The Elephant, the Butterfly, the Hummingbird, and the Orchid

The Elephant, the Butterfly, the Hummingbird, and the Orchid:
Important Lessons for These Economic Times

I am constantly interested in what makes organizations, businesses, and individuals successful. A recent HBR article drew parallels from the Foreman v. Ali fight, and their symbols, the elephant and butterfly/bee, as creative impetus for business principles and solutions for our current market. I like a good metaphor. Metaphors are universal, offering insights that mold into our personal situations through shared symbolism and meaning. I like this. I am borrowing two of theirs and adding a few of my own.

The HBR article provides both exquisite symbolism and practical analytical tools, and is highly recommended. Give it a read when you have a chance.

One of the most constant assumptions in the change management consulting world is organizations that are highly adaptable will be success in our ever increasing world of rapid change and ambiguity. I tend to agree with this assumption and consult toward this end; however, as HBR points out, there are organizations (and prize fighters) that simply have the size and strength to resist challenges from the most agile competitors and most challenging environments.

Healthy adult elephants have no natural predators. They're big, tough and smart. Elephants, especially females, interact in groups, partnerships, and social circles that provide further protection. Brains and groups are helpful, but their lack of competition is ultimately a result of their size.

There are organizations in our marketplace that are the same, and because of their size, strength, positioning and cash reserves they will weather this down cycle with relative ease. It's important to note, the appearance of strength and size is not strength and size. A sick elephant is an easy target. A large organization, like Enron and Citi Bank, in a state of distress is quickly challenged by shifting markets and harmful attacks.

Consider for a moment your size, strength, production position and essential partnerships: do you have the strength, size and stable relationships with both partners and customers to weather this current storm? How are your cash reserves? Is your organization functional, resilient, and grounded in shared vision? Are the values of your company solidified in each employee? Are the larger systems that support you, lenders, supply chains, and vendors, also stable?

Strength and size is important, but it's not the only thing that will enable survival and success - think Roman Empire and Russia v. Afghanistan. The capacity to change and transform is essential. Caterpillars are great at what they do, and when there is the natural impulse to change they are able to completely transform their capacities and function interacting in a completely different environment and world - from crawling to flying.

Is your organization in touch with the intuition for necessary change? Can your business adapt to meet the demands of the current environment? Are there people in your organization that have the intuition to see needed change, development and evolution? Are there people that can facilitate necessary adaptation and growth?

IBM was able to adapt when their PC business began to fail. Instead of doing the same thing poorly, IBM created a new and powerful business of IT consulting, network installation and customer service. They completely adapted, changed their business model and process, and remained viable and successful.

Progressive and evolutionary change may not be the right thing for your business. Most often, simple, horizontal shifts will keep your organization competitive. The hummingbird has a lot to teach us here. Watching them move is enchanting and mesmerizing. Hover, shift, hover, shift. It's important now, more than ever, to move and reflect in ever rapidly increasing cycles. Pause, lateral shift, pause, lateral shift. Through this process, hummingbirds escape detection from predators and find necessary sustenance. The same will be true with your organization.

Is your organization able to make quick lateral shifts in strategy and process? Are there active reflection and action cycles built into your work process on all levels of your business? Is there clear time for assessment and course correction? Is it easy to let go of things that aren't working any longer and adjust to what does?

Again, we're not looking for big transformative shifts, just the right, strategic adjustments that keep your organization operating well from its current position.

A client over the period of a year gave me about 20 orchids. She would get a new orchid at her office each week, and so she would pass the prior week's off to me. I brought them home. I cared from them. I bought books about orchid care. I bought orchid food. I changed their light. I misted. I looked at them smiling while offering encouraging words. And nothing. They never bloomed again. After a year of this, I put them outside and left them to their own accord. I assumed that they would last just a few weeks in the challenging Los Angeles desert environment.

I was right about some. Some died quickly. However, the majority to my amazement lived! And even more surprising, about half of the plants that lived bloomed. No attention, water, care, food or encouraging words were offered - they simply lived and thrived.

Sometimes, against all odds, things survive and thrive. Does your organization have fierce will, a solid and embodied vision, and a functional strategy to channel these? Is your organization, powered by your people, systems, culture and social structure, going survive against all odds? Do you have the passion?

In this time of challenge and trial, some will fail, some will survive and some will thrive. Leverage your strengths, adapt, position and engage, just like elements in our natural world. It's worked for them for 14+ billion years. It just might work for us.

Flow In Strategic Intuition: An Exploration of Polarities

Flow In Strategic Intuition: An Exploration of Polarities
By Evan Vandarwarka, Associate

Introduction

Einstein once said you can't solve a problem at the same level of consciousness from which the problem originated. Today's business and societal challenges require a new way of being, allowing us access to new information and resolution to achieve breakthrough and change. In a previous article, we discussed the concept of strategic intuition, the creative spark found between the analysis and action of a strategy. It is strategic intuition that brings all previous analysis and experience into a clear plan of action. When immersed in strategic intuition, we often experience a state of deep concentration and focus, our mind and body in balance, our awareness heightened. We feel a state of optimal experience, or what is known as flow; a new way of being that may be one answer to today's challenges.

Flow most easily occurs when we become aware of certain polarities that are constantly occurring in our lives and are able to hold both at the same time. This balance allows for the expression of our most insightful and significant ideas and often results in the experience of seemingly opposed realities converging together to produce harmony where levels of chaos and uncertainty were previously present. As with everyone else, I have experienced varying degrees of flow in my life. When I am able to witness polarities and how they are informing me, a greater sense of clarity and trust in the process moves through me. It is a sample of these polarities we will explore in this article, those that seem to harbor significance in flow and in part provide for the experience of strategic intuition, purpose and clarity.

Action and Reflection

In human activity (whether we are aware of it or not) there are repetitive cycles of action and reflection constantly occurring. We act, then reflect on our action; reflection that then informs subsequent actions, and the cycle continues. As we grow and develop, these action/reflection cycles become more complex, incorporating more of our surroundings as we take in more of our world and understand it more deeply. In the process, as we develop more complex cycles, the action/reflection process is quicker, more closely knit. When we are children, we often don't realize the consequences of our actions until much later when we are disciplined by our parents, then reflect on what we have done as a result. As adults, we are able to act, then reflect with greater ease and rapidity from our previous experience. It is this process of quicker action and reflection that helps us resolve problems with more fluidity and grace. Bill Torbert's book, Action Inquiry, discusses ways in which these action/reflection cycles occur through various levels of human development; stages of awareness in action and reflection as we mature. In business, we find successful leaders continually take time to reflect on their actions and re-orient themselves to a more congruent plan. When highly mature, this cycle is happening all the time, at the same time, contributing to a state of flow.

Suggestion: take time at the end of each day to reflect or journal on major actions you have taken. How did they manifest, what was the impact on others, what did you learn? Bringing awareness to these cycles breeds greater clarity and purpose for future activity.

Complexity and Unity

As mentioned in our cycles of action and reflection, the process of growth and development brings with it the ability to conceive of deeper and broader systems; we have access to abstract concepts and are able to view the world from a more complex viewpoint. Linear ways of viewing situations or problems give way to a systemic understanding, seeing the problem from many different perspectives. Sometimes this complexity can be overwhelming. There's a point where we can get lost in the various ways of looking at a problem, leading to stalemate where nothing ends up getting resolved. However, when one develops the creative power of flow, this complexity comes together to form a unitive structure, one in which complexity begins manifesting as a more complete, whole understanding of complex structures. In nature, we see unity in complexity, from the fractal formation of a leaf to the organization of human molecular systems. We can begin viewing our life and its challenges as we do with nature; seeing unity and clarity in a problem through deeper understanding of its complexity.

Flow happens when we experience this unity within the complexity. Taking another example from the business world, managers who are able to view unity in complexity see the overall vision and purpose of a project or department within the many processes and systems in place that support that vision. It may seem logical, yet still a challenge to actually hold both at the same time with demonstrative efficacy. In flow, this attunement to both becomes greatly enhanced; systems within systems emerge in one’s perspective and a fuller picture comes into being.

Suggestion: take an object in your immediate environment and examine it for a few minutes. Notice whether you are paying attention to the details of that object or the object as a whole. Try to alternate between seeing the details and the whole until you are holding both at the same time. This practice is beneficial in developing the capacity to bring each into awareness.

Agency and Communion

As humans develop, we alternate between cycles that are dominated by differentiation and accommodation; sometimes we go through periods of agency in the world through our individual expression. In others, we take in our collective environment, which then informs us as individuals. In reality, this polarity of agency and communion, individual and collective is constantly occurring. A pebble dropped in a pond makes ripples that reverberate through, informing the actions of its immediate surroundings. In flow, we are both aware of our individual "pebble" AND the ramifications of our actions in the collective. When we are conscious of this, our action/reflection cycles are quick and we act in accordance with what is most needed for ourselves and our environment. We become an agent of change within the larger environment we are informing. In business and life, this becomes a critical leadership quality. If we are to form something new or resolve a certain issue, holding agency and communion, ourselves and the collective is necessary to create an environment that meets the needs of both. We are in flow when both are happening simultaneously.

Suggestion: the next time you are speaking with someone, notice how you alternate between asserting your own interest in the conversation and taking in the other, through both your thoughts about the conversation and the actual words you are saying. Reflect on how much of your day is spent in either side of the polarity and witness how they may be forming each other.

Conclusion

In practice, holding these polarities at the same time can be challenging. We often find ourselves in one of two positions; acting or reflecting, immersed in details or examining the big picture, asserting ourselves or taking in our environment. Witnessing and becoming aware of both ends of these polarities in yourself provides the experience of holding when and how they either produce positive results and balance in your life or lead to a state of contraction in which you feel immobilized. This witnessing then offers new ways of understanding; we bring clarity to challenges we face and act in accordance with purpose; we flow with greater ease and acceptance. At Krama Consulting, we help to elicit these qualities in projects and leaders, pointing out polarities that are being managed and to what extent they are generating or halting flow, allowing transformative change to occur.