4
CHAPTER 4 FRAMEWORK
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, day and night, to make you everybody but yourself—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight—and never stop fighting.”
E.E. Cummings1
Without going over much trodden ground, the world is increasingly connected (and disconnected), possibilities and possible selves are endless, work is intense (or boring), money is not an issue (or it is the issue), families are dispersed (or on top of one another) – to step up, to keep up and to deliver to ever-increasing demands, we find ourselves overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, fearful, excited, bombarded. Wherever you are, whatever your circumstances – how do you survive? How do you thrive? How do you flourish?
How do you be at your best whatever the context or circumstances you find yourself in?
How on earth did you get here?
You are sitting on a bench on the south side of the River Thames, London, amid the glass tower blocks behind the warship HMS Belfast. A list of points to cover in your next meeting run through your mind. You stop, taking a few moments to “notice” where you are, notice the sounds, the smells, notice the people scurrying about, others engaged in meetings at the many coffee bars spilling onto the walkway. What’s the purpose of all this activity – all this “doing”? What are you really doing here? What was the reason for this meeting? Why were you going? How does this work fit into what is important to you – into what you really want to be doing?
A high-performing team?
A global technology company attracted significant funding through its reputation for a unique product and great service. Great individuals were brought together to deliver the business plan. One year on, the business is seriously off-track from the intended deliverables. The investors are getting edgy and the great individuals are at each other’s throats – blaming, defending and disengaging. Scratch below the surface, and you find little to bind the top team together. The connections between the great individuals are disabling rather than enabling, there is no shared purpose, and no agreement as to how they need to work together.
Imagine – what would it be like to have a clear purpose, to be able to make meaning of what it is that you are doing here, to have a shared purpose with those that you work with, where you are clear about how you want to be together and how you want to move forward to deliver that purpose?
The answers, personally and organizationally, are both simple and complex. The simple answer is get to know yourself, your organization, identify what’s important and live according to that purpose and those principles every day.
The complex part is the journey that identifying and living core values every day will take you and your organization on – even choosing that journey is not necessarily easy. Even more complex is why on earth such an approach works anyway.
AT THE CORE: BEING VS. DOING
We are often caught in a cycle of doing things, driven by external imperatives and demands. Doing more to achieve – achieve what? Doing more to buy the things to flag our success to others – do we really need it? Doing more to prove our worth – to whom?
How do we break the cycle – more to the point, why bother?
Doing mode
Our brains operate primarily in “Doing mode”2 using our minds to solve problems, make plans to act, anticipate events, make choices and decisions. Clearly this mode fundamentally enables us to live and achieve our goals. Doing mode doesn’t help us thrive emotionally – or be in touch with ourselves, others or the world we live in. Jon Kabat-Zinn3 notes that staying in “doing” mode, we are in danger of “Dying without actually fully living”. It’s a significant risk for all given the relentless pace of our lives and the rapidly changing context we live in.
To illustrate the point, in the last two millennia there has been an accelerating pace of change. Our lives and the systems we live by have become increasingly complex and our ability to manipulate our environment extreme. Some people have become immeasurably wealthier in material terms and many others considerably poorer.
Bringing the scale of recent change into perspective, humans have walked on the earth for about 195,000 years, and only 300 of those years have been after the industrial revolution. The rapid technological, social and economic changes in the last 300 years just may not be ones to which we are biologically or socially optimally adapted. Given where we are as a species at the moment and the way we are depleting our personal, interpersonal and planetary resources, it is difficult to see Homo sapiens surviving for another 1,000 years, never mind another 300,000.
In this complex and chaotic world, our lives have evolved such that we are bombarded. We experience information overload and an increased perception of threat such as job and financial insecurity, fears for personal safety, and even the threat of extinction as a species. Our traditional social bonds are more easily fragmented, with people and groups across the social hierarchy left on their own to deal with what seem like overwhelming pressures.
In this context, there is so much that we could be doing, so many possibilities, so much demand: staying in Doing mode perhaps feeds our need to have a sense of control within this chaos.
And yet, we cannot hope to gain control.
Scratching the surface, we find increasing stress, fragmentation, obesity, malnourishment, addiction, pollution. In our hardwired drive to avoid pain, mistakes and threats by thrusting forward and demanding control, we are only ever one step away from the pain we are desperate to avoid.
As our material wealth increases, we see ourselves as “time poor”, as our time is totally consumed with “doing” what we need to do, with the purpose of reaching an ever-elusive goal. This, in Prof. Richard Layard’s view, is the hedonic treadmill. Despite our increase in material wealth, and our busyness “doing”, we are no happier now than we were 50 years ago (see Chapter 12, Happiness).
Take the time now to reflect on what you are doing. Step back and consider how you are choosing to live.
If we don’t know who we are, and are not aware of the way that we are being, then what we do is mindless rather than mindful. In these circumstances, our doing is only by chance, aligned to our purpose and our values. How can we learn to align ourselves? How can you become the person you keep dreaming you are?
Being mode
In order to have a different outcome to the place that the “doing” mode is taking us, we need to switch tracks.
Not stopping doing (how would we get anything done, make any decisions, live?), but stepping into a different zone. Building the capacity to be present and aware in the here and now to what is happening around us.
Switching modes
There are different starting points to enable you to switch modes, and achieve a different level of awareness of yourself, and a different, more resourceful centre from which to act. Cast your mind back and remember the last time that you recalled questioning what you are doing, beyond the immediate, tangible “it’s part of my job”; “I’ve been asked to attend the meeting” reasons that come readily to mind.
Have you gone further, perhaps asking: What is this all for?
When have you have taken the time to step back and really consider this question, and perhaps even done something to live in a way that is more aligned with who you aspire to be?
In describing our version of “being”, we are perhaps offering a different perspective to that of mindfulness practitioners such as Jon Kabbat-Zin and Daniel Siegel. We are placing the concept of “being” within a consciously shaped awareness of what it is that is core to you – designing a unique personal compass that will guide you towards your chosen purpose.
Imagine how it might be if, in your “doing mode”, your actions and behaviours were expressions of your core purpose and values?
Now, consider this in the context of an organization. When did your organization last reflect and question what its core purpose was? The mission and vision, do we really believe in that? Is it truly what we are about? Or was that a tick box activity that met the governance requirements at the time?
What is the purpose of your organization? What is it uniquely able to do that people need in the world right now? What are the core values of your organization (the personality and the way of doing things)? How does the behaviour of those in the organization, from the leadership down to the front line, express your organization’s purpose and values? Are those actions and behaviours truly expressions of the organization you want to be? This is the subject of Chapter 5, Purpose.
Imagine the energy and resources that might be released if individuals’ behaviours and actions were aligned and connected directly with the organization’s core purpose and values. This idea has been at the forefront of much work on employee engagement and organizational design over years of research.
This is also where the 31Practices framework and underpinning methodology comes in.
31PRACTICES: THE FRAMEWORK
31Practices has been designed with the explicit purpose of enabling people to live the core values of their organization, being the personality, identity and culture of their organization that is designed to deliver the organization’s purpose. In addition, 31Practices offers a way for individuals to live their lives according to their personal core values, their actions expressing their core identity and purpose.
We believe that 31Practices offers one methodology that can provide greater fulfilment and strengthened resilience individually, and greater impact and resilience organizationally. In this book, we focus on the organizational context as we articulate the underpinnings of 31Practices. Our sister text, my31Practices (our second book), focuses on how to apply the 31Practices framework and methodology to your individual situation and is introduced in Chapter 29, my31Practices. If you read both, you would notice, and not be surprised, that the underpinning framework and thinking is the same, while the context, stories and impact of the application of 31Practices and my31Practices differ.
31Practices simply helps to translate an organization’s core values into practical daily behaviours and to enable employees to live these on a dayto-day basis. It is an approach that is so simple, it is almost common sense.
31Practices is an approach based on doing a little every day with mindfulness, internalization, imprinting and positive reinforcement. It provides a discipline in much the same way as an exercise programme for fitness or a diet. An important difference is that the discipline is deeply integrated into the fabric of the organization.
31Practices offers flexibility so that each organization’s set of values and daily Practices are designed and driven by the people who work in the organization. Despite the simplicity, the approach is underpinned by a vast array of theories, principles and ideas that have been developed over decades and, in some cases, centuries.
Purpose
The starting point of the framework is purpose. What is it that the organization is there for? Expressed simply, in a way that engages hearts and minds, the core purpose becomes something that people can get behind.
Having identified your purpose, this is supported by the 31Practices four pillars:
• Identify
• Action
• Impact
• Refine
Identify
The first pillar requires the organization to identify a core set of principles, values, traditions that can act as a guide in this ever-changing, complex, and busy landscape. Building from Purpose, the values are the principles, the “how” that links the here and now to that purpose. The values clarify what is fundamentally important in the way the organization is seen and experienced by stakeholders (customers, employees, investors, communities, suppliers) and the way its people behave.
Action
The second pillar is simply about putting core values into action. Many organizations have taken considerable time and trouble to create a vision and values. For many, this is where the work flounders or stops. The values may be in a frame on the boardroom wall or referred to as “fundamentally important” in the annual report. But if you ask employees about these values, often they do not even know the words; and even when they do know the words, they are unable to explain what these mean to them as part of their daily life at work. Through daily action, new habits develop and the values are brought to life in the stories and very fabric of the organization.
Impact
The third pillar is to notice what happens as a result of the behaviours that are now being practised consistently across the organization. What is the impact on different stakeholder groups? What is the impact on the employees? On customers? What’s the impact on your bottom line? What are the stories that are circulating from customers, from suppliers, from employees? How are employees feeling? What is their level of engagement? As an individual employee, you directly experience the impact. The stories you tell yourself about your role in the organization are likely to change, perhaps you start to embed some different skills, have a different awareness, or feel more engaged with the “bigger purpose” of the organization you work for.
Refine
The fourth and final pillar is to refine and adjust the way in which you are applying the Practices, and, in time, perhaps refining the Practices themselves. The values or what is core and important to the organization is not going to change or shift radically from one moment to the next, but as your awareness and insight grows, you are likely to get a different understanding of how these values are constructed and the best way to bring these values to life. You might refine, reconstruct, re-prioritize, add to or take away from the way you implement your Practices based on greater awareness and experience. A series of reviews are built into the 31Practices approach to assist this process of refining.
Based on a form of the scientific method (and building from models such as Plan-Do-Check/Study-Act), this enquiry-based cycle (identify, action, impact and refine) will extend understanding and bring organizations closer to their goal.4 5 Made explicit, this approach can enhance the level of critical thinking, enabling employees to be more purposeful and have greater choice about how they act – rather than mindlessly acting to fulfil a demand.
WhAT MAKES 31PRACTICES WoRK?
Why is 31Practices likely to be effective? For this part we turn to a wide range of sources that shed light on what it is to be human: the interplay between Heart, Body and Mind. We often talk about and see these as different “parts” of ourselves. In fact, they are all strongly interconnected and if all three are working together in the same direction, positive things start to happen.
Working in the manufacturing industry in the 1990s, there were many times when a lathe operator, grinder, or driver would share the “fact” that “you’re expected to leave your brains at the gate when you work here”. Another favourite in a particular manufacturing organization was that “we are treated like mushrooms… kept in the dark”. The message here was very clear: you’re not meant to think – just do – we don’t want to harness the power of your minds.
The energy and resource provided by inspired and engaged employees is a known factor that organizations are keen to tap into, often spending a significant budget on measuring engagement with the aim of creating the right context and environment to enable people to put their hearts into their jobs.
The 31Practices framework is not something that is rigid or fixed, but provides a framework that enables organizations to create the habits of their own success. We believe 31Practices enables organizations to have the yin and yang that Jim Collins and Jim Poras refer to in their book Built to Last. Namely, the 31Practices framework is designed to enable organizations to preserve their core and stimulate progress through:6
• continuity and change
• core values and big goals
• stability and discontinuity
• strong cultures and idiosyncratic people
• consistency and innovation
• discipline and creativity
• systematic methods and experimental approaches
• meaning and achievement
The next five chapters give more depth to the steps and stages of the 31Practices methodology.