This discovery that thought alone changes the brain’s physical structure validates strategies that practitioners of systems thinking and organizational learning have long appreciated. These strategies — effective with everyone from primary school children in the Netherlands to employees in global corporations — include listening without judging, speaking honestly, looking for interrelatedness, nurturing relationships, and asking fresh questions. Brain research suggests that such mental awareness, attentiveness, and creative questioning can actually transform our brains from rigid, automated responders to thoughtful, alert, searching, and open creators of Self and the world.

This article explains why mindfulness — being fully aware of the present moment and regarding it with openness and curiosity — is the compelling responsibility of all human beings. It explains why all of us are by definition obligated to examine and develop our inner context — the Self that thinks well, sees clearly, and decides intelligently. Our survival as individuals, organizations, and a species depends upon it.

Our Inner and Physical Contexts

For the purposes of this discussion, I use “context” in two ways. Strictly speaking, the word “context” means “the situation that surrounds us, with its conditions.” I use it to designate inner context, the mental state inside our heads that envelops us — such as our ideas, tastes, attitudes, moral principles, social rules, and worries. Used this way, “context” is synonymous with “Self or “Mind.”

I also use physical context to refer to the world surrounding us now. The Self is always moving from past to future in a physical space with its own conditions. We live among family, friends, teams, clubs, and neighbors. We occupy a workplace consisting of office furniture, equipment, tasks, deadlines, and colleagues who interact, apply knowledge, make choices, interpret events, and sometimes bring us coffee.

In the workplace — or in any physical context — people, objects, and events are woven together. Indeed, the word “context” comes from the Latin “contexere,” meaning “to weave together.” Woven together in our inner context, our Self, are all those attributes we refer to with the pronoun “I.” The Self, the Mind, emerges as brain cells (specifically, neurons) weave together and connect. Brain cells connect as a result of our experiences. Daily life builds the brain, continuously, moment by moment. We make our Selves.

For example, humans are born with the capacity to distinguish every one of the sounds contained in the 6,000 languages spoken on earth. Particular neurons are genetically assigned to receive particular sounds. The more an infant hears a single sound, such as “gr,” the more that “gr” is wired into a tiny cluster of neurons in the brain’s auditory cortex. The cluster of neurons holding “gr” comes alive with electrical activity when — and only when — that distinctive “gr” sound enters the child’s ear and passes to the brain. Clusters of neurons — circuits — in your brain hold all the sounds of the language you speak. In this way, experience decides if Italian will make sense to you or sound like gibberish.

Experience also wires the brain for music. During the first few years of life, a child’s brain can wire for any kind of music. Because in the United States children hear Western music, by the age of five, their brains have formed circuits that hold Western musical sounds. Five-year-old children know the customary chord progressions in Western music. These examples from music and speech demonstrate that use sculpts the brain.

Because personal experience generates the Self, therefore, one might well ask, “What experiences, what influences, made me the Self that I call ‘I’?” and “Will I, my Self, choose to rewire my brain by paying attention to new contexts that offer new experiences, or will I refuse?”

Perhaps the most obvious influence that shapes the human mind is culture, the context that envelops us from birth. Culture is, of course, a social invention. This invention is communicated to us by our grandparents, parents, friends, teachers, colleagues, and others. These people form a social network that hands down rules of behavior. They give us opinions about education, political parties, right and wrong, the war in Afghanistan, and offshore drilling. They tell us what knowledge is worth learning. Culture wires circuits in our brains, and, miraculously, a Self emerges.

Culture encompasses more, of course, than the social inventions of people inhabiting a broad geographical region. The term also alludes to narrow contexts, such as universities, reading groups, and NASCAR races. Economics, for example, is an academic discipline with its own culture. This academic discipline’s culture does not train economists to be ethicists who ask, “How can the economy be made to serve society?” Nor does the culture of economics departments train economists to be historians disposed to ask, for instance, “Should the Federal Reserve System, created in 1913 as an entity privately owned by the nation’s leading banks, continue to exist in its present form and continue to issue all U. S. currency, so that the federal government must borrow money from the Federal Reserve Bank to meet its financial obligations?”

Rather than consult history, economics departments focus on designing theories, abstract models divorced from ethical and historical contexts. Their models deal with describing, analyzing, and preserving the current economy, which, for better or worse, depends on market activity leading to continuous growth. The product of a narrow culture, the economist sees through a special lens. So do we all.

User’s Guide to Life

Each of us perceives reality through the unique lens of our personal values and ideas. These values and beliefs are part of us, just as surely as an arm is part of us. And just as we are unwilling to part with an arm and will fight to protect it, so we are unwilling to part with the ideas, customs, and practices that constitute the Self, our “User’s Guide to Life.”

Protective of their “User’s Guide to Life,” people who hear of a discovery that challenges their way of thinking typically say immediately, automatically, “It is not true. It is impossible.” Eventually they may admit, “Well, perhaps it is possible.” Faced with irrefutable evidence, they concede, “Ah, it is true.” In time, they incorporate that new information into their own “User’s Guide to Life,” saying, “I thought so all along.” If it is a popular discovery, invention, idea, or procedure, some might even claim, “I thought of it first.”

When culture produces results no one wants, people automatically distance themselves from those outcomes. We treat unwanted results as if they had an independent existence of their own. For example, human beings have degraded 21 percent of the topsoil in the world’s arable land and have reduced 80 percent of humankind to poverty, and yet we automatically disavow responsibility for these conditions. We claim to be prisoners of systems and powerless to alter them. We say we can do nothing.

Not just when our “User’s Guide to Life” faces a daunting or unwanted context, but in any context — familiar or novel — we humans tend to run on automatic pilot. In a meeting with colleagues, the Self automatically downloads a reaction: “Seen it before, know it well.” Relying on customary thoughts, we make customary judgments. As Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist, points out, instantly we interpret events, hastily we decide what they mean, immediately we judge and reach conclusions about what is going on around us. We defer to authority, continue the same old practices, and fiercely, sometimes violently, protect a long-held idea.

Protecting What We “Know”

It is understandable, profoundly regrettable, but by no means inevitable that human beings regularly function on automatic pilot and fight to preserve familiar ideas. Brain research suggests three reasons for this determination to protect what we know, freeze thought, and close the Self.

Need to Belong. One reason we seek to retain the lessons of culture and personal experience is that the brain is a social organ. It loves the company of other brains. Indeed, it demands the company of other brains. To survive and flourish, it must belong. Belonging is so important to the brain that it spends its downtime—when it is thinking of nothing in particular — rehashing relationships, asking, “Did I belong? Was I accepted? Did they like me?”

“Social to the core,” as Michael S. Gazzaniga put it in Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique, the brain also delights in gossip because gossip makes it feel included. Men and women alike spend hours gossiping. Cell-phone conversations are rarely about Tolstoy or astrophysics. They’re about personal matters. Women spend one-third of their conversation talking about themselves. “My friend gave me roses.” “I really do want that facelift.” “We meet every winter to ski.” Keenly interested in others, women spend two-thirds of their conversation talking about other people. “The last time I saw her, she looked upset.” Men also love to gossip. They call it “exchanging information” or “networking,” but it’s still just gossip. Furthermore, men spend two-thirds of their time talking about themselves: “I beat my own personal best in that marathon.” “I convinced the boss to use my design.” “I think she likes me.”

Belonging is so important that not belonging generates actual pain. When we do not belong — when we feel rejected, ignored, mocked, or reprimanded—we experience the same hurt that physical pain causes. Two brain regions respond to physical pain. The same two regions also respond to social pain. These two regions — the anterior cingulate cortex and the right ventral prefrontal cortex — react to the pain of a broken arm, and they react to the pain of social distress. When you break your arm, or when you are ignored, your anterior cingulate cortex immediately sends out an alarm: “Pain . . . something is terribly wrong.” This alarm serves to alert the right ventral prefrontal cortex to dampen the pain as much as possible.

The pain of not belonging is so intense that we try hard to avoid it. To avoid the pain of not belonging, we conform. We repeat the same ideas our friends and colleagues voice. We accept culture’s dictates. Willingly, we become prisoners of context, physical and mental.

Search for Meaning. A second major reason that humans automatically struggle to protect their values and convictions is that in order to survive, the brain requires meaning. In its perpetual quest for meaning, the brain looks for patterns and order in everything. Troubled by randomness, for example, it tries to make sense of life, asking, “Is my job worth doing?” “Why did those teenagers have to die in a car crash?” In its quest for meaning — for order, significance, and purpose — the brain protects, apparently, the beliefs and practices it has long known and resists anything that does not fit its patterns. Ironically, protecting meanings causes us to miss the new meaning that an immediate physical context offers us now, as we inhabit the moment.

Habit. A third major reason that human beings struggle to protect customary thoughts and practices is that habit grips the human brain. Gipsie Ranney provided a fine instance of the power of habit when she said that many CEOs insist that “increases in external incentives will enhance performance.” They make this claim despite compelling evidence showing that external incentives actually squelch creativity, discourage risk taking, and increase conformity. These CEOs cling to their belief in external incentives because, often reinforced, it has become habitual. Once a thought becomes habitual, it occupies physical space in the brain.

The Brain’s Habit Center

The habit center of the brain consists of interconnected clusters of neurons located near the core of the brain and called the basal ganglia. Scientists have long known that parts of the basal ganglia affect movement. They now realize that the basal ganglia is also implicated in storing habits. For example, when an activity is practiced so long that it becomes habitual, like leaving the house at six every morning to go jogging, the habit is stored in the basal ganglia. Habits of thought seem also to be held in parts of the basal ganglia. If throughout childhood you were treated kindly, and if you were always encouraged to practice kindness, then neurons in your basal ganglia became wired to form circuits holding the habit of kindness. Embedded in your brain and emerging in your personal Self is the habit of always doing the kind act.

Habits — good and bad alike — are hard to break. One reason habits are hard to break is that they occupy physical space in the brain. The more a habit is practiced, the more real estate it usurps.

Habits are also hard to break because when we try to get rid of a habit, one part of the brain, the orbital frontal cortex, sends out an error message. The orbital frontal cortex, located just above and behind the eyes, is the brain’s error detector, constantly appraising situations to see how things are going. When expectations are thwarted, the orbital frontal cortex sends out an error alert — like a flashing orange hand at a crosswalk that warns pedestrians to rush to the safety of the curb. This error message says, “Something is not right.”

When a healthy person tries to break a habit, the orbital frontal cortex resists doing so, in effect declaring, “Breaking this habit is wrong.” The error message at the same time triggers overwhelming emotions strong enough to vanquish rational thought. Overpowered by these emotions, the brain does not want to listen to reason. The brain wants victory, not truth. It wants to defend its interests, even if what it defends is illogical and unsubstantiated.

The following two versions of the “Trolley Game” illustrate the tendency of emotion to vanquish reason. While the first version favors reason, the second defers to emotion.

Version 1. You are on a bridge watching as an out-of-control train hurtles toward five unsuspecting workers on a track. There is a switch near you that you can use to divert the train onto a different track, where only one worker is standing. Would you divert the train to hit one person in order to save five? Most people answer, “Yes.” It’s a question of logic. The part of your brain that reasons does the math. It tells you to sacrifice one to save five.

Version 2. You are standing on a bridge watching the train aim at five people. There is no way to divert the train. However, standing next to you on the bridge is a massively overweight stranger. If you push him off the bridge and onto the track, he will stop the train. You will kill him and save five. Will you push the stranger off the bridge?

Most people will not push the stranger. Simple logic says, “Kill one; save five.” But now emotion is involved. It feels bad to push a stranger to his death. Emotion defeats reason.

Emotion also trumps reason in a well-known experiment called the “Ultimate Bargaining Game,” involving sharing. Two players are given a chance to split money. One player receives $100.00 and is invited to propose a split. The other player is allowed to accept or reject the offer. If he rejects it, neither player gets anything. Pure logic says, “Having money is desirable.” Therefore one expects the first player to offer the worst possible split. Logic also says, “A little money is better than none.” Therefore one expects the second player to take whatever is offered. However, typically players in the experiment defy logic. The person proposing the split frequently offers almost a fifty-fifty sharing, which is illogical. Such a split is normally accepted. However, when the first player offers significantly less than a fifty-fifty split, the second player rejects the offer. The second player’s feelings of insult, anger, and unfairness trump logical self-interest. Emotions sometimes help us make good decisions, sometimes not.

Mirror Neurons for a Change

Fortunately, we are not trapped in an overwhelmingly emotional, habit-ridden, culture-molded Self. We are capable of opening our minds, hearts, and wills, as systems thinkers and management theorists Otto Scharmer and Peter Senge so emphatically encourage us to do. We are capable of learning from one another, paying attention, thinking well, and seeing clearly.

Mirror neurons are the cells in the brain that make it possible for us to know what it is like to be another person. Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues at the University of Parma discovered mirror neurons in 1996. They were studying how the brains of monkeys buzzed with activity when the animals picked up different objects. Astonishingly, when a trainer picked up some nuts and the monkeys just sat watching, the monkeys’ neurons began to buzz — as if they were picking up the nuts. Watching the scientists grasp food had activated in the monkeys’ brains the identical neurons that had buzzed earlier when the monkeys picked up food. Just watching caused neurons to fire and create circuits.

Human brains behave the same way. We, too, have mirror neurons. Mirror neurons look like any other neuron, but they have a surprising and unique double function. These neurons fire both when you do something — that is, when you perform an action or feel an emotion — and when you watch someone else do something — when you watch someone else perform an action or feel an emotion. Mirror neurons cause you to imitate that action or feeling in your brain.

For example, when someone else kicks a ball, your brain kicks the ball. When you see someone else feel an emotion, then your mirror neurons cause you to feel that same emotion. Your brain makes circuits that hold that feeling. When you observe a woman smile in happiness, then your mirror neurons cause you to feel that same happiness. Because of mirror neurons, you do not have to reason to yourself, “That woman looks happy; therefore she must be happy.” Mirror neurons let you just know the person is happy.

Furthermore, suppose that you are with a friend who is anxious. As you watch your friend feeling anxious, your mirror neurons wire to imitate your friend’s emotion. You “catch” his anxiety. Now you feel anxious, too. Furthermore, your anxiety causes your own body to react. In effect, secondhand emotion affects us physically. When we see an emotion on another’s face, that sight affects both brain and body.

Mirror neurons are sometimes called “empathy neurons” because they let us empathize. They let us unite with another, understanding another’s experience completely and compassionately.

The fact that human beings are equipped with these powerful mirror neurons changes our view of human nature. By nature, human beings seek intimacy and form close ties with others. By nature, humans are highly social, cooperative, and collaborative. By nature, humans are an “empathic species,” born equipped with neurons that unite us. It is possible that, given this capacity for empathy, human beings have survived not primarily by being aggressive, self-sufficient, independent competitors fighting tooth and claw to gain every advantage. On the contrary, it seems that we have survived by seeing with another’s eyes and feeling with another’s heart. Neuroscientist Richard Restak says, “If we try to think in a compassionate manner about the other person — no matter how difficult that may be — we then become capable of empathizing — of thinking and feeling as that person does.” We become one with the person, united.

A New Responsibility

Understanding the power of mirror neurons as well as the fact that daily life shapes the brain brings with it great responsibility. We now realize that those watching our actions and displays of emotion will “catch” our behavior, performing it in their own brains. Surely we must take care, then, that our behavior is worthy of emulation. We must also be careful of what we are willing to observe. When we observe the actions and feelings of others, especially for a sustained period, our brains perform those same actions and feelings. What behavior do we want our brains to replicate?

And what truth does knowledge of mirror neurons and the brain’s plasticity permit us to confidently promulgate? How do we know that our own peculiar daily life and interactions have led us to truths?

Culture gives us, of course, its version of truth. For example, virtually all cultures teach a few universal moral principles.

1. Do no harm. Be compassionate, empathize, oppose cruelty, alleviate suffering.
2. Be fair. Give everyone an equal chance. Punish cheaters; repay kindnesses. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
3. Support the community. Share, be generous, collaborate, volunteer.
4. Respect authority. Show respect for those in authority. Fulfill duties and obligations.
5. Be pure. Reject things that contaminate, such as incest and polygamy.

The trouble is that interpretations of these universal principles are local. In some countries and in some religions, do no harm permits stoning a woman to death for having sex out of wedlock. Surely we must be wary of judging right and wrong based upon universal moral codes that yield widely divergent interpretations.

But if we can’t trust local interpretations of universal moral codes, what foundation does allow us to make moral judgments? Science might help. For example, as Professor Will Keepin explains, “In field after field, in biology, physics, nonlinear dynamics, artificial life, complexity theory . . . [is] a new idea . . . that beyond the physical realm, there exist invisible patterns and principles that somehow organize what we observe and experience.” Apparently there exists “a realm beyond the observed, material, empirical world . . . Something transpires behind that which appears.” Might an ethic be drawn from that observation? What might a new moral code be? Perhaps a new moral code will emerge from our capacity to empathize.

The point is that definitive concepts of right and wrong are elusive. Achieving the fullest understanding possible about ethical and other matters is exceedingly difficult. Because it is so difficult, each of us has a responsibility to open our minds and hearts to every single context we inhabit, always searching for truth. To open our minds intelligently demands, among other things, thinking well and paying attention.

Thinking Well. Thought alone — just thinking — can actually connect neurons in emotional regions of the brain so that they hold a positive outlook. If we begin each morning writing down three reasons to be grateful, we will in time weave brain circuits that hold a grateful attitude. Buddhists meditate on compassion and as a result generate brain circuits in which compassion is embedded.

Paying Attention. Thinking well requires paying attention. Paying attention in a disciplined way intensifies the brain’s response to any thought or sensation. To understand the force of paying attention, consider that all objects possess shape and color. Take a chair, for example. The shape of the chair is processed by distinctive circuits of neurons. The color of the chair is processed by an entirely different circuit of neurons. Neurons that process the shape of the chair have nothing to do with those that process the chair’s color. Therefore, if you choose to pay attention only to an object’s shape, then you strengthen only the neurons that specialize in shape. If you then focus on the object’s color, you will bolster the neurons that specialize in color.

Targeting an object, taking aim, is the first step in paying attention. Having chosen the target, concentrate on it. Ignore distractions and irrelevancies. Return wandering attention to the target, re-aim. This process wires the target into the brain’s circuitry, thus changing the brain’s physical structure.

Paying attention is of huge importance to anyone interested in context because it makes the brain alert and vigilant. Otherwise, we might end up in this situation:

• “What big eyes you have Grandma,” Red Riding Hood said, oblivious of the countless past visits when her Grandma’s eyes did not seem big.
• “What big ears you have, Grandma,” she said matter-of-factly. Had she concentrated, Red Riding Hood would have recalled that her grandma’s ears had never looked big, furry, and pointed.
• “What a deep voice you have, Grandma,” she said blandly, as if her Grandmother’s voice had always sounded deep and low.
• “What big teeth . . .” At last paying attention — too late — Red Riding Hood realized that she had been talking to a wolf.

Poor Red Riding Hood. No one taught her to concentrate, so she wasn’t vigilant. Clearly William James was right when he said, “An education that would improve attention would be the education par excellence.”

A Work in Progress

We human beings are capable of exercising mindfulness — of paying attention and thinking well. We are able to suspend disbelief, listen, learn, and deepen understanding.

• Shall we, then, in any context strive intentionally to cultivate compassion, patience, and love?
• Shall we perhaps apply the term “social” not only to relationships among human beings, but to relationships among every living thing?
• Shall our values serve not only our own ends, but those of all life?

The Self, a work in progress until the day we die, has the power to grow and learn in all the contexts it inhabits. What’s more, it has the power to transform these contexts and, in so doing, perhaps even save the world. Let’s use our knowledge of the brain to cultivate reason, curiosity, mindfulness, and empathy now, in today’s context, so that our wise decisions enable human beings and Earth to flourish always.

Elaine B. Johnson, Ph. D., a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and Honorary Fellow of Huron University College, Canada, is an internationally recognized authority on contextual teaching and learning and a popular interpreter of brain research. Author of the definitive study on teaching in context, Contextual Teaching and Learning: What it Is and Why It’s Here to Stay (2002), Johnson is in demand as a consultant to businesses and schools. She is currently writing a book about the brain tentatively called Love Your Brain, Improve Your Life.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The material in this article is based on numerous studies that, in an academic journal, would be scrupulously documented. For this publication, space permits mentioning only a few major sources: Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (NewYork: Ballantine Books, 2007), pp. 156-160; John B. Cobb, Jr., “Capital,” a paper written for a conference in Suzhou, China, January 2009, pp. 4-13; David Dobbs, “A Revealing Reflection,” Scientific American Mind, April/May 2006, pp. 22-27; Michael Gazzaniga, Human (New York: HarperCollins, 2008); Marco Iacoboni, Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), pp. 1-46; Will Keepin, “Science and the Spirit: Integrating the Sacred and the Secular,” Timeline, September/October 1998, p. 15; Ellen J. Langer, The Power of Mindful Learning (Cambridge: Perseus Books, 1997), pp. 1, 4, 16- 18,100, 103-105; Daniel J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music (New York: Plume/Penguin, 2007), pp. 26-27, 40-43; Gipsie B. Ranney, “The Trouble with Incentives: They Work,” Ongoing Discussion Thought Piece for Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne’s Enterprise Thinking Network, pp. 5-7; Richard Restak, The Secret Life of the Brain (New York: Dana Press & The Joseph Henry Press), 2001, pp. 44-45; C. Otto Scharmer, Theory U (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009), 119-121; Theory U’s Foreword by management theorist Peter Senge, p.xiii; Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M. D., and Sharon Begley, The Mind and the Brain (New York: Harper Collins, 2002), pp. 59-73; Daniel Siegel, The Mindful Brain (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), pp. 110-118. For the relationship of emotion to reason, see Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error (New York: Avon Books, 1994), pp. 70-71, 159-160. Matthew Lieberman and Naomi Eisenberger, working at UCLA, discovered that emotional pain is comparable to physical pain.

The post Changing Our Systems by Changing Our Brains: The Leverage in Mindfulness appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Strategic learning can occur, not only through formal planning activities, but also through webs of informal conversations and networks of relationships, both within an organization and among key stakeholders. Choosing to ask and explore “big questions” — questions that matter to the future of the organization — is a powerful force.

When people frame their strategic exploration as questions rather than as concerns or problems, a conversation begins where everyone can learn something new together, rather than having the normal stale debates. In effect, people begin looking at “the map of the territory” together. The questions encourage them to wonder “What is the map telling us?” rather than to push preconceived ideas of what they think it shows.

Why Don’t We Ask Better Questions?

If asking good questions is so critical, why don’t we spend more of our time and energy focused upon discovering and framing them? One reason may be that much of our Western culture is focused on knowing the “right answer” rather than discovering the “right question.” Our educational system focuses more on memorization and static answers rather than on the art of seeking new possibilities through dynamic questioning. We are rarely taught how to ask powerful questions. Nor are we often taught why we should ask compelling questions in the first place. Quizzes, examinations, and aptitude tests all reinforce the value of correct answers, usually with only one correct answer for each question asked. Is it any wonder that most of us are uncomfortable with not knowing?

Perhaps our aversion to asking creative questions stems from our emphasis on finding quick fixes and our attachment to black/white, either/or thinking. Often the rapid pace of our lives and work doesn’t provide us the opportunity to be in reflective conversations where creative questions and innovative solutions can be explored before reaching key decisions. This dilemma is further reinforced by organizational reward systems in which leaders feel they are paid for fixing problems rather than fostering breakthrough thinking. Between our deep attachment to the answer — any answer — and our anxiety about not knowing, we have inadvertently thwarted our collective capacity for deep creativity and fresh perspectives in the face of the unprecedented challenges we face, both in our own organizations and as a global human community.

The World’s Best Industrial Research Lab

One of the best corporate examples of how a “big question” — a truly strategic question — can galvanize collective conversation, engagement, and action occurred at Hewlett-Packard. The director of Hewlett-Packard Laboratories wondered why HP Labs was not considered the best industrial research lab in the world. As he thought about it, he realized that he did not know what being the “World’s Best Industrial Research Lab” (WBIRL) really meant.

One key staff member was charged with coordinating the effort. Instead of looking for “answers” outside the company, she encouraged the director to share his “big question” with all lab employees around the world. Instead of organizing a senior executive retreat to create a vision and then roll it out, she encouraged organization-wide webs of inquiry and conversation, asking people what WBIRL meant to them, what it would mean personally for their own jobs, and what it might take to get there. She invited the entire organization to join in exploring the question through informal, ongoing conversations; and she took advantage of more formal internal survey and communication infrastructures. When the lab director acknowledged his “not knowing” — an uncommon stance for a senior executive — an open field was created for multiple constituencies and perspectives to be heard.

The conversation continued for several months. The WBIRL leader developed a creative “reader’s theater” piece which reflected 800 survey responses, detailing employee frustrations, dreams, insights, and hopes. Players spoke the key themes as “voices of the organization,” with senior management listening. That made a difference to everyone’s thinking by literally putting a variety of points of view on stage together. But it wasn’t the only venue in which the “big question” was explored. Senior management met in strategic sessions, using approaches such as interactive graphics and “storytelling about the future” to see new opportunities that crossed functional boundaries. In these strategic conversations, they considered core technologies that might be needed for multiple future scenarios at HP Labs to unfold.

People throughout the labs, meanwhile, were initiating projects at all levels, resulting in significant improvement in key areas of the lab’s work. Weekly Chalk Talks for engineers, “coffee talks,” an Administrative Assistant Forum, and a Community Forum created opportunities for ongoing dialogue, listening, and learning. A WBIRL Grants Program provided small stipends for innovative ideas, enabling people to act at the corporate grassroots level, taking personal responsibility for work they believed in. In all of these efforts, the leader of the WBIRL project spent most of her time “helping the parts see the whole” and linking people with complementary ideas.
And yet, while productivity was improving rapidly, something was missing. During an informal conversation while planning for a “Celebration of Creativity” to acknowledge what had already been accomplished, one of the lab engineers spoke up. She wondered what was really different about HP that distinguished it from any other company that wanted to be the best in the world. She said, “What would get me out of bed in the morning would be to become the best for the world.”
Suddenly a really “big question” had emerged. What would it mean for HP Labs to be the best both in and for the world? (See “What Makes a Powerful Question?”)

Stakeholders in any system already have within them the wisdom and creativity to confront even the most difficult challenges.

A senior engineer created an image of what “for the world” meant to him. It was a well-known picture of the founders of HP looking into the backyard garage where the company began. He added a beautiful photo of Earth placed inside. This picture became the symbol of “HP for the World.” A “town meeting” of 800 Palo Alto employees with live satellite hook-ups enabling a global conversation focused on the question, “What does ‘HP for the World’ mean to you?” The “HP For the World” image spread throughout the company — appearing in lobbies, featured in recruiting brochures, and offered as executive gifts. More than 50,000 posters were purchased by HP employees around the world, stimulating a growing network of conversations about the meaning of the big question for the future of the company.

In the course of this exploration, people rediscovered that the company founders, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, had always maintained a commitment, as Packard put it, that “the Hewlett-Packard company should be managed first and foremost to make a commitment to society.” Growing numbers of people throughout HP reconnected to that founding governing idea — stimulating investigations into breakthrough technologies for education, remote medical care for third-world nations, and global environmental issues.

As part of this effort, the same senior engineer who had created the “for the world” poster image was persuaded to pursue a 25-year old dream: To create a mile-long educational diorama, placing human life in the context of evolutionary history. In 1997, this work — “A Walk Through Time: From Stardust to Us” — was featured at the annual State of the World Forum. There, the question of what it means to be for the world was posed to global leaders gathered from every continent. Public and private partnerships evolved from these conversations. Clearly, this is a powerful question that “travels well.”

Big Questions and Strategic Thinking

This approach to discovering and asking the “big questions” — strategic questions for which we truly do not have answers — is grounded in the assumption that stakeholders in any system already have within them the wisdom and creativity to confront even the most difficult challenges. Given the appropriate context and support, members of an organizational community can often sense where powerful strategic possibilities and opportunities for action may lie. Is it simply “luck” that enables us to stumble onto questions that really matter for strategic thinking? Or can we actually design processes that make it more likely for those questions to emerge? (See “How to Use Questions Effectively” on page 4.)

“Discovering strategic questions,” says one colleague, a senior executive at a major multinational corporation,

“is like panning for gold. You have to care about finding it, you have to be curious, and you have to create an anticipation of discovering gold, even though none of us may know ahead of time where we’ll find it. You head toward the general territory where you think the gold may be located, with your best tools, your experience, and your instincts.”

To evoke strategic thinking based on discovering powerful questions, several activities may be useful. They

may not apply to all situations and they may not always follow the same sequence, but they suggest ways that formal and informal processes can evolve together to support individuals as well as teams in discovering “gold” for themselves.

Assessing the Landscape. Get a feel for the larger context in which you are operating. Scan the horizon, as well as the contours of the current business and organizational landscape, related to the system or project you are working with. Like trackers in the mountains, look for obvious and subtle indicators that point to storms as well as to sunny skies. Allow your curiosity and imagination to take the lead as you begin to identify the many questions that the business landscape reveals. It will be tough, but important, to frame your findings as questions, rather than as concerns or problems. To help in framing those questions, ask yourself: “How does A relate to C and what questions does that suggest? If X were at play here, what would we be asking? What is the real question underneath all this data?”

Discovering Core Questions. Once you think you’ve posed most of the relevant questions (and there may be many of them), look for patterns. This is not a mechanical process, even though it can be disciplined and systematic.

You are on a treasure hunt, seeking the core questions — usually three to five — which, if answered, would make the most difference to the future of your work. Cluster the questions and consider the relationships that appear among them. Notice what “pops up” in order to discover the “big questions” that the initial clusters reveal.

Creating Images of Possibility. Imagine what your situation would look like or be like if these “big questions” were answered. Creating vivid images of possibility is different from pie-in-the-sky visioning, especially if people with a variety of perspectives have participated in the earlier stages of the conversation. This part of the conversation can also provide clues for evolving creative strategies in response to the “big questions.” It often reveals new territory and opportunities for action while remaining grounded in real life.

Evolving Workable Strategies. Workable strategies begin to emerge in response to compelling questions and to the images of possibility that these questions evoke. Of course, the cycle is never complete. Relevant business data, ongoing conversations with internal and external stakeholders, informal conversations among employees, and feedback from the environment enable you to continually assess the business landscape revealing new questions.

Many organizations are stuck in a “problem-solving orientation” when it comes to strategy. They can’t seem to shake the focus on fixing short-term problems or seeking immediate (but ineffective) solutions. Simply by moving their attention to a deliberate focus on essential questions, they can develop an inquiry-oriented approach to evolving organizational strategy (see “How Can I Frame Better Questions?”). In a knowledge economy, this approach provides an opportunity for developing the capability of strategic thinking in everyone, and for fostering sustainable business and social value.

How Can Leaders Use Powerful Questions?

In today’s turbulent times, engaging people’s best thinking about complex issues without easy answers represents one key to creating the futures we want. Leaders need to develop greater capacities for fostering “inquiring systems” in order to learn, adapt, and create new knowledge to meet emerging needs (see “Is Your Organization an Inquiring System?”).

The leadership challenges of the next 20 years are likely to revolve around the art of catalyzing networks of people rather than solely managing hierarchies as in the past. The ability to bring diverse perspectives to bear on key issues both inside and outside the organization and to work with multiple partners and alliances will be a critical skill for effective leaders. We believe the following core capabilities, rarely taught in today’s MBA or corporate leadership programs, will help define leadership excellence:

Engaging Strategic Questions. In a volatile and uncertain environment, one of the most credible stances leaders can take is to assist their organizations in discovering the right questions at the right time. A key leadership responsibility is creating infrastructures for dialogue and engagement that encourage others at all levels to develop insightful questions and to search for innovative paths forward. Leaders also need to consider reward systems that provide incentives for members to work across organizational boundaries to discover those challenging questions that create common focus and shared forward movement.

Convening and Hosting Learning Conversations. A core aspect of the leader’s new work is creating opportunities for learning conversations around catalyzing questions. However, authentic conversation is less likely to occur in a climate of fear, mistrust, and hierarchical control. The human mind and heart must be fully engaged in authentic conversation for the deeper questions to be surfaced that support the emergence of new knowledge. Thus, the ability to facilitate working conversations that enhance trust and reduce fear is an important leadership capability.

Supporting Appreciative Inquiry. Opening spaces of possibility through discovering powerful questions may require a shift in leadership orientation from what is not working and how to fix it, to what is working and how to leverage it. Shifting the focus in this direction enables leaders to foster networks of conversation based on leveraging emerging possibilities rather than just on fixing past mistakes. Leaders who ask, “What’s possible here and who cares?” will have a much easier time gaining the collaboration and best thinking of their constituents than those who ask, “What’s wrong here, and who is to blame?” By asking appreciative questions, organizations have the opportunity to grow in new directions.

Fostering Shared Meaning. Leaders of organizations in the 21st century will discover that one of their unique contributions is to provide conceptual leadership — creating a context of meaning through stories, images, and metaphors within which groups can discover relevant questions as well as deepen or shift their thinking together. To tap into this pool of shared meaning, which is the ground from which both powerful questions and innovative solutions emerge, network leaders need to put time and attention into framing common language and developing shared images and metaphors.

Nurturing Communities of Practice. Many of the most provocative questions for an organization’s future are first discovered on the front lines, in the middle of the action of everyday life. Key strategic questions that are critical for creating sustainable value are often lost because few of today’s leaders have been trained to notice, honor, and utilize the social fabric of learning that occurs through the informal “Communities of Practice” that exist throughout an organization. A Community of Practice is made of up people who share a common interest and who work together to expand their individual and collective capacity to solve problems over time. Nurturing these informal learning networks and honoring the questions they care about, is another core aspect of the leaders new work.

Using Collaborative Technologies. Intranet and groupware technologies are now making it possible for widely dispersed work groups to participate in learning conversations and team projects across time and space. As these tools become even more widely available, leaders will need to support widespread online conversations where members throughout the organization can contribute their own questions and best thinking to critical strategic issues. The Hewlett Packard case shows how important enabling technology infrastructures are for strategic innovation. Collaborative tools will be a critical factor in how well strategic questions travel both within the organization and among customers and other stakeholders who are key to success.

Co-Evolving the Future

It is quite easy to learn the basics of crafting powerful questions. However, once you have begun down this path, it’s hard to turn back. As your questions broaden and deepen, so does your experience of life. There is no telling where a powerful question might lead you. Transformative conversations can result from posing a simple question such as: “What questions are we not asking ourselves about the situation in the Middle East?” Tantalizing possibilities emerge from the simple act of changing a preposition from “in” to “for” as in the HP example. Profound systemic change can emerge from creating a process for discovering and acting on the “big questions” within a business setting.

Where collaborative learning and breakthrough thinking are requirements for a sustainable business future, asking “questions that matter” and engaging diverse constituencies in learning conversations are a core process for survival. Because questions are inherently related to action, they are at the heart of an organization’s capacity to mobilize the resources required to create a positive future. Seeing the organization as a dynamic network of conversations through which the organization evolves its future encourages members at every level to search for questions related to their real work that can catalyze collective energy and momentum. It enables each one of us to realize that our thoughtful participation in discovering and exploring questions that matter — to our team, to our organization, and to the larger communities of which we are a part — we can make a difference to the whole. For it is only in this way that organizations will be able to cultivate both the knowledge required to thrive today and the wisdom needed to ensure a sustainable future.

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Reflection is the practice of pondering the meaning to self and/or to others of what has recently transpired in the immediate environment. It thus constitutes the ability to bring to light and make explicit to oneself and one’s colleagues what has been planned, observed, or achieved in practice. In particular, it privileges the process of inquiry, leading to a level of understanding of experiences that may have been overlooked in the heat of the moment. This deep understanding, in turn, provides a basis for future action.

Three Aspects of Reflection

There are three aspects of reflection in work settings that are often overlooked but potentially vital to ethical inquiry: first, reflection should be collective or public; second, reflection should be contemporaneous; and third, reflection should be critical. Let’s begin with reflection’s collective nature.

1. Reflection Should Be Collective or Public. Plato had the idea of relationships in mind when, in Apology, he quoted Socrates’ now famous phrase, “the unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Although people usually interpret this maxim as a call for introspection, it actually means that we need to discuss our life’s experience and meaning with others. As human beings, we learn about ourselves in relation to others through language; communication allows us to validate our behavior.

In reflection, we examine others’ responses to our actions to determine if our participation in our social communities has been helpful. Accordingly, our self is formed as much from how others respond to us as from what we do. The self, then, is linked to the social communities that give it definition.

In this age of Enron and WorldCom, how can we jump-start much-needed ethical inquiry within the corporate world?

The process of reflecting together and sharing our individual insights in the safe presence of trusting peers constitutes a learning dialogue. The data that come out of these exchanges often involve the interpersonal dynamics at play; when these are acknowledged and dealt with, true inquiry and insight emerge. Learning dialogues also serve to create mutually caring relationships.

2. Reflection Should Be Contemporaneous. Reflection should also be contemporaneous, that is, it should occur in the moment. For example, a team is just about to launch an advertising campaign featuring a comic depiction of a bumbling old man. At seemingly the last moment, a member chimes in with the comment: “It appears as if we have made our decision. But even though it feels right to me, I still have a nagging reservation that the scene may come across as offensive. What would you say to our taking one more look at it? I’m afraid we may have overlooked something.” This “reflection-in-action” can help a group reframe standard ways of operating so as to see experience in a different light.

Other forms of reflection relating to time serve different needs. Anticipatory reflection occurs prior to the experience, often in the form of planning, as learners suggest to themselves and to their peers how they might approach a given situation. In retrospective reflection, an individual or group recalls a recent experience, often with the goal of assessing or evaluating it so as to gain insight for future tasks.

3. Reflection Should Be Critical. Finally, reflection must be critical. When reflection engages our critical consciousness, it probes to a deeper level than trial-and-error experience. It leads to “double-loop” and “triple-loop” learning, both of which seek to go beyond habitual approaches to problem-solving. In double-loop learning, we challenge our assumptions about the applicability of learning from one context to another. In triple-loop learning, we learn about the “context of contexts” as we question the entire frame of reference for approaching an issue.

Consider an example: Executives often assume that, in order for their companies to stay lean and productive and to cut costs, they need to reduce headcount. A traditional, single-loop approach to the issue would be to research how to rationally restructure the company; i.e., lay off workers across-the-board, concentrate on weak operating units, rely on natural attrition, or make specific cuts. Double-loop learning would involve questioning the assumption to begin with that layoffs will improve productivity. Finally, triple-loop learning might address why executives automatically turn to reductions-in-force or restructuring as the set of usual alternatives whenever they are concerned about productivity.

Putting Reflection into Action

Acknowledging the importance of collective, contemporaneous, and critical reflection can help us understand its contribution to ethical inquiry. Through civil discourse about the values that drive the choices we make, we can begin to reach agreement about the standards our organizations should uphold. Critical consciousness enhanced through public reflection helps us recognize the connection between individual problems and the social context within which they are embedded. Once learners make this connection, they acquire intellectual humility, empathy, and courage to challenge standard ways of operating. They learn to consider data beyond their personal taken-for-granted assumptions and begin to explore the historical and social processes that foster universal ethical principles.

Let’s consider the hypothetical case of Charlie, a young professional who was considering whether to accept employment in a military laboratory known to sponsor research in biological warfare. Charlie considered this form of research reprehensible, but the offer was lucrative. With the money, he would be able to start to pay off nine years of student loans and contribute to a critical transplant operation that could save his mother’s life.

Charlie contemplated the offer for nearly two months without coming to a decision. The pros and the cons seemed to balance each other out. Fortunately, he was able to call on the wisdom of an informal group of colleagues that had met casually after work for two years. Although the group originated as a social gathering, it soon became a support network in which people felt free to reveal personal and professional problems for deep consideration by the others.

Charlie introduced his dilemma, and the group helped him work through the decision. His colleagues listened intently to his predicament and offered their support as well as a range of possible solutions. Although some had strong views about the laboratory’s mission, they were most concerned about helping Charlie think through the countervailing ethical principles that could ultimately guide his decision. For example, how would he balance the utilitarian value of possibly saving his mother’s life against the destructive use of the weapons he would be contributing to producing, not to mention the drain on his own conscience? His colleagues also probed a number of Charlie’s assumptions; for example, whether the lab’s agenda could be reformed or whether he was the only source of funds for the transplant operation.

We see in this example that Charlie was able to use all three aspects of reflective practice: his thought process was public, contemporaneous (as well as anticipatory), and critical. Likewise, human resource departments can design practice-oriented learning experiences to emulate the conditions reported in this example. For example, facilitators can assemble learning teams to help employees inquire collectively with their peers on matters of personal and professional consciousness. They can build reflection into learning experiences using techniques such as learning histories, after-action reviews, or group dialogue.

To ensure its practice in day-today management experience, coaching may be needed to encourage individuals to develop their insight by becoming mindful of why things occur in a certain way, scrutinizing differences between others’ perceptions and their own perception of self, becoming curious about how forces below the surface shape actions and outcomes, examining discrepancies between what is being said and what is being done, or just becoming open to feedback from others. By adopting a minimalist intervention style, coaches and facilitators can permit learners to manage their own process of self-discovery.

In this way, employees such as Charlie can learn to cope with real ethical dilemmas that can have both personal and professional consequences and, with the support of others, bring those issues into public dialogue. Such dialogue can go a long way toward preventing the erosion of integrity that has plagued the corporate world in recent years.

Joe Raelin holds the Asa. S. Knowles Chair of Practice-Oriented Education at Northeastern University. Portions of this article have appeared in his recent book, Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone (Berrett-Koehler, 2003) and in Northeastern’s Center for Excellence in University Teaching Newsletter, Teaching Matters.

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This process usually begins with the CEO. Pressured by shareholders’ demands or analysts’ expectations, top executives sacrifice their personal lives by working 70-hour work weeks. At the same time, they demand that everyone in the organization do the same, pressuring them to produce more with fewer resources. However, results do not necessarily follow. Instead, tension increases, and commitment, energy, and creativity all decline.

Executives justify sacrificing their souls because they believe that everything is secondary to the bottom line. However, this assumption is based on the erroneous belief that people need to work harder in order to produce better outcomes. This is not true. Working harder tends to produce more—but of the same. If companies want to increase their competitiveness, they need to constantly create new products and services, new strategies, new processes, and often a new organizational culture. As the cliché goes, they need to work smarter, not harder.

Feeding the Soul

But current working conditions don’t support working smarter. According to quality pioneer Edward Deming, our prevailing system of management is based on fear. Fear of failure, fear of being embarrassed, fear of not getting a promotion, or fear of getting fired. Fear is the dominant emotion—the main source of energy and the impetus to action.

But when human beings are in a state of fear, do they behave in innovative or habitual ways? Habitual, of course! When we’re afraid, we almost always revert to our most ingrained patterns of behavior. In fact, brain physiologists explain that the primitive part of the brain takes over—the limbic system, where our “fight or flight” programming resides.

Why does management by fear still persist? Most organizations are still designed based on what Douglas McGregor termed “Theory X”—the idea that employees are unreliable and uncommitted, and work merely to earn a paycheck. From this perspective, people need to be bullied or frightened into acting on behalf of the organization. “Theory Y,” however, offers another possibility—that employees are responsible adults who want to make a contribution. Based on this alternative mindset, it is possible to consider aspiration as a source of action—one that is far more effective than desperation ever could be.

Businesses can learn a lot from sports and the arts in this regard. Ask an athlete what usually happens when she mentally repeats “Can’t miss” or “Can’t fail” before or during a performance versus repeating “I’ll make it” or “I’ll get it.” Thinking about what you want to create works much better than thinking about what you want to avoid. Picasso pointed out that if you trace the history of any great piece of art, the crucial moment in its development inevitably came when the artist had the vision of what needed to be created. Why would business be different? Being able to articulate what deeply matters to us is a powerful source of energy. As the old saying goes, “Dreams feed the soul.”

Accessing the Soul

Visualizing what we want to create doesn’t mean escaping reality; it means being present in a new way. The martial arts offer an excellent example of handling challenges from a posture of creativity rather than fear. The essence of disciplines such as karate and aikido is to develop a capacity to be more and more quiet, centered, and relaxed in dangerous situations. Martial artists know that, by doing so, they can produce outstanding results.

During the last several years, the Society for Organizational Learning has sponsored a research project involving interviews with more than 150 leading scientists, artists, and government, business, and religious leaders. One of the conclusions reached by the researchers has been that the internal place from which a leader operates matters; in other words, the quality of consciousness determines the quality of performance.

If these ideas seem too abstract, take a moment to reflect on the best decisions you have made in your life, professionally or personally. Now remember where you were when you made those decisions. Were you in the office, feeling stressed or desperately grasping for an answer to your problems? Or were you taking a shower, driving quietly, or observing your kids? I wager it was the latter.

When Leonardo da Vinci was painting “The Last Supper,” the church commissioner was impatient for the painting to be completed and complained to the Duke that Leonardo occasionally took long breaks from his work. The commissioner argued, “If a gardener doesn’t take his hands off his scissors during the whole day, why does [da Vinci] need to leave his paintbrush?” But Leonardo understood that he needed incubation periods, away from the work, in order to produce his best. With humor, he replied to the Duke, “Great geniuses sometimes work better when they work less.”

Different fields of knowledge have alternative explanations for this phenomenon. Psychologists would say that our unconscious mind processes information, in quantity and speed, thousands and thousands of times more effectively than our conscious mind. When we turn off our conscious mind, we let the unconscious mind work better and the answer suddenly comes to us. Spiritual leaders would say that, in silencing our mind, we access our soul, which is our full potential and knows all.

Connecting Souls

Although individual performances are important, companies increasingly rely on decisions and actions taken by teams. Here, again, businesses can take lessons from the world of sports. High-performing sports teams sometimes find themselves “in the zone,” where they experience peak performance. Bill Russell, the star center of the 11-time world champion Boston Celtics, spoke of those special times:, “Every so often a Celtic game would heat up so that it became more than a physical or even a mental game, and would be magical. That feeling is very difficult to describe, and I certainly never talked about it when I was playing. When it happened, I could feel my play rise to a new level. It came rarely, and would last anywhere from five minutes to a whole quarter or more. … It would surround not only me and the other Celtics, but also the players on the other team, even the referees.”

In researching all kinds of high-performing teams—heart surgeons, firefighters, astronauts, trial lawyers, business teams, and others—Carl Larson of the University of Denver found the same phenomenon reported in different terms: the atmosphere of the room becomes “super-charged”; there seems to be a “group mind” or “collective wisdom”; team members experience the sensation of being “a conscious part of even a more conscious whole” and feel a “luminous transparency” between all the participants. David Bohm, the famous quantum physicist, once explained this experience to consultant Joseph Jaworski as “a single intelligence that works with people who are moving in a relationship with one another.”

If you want scientific proof that this “single mind” could exist, consider the experiment by Mexican neurophysiologist Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum. Two people meditated together for a period of 20 minutes, aiming to feel each other’s presence. They then entered separate Faraday chambers (metallic enclosures that block all electromagnetic signals) while attempting to maintain their direct communication. One of the subjects was shown a flash of light that produced electrophysiological responses; the responses were measured by a machine. In about one in four cases, although no electromagnetic signals could have been transmitted between the two subjects, the brain of the person who hadn’t been exposed to the light showed electrical activity quite similar to that displayed in the first subject.

In my work as consultant, I have seen several groups experience this special kind of connection. Most of the time, the precipitating factor was that people talked openly and listened deeply—or, as I prefer to say, talked and listened from the heart. And as many ancient cultures believed, the heart leads directly to the soul.

Stop Giving Up, Start Using It

In modern society, we take for granted the existence of gravitational and magnetic fields. Executives and managers must also learn to recognize that every company produces its particular social field, created by people’s thoughts and emotions, relationships, and the organization’s physical space. This field is an invisible but powerful force that influences the quality of shortand long-term performance.

Giving up your soul doesn’t create a promising field and it doesn’t produce the best possible results, even over the short run. The alternative strategy: Start really using your soul—feeding, accessing, and connecting. By doing so, you will produce much better outcomes in all senses—financial and material, but also physical and spiritual. As Joseph Jaworski says, “Anyone who walks into a locker room of a championship team can feel the energy, the excitement, the mutual trust and the extraordinary sense of the possible.” Why can’t you feel the same when entering your office? It can be this way, as long as you bring your soul along for the ride.

Tácito Nobre is a senior consultant with Axialent (www.axialent.com).

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I glanced around secretively, leaned over the table that separated us, and whispered to Diane, “You know, this transformational change is spiritual.” I feared making this statement out loud because I was convinced that had I described the change process as a spiritual journey, the mechanistic organization would have rejected me quickly. On the other hand, when I linked the change effort to materialism (reduced costs and increased revenues), I was provided heroic status—at least for a time.

“Spirit at work” is one of the recent themes of people seeking to help organizations adopt a holistic and organic worldview. And, like other well-intended and theoretically sound initiatives, it is in danger of being rejected as a fad. But spirit at work is not a quick fix to problems; it embraces the complexity of life and the human condition—and focuses on the difficult inner work followed by courageous actions needed to effect profound transformation.

The change effort I was involved in began in 1990 with the need to save the enterprise millions of dollars and respond to a union-organizing effort. In addition, demographic and market changes that demanded new ways of doing things were on the horizon. We all felt a sense of urgency and excitement.

A period of exploration and study about ideas new to organizational life began. We read books, attended conferences, and visited other organizations. Those who had caused the crisis retreated to the safety of their offices. We began to feel the end of the old ways, the confusion of chaos (which we welcomed), and the uncertainty of new approaches.

People responded to the challenge. The worries and frustrations of day-to-day life receded from awareness. A powerful sense of purpose became real. The rule books went out the door. Finding what worked was what was important. Barriers were eliminated. Those with the needed skills or information led, regardless of rank, and all who wanted participated in the creative process. People learned and adapted as they proceeded.

Employees were involved in the redesign of their work. Consultants provided facilitation and methods. Managers made sure the employees felt valued, involved, and informed during this change effort. Trust and credibility grew, and the union-organizing effort went away. The energy level was incredible. We were alive in the moment instead of toiling for an obscure future.

Operational results were phenomenal. Now when employees went to conferences they were presenters as well as observers. People began to visit to learn from the business unit. Consultants began to write about this work.

For a moment we were more of our natural selves: braver, smarter, and more creative than during more orderly times. We worked harder, cared for one another more, and accepted our differences. We were filled with hope for the possibilities we saw for us as people and for the life we lived at work.

As the change effort continued, its meaning became clear to me. I realized the ways in which leadership can bring forth mediocre organizations and dispirited people. I came to understand the powerful energy generated by a shared vision. I saw the courage summoned when people create together what they want most for their lives. I felt the inspiration born when people live by their deepest values.

This describes spirit at work. Spirit is not the move to teams, the quality efforts, the job redesign, and all the other tools we use to change organizations. Spirit is the profound energy, the creativity, and the commitment that emerges when free people live their highest and most authentic potential. For me today, spirit at work represents the expression of our deepest authenticity as, inspired by our sense of purpose and guided by our values, we step into the unknown and move courageously together toward a bold vision, feeling the aliveness of life experienced completely and humanity realized more fully.

Historically, spirit at work was effectively destroyed by industrialization when work was redesigned to make money for others. Our spirit at work at the newspaper was eventually destroyed by people who, afraid to look within, projected their fear, pain, and limitations outward and destroyed our creation.

Why is spirit important? Because, simply, our spirituality makes us human, connects us to all of life, and elevates us to our potential as caring people. The uncertainty of the times, the suffering all around us, our need to help others, and the grandeur of life focus our attention on spirit at this difficult time in our history.

Tom Heuerman is a leadership and organizational change consultant, writer, and wildlife photographer. His essays on life, leadership, and organizations are available at www.amorenaturalway.com.

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