unfrozenmind – why, and why now?
Published by Toby Coop May 31st, 2007 in Uncategorized
Dr Bettina von Stamm interviewing fellow advisory board member Ven. Geshe Thupten Khedroup at the Unfrozenmind Advisory Board meeting in Paris, 15-16 May 2007 (videos forthcoming).
by Dr Bettina von Stamm, FRSA, Unfrozenmind Advisory Board:
The guys behind unfrozenmind have been working relentlessly to find supporters of their concept – of their dream – and have brought together an impressive group of people. Why is that? It cannot be their stamina and determination alone. Many people have ideas and concepts they are trying to sell with tireless engagement yet few have succeeded to create such interest and drum up such support. (Please see Advisory Board Members under the Who tab above). If it is not the people (sorry Toby & Alexei) it must be the idea itself. So, assuming that this is the case, what is so special about it?
I believe to understand the reaction to the idea one needs to step back and take a look at the broader picture of what is happening in the world, inside as well as outside work. And what I see is,
• A crisis of belief.
• A lack of engagement
But on the other hand, deeply-rooted in human nature,
• A desire to contribute & belong
I would like to expand a little more on each in turn, drawing on my own, very personal views (primarily on the issue of ‘belief’) as well as research (engagement and desire to contribute and belong).
If we go back 50 t 100 years there were structures and aspects in people’s lives that provided meaning, structure and a sense of belonging. External reference points that helped people navigate life. These things included religion, home-life and the place of work. All of these have deteriorated over time; ‘work for life’ is no longer, divorce rate and single parenting are constantly on the rise. It has been a gradual process but the consequences are being felt. As a consequence people are looking for new sources of meaning, something that helps them find reason and belonging in life.
Given that most of us spend most of our waking ours at work I’d like to spend a little more time on this issue. With multiple shareholders and anonymised ownership lead to employees being treated as numbers while efficiency gurus apply their skills in downsizing, right sizing and consolidation. Aligning a sense of belonging to such an organisation can be a painful experience. To safeguard against this employees separate strictly between self at work and self outside work – which is a major factor contributing towards the low levels of engagement increasingly observable in most organisations.
Why is that of concern? First of all of course it matters to the individual, spending as much time at work as we do; but it also matters to the companies. As Keith Ayres,CEO of Integro Learning Systems, says, “Lack of employee engagement is like a cancer, eating away at an organization’s vital organs.”
It can not be all that bad, you may say. But figures of a Towers Perrin survey conducted in 2005 might convince you otherwise: [1]
• Only 17% of the workforce are Highly Engaged which means that these people are freely putting in an extra effort at work
• The large majority, 66% were Moderately Engaged which means these people are open and evaluating
• And a number equal to those engaged, i.e. 17% are Disengaged which means they have mentally already “checked out”
Why does it matter, and what does it mean? At the emotional level being engaged at work means to take pride in working for a company; being rationally involved means to understand how your job fits into the ‘bigger picture’.
To illustrate the point further, Denny Macha, HPower & Associates, LLC provides hard financial data: “If you are an average company in terms of employee engagement, 70% of your employees are giving you back only 50% for what they are being paid. That means that 35% of your payroll is going down the drain. For a 100-person company, that works out to $1,750,000; for a 1000 person company, $17,500,000. You can do the math for your own company. And remember, we are assuming that the Actively Disengaged employees are giving you 50% of their capabilities and the Engaged employees 100%. The real figure could be substantially worse.”
Author Tim Field has done the figures for UK plc, saying that a lack of engagement costs UK plc between £39-48 billion a year.[2]
So a lack of engagement is – should be! – a major worry for organizations. If you have engaged people in the organisation you will find that they are willing to go the ‘extra mile’, that they feel they can contribute, and that attrition rates are likely to be low.
There is another reason why I believe engagement is critical: without it you cannot possibly creating an innovative organisation. You cannot tell people to be more innovative! You have to inspire them, you have to paint a vision that they want to help achieve.
You need people who are engaged and enthusiastic. Pushing innovation through organisations is a tough job, and not for the faint hearted. Without inspiring leadership there is little hope of engaging employees, and without engaged employees the creation of an innovative organisation becomes impossible.
Resulting from the above I believe that there is the emerging need that says, but I want to belong, and I want the belonging to be meaningful in the broader context of life. The ‘me-me’ society has isolated people and created a shallowness people are no longer willing to buy into. Concern for the self is moving – not off stage but often off centre-stage – to make room for a concern for the bigger good. Physically noticeable changes in our environment create a receptiveness to things beyond the ‘me’.
It is difficult to live one’s own life happily with so much going on around us, which, admittedly, to ignore is becoming increasingly difficult. So, I can hear the sceptics and pessimists say, so it is sill about the me, just that doing something for me means doing something for the wider community… But if that is the case I say, if one does not care for oneself it is even harder to care for something that is not oneself.
For me caring for oneself (which is decidedly NOT the same as being selfish) and caring for others go hand in hand. Caring for oneself and for others involves some morals, some understanding of right and wrong, a yardstick by which to measure one’s actions.
This does not have to be a particular religion, in fact, I believe the less religiously coloured the better![3] It is more a code of conduct, a sense of only doing what is best for the wider community or at least an awareness and understanding of the implications of one’s actions in the wider context. It is about sensitivity for the needs of others – as well as oneself. It is about respecting other people’s point of view – and having one’s own. It is about having a dream, and helping others discover theirs.
If believe the search for new meaning, for a new code of conduct has been under way for some time. More and more people are actively looking, and even more would want to buy into it if they knew it existed. There are first manifestations of this, such as the book ‘Putting hope to work’ by Harry Hutson and Barbara Perry, such as green parties gaining a foothold. But so far it has largely been something at the edge of our conscious, a feeling, something in the haze that cannot be seen clearly.
It seems that unfrozenmind has been able to make this something visible, and give it some shape and structure. And unfrozenmind has developed a process built on logic that facilitates transformation at the individual level.
If their dream becomes reality then perhaps working and living gets new meaning.
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[1] http://www.kathleenredmond.com/newsletter/60secondsOct06.html
[2]http://samvak.tripod.com/pp114.html
[3]Religions are abused too much to divide people into those who are right and those who are wrong, with all the ugly consequences.
© Bettina von Stamm 2007
____________________________________________________
Dr Bettina von Stamm, FRSA
Catalyst
Innovation Leadership Forum
bettina@innovationleadershipforum.org
+44(0)7767 428 457
www.innovationleadershipforum.org
www.innovationwave.com
Visiting Professor Middlesex University
Associate, Centre for Business Research, Manchester Business School
Visiting Fellow, Cranfield University
Visiting Professor, Zollverein School of Management & Design, Essen,
Germany
Visiting Professor, HHL Leipzig School of Graduate Management
Member of the External Advisory Board, Suffolk University, US
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