of Learning: cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown.
  2. Artistic Interventions in Organisations: research, theory and practice; edited by Ulla Johansson Scöldberg, Jill Woodilla, and Ariane Berthoin Antal.
  3. Artful Creation: Learning-tales of Arts-in-business, by Lotte Darsø.
  4. Artful Making: what managers need to know about how artists work, by Rob Austin and Lee Devin.
  5. Creative Company: how artful creation helps organisations surpass themselves by Dirk Dobiéy and Thomas Koeplan.
  6. The Value of Arts for Business by Giovanni Schiuma.
  7. Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie.

Additional books, from July and August 2021

  1. Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown M.D., and Christopher Vaughan
  2. A Whole New Mind: why right-brainers will rule the future by Daniel H. Pink
  3. Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Ken Robinson
  4. The Master and his Emissary by Iain McGilchrist
  5. The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination by Gary Lachman
  6. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez
  7. Leading from the Emerging Future: from Ego-system to Eco-system Economies by Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaeufer
  8. Dance of Change by Peter Senge, Art Kleiner
  9. Spiral Dynamics Integral by Don Beck (abridged audiobook)
  10. Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows
  11. The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi
  12. The Wise Company: how companies create continuous innovation by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi
  13. Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All by Tom Kelley, David Kelley
  14. Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World by Jacqueline Novogratz
  15. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
  16. Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
  17. Power of Not Thinking by Simon Roberts
  18. Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch
  19. The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation by Timothy R. Clark
  20. How the World Thinks: a global history of philosophy by Jullian Baggini
  21. The Silk Road: a new history of the world by Peter Frankopan
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How your KM Program can help you for life after Coronavirus (COVID-19), part 1

The previous post was about KM should be doing now, at the start of this COVID-19 Apocalypse, this post is how they can help the organisation prepare for life after Coronavirus.

How long is this going to last? No one really knows at this point estimates are anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. Some analysts suggest that we will have periods of tighter controls and looser controls, but first we need to “bend the curve” and stop this exponential growth. Even when a vaccine is developed, testing and then manufacture is going to take many months.

How can KM help moving forward?

In part this depends on whether the organisation sees KM as a “keeper of historic records and events”, i.e. more on the document/information management, lessons learned side of things, or whether they are seen as key enablers of collaboration, sharing, learning, creating new knowledge. Hopefully it’s the latter not the former.

What we know is that there is going to be uncertainty for a while, and we’re not sure what things will look like once we’re on the other side of this. How do we prepare for that?

By being adaptable and self-aware.

These things are ultimately up to the individual, not the organisation, and yet, the organisation can help. In particular HR, KM, and managers all have a role to play in encouraging employees to learn these skills and to become/be self-aware.

How?

Give employees the opportunity to learn, to try things out, to reflect, to ask questions. Wait, that sounds like knowledge management! It also sounds like quality management (plan-do-check-act), trial and error, being agile, and several other modes of learning/being.

Mostly it sounds like encouraging creativity. And what group are known for their creativity?

Artists!

So, what can we learn from artists? (Learning from other disciplines, that sounds like KM, too.)

First artists have an artistic attitude, they are curious, passionate, confident, and resilient. And then they refine and hone these skills through their artistic practice: perceiving, reflecting, playing, and performing.

Pausing for a second, we were all once creative, but our creativity was educated out of us:

On psychological tests of creativity:

Only 5 percent of people 18 and older registered in the “creative” range?

Among 17 year-olds, 10 percent scored “creative.”

But among 5 year olds, more than 90 percent demonstrated the creativity to suggest innovative ways of looking at situations and the ability to dream up new ideas.

Source:
https://ideapod.com/born-creative-geniuses-education-system-dumbs-us-according-nasa-scientists/

So, we were all artists/creative at one time and we’ve unlearned it. What do we do about it?

We develop an art/creativity practice. Except, we are doing it for another reason, we are doing it to re-learn something we lost. We are re-learning so that we become whole again, so that we can apply it in other areas of our life, because it’s been missing. We are doing it to help us be more successful in our careers, to bring us more balance and satisfaction. We are doing it to be more sustainable.

Back to the original question: How can the KM program help?

One of the motivations for doing KM has been about knowledge creation, some organisations have focused on that as a primary reason for their KM or a secondary reason for KM.

Knowledge creation takes space, it takes questioning, it takes trial and error, as well as collaboration and all those other Artistic Attitudes and Practices that were mentioned above.

To give people a sense of that, of what it feels like, what works and what doesn’t in a safe, supported atmosphere is key. So, in this case, we do, in fact, use art/creativity as a metaphor, as a means to an end.

How does it feel to experiment with different art supplies, or different creative modalities, e.g. poetry, music, to name two, although there are lots more? When people have these kinds of experiences, in a safe supportive atmosphere, it gives them confidence and resilience that transfers to other areas of their lives.

KM Programs should be working with HR to facilitate this experience and the building of these skills and abilities. There are benefits to the organisation as well as the individual–it’s a Win-Win.

But, it’s not a straight-line, the accountants will hate it, however, it is necessary if we are going to come out the other side of this and be able to move forward with whatever the future holds for us as organisations and individuals.

Note: If you want to see/read more about what is possible by adopting an artistic attitude and practice, read, “Creative Company” by Dirk Dobiéy and Thomas Köplin. You can find more info and get a copy, here. 

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Sustainable Leadership

At the end of February 2020, I did two talks on Sustainable Leadership. The first was with Janus Boye from Boye Company, you can find his blog post and a link to the recording and slides here.

The second was with Glenn Behenna for him MBA class. In that video Glenn interviewed me about my thoughts and experience with sustainability and leadership. Glenn has graciously allowed me to share the recording of that interview with you. You can find it on my YouTube channel, here.

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Entelechy

Why Entelechy?

I have had a few people comment about the name Entelechy: what does it mean? It’s too hard, no one will understand. How do you pronounce it? Why?

Entelechy means: realisation of potential. When I saw it, I knew it was the name for my next adventure. It summed up where I am in my own career: realising my potential and it described what I wanted to help others do: realise their potential.

What has helped me realise my potential is the expanding out from my accounting and information technology background and exploring my other side, the non-analytical, creative side.

I started to do that after I finished my MBA and was working for a high technology company. I had all this time on my hands, what was I supposed to do now that I didn’t have to study? I tried all kinds of things, but painting grabbed my heart and soul. Then it became about how do I bring this into my day-job, and that is how I spent the last 7 years, exploring that idea, talking to people, reading, looking at research, and, of course, continuing my own creative journey, which has brought me to Berlin.

Berlin, the city that buzzes with the energy of creativity, whether it’s some kind of artistic endeavour (painting, dance, music, etc.) or the creativity of the start-ups that populate the multitude of co-working spaces.

This is where I have met other people like me, who want to bring this creativity into a business/organisational setting, to help employees be more engaged, connected, resilient.

There is support in popular press for this idea of bringing the “whole person” to work, not just a part of the person. Introducing a culture that supports creativity and innovation is the way to do that.

We are born creative, but it is educated out of many of us, it’s time to re-learn that and realise our potential.

Entelechy!

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Why is creativity important to me?

I have two degrees, an undergraduate degree in Accounting, and an MBA in Information Technology. Nice degrees, years and years of studying, useful, but ultimately very analytical, logical, process oriented, and rational. I spent most of the first 30 +/- years of my life being very process driven, analytical, rational, and results-driven.

When I finished I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I started to ask questions, try things out: going to the symphony, drawing, photography, painting…

I started to have fun.

I was more relaxed, less stressed, more curious, more confident, more resilient.

My personal and professional lives were more interesting, and satisfying. 

I wanted to share my experience with others, and help them have these same benefits, and hopefully, reduce their learning curve, or at least move them along it, so now I am!

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Productivity, is that all there is?

We seem to have spent so much time in the last 100+ years trying to drive efficiency and effectiveness into our processes. How to do things faster, with more quality, with better outcomes, reduce waste, reduce re-work. These are not bad things, but in our push to be effective and efficient many of our organizations have removed time for reflection, for questioning, for considering alternatives out of the process.

That’s not to say that there hasn’t been a lot of innovation in the last 100+ years, there most definitely has been. Whole areas of study have been developed/discovered, new technology is being developed all the time, but what about the “smaller” things, everyday things. What happens when we take away the time to think and reflect? We do things by rote, not thinking about if that’s the right thing to do, we get tired and suffer burnout, we start to make mistakes and treat people badly because we have focused on efficiency and effectiveness to the detriment of the system as a whole (see United Airline’s complete failure to respect passengers  (https://fortune.com/2017/04/11/united-airlines-video/ and https://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2017/04/17/innovating-for-a-worse-customer-experience-insights-from-united-airlines/ and https://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/03/27/united-airlines-bars-teens-from-flight-for-failure-to-meet-dress-code-social-media-erupts/)

How do we bring that space for reflection, for some humanity back into our activities? By introducing time. Time for reflection, time for learning, time for asking questions, time for talking to other people, time for doing things differently, time for experimenting. Time.

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The Art of Innovation Workshops

Innovation and creativity, powerful skills we need for differentiation purposes in business, and to which we are attracted as humans. Sadly, too often we let self criticism and anxiety hold us back from being creative.

What can you do about it?

Come to one of our workshops in London (June 8 and 9)  or in Berlin on July 4-5. In London we are doing 2 1-day sessions, and if you sign-up early you will get a ticket for an evening event on June 8th. In Berlin we’ve decided to delve a little more deeply into the ideas and experiences that are possible in this domain, so the workshop is 2-days, with an evening event on the first day.

Isn’t it time to do things differently?