Focusing on Potential, not firefighting problems

So welcome back to the mid year Midlife Regeneration. It's our time to pause, reassess, reset, and renew for the next half of our year together. And we're focusing on our self and our systems, of course, focusing this video on potential, our inherent potential, not firefighting, existing problems that come from the fire past, but actually thinking about our potential and the future, skating to where the puck will be, as Wayne Gretzky said. So we're taking another developmental approach, thinking on paper and focusing first on your potential, either personally or professionally, or both. And then we'll stop and look at the system's potential, and that one will be the mind of an enterprise leader. But let's first talk about potential. You as an individual have a potential, and then your system has its own potential, which in living systems, we call it our essence. But I found this ancient Norse term called weird. So I've put them together. Your weird essence. It comes from Old English meaning to become, which I love that thinking because living systems is in a constant process of becoming. It's not static, has this mystical, sacred concept. And it's not something that grows from experience. You'll notice the red thread because I'm using that as a metaphor for our, for our capturing and remembering and tugging on what is our weird essence. Let's spend time thinking that through and unpacking it over the next few slides. So your weird essence, from Latin, the word essence means essential qualities, innate disposition. It's the distinct core to someone or something. So something. It could be a place has its own essence, or a team has its own essence. Certainly from organizations, you can see that they have their own essence if you compare one to another. So they're the tendencies, the talents, the inborn differences that make us all unique. The unis at birth that guides us toward one area and away from something else, some other activities and things. And essence precedes personality. We can learn, we can grow, we can change, but our essence is deep inside of that. It endures. Essence is divined by a whole, a living whole, not by fragments. And sometimes, you know, we call people, or in organizations especially, I've heard, you know, have you talked to finance? It's like you don't see their core essence or customers or millennials. And if you have a child or you have a pet, you wouldn't want them, anyone else, to see your beloved. Just as a generic category, you know that they have an essence that's unique, it's an n of 1. So essence doesn't conform to cultural expectations. Now we shield it and we cover it up and we protect it with this layer called personality, which we need to live in this culture, in this world. But personality can outgrow its original utility and then it blocks our essence. If I think about that myself as an example, I was rewarded to be, as a child, extroverted. So the more extroverted I was, the more attention I got. But at some point in my life on this search, I realized that that was just personality. When I unpeeled the layers, the coats, varnish, I realized I'm not that outgoing. I'm getting closer to my essence. So often essence becomes choked off or goes to sleep like an essence coma. And we can feel imprisoned. Often this voice, this sensation, muffled sensation or yearning surfaces beyond personality. So let's use this time to find our inherent potential that we all have. Because essence has a potential. It's life that wants to become so. Just as nature creates wheat, it doesn't create sourdough bread. Nature creates milk, but not ice cream. It. It creates the wind, but not electricity. What I'm saying is that for the potential of our inherent essence to evolve, we need to fan the flames. Just like this little girl here. If, if we don't fan and support her motivation to become a pilot, she might become a lawyer because her parents, culture, outside voices were directing her that way. And this quote from Marcus Buckingham is that human uniqueness is a feature, not a flaw. So what's yearning inside of you, that red thread that maybe needs a little more encouragement? Regeneration. And we're going to start with this exercise. This is focused on yourself and your own essence potential. Like I mentioned before, we'll talk about the system later. So we'll go on a scavenger hunt and we're going to look at what are some of the causes, the concerns, the wounds that seem salient in your life, not necessarily in mine. So you're going to ask yourself, what's formative to me? What's seminal, what's influential? Moments made me feel most authentic in my life. Another scavenger hunt trick is looking at how do I react under stress. That often gives us a little glimpse of your defining core character, or essence. What challenges and obstacles played a role in defining me? You know, you might have had some challenge in education, sports, nature, family, math, your own unique story that now you're realizing, I want to affect that area. For me, I went, I go into education, and there's a reason why it's a. My essence is attracted to that. You have your own unique story. And then finally when are some of the issues, beliefs and convictions that you always talk about with your friends, your family? I talk a lot about climate change. Anyone talking to me, I can turn it on to climate change. Also, I'm interested in industrial farming, so those are mine. And there are certain things I'm not interested. They're very good, worthy causes. I just don't have the energy of the attention towards them. I'm going to give you time. And now let's look at another side. Let's look at what are some of the strengths, the things you enjoy or you desire, want more of? So these are. What are some of the talents that I'd like to strengthen or develop even more? What are some of the dreams and ambitions I'd like to pursue if I knew I wouldn't fail? Are there things that make me lose track of time or people have to tear you away from them because it gets my creator juice flowing? And maybe they're your friends, your family, they see unique attributes or qualities in you that you don't see because you're you. So let's put all of this together and do a scavenger hunt looking at the causes, concerns and wounds, or strengths and joys and desires. We're going to step back now based on what we've talked about so far and your thinking. Let's reflect on these questions. What is energizing you now? And is your personality? Are you realizing that maybe your personality has overtaken a little bit of your essence? Or maybe it's on balance. How on track are you with living and working your meaningful purpose? Are you working from something that seems to be fueled from your own essence, that weird essence that wants to shine through? And what is blocking or draining energy, draining attention, that you need to be able to work towards your own next stage role, your next stage contribution? In the world. And in living systems, we talk about the metaphor of acupuncture, where the acupuncturist knows the precise spot to place the needle to release the energy in the system. That's a nodal point. So what's the one thing, the one nodal point that would release some energy and re refocus attention for you, Build your will perhaps. Now, finally, I have to remember that when we do change, our system doesn't like change. So any type of change will trigger an instinctive fight, flight or freeze response. Because our systems want to maintain the comfortable habitual patterns of existence. Our instincts want homeostasis. But your head, your heart, your essence wants change, transformation somehow. So try this one Small, easy, private action, so tiny that it goes under the radar of your internal alarm system. What would that be? That nodal point that's tiny. Now let's look at your system. And we're going to work from a meaningful purpose that's linked to our collective essence. Whether the collective essence is your team, your department and organization, or the whole company. And we'll use a systemic framework called the mind of an enterprise leader. And from a living systems perspective, the aim that we're always having is evolving the customer's capacity, their ableness to do more at a higher level than they're doing now. Not just to deliver their existing solution, but are we supporting them in their evolution and are we integrating our offering? Does it integrate with their value adding process? So now let's look at the parts of the triangle, the triad here. First of all, purposeful agency. On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 low, 5 high. How much motivation will backbone taking initiative do we have versus sitting back or being reactive? So rate yourself as a system, whoever you chose, whether it's your team, department or organization around purposeful agency for the mind of an enterprise leader. The second area where an enterprise leader thinks is actually whole business thinking and taking action. So instead of being a fragmented siloed leader who says to his team, I don't know what you guys are failing, but I'm doing all right in my subsystem, no, an enterprise leader thinks and acts on behalf of the whole system, scale of 1 to 5. Because if you remember, I have this premise. A fragmented siloed piecemeal thinking leads to fragmented, siloed piecemeal way of doing, being and leading. And the third area that we're going to focus in this triad is on self managing capacity. So on a scale of 1 to 5 for each of these reactive ego or meaningful purpose, none are necessarily good or bad. It's about the context in the right working in the right context. So what is appropriate for for each situation and the relationship between them. So if we think firstly about reactive on a scale of 1 to 5, that could be defined as automatic response to an external stimuli or protecting ourselves against outside influences, being over sensitive or over attentive to others opinions, demands or requests. Does a customer say jump and you say how high? But if you were to be more reflective and more discerning, you're realizing we don't really even want to respond to this customer this way. The second area is ego. Again, it's not good or bad. I need ego to stand here and talk to you now believe me. But ego, Think about it as upholding personal or group beliefs. I'm doing that right now. Or pursuing personal or group aims, protecting my reputation, my control, covering my arse. I also might want to increase my power, my span of control, my ability to influence. Sometimes upon reflection, we might say maybe we overdid it. Finally, meaningful purpose. It's about overcoming our self centered self interest and evolving the capacity of our beneficiaries. Exercising stewardship on behalf of the whole, not fragments, and connecting our unique essence with the essence of our people, our places and our causes. So not thinking about, oh, this is the customer. It's like who is the customer? They have a name, they have aspirations, they have dreams. So here it is all together. What's activating you, maybe energizing you, motivating you right now. And then the other side of your paper, what's restraining, maybe putting some guardrails, bottlenecks, governance, hesitation, buzz kill. Reflect on that. Gather your thoughts. To put these two frameworks together. The mind of an enterprise leader and the three lines of work that we talked about in the last module. So here's some questions for you. What was the difference between your left hand side and your right hand side of that paper for yourself and for your team? If you communicate this and share this information with your team, what are we paying attention to or not paying attention to? What's the effect and the effectiveness of your team on the three lines of work, on our customers, on our stakeholders, our beloved beneficiaries of our work? Where's the nodal point that could release the energy? Find the right node, release the energy in the system, refocus attention, release energy, engagement perhaps. And then where's the noal point for the your team and for you as an individual? So those are the questions to reflect on. I'm going to stop us now and tell you that we'll meet back in the third session which will be on discerning worldview paradigms, not having paradigm blindness. I look forward to sharing that one with you. Thanks.