Years ago, when I started working on strategic conversations, strategic planning and forward thrusts in organizations I realized that any model that takes people into "judging backwards" or "finding weaknesses" or "analyzing why things don't work" or "obstacles to success" all focus our minds on what we can't do, not what we can do.
From this perspective, we feel, on a conscious or unconscious level, that we can't achieve our goals. We often "narrow cast" the opportunities without knowing it, and we call that reality and we limit what we imagine could be possible.
Instead, what we should be focusing on is what we want to do -- and when we do that what happens is we open our minds to new energy and we "broadcast the opportunities" in our minds. In other words we expand what we imagine could be possible.
Creating the Future
My business focus is working with CEO's and their teams, and organizations to create the future. Most of my clients are Fortune 500 companies. When I started to use words like "aspirations" and "wishes" in the mid eighties, some CEOs and their senior teams thought I was quite "woo-woo" and some didn't want to enter discussions with this framing.
Others found it intriguing and did experiment with me on how to shift energy and shift mindsets. This lead to two decades of research, projects, initiatives and incredible growth inside of large companies who many would say "could not change."
Aspirations are the Key:
Those executives who were willing to enter a new space and search inside themselves (that's where aspirations live) for their most treasured hopes and dreams, and then experimented with articulating these deeper aspirations, became tougher mentally for the journey ahead because of the internal touchstone that was created by being courageous and willing to find their own place of greatest desire -- and share it with others.
Unfortunately, life teaches us that hoping for too big a dream creates disappointment -- especially when we don't get it, and so we often give up the dream for the reality. My two decades of work with transformation has taught me that when I am successful in helping create space for aspirations to surface, and when we can create the support team to hold the space open, and for redirecting our the energy and learn along the way, then big dreams do happen and everyone involved lifts to the next level of their growth and evolution.
This may sound a bit spiritual for some, yet those who experience it find the words to explain it and sometimes what is required are more spiritual or energetic words to capture the feeling of growth. Some clients call this a rebirth ... others transformation. Client's who have experienced this want more experiences like this because they energize, catalyze and create a positive ripple effect in their organizations.
Anyone who wants to read more about the approaches I'm experimenting with, please refer to my website for case studies, or to a variety of books and articles: http://www.creatingwe.com/.
Growth and Health – Cells and Organizations have Similar Needs
Also, I have a series in Executive Excellence Magazine on partnering. In the first issues of my series, I have linked three key principles, or conditions for growth. The principles that I've discovered came out of my husband’s research on cancer. He and scientist from NYU have found a disruptive technology for curing cancer by "reinstructing cancer cells how to be normal." They are an early stage research and development company and their work is an incredible contribution to the field of oncology, and with the inspiration of their work, I've connected it to how to create conditions for growth in individuals, teams and organizations.
I hope my work will add to AI's community of thought leadership by defining the conditions for AI practices to thrive.
I welcome further conversation... Judith
PS: My husband's site is: http://www.biomegalaboratories.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment