Embracing Reinvention: Part Three: Hold On Loosely

Celebrate your reinvention and be open and ready to shift again. Image: freeimages.co.uk.

Authors:
Tony Bond, MBA, MPOD
& Kristen Barney, MA, MSOD

How do we know when we are reinvented? We wrap up our three-part blog conversation by looking at the tangible, external results of reinvention.

TB: In Parts One and Two we turned inward, looking at the personal heart and mind. While looking within is essential, reinvention also involves other people. It is a contact sport. We transform in relationship, not in isolation. In fact, engagement with others propels us forward and allows us to see the progress we have made, when we might otherwise miss it. Reinvention can sneak up on us, because we are so busy striving, judging what we have not yet achieved, or looking for the next new strategy. Meanwhile, we may have arrived at a new station in life without realizing it. Here’s an example:

Years ago as a graduate student in positive organizational change, we were required to craft our own personal development plan that would include goals and aspirations for the next ten years. This came after a long process of defining our own personal vision, identifying personal strengths and gaps and building a personal network of relationships that could help us along our journey. The end result would be a total transformation into our ideal best self.

Through my experience in this program, I developed a strong interest in the field of sustainability. Consequently, part of my personal development plan involved becoming somewhat of a subject matter expert on how the role of organization development and change was crucial to embedding sustainability into organizations. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to study under an internationally renowned thought leader in the field. I optimistically built a plan that not only inlcuded developing a working relationship with this professor, but also collaborating with other notable people in the sustainability as well as innovation spaces. As any good student would, I filled my personal development plan with aspirational goals that resonated with me and activities that would build the competencies I needed to pull of such a plan.

Over the next several years I found myself busy pursuing the activities that were necessary to achieve my long-term vision. This included numerous networking events and cold calls which at times felt like they were going nowhere. Often, I found myself turning to other ideas where I felt I could gain more traction, but always felt this tug to stay on course. If I had to assess myself on how well I had achieved the milestones that made up my ten-year plan, I would have scored myself very low.

During a recent conversation with a trusted friend, I realized that I have indeed made progress toward my vision. Through the gift of reflecting with this friend, I saw that over the intervening years I had, in fact, gotten to know and work with that esteemed professor and thought leader. My progress was further impressed upon me when I sat down recently to read his new book and had a pleasant surprise. Although I don’t usually read acknowledgements, for some reason I did that day, and found my own name among those deserving “special thanks for all they contributed.” Likewise, a few weeks ago I found myself having lunch with one of those icons in the innovation space to whom I made cold calls years ago. It dawned on me that I had been so busy peddling as fast as I could that I had lost sight of what I was experiencing along the journey. In my quest to force transformation, it was happening to me without my notice. I learned two lessons from this. First, although transformation requires effort, we don’t “do” transformation. Transformation happens to us; it emerges in its own time from the totality of our efforts and experiences. Second, it is only through reflection and relationships with others that we fully see what’s happening in our lives.

KB: I agree. Many leaders recognize that striving for excellence involves modesty and a reluctance to rest on our laurels. Yet it is important to stop and reflect, so that we notice when we have achieved something. While modesty can make leaders effective, it can also be a double-edged sword: we may not even notice that we are suddenly in the place we have long sought to reach.

Related to that is the need to see with new eyes. I recall Einstein’s statement that we cannot solve a problem with the same consciousness which created it. In the same way, we cannot see a transformation with our accustomed eyesight. We need new eyes to recognize our reinvention. I had this experience recently in my own professional life:

For some years I sought to define the market niche where I would develop my consulting and coaching practice. At one point I listed the top ten arenas in which I sought to make a difference. The very last priority was the Earth and human sustainability. I was not sure what to make of that, and while I waited for clarity to emerge, I worked where I could find interesting assignments. Recently I noticed a common thread tracing through my career: working with sustainability-related nonprofits and supporting partnerships with the private and public sectors. I came to realize that my top nine priorities were just my way of leading up to or influencing the support of Earth and human sustainability. Without being in contact and interaction with people who appeared with needs for my craft and presence, I would not have noticed how all roads were leading to sustainability for me.

We grow and transform by coming into contact with other people. And we need to notice small things and see in new ways, in order to recognize our progress. Here is an exercise that can help you strengthen your ability to see anew.

• Practice 5: Look with New Eyes. In this exercise we deprive ourselves of a physical sense (sight) for a little while, and then engage that sense again. If you do not have physical sight you can redesign the exercise with deprivation of another sense, such as hearing or touch. So we begin. Go to a quiet, safe place. Ideally this is a place outside in nature, such as a park or garden. Or a big empty room. Close your eyes, and be still for some time. Let your eyes relax. Let the muscles around your eyes grow soft. Let your eyes recede into the back of your head. Let your facial muscles relax. Let yourself breathe deeply. Spend some time trying to see the color black. Focus on the color of the sky at midnight when there are no stars or sun. Eventually your breath may change to be fuller, slower, and full of relief. Let yourself be in that quiet, dark place, seeing pure and complete darkness. At first you may see light, even with your eyes closed. Be patient and relax, and see if the blackness becomes more complete. After a while, maybe 10-15 minutes, tell yourself you are going to come back. Slowly and gently open your eyes. Notice. Look gently at your surroundings. What do you notice? Do you see anything you didn’t observe before? Do the colors look different? Make some notes for yourself. How can you apply what you have learned and experienced to your larger life?

(Note: this exercise is based on the work of Dr. Meir Schneider, who credits Dr. William Bates, and ultimately Tibetan Yoga, as the sources of his eye-improving practices.)

TB: There is another force at play in our reinvention. As a society that values the self-made man or woman, we can come to believe that we are the sole creative force in our lives. Whether you call it the Universe, God, the Divine, or something else, there is a force that wants us to become something, that has an idea of what we will contribute in this life. For example, that universal force seems to want basketball and sports to be part of my life:

I grew up playing sports. I was fortunate to receive an athletic scholarship to attend an outstanding liberal arts college and continue to pursue my passion for playing basketball. The journey there was not an easy one and was filled with injuries and obstacles. The struggles continued during my four years of college, and there were times when I questioned whether or not I had the mental capacity to deal with one more stint of physical rehab or with what I perceived to be irreconcilable differences with coaches. I persevered, but once I graduated, despite having some offers to pursue the sport professionally, I made a vow to officially and forever close the book on basketball. As much as I have tried to avoid it, basketball has consistently followed me with new and compelling invitations. From being asked to volunteer to coach youth, to founding an elite program for gifted athletes, sports have continued to engage me. Despite all of my efforts to hide from our infant children any signs that my wife and I were basketball players, our son and daughter, too, went on to have college basketball careers. The love-hate relationship with the sport has persisted much of my life. I have become resigned to the fact that maybe basketball is one of my callings.

In striving for greatness, leaders need not only modesty but also receptiveness. There is something an organization wants to become. The universal force wants it to have a certain impact. And for all the strategic planning, market analysis, and restructuring we may do, there is some unique calling that a leader and organization will discover. I believe that the general calling of great leaders is to create a culture that provides deep meaning for those they lead. As I have learned from coaching our children and others, a leader’s role, first and formost, is to create an atmosphere where others can flourish and comfortably pursue their dreams and passion. Modesty is being open to receive that calling and responding to it.

KB: That reminds me of some words of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke: “Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” (From Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell.) We cannot always see the purpose of a certain phase of our life in the bigger picture. Sometimes we have to delve into a project or task without understanding its meaning in our life. We may not know that this project will help us build connections to an icon we dream of meeting or teach us a skill that will serve us later in life. We have to “live the questions.”

I once heard that our lives are like patchwork quilts: that each square has its own design, which seems unrelated to the next. Yet when we stand back and look, we can see how every piece fits together to make up a whole. Recently I felt that way when in discussions about a new professional opportunity. By the end of the conversation I found that I had described accomplishments from nearly every project I had completed in the last few years. It was as though every piece had been part of a larger puzzle, even though I could not see how the pieces fit together at the time.

• Practice 6: Put Together a Blank Jigsaw Puzzle. Pull from the closet or attic a jigsaw puzzle. Or borrow or purchase one. Put all the pieces on a table upside down, so the picture side cannot be seen. Now put together the puzzle, with the gray, cardboard side facing up. Pay close attention to the information that is available to you: the shapes of the tabs and the blank spaces cut out of the pieces. Which are wide or elongated? Which are thin or squat? Which are square or round? Are there ways to systematize your process such as finding and organizing pieces for comparison and assembly? Do you find it easier or harder to put the puzzle together without the details, colors, and designs on the picture side of the puzzle? Don’t forget your humor: if you get stuck, you can always proclaim, “there is a piece missing!” (It is usually under the table, or if it’s a borrowed puzzle, one may really be missing!) What parallels or contrasts do you find with the reinvention process? How can you move forward with life even in the absence of the full picture?

Conclusion

We close with the suggestion to “hold on loosely,” borrowed from the title of a song by 38 Special. Reinvention does not have a firm beginning or end. We are always works in progress. We may achieve a sense of completion, and we can wisely “hold on loosely,” so that we are ready to open and shift again when the time comes. Finally, Tony and Kris will share how our own reinvention processes are unfolding.

TB: I continue to work with a diverse group of organizations and feel that my broad repoitore and experiences provide valuable resources that can be tapped into by new clients. I am becoming increasingly aware of how the field of organization development and change (ODC), which is a central framework of my consulting and coaching, is uniquely positioned to help enterprises embed strategies for sustainability into their core operations.  Sustainability – including social, environmental, and organizational dimensions – needs to be at the core, rather than a special side program for corporate responsibility.  By embedding it in core strategy, operations, and metrics, enterprises can create what we call sustainable value – an ongoing and evolving competitive edge supporting the enterprise’s relevance and resilience through changing times while helping to address issues in the economic, social, and natural ecosystems. The focus of my work is to help organizations implement strategies that vigorously engage stakeholders, create shared leadership across business units, and build a culture of learning and innovation. To learn more about my work, please follow me on Twitter, @tonybond.

KB: In my projects and explorations I am increasingly aware that our human civilization and planet will continue to experience shifts, changes, and shocks. The unfolding direction of my work includes helping groups of people to create collective grounding while navigating the changing landscape of work, leadership, strategy, and collaboration. Human connectedness is an extension of our connection with the Earth, from which all grounding comes. By using storytelling, shared experiences, and group exercises that reveal how individuals each contribute to wholeness of a group, we can create strength and wisdom in a group to be resilient through shocks, reinventions, and changes in our world. The strength and wisdom generate clarity and leadership about organizational priorities and strategic directions that will keep our products, services, and partnerships relevant and helpful in times of challenge and opportunity on the planet. In late August 2012, my partner Anthony Hyatt and I will be offering a half-day workshop on human connectedness, storytelling, reflection, and movement at Mindcamp, a four-day event near Toronto, Canada. Please join us and/or spread the word!

We look forward to your comments, questions, stories, and examples related to reinvention!

Embracing Reinvention: Part Two: Moving into the Heart

The interior space of a shell reminds us of the heart, where transformation can happen. Image: freeimages.co.uk.

Authors:
Tony Bond, MBA, MPOD
& Kristen Barney, MA, MSOD

Deepening our earlier conversation about our own practices supporting personal reinvention, in support of our consulting and coaching practices – and of your reinvention needs, we now explore the theme of creating space in the heart to allow for transformation.

TB: It’s hard to bring about transformation while living in the head. Transformation happens when attention is centered in the heart. A few years ago I participated in a transformative retreat with Father Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation. It changed my life, and every day I still connect with the experience and Father Rohr’s teachings.

During this men’s retreat, which was a modern initiation process based on ancient practices, we were asked to not refer to anything outside ourselves: not even our jobs, spouses, or children. For the entire week, we did not know the profession or status of our fellow participants. We could only identify ourselves as who we were at the core. The best part: this stripped away the identities I carried. It was basically me. At first, we were apprehensive. Not really knowing what to expect from the experience (letting go of control) and not being able to rely on the false identities we normally think of as our true selves, we felt vulnerable.

Once the ego is put in check and the focus is directed inside, there is room for growth and true transformation. This is what took place for all who were a part of the experience. There are leadership lessons to be drawn from this type of experience. Accepting the fact that we really cannot control most things, and being intentional in developing a high level of self-awareness can have a positive impact on others and the organization as a whole.

• Practice 3: Explore on the internet for a teacher or speaker who offers daily messages of inspiration, reflection, or inquiry, and subscribe to his or her list. Or choose a book of daily meditations from your bookstore or library. Commit to spending 10 minutes a day reading and journaling about what comes up for you during the reading. Spend an extra 3 minutes writing about how the reading and reflection changes your state of mind or the place of your attention. Keep it up for 30 days, and write a final reflection about what you learned and what you noticed about yourself. This might be about three pages long. If you choose, you can renew your commitment for another 30 days. Here are links to two teachers who offer emails and other resources for meditation: Father Richard Rohr and Tara Brach.

KB: I agree about creating “room for growth.” I find that space is a valuable ingredient in allowing transformation to happen and connecting with our truest identities. As a student of Iyengar yoga for more than ten years, I’ve learned that it’s possible to create much more space in the joints than I ever imagined was feasible, while also being more grounded. This allows my consciousness to be more expansive, and therefore I am more open and present for what is and what can be. As a consultant and coach, my clients and their situations take me to places I am not expecting, and when open and grounded, I can respond in the most helpful ways.

Recently I have been using a guided meditation developed by the Tibetan Buddhist Monk, Tulku Thondup. He noticed in working with Westerners that there can be discomfort with the body, and therefore he created a meditation to create greater ease and connection with the body. In his book, Boundless Healing, Thondup guides the meditator through connecting with all the body parts (such as feet, liver, heart, and brain), and then seeing the trillions of cells in the body. And, since physicists believe that matter is really just a condensed form of light, he has the meditator see all the cells as filled with light, and even enter and explore a single cell through the imagination. Just as in my experience with Iyengar Yoga, I found my concept of self, possibility, and space to shift. If I am really a giant mass of light-filled cells, are the possibilities not endless?

• Practice 4: Find a book or recording of a guided meditation that inspires you and expands what you believe is possible. Work with it daily or at least several times a week, and notice how it changes your energy level, mood, ability to be present for yourself and others, and what shifts happen in your life. For example, try the guided meditations in Thondup’s book, Boundless Healing, or the CDs on breathing and “listening to the inner voice” by yoga master Angela Farmer.

TB: The power of reinvention is not in big things, but in small things. For example, what are the “tapes” I play in my head? There is power in simply noticing the tapes (e.g., negative messages), and knowing how I can switch them to positive thoughts. I look for little inconsistencies between what I believe in, what I communicate to others, and how I am practicing on a personal level. When I get stressed and things are not happening in my preferred time frame, I lose sight of the faith concept. I have to work to reconnect with personal faith, belief, and trust. I keep catching myself in those moments when I’m inconsistent with what I instill in others and how it plays out for me, and that awareness allows me to shift. I want to be consistent with my values.

In my work supporting leadership development, I take leaders through personal sustainability journeys. These journeys are about being comfortable with being less in control and being able to see yourself. If we can see ourselves as stewards of the Earth, our organizations, families, and children, we can become more aware of what sustainability really means. We are stewards of their well-being. Transformation is an inside-out job: the leader has to lead with personal transformation.

KB: I also find, in leadership development work, that when enough emotional safety is created, there is a natural progression of moving into the heart. While we maintain an overall focus on the business issue at hand, it is only through stepping into a place and time of being in the heart that transformation can happen. Having new awareness and consciousness from this journey is what then allows movement and progress on the business issue.

We welcome your comments and stories below. Please share your experiences with how “moving into the heart” is and whether you find it an essential practice and competency to support leadership and personal reinvention.

Note: Several readers have made comments pertaining to Parts One and Two. You can read those comments here. 

Embracing Reinvention: Part One: Connecting and Seeing Anew

A defocused, decreasing, spiral fractal pattern, suggesting the true self being reinvented and released into the world. Image: freeimages.co.uk.

Authors:
Tony Bond, MBA, MPOD,
& Kristen Barney, MA, MSOD

Introduction

In a sense, we are Tony Bond and Kristen Barney. Yet like you, we are reinventing ourselves. All of us –individuals, leaders, and organizations – are being challenged to move beyond who we were yesterday or last year. This is the gift of our challenging economic times. All of us are called to be more, to dig deep within ourselves to draw out more of our potential. The good news: this is a chance to be truer to ourselves, which basically means shedding unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, or habits which are generating unhelpful results, and embracing more helpful ways of seeing and being.

The starting place for transformation is always at the personal level. And as consultants and coaches, in order to support others in transforming themselves, we (Tony and Kristen) must first be adept at self-transformation. So we sat down via Skype for an open-ended conversation on this question:

• How can we share the essence of transmutation – shedding old skins and embracing different or refined identities – with individuals and organizations who might not connect with buzz words like innovation or reinvention, yet are being urged by the new circumstances of economic and other conditions, to change?

We have created a three-part blog post to share our conversation, including several practices you can use in your daily life to support self-transformation. We have used a wide range of terms to refer to  transformation, including change, transmutation, reinvention, innovation, and refinement. Many authors have written about the different meanings of these words and for this post we are using them interchangeably to refer to internal shifts that generate new kinds of results in your life. We invite you to explore what these terms mean for you.

Part One: Connecting with the System and Seeing from Different Levels

Tony: When I think of the reinvention process, and how insights can be transferred to other contexts, I am reminded of Professor Chris Argyris’ research, which found that the more educated one is, the less likely one is to look reflectively within.  (See Argyris’ Harvard Business Review article on this theme.) As leaders, we are tempted to look on our organization as something outside ourselves that we are managing (like a puppeteer with a marionette), while at the same time forgetting to manage (or reflect on) our own impact on the situation or system.

The truth is, the idea that we are “in control” as leaders is somewhat of an illusion, and our efforts to control actually block critical insights. When leaders and individuals can look inside at their own role in a situation, that’s when organizational transformation begins. I experienced this myself: when I paused to see how I was contributing to a situation, a veil of illusion was lifted and I could see more clearly.

I’d like to use a recent, personal experience to help illustrate this point. I recently sat down to do some business planning for the upcoming year, because, as an independent consultant and business owner it is important to have a clear strategic direction, as well as make room for gathering and studying insights that can help shape future actions. For this business planning, I went through a process of divergent thinking, brainstorming as many ideas as possible to capture new market opportunities and to bring even greater value to my clientele: small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The next logical step was to switch to more convergent thinking, selecting a few ideas that created the best match between client needs and my capabilities and interests. This is where the problems started for me. For whatever reason, I found myself locked in a state of mental block. The more I worked “on” my business, the more frustrated and stuck I felt. For whatever reason, I was not experiencing the flow that this exercise normally brings. I found myself trying to choose between numerous directions with no clear way of discerning what was best. Fortunately, I was able to work through this with my coach. I had fallen victim to the same trap that clients face. I was busy working “on” my business as if it was something separate from me, analyzing or breaking each part of what I do into pieces that could be easily examined.

Update: Stakeholder Engagement in the Community Garden

Tricolor Garden Sage (Salvia officinalis) shown through the garden fence, is a planting intended to give passers-by a connection to the garden while the organizational boundary (fence) remains clear.

Author: Kristen Barney, MA, MSOD

So, what has happened in my experiment with stakeholder
engagement in a community garden?

• As I tend my plot, people walking by continue to speak with me and even compliment the garden.
• There continues to be little or no evidence of littering.
• Only a rabbit or vole has committed theft (and murder by the way), neatly executing a promising zucchini plant at the base and knawing up the first squash. (I may not cast any stones, however, as I mashed some harlequin beetles, or Acrocinus longimanus, which breed quickly and transform kale leaves into lace.)
• Today a petite elderly woman in a turquoise tunic spoke softly to
  me in an Asian language and made hand gestures about my weeding activities and how she was exercising her legs.

Stakeholder engagement aside, the blackberry brambles have tripled in size, the cabbage is nearly ready to harvest, and I snack on gold and red cherry tomatoes with every visit.

Organizations (and farmers!) usually have more ambitious goals than stemming the tide of litter, preventing theft, and having friendly conversations; yet, the principles of stakeholder engagement do scale well. I hope you will tell more gardening and/or stakeholder engagement stories below and share posts with friends and colleagues.

Walking the Stalk: Leadership Lessons from the Garden

The community garden relies on goodwill and a chain link fence to protect the gardens. My 17′ x 30′ plot is partly covered with plastic to keep weeds down while I slowly reclaim parts of the garden for production.

Author: Kristen Barney, MA, MSOD

One year into my tenure as a community gardener, as I unearth a tangle of mint and mugwort roots, I remember those distant first mornings digging up broken bottles and old shirts. When I first saw the plot and was informed it had “issues,” I took a deep and fearless breath, knowing that I love a good challenge. Being a corner plot close to a sidewalk in a densely populated residential neighborhood, my little rectangle of earth has long been viewed as a handy place to throw coffee cups and cigarette ends. And all plots, not just corner ones, have suffered from theft of the bounty: corn, tomatoes, beans, and peas.

In the first weeks as I piled up hitherto buried treasures (cast iron utility markers, plastic bags, and old shoes), I reflected on the community garden as an organization with physical and social boundaries. There were gardeners who were insiders, and people walking by who were outsiders. I wondered what I would learn about organizations, leadership, and myself during my adventures with weeds, seeds, soil, and the elements.

Seeking to Create New Dynamics

For one who adores sifting out roots and stones with her bare hands, happening on broken glass is a bit dangerous, so my first desire was to stem the flow of new trash in the plot. One obvious approach would be to strengthen the physical barriers: build up the four-foot, chain-link fence with chicken wire and other materials, and grow tall plants like morning glory vines, sunflowers, or climbing roses to create a barrier between my plot and people walking by.

Yet being a natural practitioner of polarity management, I suspected there would be complementary strategies that did not involve building barricades. (Of course, others may have already tried my complementary strategies to no avail! Our knowledge management system in the community garden is a bit haphazard!) So yes, the amended fence is increasingly un objet d’art brut. I also removed trash as soon as I found it, a strategy that is documented in The Tipping Point as a powerful way to encourage respect of shared spaces. And, I would take the seemingly opposite tack, and engage with those who may have been tempted to trash or filch.

My Experiment

Now, I will never know who exactly lifted last year’s corn harvest, nor do I care to know. (I am starting with the hypothesis that “outsiders” have been the culprits since the insiders have agreed to abide by an honor system.) So, I wanted to know something about the people who walk by and how they experience the garden. I went outside the chain link boundary and walked around the entire garden (made up of about thirty plots). On my side of the garden, walking down the sidewalk, sweetpea and sunflower greens leaned into the sidewalk space. By the end of summer 2010, one could hardly use the sidewalk due to larger-than-life foliage. As gathering places for trash and dead stems and leaves, the stalks were also quite unsightly: nothing much to enjoy or admire.