9Qs Resources for Q1

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it. -Jiddu Krishnamurti What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it. - Jiddu Krishnamurti The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change, until we notice that failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. - Ronald Laing [O]ne can be both free and economically secure while leading a totally meaningless and empty existence.” - George Lakoff The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. - Lao Tzu At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want. - Lao Tzu, quoted by Deborah Hartmann Preuss

The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimen- sions of consciousness into our awareness. - Lao Tzu It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins. - Lao Tzu The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself. - Lao Tzu An organization’s collective capacity comes in three layers: what the organization knows it knows, what it doesn’t know it knows, and what it has the potential to invent. Only the first layer is visible to leaders and the view is often incomplete. The other two layers are invisible; the knowledge in layer two is there but must be uncovered before its potential contribution can be developed, and layer three doesn’t even exist until successful experiments generate valuable innovations. Leaders who are confident about practicing self-discov- ery believe that layers two and three can be exposed to deliver homegrown solutions that will be successful. They also believe that they and others will know how to unlock those layers reliably time after time. They build widespread faith and confidence in the process through repeated successful experiences at many levels. Creating a growing wave of successes is the only way to build a

more self-sustaining and resilient organization that doesn’t continuously depend on external experts. Front- line people are no longer left out of the innovation action. Groups that discover their innate productive capacity and creativity through the power of self-dis- covery don’t want to return to having external solutions imposed on them. This is their incentive for developing their own ability to facilitate self-discovery and invite experts only as needed. They own the changes they have to make, which is the best preparation for implementa- tion and adaptation. Our job as leaders is to remove obstacles and create the conditions for self-discovery and co-creation. - Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then we shall find the way. - Abraham Lincoln Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you can imagine it. - George Lucas A working definition of integrative thinking: The ability to face constructively the tension of opposing ideas and, instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each. - Roger L. Martin.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise. -F Scott Fitzgerald , quoted by Roger Martin The Chinese character for “crisis,” he pointed out to me, combines the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.” Quoting Michael Lee-Chin. - Roger L. Martin. The leaders I have studied share at least one trait, aside from their talent for innovation and long-term business success. They have the predisposition and the capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads. And then, without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they’re able to produce a synthe- sis that is superior to either opposing idea. Integrative thinking is my term for this process or more precisely this discipline of consideration and synthesis-that that is the hallmark of exceptional businesses and the people who run them. - Roger L. Martin Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essen- tial to the work of art or poem. - Rollo May

Artful Making. This term was introduced to the software world by Lee Devin and Rob Austin in the book Artful Making. Devin, a theatre director, and Austin, a business professor, proposed that for any team to be successful in a creative and improvisational space (which is exactly what software development is, at its heart) four qualities are required. They name these as: release, collaboration, ensemble, and play. This suggests the idea that a team needs to be given freedom for its mem- bers to interact, so that a collaborative environment is fotered, leading to ensemble, where both the thing being created and the team itself are larger and more interesting than any one person’s input: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For this to happen, a spirit of play needs to be encouraged, risks need to be taken, failure embraced as a learning opportunity— and team members learn to take the product or business goals seriously, rather than themselves! -Tobias Mayer Scrum is a framework for helping people improve the way they do their work. It does this by setting clear expectations and boundaries— two essential aspects that allow self-organization to occur and dysfunction to surface. Scrum uses an iterative process wherein each iteration (aka sprint) is kept as short as sensibly possible, keeping to an even rhythm as it pulses through plan- ning, execution, and reflection. This strict, rhythmical, timeboxing aspect of scrum provides scrum teams with an uncanny ability to unearth organizational dysfunc- tion.

Scrum specifies three roles (scrum master, product own- er, and team), requires a prioritized set of requests, a goal for every sprint, and a simple way of measuring progress. Scrum uses timeboxed dialogs to plan, to align on a daily basis, and to inspect/ adapt on a sprint basis. A clear distinction is kept between the “what” (the des- tination) and the “how” (the pathway). Scrum requires clear focus, commitment and complete transparency at all levels; it embraces, or emphasizes, certain hu- man-centric values including (but not limited to) trust, integrity, courage, and engagement. - Tobias Mayer Happiness can only come when you are truly and un- ashamedly yourself, which takes time, support, study, trust, and love. - Karla McLaren The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. - Michelangelo

Embodied cognition, the idea that the mind is not only connected to the body but that the body influences the mind, is one of the more counter-intuitive ideas in cog- nitive science. In sharp contrast is dualism, a theory of mind famously put forth by Rene Descartes in the 17th century when he claimed that “there is a great difference between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible... the mind or soul of man is entirely different from the body.” In the proceeding centuries, the notion of the disembod- ied mind flourished. From it, western thought developed two basic ideas: reason is disembodied because the mind is disembodied and reason is transcendent and universal. However, as George Lakoff and Rafeal Núñez explain: Cognitive science calls this entire philosophical world- view into serious question on empirical grounds... [the mind] arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experiences. This is not just the innocuous and obvious claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim that the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment... Thus, to understand reason we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanism of neural binding. What exactly does this mean? It means that our cogni- tion isn’t confined to our cortices. That is, our cognition is influenced, perhaps determined by, our experiences in the physical world. This is why we say that something is “over our heads” to express the idea that we do not understand; we are drawing upon the physical inability to not see something over our heads and the mental feeling of uncertainty. Or why we understand warmth

with affection; as infants and children the subjective judgment of affection almost always corresponded with the sensation of warmth, thus giving way to metaphors such as “I’m warming up to her.” Metaphors We Live By was a game changer. Not only did it illustrate how prevalent metaphors are in everyday language, it also suggested that a lot of the major tenets of western thought, including the idea that reason is conscious and passionless and that language is separate from the body aside from the organs of speech and hear- ing, were incorrect. In brief, it demonstrated that “our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” Samuel McNerney - in Scientific American: A Brief Guide to Embodied Cognition: Why You Are Not Your Brain. Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple. - Charles Mingus This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do lan- guage. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art. -Toni Morrison, quoted by Maria Popova

This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. -W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalaya Expedition 1951 The choices that actually matter when it comes to your health, when it comes to healing, when it comes to positioning yourself, empowering yourself, are the tiny ones -- that are the choices, I should say, that you think have the least power, that you make in the privacy of your own company, that perhaps you think are the most insignificant. I would make studying the power of choice part of every school curriculum. That everyone should learn that the power of the choices you make have infinite conse- quences. -Carolyn Myss

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. - Isaac Newton I can suggest one little change right away: Stop generat- ing action plans and start doing experiments. - Hiroshi Hiromoto Nako He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. - Friedrich Nietzsche In their spiritual classic, Compassion, A Reflection on the Christian Life, authors Nouwen, McNeill, and Morrison write: …the question arises, “How can we build community? What do we have to do to make community happen?” But perhaps such questions come from an anxious heart and are less practical and helpful than they appear to be. It seems better to raise the more contemplative ques- tion, “Where do we see community occurring?” - quoted by Tobias Mayer The best stories are lived (not written) - Song title, The Ocean’s Eyes

Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction. - Kenichi Ohmae I did not think of language as the means to self-descrip- tion. I thought of it as the door — a thousand opening doors! — past myself. I thought of it as the means to notice, to contemplate, to praise, and, thus, to come into power. I saw what skill was needed, and persistence — how one must bend one’s spine, like a hoop, over the page — the long labor. I saw the difference between doing nothing, or doing a little, and the redemptive act of true effort. Reading, then writing, then desiring to write well, shaped in me that most joyful of circumstances — a passion for work. I don’t mean it’s easy or assured; there are the stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet. But there is, also, the summoning world, the admirable energies of the world, better than anger, better than bitterness and, because more interesting, more alleviating. And there is the thing that one does, the needle one plies, the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them slowly and with meticulous effort into some shapely heat-retaining form, even as the gods, or nature, or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft, curved universe — that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life. - Mary Oliver, quoted by Maria Popova

The Invitation It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human. It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betray- al and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’ It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty mo- ments. -Oriah Mountain Dreamer When you work only for yourself, or for your own per- sonal gain, your mind will seldom rise above the limi- tations of an undeveloped personal life. But when you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break your bonds: your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be. - Patanjali, quoted by Nick Williams A few centuries of listening to the head and more or less ignoring the wisdom of the body have produced a world that makes sense to the head but bewilders the noble physical being that’s hiding beneath our business suits. - David Pearl

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. - M. Scott Peck Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult -- once we truly understand and accept it -- then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. - M. Scott Peck Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other. - M. Scott Peck You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time. Love is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love. - M. Scott Peck

If we know exactly where we’re going, exactly how to get there, and exactly what we’ll see along the way, we won’t learn anything. How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weakness- es to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others... But even more im- portant is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness. The overall purpose of human communication is - or should be - reconciliation. It should ultimately serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate us human beings, one from another.” We are incapable of loving another unless we love our- selves, just as we are incapable of teaching our children self-discipline unless we ourselves are self-disciplined. It is actually impossible to forsake our own spiritual devel- opment in favor of someone else’s. We cannot forsake self-discipline and at the same time be disciplined in our care for another. We cannot be a source of strength unless we nurture our own strength. -M. Scott Peck Wandering in nature is perhaps the most essential soul- craft practice for contemporary Westerners who have wandered so far from nature. . . . The Wanderer allows plenty of time to roam in wild na- ture, and roam alone. Maybe you start out on a trail,

but if the landscape allows, it won’t be long before you wander off the beaten track. Because you are stalking a surprise, you attend to the world of hunches and feelings and images as much as you do to the landscape. . . . You will get good at wandering, good at allowing your initial agenda to fall away as you pick up new tracks, scents, and possibilities. You will smile softly to yourself over the months and years of wanderings as you notice how you have changed, how you have slowed down inside. Through your wanderings, you cultivate a sensibility of wonder and surprise, rekindling the innocence that got buried in your adolescent rush to become somebody in particular. Now you seek to become nobody for a while, to disappear into the woods so that the person you really are might find you. - Bill Plotkin, quoted by Richard Rohr. Trust, not authority, is the only glue that will hold organ- izations together in a diverse, global, technology-em- powered world - Paul Polman, CEO Unilever, courtesy of Sarah Rozenthuler The whole concept of managing complexity is not plan and meet the plan, it’s probe, observe and adjust. - Mary Poppendieck, courtesy of Agilequote.info In reality, we are servants of the Mystery. We were put here on earth to acts as agents of the Infinite, to bring into existence that which is not yet, but which will be, through us. - Steven Pressfield, author The War of Art

You may think that you’ve lost your passion, or that you can’t identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true. Fear saps passion. When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion. - Steven Pressfield, Do the Work A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and over- think and hesitate. Don’t think. Act. - Steven Pressfield, Do the Work The drawing is also a reminder that there’s an artist with- in each of us, and we must encourage that artist to do the work, to make something that matters, regardless of anything else that is going on. - Steven Pressfield, Do the Work The opposite of fear is love - love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off. - Steven Pressfield, Do the Work The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes - Marcel Proust Where there is no vision the people perish. - Proverbs 29:18

The root word of education -- educare -- means to lead forth a hidden wholeness in another person. A genuine education fosters self-knowledge, self-trust, creativity and the full expression of one’s unique identity. It gives people the courage to be more. - Rachel Naomi Remen At the end of the Healer’s Art in all the 90 schools that presently teach it, the students stand in a large circle, silently review their memories of the course and identify the most important thing that they learned or remem- bered during the course. They then turn this insight into an affirmation: a little phrase which begins in one of three ways: I AM…. I CAN…. or I WILL. One at a time, the students go around the circle each saying their phrase out loud. This year will be the 24th year that I have taught the course at my medical school. The most com- mon thing that students say in this sharing is a simple three-word phase: I AM ENOUGH. Year after year it is the same phrase I myself say as well. It is the beginning of everything. -Rachel Naomi Remen, MD. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. - Rainer Maria Rilke

The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart- work on the images imprisoned within you. - Rainer Maria Rilke If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame your- self that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the creator, there is no poverty. - Rainer Maria Rilke The only journey is the one within. - Rainer Maria Rilke Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” - Rainer Maria Rilke Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always. - Rainer Maria Rilke

The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things. - Rainer Maria Rilke I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other. - Rainer Maria Rilke This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess. - Rainer Maria Rilke A person isn’t who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they’re who they’ve been throughout your whole rela- tionship. - Rainer Maria Rilke I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. - Rainer Maria Rilke Start anywhere and follow it everywhere. - Myron Rogers Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground. - Franklin D. Roosevelt All work is an act of philosophy. - Ayn Rand

In order to deal with the chaos that exists in the world today, you need some grounding. That grounding best comes from knowing who you are. -Michael Ray If you live for the highest goal, you are living a life of the spirit -- whether or not you consider yourself to be on a spiritual path. If you consciously notice the larger aspects of life, always consider whether what you are doing co- incides with these aspects, never forget the times when you were enlivened by the power of the highest goal, use those memories in new situations, and act with the knowledge of the support you have and the journey you are on -- you will be living for the highest goal. - Michael Ray Before you can answer the question, “What am I going to do?” you’ve got to first ask the question, “What do I want?”That shift in focus will change completely how you respond in your life. It will change you from focusing on everyone else’s demands for your attention, or what you’re afraid of, or what might give you pleasure in the moment, to what’s most important to you. - Anthony Robbins

It is not the critic who counts; not the one who points out how the strong one stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the one who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives val- iantly; who errs and comes short again and again; be- cause there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends herself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if she fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt (pronouns adjusted by SD) Natural giving: anything we do in life that isn’t coming out of that energy, we pay for it and everybody else pays for it. Anything we do out of fear of punishment, if we don’t, everybody pays for. Anything we do for a reward, everybody pays for it. Everything we do to make people like us, everybody pays for. Everything we do out of guilt, shame, duty, obligation - everybody pays for. That isn’t what we were designed for. We were designed to enjoy giving, to give from the heart. -Marshall Rosenberg

Our nature as human beings is to exercise our enormous power in the service of life, to enrich life in ourselves and others. - Marshall Rosenberg Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart. - Jalaluddin Rumi Every so often a Celtic game would heat up so that it became more than a physical or even mental game, and would be magical. That feeling is difficult to describe, and I certainly never talked about it when I was playing. When it happened I could feel my play rise to a new level. . . . The game would just take off, and there’d be a natural ebb and flow that reminded you of how rhyth- mic and musical basketball is supposed to be. . . . It was almost as if we were playing in slow motion. - Bill Russell quoted by Keith Sawyer Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. - Jalaluddin Rumi There is an invisible strength within us; when it recogniz- es two opposing objects of desire, it grows stronger. - Jalaluddin Rumi

Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy. - Jalaluddin Rumi Rabbi Tarfon taught: “It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it either.” - Courtesy of John Rowe, in conversa- tion with Jerry Doyle In thinking about religion and society in the 21st centu- ry, we should broaden the conversation about faith from doctrinal debates to the larger question of how it might inspire us to strengthen the bonds of belonging that redeem us from our solitude, helping us to construct together a gracious and generous social order. - Jonathan Sacks If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence. - Sheryl Sandberg [Czikszentmihalyi] discovered that extremely creative people are at their peak when they experience “a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little dis- tinction between self and environment; between stimu- lus and response; or between past, present, and future.” Drawing on research with mountain climbers, club danc- ers, artists, and scientists, Csikszentmihalyi found that people are more likely to get into flow when their en- vironment has four important characteristics. First, and most important, they’re doing something where their skills match the challenge of the task. If the challenge is too great for their skills, they become frustrated; but if the task isn’t challenging enough, they simply grow bored. Second, flow occurs when the goal is clear; and third, when there’s constant and immediate feedback about how close you are to achieving that goal. Fourth, flow occurs when you’re free to concentrate fully on the task. When you’re lucky enough to work with these four features, you often enter the flow state— where people from all professions describe feeling a sense of compe- tence and control, a loss of self-consciousness, and they get so absorbed in the task that they lose track of time. - Keith Sawyer

In group flow, each person’s idea builds on those just contributed by his or her colleagues. The improvisation appears to be guided by an invisible hand toward a peak, but small ideas build and an innovation emerges. In dis- cussing a colleague who often participated in groups in flow, one executive had this to say: “He is animated and engaged with you. He is also listening and reacting to what you are saying with undivided attention. - Keith Sawyer The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious. -John Scully When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the sec- ond-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people’s, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception. -Zadie Smith

Every man (sic) takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. - Arthur Schopenhauer To the person who does not know where he (sic) wants to go there is no favorable wind. - Seneca It’s not what the vision is, it’s what the vision does. - Peter Senge This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not de- vote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations. - George Bernard Shaw Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. - George Bernard Shaw

To be in hell is to drift. To be in heaven is to steer. - George Bernard Shaw You have to know what you want. And if it seems to take you off the track, don’t hold back, because perhaps that is instinctively where you want to be. And if you hold back and try to be always where you have been before, you will go dry. - Gertrude Stein Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. -Gloria Steinem No matter how good you get at reframing, the single most important rule about managing the interaction is this: You can’t move the conversation in a more positive direction until the other person feels heard and under- stood. And they won’t feel heard and understood until you’ve listened. When the other person becomes highly emotional, listen and acknowledge. When they say their version of the story is the only version that makes sense, paraphrase what you’re hearing and ask them some questions about why they think this. If they level accu- sations against you, before defending yourself, try to understand their view. Whenever you feel overwhelmed or unsure how to proceed, remember that it is always a good time to listen. -Douglas Stone et al

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. - Jonathan Swift Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help re- lieve the suffering of another person. You can call it com- passionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart. Even if he says things that are full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion. Because you know that listening like that, you give that person a chance to suffer less. If you want to help him to correct his perception, you wait for another time. For now, you don’t interrupt. You don’t argue. If you do, he loses his chance. You just listen with compassion and help him to suffer less. One hour like that can bring transformation and healing.” - Thich Nhat Hanh, quoted by Olaf Lewitz and Christine Neidhardt. Most people lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. - Henry David Thoreau It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about? - Henry David Thoreau

If a man (sic) does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however meas- ured or far away. - Henry David Thoreau I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. - Henry David Thoreau If one advances confidently in the direction of her dreams, and endeavors to live the life which she has imagined, she will meet with success unexpected in common hours. - Henry David Thoreau (pronouns adjusted by SD) Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life. - Paul Tillich You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction. - Alvin Toffler

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. - Desmond Tutu How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeep- ers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns? - Desmond Tutu If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. - Desmond Tutu My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. -Desmond Tutu You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. - Mark Twain I never let my schooling interfere with my education. - Mark Twain All leaders affect space whether they know it or not. By default of their structural position in a hierarchy, and/ or by their intellectual capability, their charisma, or their presence, leaders determine the quality and quantity of space available in their organizations. The danger is that

leaders fill the space themselves rather than describe and hold spaces in which people and teams can step in, make meaning, play with possibilities and allow the new to emerge. The nature of the available space, and the leader’s role within it, defines boundaries, and, in turn, determines the level of productivity and creativity in an organiza- tional system. The challenge is that many leaders are good at, taught to, and rewarded for, taking up space, as opposed to the art of creating and holding space. Great leadership is a movement from taking up space to beautifully holding space, spaces that use collective intelligence, creative tension and flow to significantly increase productivity and creativity, and thereby the capacity to out-innovate the competition. [These] containers, spaces and working practices need to be strong enough to hold the uncertainty and emotion that emerges when we disrupt the status quo. They need to be safe enough to speak the truth. They must create the openness and trust needed to step into the un- known. They need to be subtle and still enough to catch glimpses of ‘the new’. And they need to be skilful enough to transform creative sparks into innovations. Creative insight and collective breakthrough are born from the frequencies created in these containers and spaces, and our ability to innovate is dependent upon them. This is how the new comes into the world. And this is how breakthrough happens, not by accident, but by design. - Nick Udall

Creative teams are the DNA of cultures of innovation. While the previous layers focus on leveraging, order- ing and controlling the known (facts, figures and data), creative teams are able to embrace and work with the unknown, the intangible, the invisible, the unconscious and the implicate. Meetings no longer require delivery skills and now require discovery skills. This is why step- ping over the threshold to becoming a creative team is so difficult for achievers. Their success to date is likely to be based on their ability to deliver results in the known. Their challenge now is to wander with wonder into the unknown. The entry-level skills for being a creative team have been documented by many. They include questioning, observ- ing, networking and experimenting. For example, the ability to... Question the status quo and to challenge key assump- tions and beliefs. Observe with a beginner’s mind. Network into the new and novel intersections (the knots, nets and threads) of diverse experiences and knowledge. And, to fail faster through experimentation to succeed sooner. While each of the previous layers develop innovations in their own way, they are but echoes of the insights and breakthroughs that are possible from a creative team. Creative teams are formed around a quest – or quest- ion. This quest-ion points them into the unknown while generating a creative fire, a passion and a tension in the team. - Nick Udall

[In fourth-realm cultures] meaning-making and lan- guage become more playful as [participants] learn that innovation isn’t a linear process, or a fact-based deci- sion-making activity; rather it is about making marks in the world and allowing new patterns and possibilities to emerge in the space between. They therefore conscious- ly call upon other ways of knowing, beyond the rational, to include feelings, intuitions and embodied knowing. They know that without these extended capacities it is very difficult to hold complexity, integrate difference, challenge fundamental assumptions and creatively scru- tinize deeply held beliefs. - Nck Udall A colleague of mine ... describes how creative teams can step into a peak experience that he calls ‘our beautiful mind’. This is when he believes a team is able to acti- vate and access over 90 per cent of the total number of available combinations of creative relationships and intersections across its members. At this point they move into a creative hive-like mind (not to be confused with group-think), where a larger collective intelligence be- comes accessible. This is where the creative team is able to see new pattern in complexity, new order in chaos, and where innovative foregrounds start to emerge from strategic backgrounds. - Nck Udall

The impetus for organizations of all kinds to learn how to step over this subtle threshold continues to grow. We need to embrace diversity and leverage difference in order to innovate our way to more purposeful and sustainable futures. We need to break through the nu- merous super-wicked problems of our time if we are to create futures fit for generations to come. We need a new and next generation of leaders to step forward who can work from the fourth realm. And we need these leaders to evoke the music of innovation within their organiza- tions and across wider and more complex ecologies of resource. The challenge for evocative leaders is to create and hold post-conventional containers and spaces in which teams and organizations can ride the highs and lows of the creative process, work with creative tension, tap into our collective intelligence and thereby discover the new, by design. This is in contrast to teams and or- ganizations that consciously, unconsciously and prema- turely collapse creative tension, - Nick Udall

As the creative tension increases so we need intentional- ly to thicken the space between people. This thickening primes the field for the ‘new’ to reveal itself. This thick- ening happens as a result of people disclosing more, speaking their truth more, exploring the nature of the space between each other more. We follow a simple rule: create a safe space, and then a healthy space, if you want a co-creative space to emerge. It is only from a place of trust that we can leap, feeling into the wider context. As our intellect can only take us so far, we need to tune into other ways of knowing. These include gathering data from our feelings, our bodies and our intuitions. With practice, we can start to feel into a wider context and its underlying and interrelated rhythms and cycles. That which we previously thought to be isolated and separate is often the opposite, woven into the fabric of cost and consequence. Handing over knowing to our collective intelligence, at some point we stop trying to solve ‘it’ ourselves, and realize that innovation happens at new and novel intersections. We surrender to this collective endeavour and realize that each of us holds a different part of the puzzle. Moreover, when we each slow down, lean back, deepen our quality of contact, and feel into the wider context, we start to tap into a collective intelli- gence beyond that which is in the room. We start to tap into a wider knowing field. - Nick Udall

Only when power is widely distributed, and only when people work together to create the world they want to live in -- only then can transformation be deep and holistic. While also being liberating, compassionate, and inclusive. - Sarah van Gelder How difficult it is to be simple. - Vincent Van Gogh, quoted by Henri Lipmanowicz et al No plan survives contact with the enemy. Planning is everything. Plans are nothing. -Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke, quoted by Mike Cohn Missing from the life of modern man is the deepest connection with the changes of the seasons, sunrise and sunset, the phases of the moon, the dark forest, the soul of brother animal and the soil. Man’s soul is starving from this separation, lack and poverty. - Marie-Louise von Franz, quoted by Lewis Lafontaine

There is a world of difference between an inference and a feeling. You can reason that the universe is a unity without feeling it to be so. You can establish the theory that your body is a movement in an unbroken process which includes all suns and stars, and yet continue to feel separate and lonely. For the feeling will not corre- spond to the theory until you have also discovered the unity of inner experience. Despite all theories, you will feel that you are isolated from life so long as you are divided within. But you will cease to feel isolated when you recognize, for example, that you do not have a sensation of the sky: you are that sensation. For all purposes of feeling, your sensation of the sky is the sky, and there is no “you” apart from what you sense, feel, and know. -Alan Watts, quoted by Maria Popova We are living in a culture entirely hypnotised by the illusion of time, In which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between between an all-powerfully causative past and an ab- sorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realise that there never was, is, or will been any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described and measured with the world as it actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and num- bers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. - Alan Watts, quoted by Johnny Tenn

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion. - Jack Welch Questions that have no right to go away are those that have to do with the person we are about to become; they are conversations that will happen with or without our conscious participation. - David Whyte The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering. - David Whyte When human atoms are knit into an organization in which they are used, not in their full right as responsible human beings, but as cogs and levers and rods, it mat- ters little that their raw material is flesh and blood. - Norbert Wiener, quoted by Joishi Ito Be yourself, everyone else is taken. - Oscar Wilde, quoted by University of Reading Career Services The aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond meas- ure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous. Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of the Universe. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the universal glory that is within us. It’s not just in some of us — it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others - Marianne Williamson Ninety-five percent of thought, emotion, and learning occur in the unconscious mind--that is, without our awareness. - Gerald Zaltman If someone tells you that there is a rule, break it - that’s the only thing that moves things forward. - Hans Zimmer



Sources and readings Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous Barry, Shadow Work http://www.shadowwork.com/ Beck et al, Manifesto for Agile Software Development http://agilemanifesto.org/ Bohm, On Dialogue Brown, Change by Design Brown, Braving the Wilderness Brown, Daring Greatly Brown, Rising Strong Burnett and Evans, Designing Your Life: Build a Life That Works for You Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces Capra and Luisi, The Systems View of Life Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life? Cohen, I Carry Your Heart in My Heart Cohn, Agile Estimating and Planning Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Csikszentmihalyi, Flow Doyle and Downs, Nine Questions for Career and Leadership Development Doyle and Downs, Conversations of Inquiry Friedman, Leading the Life You Want Gendlin, Focusing Godin, Linchpin Godin, What To Do When It’s Your Turn Goleman, Emotional Intelligence Heath and Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard Hill, Collective Genius

Isaacs, Dialogue and The Art of Thinking Together Kegan and Lahey, Immunity to Change Kofman, Conscious Business Kotter, Leading Change Kline, Time to Think Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh Laloux, Reinventing Organizations Lewitz and Neidhardt, Showing Up Lewitz and Neidhardt, Leading with Intention Lipmanowicz and McCandless, The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures Martin, Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage Martin, The Opposable Mind May, In Search of Elegance Mayer, The Peoples’ Scrum McLaren, The Language of Emotions McLaren, The Art of Empathy Moore and Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler, Crucial Conversations Peck, A Different Drum Peck, The Road Less Travelled Pearl, Will There Be Donuts? Ray, The Highest Goal Rees and Sullivan, Clean Language Rosenberg, Non-Violent Communication

Roth, The Achievement Habit Rowland and Rozenthuler, Systemic Coaching with Constellations Rowland and Rozenthuler, Leading Systemic Dialogue Sawyer, Group Genius Seelig, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 Senge, The Fifth Discipline Scharmer, Theory U Scharmer and Kaufer, Leading from the Emerging Future Schwaber and Sutherland, The Scrum Guide http://www.scrumguides.org/ Seelig, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 Servan-Schreiber, The Instinct to Heal Siegel, Mindsight Sinek, Start with Why Sirajuddin and Willeke, Temenos, A Reliable Vehicle for Organizational Transformation Strozzi-Heckler, The Leadership Dojo Strozzi-Heckler, The Art of Somatic Coaching Temenos+Agility, Introduction to Influence Maps https://www.visiontemenos.com Torbert, Action Inquiry Turner and Udall, The Way of nowhere Udall, Riding the Creative Rollercoaster van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score Vision quests: e.g. http://sacredpassage.com/, http://northerndrum.com/ Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations Williams, The Work You Were Born To Do

Articles and websites Blair Decembrele on The Quarter-life Crisis https://blog.linkedin.com/2017/november/15/encountering-a-quarter-life-crisis-you- are-not-alone The Heroes Project https://theheroesproject.org/heroes/ MyHero.com https://www.myhero.com/ Share a Dream https://www.share-a-dream.org/about Passiton.com https://www.passiton.com/your-inspirational-stories Barry, Shadow Work http://www.shadowwork.com Vision quests: John Milton http://sacredpassage.com/ Northern Drum http://northerndrum.com/