What if.. people want to be actively engaged in their community.. and yet are not achieving that?
A study in the US that looked at what people privately share as their top personal priorities* and also to what degree do they subjectively feel they achieve against these. Below you see the top 10 results – source Populace, Success Index: Misunderstanding the American Dream:
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Of the individuals reported top 10 priorities – active engagement in their community scores lowest in terms of their feeling if they are achieving it in their lives.
From my other research I know active engagement in our local communities is important for our wellbeing, for building peaceful connections across divides, and for engagement into looking after our local environment. It matters.
My personal experience with community engagement? My observation is for me getting involved in my local community requires space such as small regular chunks of time, free attention to look around myself, and consistency in being present. It’s about familiarity and micro-steps in building trust. It’s quiet, not loud. Sometimes it feels pointless and annoying. The rewards are not what mainstream culture rewards, they are connection, the satisfaction of living into your integrity and fulfilling that priority number 1 of having a positive impact on others in small, hardly noticeable ways.
And maybe it is simply knowing you matter because you feel part of a place. Your community. Where people know you and treat you as part of the community, irrespective of differences you may have.
A shoutout here. This makes me proud to be affiliated with the new initiative PIONIERQUARTIER – which is an amazing team of experts and initiative looking at how to create community spaces with a lower threshold for how to become and stay engaged. 💫
If anything these data are an invitation to question any judgement if people are not engaged because they do not care about their local community, and wonder what if rather there is something in the way of making it happen? What if..?
(*note: these top personal priorities are often not expressed publicly as we self-silence and follow what we believe are societal norms, there is more to this in this study – for example actively engaging in our community is ranked at nr26 for how important supposedly ‘others’ think it is)
Source: If you like reports and data and original sources as much as I do. This is all from the Populace research report on ‘Success index’ (2023) and the conversation by Todd Rose: Populace
Source: I also can highly recommend a listen to Todd Rose talk about his data and the findings in this episode of the Mel Robbins podcast. So much also on belonging, values, trust, and our personal agency.
Image: Artist Olaf Hajek 2003. Personal material from the Move On Weekend, Munich 2005, by The Boston Consulting Group.
“Denken ist handeln” takes me back to my first interaction with the large management consultancy I joined after my malaria PhD. That line, “Thinking is for action,” spoke to me. I love ruminating, researching, putting complex bits of information into a digestible big picture, spotting the inconsistencies, the patterns, the messages. I tend to hang out a little longer on the side of thinking than on the side of action.
Yet – today I ask.
What if our thought itself was incorrect?
What if our thought adapted to a world around us and is driven by external messages of “you are not enough until _____” and you fill that blank with an external validation: your school grades, your university, your job titles, your products, your material wealth, your nose shape, your wittiness, your number of likes and followers. A world that we have created and our brains told us this is the only way of doing things.
If there’s one thing that such thought does it keeps us pretty distracted, busy and insecure as our basic desire for worthiness depends on external factors. It turns our opinions into self-identities, as David Bohm writes. It makes conversations into dangerous battle-grounds, as differing opinions are seen as attacks on our inherent internal worthiness and right to belong.
It makes us distracted and complacent.
As I write this, the world is watching atrocities unfold in the Middle East. It feels a little like the final straw on the camels back. I observe we are in pain. Yet, I also sense a discomfort in a sense of how could this happen (again). And a sense of grief for what we realise we are losing. There is also an unsettling silence to not say a wrong thing.
For me this article in the Guardian by Patrick Wintour sums up what I believe is a relevant viewpoint and speaks in a broader sense on other topics such as the loneliness, the anxiety, the questions on how to care for each other and our planet better. His title captures it: “The danger of leaving things be”.
Can we break the cycle of complacency?
Can we channel the regret of what got us here today, into where we put our energy into action tomorrow?
From all the research into the topics of wholehearted, courageous leadership, moving from discussion to dialogue and ways of rethinking strategy and business, I land at these three areas of focus for myself:
Thought: Start with “you are enough”. Full stop. Then get really curious about a lot of other aspects of what we think of as normal and ‘has to be that way’. Ask yourself is it true?
Feeling: Seek out & soak in awe. You can find this witnessing moral beauty in others, music, dance, nature, art. Read words from those that inspire you, watch concert videos, go to an exhibition, dance in the kitchen. Awe connects when the world polarises.
Action: Shift from exploitation to exploration. I hold a deep desire to work with leaders and organisations (exploitation). That rarely allows real disruption and is slow, the logical consequence – it’s time to work with those leaders and organisations at the fringes (exploration).
Now here’s the thing – if we are feeling regret mixed in with all those feelings, according to Dan Pink we have three choices: Delusion, Despair or Action. Let’s choose action.
Sources:
David Bohm: On Dialogue.
Dan Pink: The power of regret
Dacher Keltner: Awe, The transformative power of everyday wonders
I have chosen a quote from 📚 Michael Bungay Stanier‘s fantastic and funny session on ‘how to work with (almost) everyone’, to sum up what I wish to share from my The_Dream business festival attendance: a quick win, a pay attention, a choice and a permission.
1) Less talking, more doing regarding our inner & outer ecology. It’s time to get the hamsters out of those wheels (alternatively we can use Philosopher Bayo Akomolafe’s reference to not be a Kafkan bug). Ie. how we want to work with each other, how we look after ourselves, how we build skills for wholehearted, courageous leadership. This can be a ‘quick win’ – it is known what can be done. Do it.
2) Speaking the truth – our planetary safety needs degrowth, our geopolitical safety needs growth. That means we have to really drill down into this paradox and align on a global scale to work on solutions. This is taken from Olivia Lazard‘s talk – the speaker who to me stood out most with her bravery, courage to look closely and her ability to grasp and look for solutions around energy transition and global situations. This is about paying attention – don’t look away from hard topics, chose where you want to invest your skill sets, your own behaviour.
3) Every time we invest in technology, we have to also invest in being human – our morality, our ethics, our communities. The messages were clear on how fast technology is moving, I took from it once more confirmation that we cannot expect to ‘teach’ technology ethics, morality if we are not investing similarly into these skills for ourselves and ensuring well grounded, alive human beings, relations and communities. To me this is a choice – let us link tech investment to human investments.
4) Do not mistake dreamers for not also being doers. I met the most amazing people – dreamers AND who have created businesses and institutes and art and graduate schools and new ideas. And who bring new ways of being to their leadership, teaching and interactions. Full of hope, curiosity, passion and desires to develop life-centered businesses. To me this is a permission – please dream, be full of aliveness, that is what our communities and work places need.
Back to that quote and stepping out from the busyness of a turning wheel – only with our aliveness can we tackle all these paradox questions around planetary wellbeing, shaping technological developments and doing so out of a deep care for ourselves and others.
Again, a thanks to the organisers and curators at House of Beautiful Business and all dreamers contributing.
Source: This post is reflecting my experience at The_Dream Business Festival, 2-5 June 2023, Sintra Portugal. Full details of the program is here: https://houseofbeautifulbusiness.com/thedream. I am happy to share more – get in touch.
Are you creating the space in your organisation for creativity and anticipation of the future – imagining as many possible scenarios as you can to build a bold new future? Listening to those idealists, visionaries, dreamers, thinkers who share how trends are developing?
“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Red Queen, Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll 1871
I remember in my molecular genetics in biotechnology degree many years ago learning about the “Red Queen Hypothesis”. This is used in evolutionary biology to describe how organisms interact in a continuous “arms race” of defence and counter-defence mechanisms. It was called “Red Queen” based on the above quote from the red queen in Lewis Carroll’s book. Now that I have spent 15+ years in business after leaving academic science both on the management consulting side and in the industry – it is very much how business likes to behave. Constant competition both within the organisation (employees, projects, business units, etc) and also outside against other companies (competitors, substitutes, supplier, customers, etc). A lot of running fast to get more efficient and performing in what they already do well, that is known ways of doing business.
Here is the thing though. Today more than ever, we have a good understanding that all this competition against each other is not really going to solve the problems we jointly share – around inequality, climate change, human and planetary wellbeing. Those Dennis Meadows named “Difficult, global problems”. Similarly it leads to a very narrow perspective – the busyness of running to keep still is distracting from real disruptive change. So is it time to shift away from running fast only to keep in the same place?
“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”
White Queen, Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll 1871
Inspired by the proposition from Eric Muraille in his paper “Diversity Generator Mechanisms Are Essential Components of Biological Systems: The Two Queen Hypothesis” (2018) I would like to extend his thinking around the other queen, the White Queen, towards businesses as a concept.
My reasons for this?
We have difficult, global problems to solve – it requires bold (impossible) thinking
It is time to anticipate how our future can look – have the courage to imagine outside of what we already do
The White Queen is described as child-like – it will require playfulness, curiosity, the right brain
We jointly have one planet. Let us anticipate (at least) six impossible futures that involve courageous, compassionate and collaborative ways of doing business and living.
How to start? Stop running like a Red Queen – make space for long-term thinking, playing, curiosity and reimagining. It might be a little scary to stop running – as there are multiple factors why we tend to stay on that treadmill as I wrote about here – yet there are skills you can learn so you land softly when you bounce of that treadmill and into being.
Sources:
Muraille E (2018) Diversity Generator Mechanisms Are Essential Components of Biological Systems: The Two Queen Hypothesis. Front. Microbiol. 9:223. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00223
Escaping the Red Queen Effect in Competitive Strategy: Sense-testing Business Models. European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 37–49, February 2005
Is it getting busier in here? Busyness, uncertainty and the courage to slow down
Busy. The next meeting – online, offline, over coffee, with lunch, after dinner. Presentations, evaluations, process optimisations, digitalisation, implementations and reorganisations. Emails, instant messages, video calls, meetings.
You may feel frazzled but isn’t fast a great advantage? In a recent survey McKinsey1 found that speed was associated with better outcomes – the positive effect was seen across all business dimensions, yet particularly in regards to operational resilience and innovation. Yet – here’s the thing – as separately reported McKinsey2 senior business leaders reported feeling busy and overwhelmed whilst getting nothing done and the quality of interactions decreasing. I remember that feeling well from corporate settings – a constant stream of meetings, project revisions, KPI reporting – being busy with no tangible outcome for the business.
What is it about the connection here with speed versus busyness with little value added.
When McKinsey talks about an advantage for speed, if you dig into their report, you will find that the barriers reported as getting in the way of speed are silos, slow decision-making and lack of strategic clarity. So, I would argue that the advantage of organisations being ‘faster’ is not about doing more, quicker, and spinning madly. I believe it is about being intentionally focused and calm with a clear strategy, and with a culture that enables employees to take bold business decisions at the right moment and right level, with the right amount of information and with an appropriate amount of risk. This enables a felt speed – as the right activities and decisions get focused on and delivered upon.
The importance of strategic clarity as seen as one element required for speed – and increased operational resilience and innovation. The research by Leadership Expert Dorie Clark, who focuses on long-term strategic thinking, showed that business executives recognise the importance for long-term strategic thinking yet at the same time report to not have time to do so3. She took her research further to explore why they don’t have time, what is it with the busyness. Here’s the thing, as you will see in her concise Ted Talk4 the perceived busyness is often not about how much you have to do, but is associated with status, uncertainty and numbing (ie avoiding feeling our emotions). That means this busyness achieves the opposite to what would be desired, business leaders are staying busy to avoid decisions, or feeling discomfort and ambiguity.
So if you want leaders and a corporate culture, where leaders are calm and focused, whilst making courageous decisions based on strategic clarity and collaborating across silos – you want to build the ability to handle discomfort, ambiguity, paradox challenges whilst staying true to agreed upon values and being accountable for mistakes. You want leaders who are able to feel comfortable slowing down in able to speed up.
There are three areas to focus on:
1) At the individual level: Train for skills in courage and handling uncertainty. Start right at the top of the organisation with this. You have to slow down to make space, learn about vulnerability, values, trust and resilience. Become brave and kind leaders who pay attention.
2) At the corporate culture level: Create a corporate culture where it is safe for courageous decision-making. And remember, clear is kind. Culture is defined by a collection of norms, beliefs, values or artifacts. Take a close look at what you are rewarding and what people are held accountable for.
3) At the corporate strategy level: Really focus the corporate strategy to avoid noise, ensure there is alignment with your purpose and values. Understand your stakeholders.
In 2021, the consulting firm Kienbaum did a study5 investigating courage in the workplace – their research led them to define a leader as courageous as being both ‘determined’ and ‘value-driven’ (Entschlossenheit & Werteorientierung). Despite confirming the positive correlation of courage with business performance – they found that only 12% of participants in their study displayed courage as measured by their definition.
The good news is that courage and the ability to handle uncertainty can be developed as leadership skills. I support leaders develop Daring Leadership, Abundance Mindset and Collaborative Narratives as the cornerstone for courageous and innovative organisations.
In this post I dig in to the term ‘Abundance Mindset’ and why I believe it is important at the individual leader level, and also at a cultural level for our societies and organisations.
“No problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence (Galbraith)” in J.Suzman. Work: A deep history.
Have you ever wondered why we believe time is scarce? Working long hours is seen as the way to create value? Material goods and money are the main indicators of our success? Competition and being the ‘winner’ is what counts?
Here’s the thing we live in a ‘scarcity-fuelled’ society. Scarcity meaning: “being in short supply or shortage”. We get taught from a young age onwards that we have to compete for the best grades and future jobs – this continues in adult life with performance rankings, material status symbols, the artificial desire for constant consumption. It has become our underlying mindset for our lives and the social and economic constructs. We are taught we are not enough, we don’t have enough and we don’t know enough.
I outline what living in scarcity does to our behaviour and creativity in the post on Daring Leadership. The work by Dr. Brené Brown shows that when we are in a scarcity-driven state of anxiety we are more likely to armour up and isolate ourselves further, rather than dig into vulnerability, creativity and courage to open up to new ways of operating. So being in a scarcity mindset is not going to be a great position to help us with the challenges around us and reimagining new systems.
An additional great piece in the puzzle as to where this ‘scarcity-fuelled’ way of operating may be rooted was provided in the recent publication “Work: A deep history, from the stone age to the age of robots” by James Suzman. As an anthropologist, James Suzman provides a view at a societal and economic level over our work history: from hunter-gatherers, via foraging, to farming, city-dwellers, the industrial revolution and finally our current times. I highly recommend reading the book to learn way more than I highlight in my summary and take-aways below. It provides a provoking insight. (Note: Direct quotes from this book are marked in italics)
James Suzman’s main conclusion is that we operate in a scarcity-driven system that originated in the agricultural period. Now, if we understand how our scarcity mindset originated it enables us to take a step back from our scarcity obsession and question if it is still a valid mindset for how we want to operate in our societies and businesses going forward. It allows us to recognise our own man-mind constructs, which means it is not fixed but up to us to change it.
If we move from a scarcity-driven mindset to an abundance mindset as the main notion underlying our activities, it will allow us to tap into creativity and curiosity. An abundance mindset is one where we focus on ensuring basic needs are met and beyond that the underlying notion is that we are enough, have enough and know enough. Of course we have to make sure basic economic needs are met globally and real scarcity is a thing of the past. Yet, I am convinced starting with an abundance mindset (plus daring leadership and a collaborative narrative) will play a key role on achieving more balanced distribution of the wealth and affluence we have.
As James Suzman highlights in his book, John Maynard Keynes called for an economics of abundance and that in such a scenario inequality would become irrelevant. Similarly, “Galbraith was of the view () individuals would relinquish the pursuit of wealth in favor of worthier work.”
So let’s dig into the case James Suzman builds around our work history and where scarcity originated:
James Suzman proposes that originally hunter-gatherers focused on meeting solely their immediate needs and established systems like ‘demand sharing’ with flat hierarchies. What they needed to cover their immediate needs was abundantly available and required limited amounts of their time to obtain, giving them time for leisure. In summary they had a form of affluence without material abundance as they had modest desires, which were easily met. In the consequent stage of foraging, foragers still enjoyed a form of affluence based on far greater material abundance. It is also the phase where people began to adopt a longer-term, more future-focused relationship with work.
The move to farming is really when the future-focused relationship with work and anxieties about scarcity developed and intensified. James Suzman summarises that climate changes led to a situation where the environment could not provide sufficient food year-round, so it changed the relationship with the land and work. Farmers had to focus on fewer but more prolific plants and also new farming techniques. Any gains in productivity were matched by growing populations. The situation led to an expansion into new spaces and to cultures based around anxieties about scarcity and productivity. “The sanctification of scarcity and the economic institutions and norms that emerged during this period still underwrite how we organize our economic life today“.
It is also in the farming period that the concept around money starts. “The origins of money lies in the credit/debt arrangements that arose between farmers – who were, in effect, waiting for their land to pay them for the labor they invested in it and the people who depended on their surpluses”
Later, when the industrial revolution changed farming productivity and with the continued population growth people started to aggregate in cities. Less people were occupied as farmers to work the land, and new specialist trades developed for organising how people lived in the larger populations and settlements. “This required bureaucrats, judges, soldiers, and those who specialized in keeping order and binding people together into urban communities with common values, beliefs, and goals.”
Furthermore, 20th century economic concepts and mindsets have contributed significantly to our scarcity and productivity focused systems: “Taylorism” – the focus to maximise efficiency with standardisation and assembly lines, it may have addressed a need for a while and certain industries, yet the issue here being “the right person for these industrial jobs was someone limited with imagination, boundless patience, and a willingness to obediently do the same repetitive tasks day in and day out.” “Consumerism” – producers and advertisers have been creating fears and artificial needs to keep consumption and growth up as well as “creating desires for material products would make people feel like they were moving upwards and worry less about inequality. “Talent” – a concept around a war for talent, has since been challenged for it’s issue that leads to “competitive narratives also amongst employees, overvaluing individuals, creating a corrosive culture and decreasing collaboration“.
Finally, yes wealth was created with this focus on scarcity and productivity – however this wealth has been highly concentrated amongst a few: “The richest 10 percent of people on earth own an estimated 85 percent of all global assets, and the richest 1 percent own 45 percent of all global assets”
So our relationship with scarcity are by-products of the transition from foraging to farming. James Suzman highlights how again and again it was observed by historians how people were losing their sense of belonging and purpose in these systems. For example, Durkheim was curious about the “malady of infinite aspiration” and he coined a term “anomie” as the feelings of intense dislocation, anxiety, and even anger in people due to their social isolation. We see today the concerns around growing isolation and it’s impact on mental and physical health. Already Durkheim recognised how creating safe working environments with strong relationships could potentially be a solution and when we today talk about daring leadership and purpose we are recognising the same. We are “A species whose evolutionary history has been shaped so profoundly by its need for purpose and meaning”. Besides the social cost, there is the environmental cost as we are aware and the mentioned wealth inequality cost.
No one can summarise how important this work is than James Suzman himself in the conclusion of his book:
“Recognizing that many of the core assumptions that underwrite our economic institutions (and notions of scarcity and a preoccupation with economic growth) are an artifact of the agricultural revolution, amplified by our migration into cities, frees us to imagine a whole range of new, more sustainable possible futures for ourselves, and rise to the challenge of harnessing our restless energy, purposefulness, and creativity to shaping our destiny”.
So are you ready to reimagine and start building our societies and economic models based on a notion of abundance? Start with this – you are enough, you have enough and you know enough to contribute to the change we want to see.
Source: Work – A deep history, from the stone age to the age of robots. James Suzman, Penguin Press 2021.
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