The tale’s heroes are Snow-White, her mother the queen, the seven dwarves, and maybe the prince. But it’s the new queen, or the evil stepmother, who drives the plot with her schemes to kill beautiful Snow-White out of jealousy. Her actions determine the course of the story. She is a star among fairy tale figures, the epitome of evil manipulation. Let’s step back from psychoanalytic interpretations and look at her dynamics from a different perspective: that of feedback. We shall see that she offers quite a bit of material relevant to the professional world.

The story begins with Snow White’s mother yearning for a child. Her wish is granted and she dies soon afterwards:

 A year later the king took himself another wife. She was a beautiful woman, but she was proud and arrogant, and she could not stand it if anyone might surpass her in beauty. She had a magic mirror. Every morning she stood before it, looked at herself, and said:

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who in this land is fairest of all?
To this the mirror answered: You, my queen, are fairest of all.

Then she was satisfied, for she knew that the mirror spoke the truth.

Beauty as Status Symbol

Let’s take a closer look at the queen. She has married into the royal family; her status comes from her connection to the king. The story tells us nothing about the king’s motives for marrying this woman. However, it would not be surprising or out of line with archetypal logic if he had chosen her for her beauty, which she flaunts proudly.

Beauty, then, is a currency, a symbol and a guarantee for status, both for the king and the queen. Add to that pride and cockiness, and things get dangerous, as we already know:

Snow-White grew up and became ever more beautiful. When she was seven years old she was as beautiful as the light of day, even more beautiful than the queen herself. One day when the queen asked her mirror:

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who in this land is fairest of all?
It answered: You, my queen, are fair; it is true.
But Snow White is a thousand times fairer than you.

The queen took fright and turned yellow and green with envy. From that hour on whenever she looked at Snow-White her heart turned over inside her body, so great was her hatred for the girl.

From here on out, the queen wants Snow-White dead. First, she commands a hunter to take the girl into the woods and shoot her. But the hunter is merciful and lets Snow-White run away, which she does, until she finds the seven dwarves beyond the mountains and makes a new home with them.

But the queen turns to her mirror once more, which tells her the unvarnished truth:

You, my queen, are fair; it is true.
But Snow-White, beyond the mountains
With the seven dwarfs,
Is still a thousand times fairer than you.

This startled the queen, for she knew that the mirror did not lie, and she realized that the huntsman had deceived her, and that Snow-White was still alive. Then she thought, and thought again, how she could kill Snow-White, for as long as she was not the most beautiful woman in the entire land her envy would give her no rest.

Only after her third attempt to kill Snow-White through cunning and treachery, the mirror confirms that You, my queen, are fairest of all.

Now she is number one again, even if only temporarily – as we know to be the case. Rather than focusing on the end of the story (naturally, Snow-White is wed to a handsome prince while the queen is punished), let us look at what we can learn from this fairy tale figure aside from the obvious.

Fear of Losing Status

The queen arrives at the court as an outsider and identifies her beauty as essential to her status. In fairy tales, beauty is always a criterion for uniqueness and for being chosen to inhabit an elevated position; the prince who saves the day is also spellbound by Snow-White’s beauty through the walls of her glass coffin. The fear of losing one’s status due to fading beauty is thus not particularly far-fetched.

In fact, the fairy tale tells us over and over again that the queen is not only jealous but also fearful: every time the mirror tells her that “Snow-White is a thousand times more beautiful,” she is frightened. Her first reaction is fear, which leads to jealousy and envy. And what is she afraid of? Precisely of losing her position and the status that comes with it.

Impeding Growth and Development

Loss of status is a painful experience if you haven’t given up your position willingly. For along with the external status symbols it provides, status also gives us a number of indirect advantages: attention, friendliness, agreeability – to name only a few. And the danger that we will grow accustomed to the comforts of our elevated status and accept them as natural is ever-present. Particularly in leadership positions, it’s all too easy to forget that status symbols and the associated attention are connected to our external roles, and not to our personality.

The fear of losing one’s status brings forth the strangest fruits and often sets the tone of an organization’s politics, especially at the executive level. Those who might contest our status in any way are often deliberately obstructed, stalled, or silenced. This type of behavior can do immense damage to a company. Aside from the harm done on the personal level, the intentional curbing of peoples’ potential leads to frustration, impedes development and can even lead to business losses.

The Search for Validation

The fear of losing status is naturally followed by a need to have one’s status validated regularly in order to feel secure. This is where the mirror comes in, whose job is to provide precisely that validation. It’s less about the queen finding herself beautiful and standing narcissistically before the mirror, and more about needing the mirror’s objective statement as proof – a mirror that she knows doesn’t lie.

The mirror is a powerful metaphor in leadership work. It becomes harder and harder to get honest feedback the higher you climb in an organization’s hierarchy – whether as CEO or founder, as a lateral hire or a home-grown talent.

Asking for Feedback

Finding the right mirror and asking the right questions is essential to the executive level or core of any company. When we take on leadership positions and want to continue growing from there, it’s important to pay attention to the mirrors with which we surround ourselves.

Do we really have a mirror that tells us the unvarnished truth? And are we asking the right questions? Do we have the courage to confront uncomfortable truths without getting caught up in power games and intrigue? Perhaps we need to try out different mirrors to get closer to a form of reality check. For example, a combination of personal feedback, employee surveys and regular reviews of the leadership work being done – all these are ways of realistically mirroring an organization’s inner life.

Working Together with Junior Talent

The problems in the fairy tale begin when Snow-White starts to grow older and more beautiful with each passing day, until she surpasses the queen’s beauty. This is not an unusual situation in the professional world. We become leaders of a team, build it up or help it develop further, and one day realize that a team member is outperforming us or may even be gunning for our position already. Can we manage to redefine our role and create the space that junior talent deserves? Or do we try to assert ourselves by hampering newcomers and not letting them have their turn?

In this situation, too, a mirror can be helpful – but a mirror of a different kind. When we confront the reality of aging, a good mirror might show us new opportunities and perspectives. We might recognize a level of maturity and depth of experience in our reflections that are valuable to a different role or context. To achieve these insights, we must ask new questions and perhaps also exchange our mirrors so that new truths can become visible. Good friends, a coach or well-intentioned colleagues can take on this role.

A Stable Sense of Self Worth and a New Stage

For these reasons, it’s worth shaping our own lives multidimensionally, both personally and professionally. Instead of clinging to our one status marker by any means possible, like the queen, and thereby bringing on our own demise, we can build a stable foundation within our environment. At times we may need to step back and let someone else take the stage that was once ours. But we can do so in the knowledge that new and different opportunities can develop that we haven’t yet glimpsed.

Der Beitrag Mirror, Mirror on the Wall erschien zuerst auf Organic Strategies.

Drumming as a Language

For millennia, drumming has functioned as a form of communication. Complex rhythms or polyrhythms always develop in groups, often with different instruments that speak to one another, each in its own rhythm, using each other’s pauses to highlight individual tonalities and, together, producing an intricate tapestry of sound.

That’s why it’s so important to know and understand the language both of one’s own instrument and of the others. Players need to engage with one another and listen closely in order for the music to resonate as a whole – it is much more than the sum of its parts. In this sense, making percussion music in a group has a lot in common with dialogue: the focus is on the interplay and cooperation of different voices creating something new through conscious exchange.

Keeping the Rhythm

How hard could that be? Or so I thought. In fact, keeping a rhythm consistently and regularly over time is an art in itself. I was often admonished not to play too fast or “too far ahead.” Hitting the drum at the right time, a little slower but with more precision, did not come naturally to me. I was too worried about missing the right moment or falling behind the rhythm, so I thought: Better too early than too late. Either way – a near miss is still a miss when it comes to rhythm, and it needs to be corrected. Over time, I learned to get a feel for the right timing, which helped me play better alongside others and improve on my improvisational skills.

The right timing in the sense of a regular rhythm that others can follow is foundational to the solidity of an overarching structure, as this is how orientation and clarity develop. For leaders, it’s worth paying attention to rhythm and timing when interacting with teams. By holding regular meetings, for example, and sticking to appointments as scheduled. This gives the team a sense of stability when organizing everyone’s time and enables a more effective workflow for everyone.

Developing an Intuition for the Music

Every piece of music is different and requires a different form of accompaniment. At times a soft and supportive rhythm is best, at others it needs to be dramatized with a faster pace. Depending on the music, players either need to lean into the rhythm or add accents to its structure.

In the same way, every team and every group is different, and must prove itself in different situations. In leadership, it’s important to pay attention to when a more relaxed rhythm is required – for example, in annual check-ins with employees or in year-end reviews – and when a more energetic tempo is needed to get people moving, for example when a larger project is being launched.

Improvising Within Limitations

When we think of improvisation in the percussion context, our thoughts typically turn to a fiery drum solo. In fact, an accompanying improvisation requires far more finesse. Accentuating an interplay of voices, using pauses, developing a melody, supplementing the rhythm with some entertaining turbulence – adding in all these elements smoothly involves not only a basic level of technical skill, but also a feel for timing when playing together with others. When is it my turn? For how long? When is the time to let others “speak up”?

In every meeting, there’s a time for a clearly structured sequence of events and a time for improvisation – when an individual takes center stage with their instrument or issue. What’s most important here is for the improvisation to remain part of the overarching piece and take the rest of the group into consideration. This way, a sense of solidarity is felt all around, or – if the group already works well together – improvisation becomes part of the flow, with the others responding in kind.

Setting the Pace and Providing Structure

Even the simplest instrument matters in a rhythm ensemble, for at least one instrument needs to set the pace and hold it. And unlike our common ideas about the pacemaker as someone who stands up front and says “this way,” the pace of a rhythm ensemble is actually set from within and from behind – typically by a simple instrument like a woodblock. The entire group orients itself around this instrument, which maintains the music’s internal cohesion and a clear structure. If the pace isn’t right, the music falls apart, gets fuzzy and loses its dynamic flow.

A clear structure enables other players to move within the breadth of their voices, to engage with the entirety of the music fluidly and to improvise. As a leader, I can ask myself if I’m ready to set the pace from behind instead of always standing up front. Maybe there are other pacemakers on the team, too. Are they getting the appreciation they deserve for their stabilizing function?

Everyone Joins In

One of the best things about percussion is that everyone gets the chance to participate. One simple rhythm can be enough to make a valuable contribution to the whole – provided that the player in question can keep time! This way, percussionists at different levels can work together and create beautiful music.

In the same way, it’s worth finding appropriate tasks for newcomers or “non-experts” in the group who nevertheless make tangible contributions to the collective’s wellbeing. The music as a whole ultimately stems from the diversity of the instruments, which almost always include at least one that someone less experienced can play to enrich the group. In this case, leadership is about distributing tasks according to the abilities of the team members without demanding too much of them or boring the others. If everyone knows the contribution of a single voice to the final result, it leads to mutual appreciation and joyful collaboration.

Not Getting In Each Other’s Way

“The most important thing is not to get in each other’s way.” That’s what a lifelong musician said when I asked what makes a band great. This involves knowing exactly when it’s your turn and when to take a step back in order to give someone else room to make their contribution.

So there are at least two elements to the art of percussion. On the one hand, you have to be able to play your instrument and keep up your own rhythm. You also need to cultivate the skill of listening closely – to each individual voice and to the overarching musical structure. At the end of the day, you don’t always have to stand up front and impress the masses with a solo to have an impact. Sometimes it’s enough to keep time so that others can focus on doing “their thing” as part of the whole, and the music can come together in harmony.

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The antidote to this type of culture is psychological safety, or the “belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.” Coined by Amy Edmonson, this term and its definition are meant to outline the idea of an openminded climate within groups that welcomes contributions on all levels, where people feel secure sharing questions and observations instead of keeping them to themselves for fear of negative repercussions.

Error Reports and Psychological Safety

Edmonson observed these factors during a large-scale study of hospitals. Her task was to examine the relationship between teamwork and mistakes. When she analyzed the data on error reports alongside surveys of team culture, she made an intriguing discovery: Contrary to her expectations, the most effective teams made more mistakes. How could that be? How could good teamwork lead to more mistakes?

She developed a new theory that was later confirmed by numerous studies: Teams with a more tolerant internal culture report more errors because they discuss their mistakes more openly. Teams with a culture of silence, with less exchange and more rigid hierarchies also talk less about potential mistakes, meaning more of these go unflagged. The number of errors reported thus points to effective communication within a team. Team members are not shy about drawing attention to their own mistakes or addressing the mistakes of others, because the team’s shared goal – for example, the desire to provide patients with the best and safest treatment possible – stays the in the foreground. In order to realize this goal, it’s important for people to notice changes early on and point them out without having to fear negative repercussions, in other words: to experience a sense of psychological safety within their teams.

Not Just Warm and Fuzzy
A culture of psychological safety is not about creating a warm and fuzzy space free of criticism, on the contrary: it means exposing ourselves to counterarguments and, potentially, undesired problems. This can be a real challenge for leaders, in particular. We don’t need to look far to find that bad decision making often stems from executives being told only what they want to hear. It doesn’t take much to create a culture of silence and suppression by disparaging or disregarding dissenting opinions. A culture of psychological safety, on the other hand, depends on consistent awareness and practice. It starts with an inner attitude of humility and curiosity, along with an ability to listen from a place of sincere interest in the other person and their message.

If, as an executive, I understand that I don’t and can’t know everything, that in fact, I depend on others to communicate the available information openly and honestly, and that relevant contributions can come from unexpected sources, then the importance of psychological safety becomes undeniable – and making an effort to maintain it actually turns into a key success factor.

Nurturing Psychological Safety

Of course, this kind of climate can’t be created overnight. Psychological safety needs to be developed over time and nurtured as a valuable good; and much like trust, psychological safety can easily be squandered. It’s a process, as Edmonson emphasizes, that takes continuous work. This means implementing structures and forums for discussion in which open exchange is consistently possible. Leaders play a crucial role in fostering such a climate. For example, by honoring individual people for their courage in addressing a mistake or asking a critical question, or by admitting to their own mistakes and asking openminded questions in meetings.

Psychological safety pays off not only because it helps us avoid mistakes, but also because it supports the development and innovation of brand-new ideas, like introducing new products or exploring new markets. (Edmonson researched numerous such case studies for her book.) Addressing early warning signs can be a decisive success factor. It’s no wonder, then, that Edmonson and many other researchers have observed a direct correlation between performance and psychological safety:  teams deliver better results when their members feel secure enough with each other to verbalize their thoughts and ideas, even if they are critical or unorthodox.

Anchoring Into Structures and Processes

Aside from the inner attitude, focusing on a shared mission or vision is especially important. If everyone on a team shares a goal, the motivation to reach it increases, in part because people learn from their mistakes or develop new ideas out of them. And finally, formats such as dialogue according to David Bohm can also support the development of new ideas and foster a culture of listening. The development of dialogical skills within a team ensures a stable foundation of communication and psychological safety.

Psychological safety is not always easy or comfortable. It requires a high degree of humility, respect and inner stability on all sides. Nevertheless, it helps people feel taken seriously in their abilities and perspectives, which leads to greater accountability among people – and this is something many leaders want to see more of in their teams.

Literature: Amy Edmonson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley, 2018.

Der Beitrag To Speak or Not to Speak? erschien zuerst auf Organic Strategies.

Saying that “change starts at the top” is a little like saying that spring starts when the trees have already gone green, their leaves fully formed. But we know just from looking at our calendars, from botany and from our simple observations of the seasons that in reality, spring sets in much earlier. And with a little mindfulness, these beginnings become easier to recognize – for leaves are preceded by shoots, or tiny bulges hardly visible on the branches at first. An organic and cyclical understanding of change sees its beginnings in more hidden places and attends to the seedling stage as the foundation of a flourishing spring.

Sharpening Your Senses to Perceive Weak Signals

This way we can trace the beginnings of transformation in organizations back to much earlier points in time. Every big change is heralded by weak signals sent out long before decisions are made by any board or CEO. Information coming in from the marketplace or a company’s surrounding environment reaches its peripheries first, those places with direct contact to the outside world. It might be a product that isn’t selling as well as it once did, something noticed only in the sales department at first. New technologies can develop or certain positions might not be as easy to fill as they once were, which people working in recruitment will be the first to perceive. Turnover could increase; human resources may receive complaints about the company’s leadership culture. New laws might be passed that have far-reaching effects on specific parts of the organization.

Any of these examples can be catalysts for thinking about transformation and planting the seeds of larger ideas for change. This is where pioneers recognize early signals and respond to them. For example, by talking about them with others, making colleagues or executives aware of a situation, researching it further or even creating new concepts altogether.

Think about it: how many of the changes in your environment were implemented by pioneers and their networks, through their innovation and drive? That’s why good executives know how important it is to perceive weak signals and allow for space to discuss them. Perhaps you yourself are one of these pioneers?

Good Questions and Compelling Answers

It’s particularly important to be attentive to the quality of seed thoughts and of the soil where they are planted. What types of attitudes and intentions yield transformational ideas? What kind of a culture should an idea be “planted” into?  Does it perhaps need a specific kind of fertilizer? Does it need to be dug up, given some space and fresh soil? Maybe the transformational idea requires a larger change in the organization’s culture, one that also needs to be shaped consciously?

Such questions can help build a holistic vision from an idea, giving it an internal coherence and credibility. These are the foundations of the lobbying work required to get an organization’s leadership on board and produce a compelling plan of action. Even an executive or CEO needs to do this prep work in order to be sure that their leadership team fully backs their pioneering vision.

Strategic Alignment with Seed Thoughts

A clear intention for change born from a seed thought helps shape that transformation from start to finish. Even better if this thought is fully articulated and consciously expressed, for example, as part of a vision. This helps bring clarity to communication around change and fosters a goal-oriented energy. In the process of unfolding and implementing transformation, it’s worthwhile to reflect on this foundational idea regularly and adjust the change strategy accordingly.

Not every seedling will necessarily bear fruit in the end – and the earlier this is addressed, the better. But if the seeds are nurtured and cared for, the soil prepared and the seedling given space to unfurl, then even an idea that seems small at first can grow into something big and transform an organization.

More on this topic:

The Entrepreneur’s Manifesto

Photographs: Waldemar at Unsplash /  Bogomil Mihaylov at Unsplash

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In contrast to charting a course towards a clear destination, weather and turbulences are living, non-linear phenomena that have been researched in the mathematical field of chaos theory. Here too, small steps can have a big impact, but the results are unpredictable and sometimes incredibly surprising. Unlike the calculation of a navigational course, it is impossible to say how even the smallest change to the base conditions affects the development of a non-linear dynamic system in the long term. US-American mathematician, meteorologist and father of chaos theory Edward Lorenz coined the term “butterfly effect” in a lecture about the sensitivity of systems relative to their own originating circumstances, i.e. their starting point. According to his calculations, the soft flap of a butterfly’s wings can provoke a miniscule atmospheric change in one part of the world that unleashes a tornado in another part.

Small Steps – Big Impact

These are examples of the possible effects of small and unspectacular steps. In some cases we can see and know exactly how an adjustment changes things. In others we cannot know whether a minimal deviation has any effect at all or whether the tremendous scope of its result will surprise us. And just as often, an effect can barely be traced back to its source at all.

What does that mean for us and our lives in complex systems such as organizations? Could a lost pencil trigger a winding series of events that lead to a company’s eventual downfall? Or could a kind word at the right moment provoke a sudden jump in sales? The linear principle of cause and effect can never fully explain the workings of complex systems. Organizations are not machines, and they don’t run like clockwork. Rather, they are defined by the human factor. That’s why the impact of our actions can only be predicted up to a certain point. Similar to navigation at sea, we need to manage linear, goal-oriented processes within complex, non-linear and dynamic systems.

Tolerating Uncertainty

Like it or not, we need to live with a certain degree of not-knowing and uncertainty. For no matter how much data we collect and analyze about a certain situation, we can at best make conjectures about its result – like a weather forecast.

This is why the agile principle of short-term sprints is very helpful in complex systems. Instead of working through a firm plan over a long period of time, small, manageable steps are agreed upon over a short time span and then evaluated before the next step is defined. Thus, regular corrections and adjustments can be made, and the goal can unfold along with the process.

Sharpening our Awareness

With a clear goal in mind, we can have a big impact even beyond our original expectations by continuously correcting and adjusting our course according to circumstances. They ensure that we can actually reach the goal we are aiming for, even if we encounter turbulence and sea changes along the way.

Thus it’s worthwhile to sharpen our perception of small changes that can lead you off course  – at a time when they can still be corrected easily. If you wait too long, finding your way back to the right track may involve costly detours or backslides, slowing you down significantly before you can pick up the pace again.

In the positive sense, a deviation from a seemingly fixed route may bring you to a new destination – which sometimes leads to even better results. When you want to leave a chosen path behind or achieve a different goal, a small step in the new direction which is then maintained consistently will get you there.

The Big Picture

In complex situations such as deep transformation or disruption, it is most useful not to pre-define a goal in all its details, but to let it develop and unfold as part of a process. In order to maintain a sense of orientation , it is key to look at things from a bird’s eye view and see individual steps in the context of the big picture.

How did a single step get us further along the path? What happened as a result, both expected and unexpected? What changes have taken place in the surroundings that must be taken into account when deciding on the next step? What is feasible now? What do we want to try next, and when?

Orientation through Mindfulness

If implemented mindfully, such processes of reflection can lead to foundational and sustainable change in complex systems. An impartial attitude grounded in the beginner’s mind sharpens our awareness of the little things with potentially great impact, like the butterfly effect. Dialogues based on the ideas of David Bohm are also a valuable resource for navigating transformational processes, because these conversation circles enable possible deviations to become visible and re-synchronized into the big picture.

In addition, these short meetings strengthen team spirit and a collective sense of direction, so that the small steps along the path become an integral part of the goal. We begin to understand the consequences of our everyday actions and become more mindful about the way we treat each other.

We may even realize in the process that whether or not a tree falls in the woods is not quite as irrelevant as we thought, even if no one hears it hit the ground at first!

Der Beitrag The Power of Baby Steps erschien zuerst auf Organic Strategies.

“Manifesto” is derived from the Latin manifestus and originally means “made conspicuous”, as in obvious or easily seen. When something manifests, it takes shape and becomes visible. Thus, every company is a concrete manifestation of its founder’s goals and intentions. Consciously expressing these original ideas in a clear entrepreneur’s manifesto leads to a discernible red thread from starting the company to its present form, which shows up as the organization’s individual character.

Unlike a company’s mission statement or a vision that expresses its collective purpose and goals in relation to the market, the manifesto is a much more personal statement that begins with the company’s initiator or founding team and carries their individual signature. The creation of this statement takes you back to the company’s origins and to your essential motivation for becoming an entrepreneur.

The Initial Impulse

Founding a company starts long before its name is recorded in a trade register or a homepage goes live. It starts with a concrete impulse, an initial idea.

Entrepreneurs usually remember the birth of this idea very clearly. Whether it was during a conversation with a future partner, on a long drive or at a café on a summer day: when asked about the initial impulse, founders give a spontaneous answer that in some way characterizes the nature of their organization. The initial impulse always involves a story that connects a personal experience or source of passion with the business concept.

Such initial impulses come in as many shapes and sizes as entrepreneurial personalities. They range from ideas such as “working creatively and autonomously” to “reconciling work and family life” to “passing on knowledge” all the way to “establishing a company brand,” to name only a few examples. It’s a short statement about foundational values and essential intentions that runs much deeper than initially meets the eye.

The Red Thread

The initial impulse is first and foremost an inner stance reflecting a certain mindset which manifests in a company’s culture, leadership style, and teamwork. This stance also directly or indirectly informs the organizational structure or the choice of partners and colleagues. Many a conflict, whether merely felt or actually expressed, can be traced back to a dissonance with the initial impulse (and can also be solved on this level). Thus it runs through the company’s history like an invisible red thread and helps determine its destiny.

The question of how relevant the initial impulse is today brings the red thread to light. The recollection of the initial impulse exposes what may have been buried and needs to be revived, what has been sustained over time and is worth preserving.

Your Own Role

The role of the entrepreneur is manifold, and it changes throughout the life cycle of a company. While practical work on products and projects is usually in the foreground at first, the share of managerial tasks increases steadily with the growth of the organization. It is important to clarify your own wishes and your own role in the company to accommodate this in your organizational model.

As the entrepreneur, what do I want for myself personally? What do I want for the company? It’s enlightening to see oneself in relation to one’s company and to compare your personal wishes to your wishes for the company. The answers here are as individual as entrepreneurial personalities, and they become part of the entrepreneurial manifesto.

Making Meaning and Identity

Every company is embedded in a greater social context and lives off the exchange with its environment and stakeholders, whether they are clients, employees or service providers, among others. The very existence of a company is safeguarded primarily via the meaning and value of exchanges with others. Therefore, the entrepreneur’s manifesto also needs to address the question of what the company means and represents for the people involved as well as for its environments. The connection from personal motives to the company’s relevance in the big picture grounds the entrepreneurial idea beyond the individual and helps foster a sense of identity for the whole organization.

The Seed Takes Root

A good entrepreneur’s manifesto has a timeless quality and describes the seed as it was first planted. If we know the nucleus, we can get a better feeling for how best to contribute to this plant’s growth, what can be asked of it, and what its particular strengths are. In a similar sense, we can use the entrepreneur’s manifesto to judge how well potential changes “fit” the seed and therefore have a greater chance of success. Just as a chestnut cannot be made to grow into an oak tree, a company cannot simply be separated from its initial impulse, even with the best of intentions. Instead of aiming for a transformation into an oak, it makes more sense to concentrate on developing a splendid chestnut tree and realizing the highest potentials that the manifesto aspires to.

The Many Uses of an Entrepreneur’s Manifesto

Creating an entrepreneur’s manifesto is always helpful if you have already “lived with” your company for some years or decade, when a transformation is coming or when the company is showing signs of fatigue. Maybe you have the feeling that your team has lost its sense of enthusiasm and motivation, or the company culture has taken a direction that you can no longer relate to. In such cases, a consciously crafted entrepreneur’s manifesto can set in motion a process of realignment and transformation that integrates your focused intention into the company and gives the entire organization a new boost of energy.

Even if founding the company is or was a group effort that involved several people, it is worth comparing individual motives by creating a joint entrepreneurial manifesto. What are the differences and how can they be integrated with one another productively? Where is the collective red thread that can function as a guideline for the group as a whole? In this way co-entrepreneurs can agree on a shared platform, a much more personal commitment than a mission statement or company purpose.

Finally, an entrepreneurial manifesto is a valuable compass for an organic transition when it comes to a generational shift or a process of succession in a company’s leadership. If the company’s DNA is transparent, successors or new owners can integrate it into their own visions and strategies, and continue writing the company’s story with good prospects.

The entrepreneur’s manifesto is based on an idea by Josef Gundinger that was expanded by Swaan Barrett.

Der Beitrag The Entrepreneur’s Manifesto erschien zuerst auf Organic Strategies.

That’s why the question of a company’s purpose is so important. But is this purpose clearly and unambiguously defined in your company? Can it be recognized in people’s daily activities? Usually, there is an intuitive or implicit understanding of the purpose, but it’s less common for people to address it directly or consciously use it as a point of reference in day-to-day work.

Significance of Purpose

A purpose, similar to a mission statement, describes the core identity of a company, as well as its most important products or services, in a few precisely worded sentences. It is not a vision or a strategy, but the reason for existence and the source of inspiration for the organization’s future development.

A good purpose answers questions such as:

• What do we stand for? What is important to us?
• What distinguishes us and what makes us stand out?
• What makes us successful, especially in the eyes of our customers?
• What is the relevance of our activities beyond our organization?
• What potentials do we want to realize as a whole?

Because such a purpose has long-term effects, it’s worth investing some time and effort to create a proper wording. A small team with representatives from different areas of the company is an ideal setting for this. Working together on these questions, you may be surprised how similar the ideas are that people have of their organization as a whole – no matter what perspective or role they originally come from. In the process of verbalizing these ideas and images and by making them transparent, something unifying and unique takes shape.

Focusing on Potentials

Creating a purpose can feel like an unfamiliar task because it involves abstracting from daily business in order to verbalize intuitive or implicit knowledge. Here, it is especially valuable to integrate ideas from the entrepreneur’s manifesto. Often, patience is required for everyone to exchange their perspectives and integrate the various feedbacks.

But it is precisely this exchange that creates valuable synergies with lasting effects and motivates people to hone in on higher goals. The focus shifts away from the problems and obstacles of daily business and towards the potential at the heart of the company, and a positive dynamic is set in motion. What’s more, as a side effect of this collective focus, the groundwork for a culture of dialogue can be established – a solid foundation for constructive and innovative communication.

Living the Purpose

However, just because a text is published and some nice posters have been put up on the wall doesn’t mean the work is done! In order for a good purpose to unfold its power and potential, it needs to anchor all of a company’s moving parts and be discussed regularly. The purpose is the reference for all visions and strategies to be developed in the coming years. Its effects can be felt all the way down to individual agreements on objectives and even find their way into the definition of KPIs for monitoring success and results.

Then, individual teams can also define their own objectives derived from the company’s collective purpose. Brainstorming together about how to realize the team’s assignments in a way that contributes to realizing the company’s overarching goal creates an identification with the company and fosters connection among the team members.

Thus, the development of a purpose really is only the first step in a transformational process that can lead to positive and sustained realignment throughout an entire organization. By integrating the team into the process of developing and implementing change, motivation increases and individuals come to identify more fully with the whole. Supported by clear values as well as visions and strategies, teams and organizations can realize their purpose with both passion and better results.

Der Beitrag An Inspiring Purpose erschien zuerst auf Organic Strategies.

Thus begins the fairy tale of the Bremen Town Musicians, who start out to create a musical act and find what they’re looking for after only a single concert. They achieve this literal overnight success by becoming a model team and using their individual talents for their collective benefit. The fairy tale vividly illustrates the different phases of team development from recruitment all the way to blind understanding among each other.

Recruitment: Shared Motivation

Let’s start at the beginning: There was a man who had a donkey who had been carrying sacks to the mill tirelessly for years, and whose strength was now at its end. The donkey was becoming less and less fit for work. The man thought of getting rid of him, but the donkey realized that something bad was afoot and ran away to Bremen, where he thought he could become a town musician.

On his way to Bremen the donkey encounters a dog, then a cat, and finally a rooster. All are threatened with being disposed of as livestock: they are old and can no longer render the services their owners expect of them (we’ve heard of this situation in modern life as well, but that’s another story). Thus, they all behave strangely (the rooster, for example, crows incessantly), and the donkey feels prompted to ask them for their story.

As soon as he realizes that the dog, the cat and the rooster are all in the same situation he is in, the donkey invites them to come to Bremen with him as part of his growing group of musicians. As we can see from the donkey’s invitation to the rooster, the plan becomes more concrete with every new recruit:

“Oh you redhead,” said the donkey, “better to join us and leave this place, we are on the way to Bremen, anywhere is better than death; you have a good voice, and if we make music together it should be a great show.”

The band practically starts by itself in this coming together of different personality types who would normally avoid each other. Simply the idea of going on an adventure together motivates them to join forces. Just as the saying “first who, then what” goes, the animals find each other through their common approach of wanting to take fate into their own hands. It will soon be revealed how this approach enables the group’s success.

Consolidation: Learning to Value Individual Talents

The story goes on:

But they could not reach the city of Bremen within a day, and they ended up in a forest where they decided to spend the night. The donkey and the dog laid down under a large tree, the cat and the rooster found their ways into its branches, but the rooster flew all the way to the top, where it was safest for him.

From the top of the tree, the rooster sees a light in the distance and informs his companions. Together they decide to find the source of the light in the hopes that it would be a house. And as fate would have it, they do arrive at a brightly lit up house full of robbers.

The donkey, who was the tallest, went up to the window and looked inside. “What do you see, grey one?” asked the rooster. “What I see,” answered the donkey, “is a table set with beautiful food and drink, and robbers sitting around it enjoying themselves.”

We can see how the members of this team accept each other’s different abilities without judgment; no one expects everyone to behave the same way. What’s more, they start seeing their individual abilities as complementary and recognize how they can achieve something together that none of them could accomplish alone.

Performance: Working Together

Due to their effective sharing of information, the town musicians now have a clear goal:

The animals consulted with each other about how to chase away the robbers, and finally they found a solution.  

The team has developed an integrative culture and can now develop a strategy together. The result of the consultation is true genius, because it integrates the animals’ individual skills into an effective whole:

The donkey stepped onto the windowsill with his front hooves, the dog jumped onto the donkey’s back, the cat climbed onto the dog, and finally the rooster flew up to perch on the cat’s head. When that was done, at a given signal they all began to perform their music: the donkey brayed, the dog barked, the cat meowed and the rooster crowed. Then they burst through into the room, breaking all the panes of glass…

No wonder the robbers run away in terror!

The team as a whole is now strong enough to achieve such breakout success because each animal contributes its own unique abilities to the joint effort, not only during the assembly of their tower but also during their musical performance. As a reward, the animals treat themselves to the remaining feast.

Synergy as Second Nature

But that’s not the end yet, because the robbers return after the situation appears to have calmed down. For the town musicians have grown tired, and

had found a place to sleep, each according to their nature and preference. The donkey laid down in the hay, the dog behind the door, the cat on the stove near the warm ashes, and the rooster perched up in the rafters…

 These sleeping spots, which the animals chose “each according to their nature and preference,” set the stage for the grand finale of perfect and wordless synergy in everyone’s best interest, even without any explicit agreement. Let’s see how the robbers’ delegate fares:

The dispatch found everything quiet, entered the kitchen to light a lamp, and because he thought the cat’s fiery glowing eyes were live coals, he held a match up to them so that it might catch fire. But the cat was not in the mood for games and jumped at his face, hissing and scratching. The robber was terrified and wanted to run away through the back door, but the dog who laid there jumped up and bit him in the leg, and as he lumbered across the back courtyard the donkey gave him a hard kick with his back hoof; and the rooster, woken up by the noise and becoming lively, called from the rafters, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” The robber ran off as fast as he could.

Of course, the robber’s companions receive a grisly account of what happened at their former house, and they never set foot there again. But the four Bremen town musicians liked it there so much that they did not want to leave anymore.

Thus the team has reached its true goal: a safe place to grow old in peace. All that after only a short journey and a single concert!

Making Diversity a Strategy for Success

The first building block in this success story was already laid in the recruitment phase. A shared basic approach brings the musicians together: “We take our fates into our own hands (by setting out for Bremen) and we connect based on our differing strengths (let’s start a band).” That’s why the team finds solutions together that work for everyone, that’s why the team adapts to situations repeatedly and with agility, and that’s why it collaborates so naturally.

This fairy tale perfectly demonstrates the requirement for a high performance team made up of totally different characters: mutual acceptance and appreciation of each other’s differences. But how often do we expect a dog to catch mice, or a rooster to bark and protect the house? Or use the same yardstick to measure a cat’s performance as a donkey’s? How much easier it is to instead accept donkey, dog, cat or rooster the way they are and use their natural inborn talents! Rather than having to bend out of shape, separating themselves from the pack, or competitively playing their talents off against each other, these team members can combine their seemingly irreconcilable character traits to become a decisive factor in their collective success. When differences are recognized as potential, acting in concert with one another not only becomes possible, but can also turn out to be highly fruitful.

Der Beitrag Team Building with the Bremen Town Musicians erschien zuerst auf Organic Strategies.

The language of art and images is powerful. Usually we talk about images in terms of a message to be communicated by the image, whether to ourselves or others. It’s less common for us to think of entering into a self-reflective dialogue through an image or a work of art. But there are paintings that literally invite us to step inside and wander around in them, be it because they exude harmony and beauty or because their spatial depth draws us into a seemingly endless field. This quality of certain artworks can lead us towards previously unrealized potentials through a process of self-reflection. If we look at a painting playfully and intuitively with the attitude of the beginner’s mind, we can begin to see beyond our conscious thoughts. A story about ourselves that we didn’t know before emerges, showing us different paths of action for the big and small decisions of professional life. The harbor and landscape paintings by Claude Lorrain used in the innovative Symbolon® method are especially beautiful examples of images that invite us to immerse ourselves in their worlds. A harmless aesthetic question leads us to play with our associations and ideas in the language of the painting, giving us new metaphors to translate into our work situations.

Four questions initiate the process of reflection:

1. Where in this painting do you want to be? Your preferred place is your own individual choice. There is no right or wrong, it’s only about the place where you feel most comfortable. What do you like there? What positive feelings are awakened there? How does your choice relate to your current work situation?
2. What do you see from this position? Depending on where you stand, you have a better or worse view of other sections of the painting. What is the view from your chosen place? What visual axis are you presented with? What can you see and observe? What path of action arises from this view?
3. What don’t you see from this position? No matter where we stand, there is always something blocked from our sight. Your position shows you precisely what you can’t see and where your potential for development lies. What is your blind spot? What information is unavailable to you, and what are the consequences in the language of the painting? How can you tap into the potential of this information? Who or what in the painting might need to move, and how or where would they need to go?
4. How do others in the painting see you in this position? Finally, take a look at your position from the perspectives of other areas in the painting. How visible are you for others? How close or how far away are you from each other? How does your position appear from the perspectives of others? How do you communicate from where your stand?

360° Feedback

In this way, you get a 360° artistic feedback for the position of your choice, with its strengths, weaknesses and potentials including self-perception as well as perception by others. The more open you are to the process, the greater the chance that you’ll learn something new about yourself and your situation. When you translate the language of the painting into your work situation, new ideas for drawing on previously unseen potentials will develop almost by themselves. The scope of action for achieving your goals will broaden.

Where your team stands

The power of this process of reflection also unfolds when members of a team choose their places independently of each other at first, according to the questions above. In the second step the team can reflect upon its choices as a whole. A new team constellation appears that was not visible before. A team can zoom out from its members’ individual positions to recognize how it is distributed within the painting and what key themes show up. Thus, the questions above can also be used in the context of team building in order to learn where untapped potentials for teamwork might be hidden. Whether on your own or as a team, reflecting on the painting allows you to embark on a deeply individual journey that originates in your specific situation. Creative metaphors come up almost automatically and have a way of lingering in your mind with long-term effects. In this way, art can become an integrated aspect of your work life.

Der Beitrag New Perspectives and Potentials erschien zuerst auf Organic Strategies.

Mental routines and expertise

Our minds and our thoughts are shaped by individual and cultural assumptions, experiences and knowledges. As soon as we perceive something, we automatically begin filing it into familiar categories and judging it. We may do this to achieve a greater sense of security. But it can also lead us to miss a chance to learn something new – and sometimes even miss out on important information. On the one hand, we of course need expertise and experience in order to quickly assess specific problems and find effective solutions. How would productive work be possible if we couldn’t depend on knowledge we acquired in the past? On the other hand, it is precisely this knowledge that can hinder us to think about things in new and different ways.

Not-Knowing as a resource

At work we operate under the assumption that knowledge and experience are our assets and our shield. We expend endless energy on proving to others that we know more than they do, that we as experts have the solution to a problem. The fear that our knowledge gaps may lead to pitfalls and humiliation can, for example, lead to meetings lasting much longer than is needed, because real or presumed not-knowing is being covered up by excessive talking. In the minds of experts and within expert cultures, not-knowing is an unforgivable mistake that can, in fact, have far-reaching consequences.

Thus, the idea of the beginner’s mind may appear unusual at first – useful for spiritual seekers, but dangerous in practical daily life. However, the beginner’s mind allows us to grasp situations anew, coming to different conclusions than in the past. What if we didn’t always react based on our mental routines or the pressure of having-to-know, but instead asked simple questions like beginners wondering about what they see? If we understood the beginner’s not-knowing as an opportunity for learning?

A beginner open to new information

Every day in our work lives, we encounter people of whom we have created a mental image based on experiences or appearances. But is this image true? What chance do others have to change if we always see them in the same way? However, if we enter into these encounters in the spirit of the beginner’s mind, new opportunities can open up. Maybe we see something about the other person that we never noticed before. Or we hear a sentence that previously we would have filed away under “typical” and instead ask what is meant by it. This way the conversation could take a new turn and deliver unexpected results. The same goes for long-term difficulties and problems that experts have already struggled to crack. A simple question from the perspective of the beginner’s mind can clear the path to a previously overlooked solution. The more we assume not to know anything, the more open we are to all information, becoming less selective and perceiving more of what is actually in front of us. Often enough, it’s the obvious things that elude the educated mind of the expert.

Practice makes perfect

The beginner’s mind is a wonderful concept that reminds us in one simple expression to open our minds and leave behind our mental routines. The more we practice the beginner’s mindset, the easier it becomes to switch gears in any given situation and to see with new eyes. In organizations and in teams, the beginner’s mind can be practiced together with dialogue. An honest culture of dialogue thrives when we regularly enter into conversations with a childlike curiosity based on the assumption of not-knowing. With this approach we can see persistent difficulties differently and solve real problems. Even more, we can truly learn something new and expand our horizons. This is an essential foundation for creativity and change – even for experts.

Literature:
Shunryu Suzuki: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice. Weatherhill, 1970.

Der Beitrag Seeing With New Eyes: How the Beginner’s Mind Expands Your Playing Field erschien zuerst auf Organic Strategies.