The Musician, the Surgeon and the Cure

I have been thinking about the nature of intelligence, our ability to collaborate, the the seductive quality of reactivity and what the world could look like if we each committed to our own optimal performance. From my perspective it is the protracted environments like the mentality on Wall Street, the suffering of Gaza, and the risk of disrespecting our planet that are the real test and calling of our times.

I have believed for a long time that a new way of engaging ourselves and each other may be emerging. I also believe that this emergence could lead to unprecedented well-being on a global scale. Crises are always a part of this kind of emergence because it is only in crisis that vigorous dialogue occurs. But what does this posture look like? How can we apply it to protracted commercial and political situations? And, how can we apply it at home with those we love and yet have become distant.

Two people on different parts of the earth with totally different histories and experiences may provide us with a clue - a musician and a surgeon both pushing the boundaries of thought. The musician proposed a new way to look at intelligence and how it operates. The surgeon offered a solution to overcome the chronic protraction of Gaza, most noticeably through his own example. With their thinking married perhaps we may have a cure...

The Musician

Brian Eno had this to say recently on the nature intelligence:

“I was an art student and, like all art students, I was encouraged to believe that there were a few great figures like Picasso and Kandinsky, Rembrandt and Giotto and so on who sort-of appeared out of nowhere and produced artistic revolution.

As I looked at art more and more, I discovered that that wasn’t really a true picture.

What really happened was that there was sometimes very fertile scenes involving lots and lots of people – some of them artists, some of them collectors, some of them curators, thinkers, theorists, people who were fashionable and knew what the hip things were – all sorts of people who created a kind of ecology of talent. And out of that ecology arose some wonderful work.

The period that I was particularly interested in, ’round about the Russian revolution, shows this extremely well. So I thought that originally those few individuals who’d survived in history – in the sort-of “Great Man” theory of history – they were called “geniuses”. But what I thought was interesting was the fact that they all came out of a scene that was very fertile and very intelligent.

So I came up with this word “scenius” – and scenius is the intelligence of a whole… operation or group of people. And I think that’s a more useful way to think about culture, actually. I think that – let’s forget the idea of “genius” for a little while, let’s think about the whole ecology of ideas that give rise to good new thoughts and good new work."

How Could Scenius Work?

In my experience, scenius can be cultivated if we instead seek not to own a truth, or identify ourselves with its origin, but act as its midwife or parent in the context of the way Kahlil Gibran explained of the role of parent to child in The Prophet.

Could this Age of communication and connectedness be a unique environment for scenius to flourish? Furthermore, could this natural resource of wisdom be as accessible in a crisis like Gaza?

What Does Scenius Look Like in Practice?

Scenius invites disparate viewpoints and welcomes engagement on a new level of dialogue. One requirement in creating scenius is to respect the other person or other group. Respect is a discipline: to stay centered in our respect and not recoil into allegation, threat and defensiveness is not easy. Scenius requires that we welcome, or at least, permit each other’s history, each other’s ideas, and each other’s beliefs.

I have found in my own work that this dedication to scenius (even though I didn’t know of the word at the time) has enabled exciting levels of innovation and a deep commitment to the creative process. The respect for scenius put my ego and the ego of my colleagues into the right context for optimal dialogue. Our egos do not drive the process but are a subtext of it. Individuality is crucial to harvest the wisdom in multiple perspectives, and yet a respect for scenius ensures that perspectives do not dominate the outcome but contribute to it.

I have also seen this process transform my personal life and heal protracted issues within my family. Scenius was allowed to emerge when I jettisoned agendas, embraced my vulnerability (within myself and the other), and remained centered in my vision for a transcendent outcome. The more I committed to scenius the more the other person did too. It was a clear application of being the change that I wanted to see.

The Brain: Wired for Scenius?

It is interesting to see from the latest insights in brain science that people who focus on others are clinically happier. The data supports a neuropsychological model that proposes experiences associated with selflessness are related to decreased activity in the right parietal lobe of the brain. Researchers say “the implication of this connection means people in many disciplines, including peace studies and health care can learn different ways to attain selflessness, to experience transcendence, and to help themselves and others.”

I believe that this neuropsychological model can be extended into the daily experience. In fact I have seen the application of this model in my own life and the lives of my teammates. I believe that our commitment to each other, to the vision, and to the people whose lives we are committed to has been a cornerstone of our team culture and felt personally by each of us.

The Surgeon: Gaza's Call for Scenius

While scenius can flourish where mutual respect and a love of ideas exists it seems to me that where scenius is most needed and best tested perhaps is in protracted environments – from the challenged home where love has become distant to places of endemic misunderstanding involving whole communities like Gaza. Is scenius possible in these bitterly protracted conditions?

Perhaps Doctor Izzeldine Abuelaish holds the answer. In the recent attack on Gaza Israel television was galvanized by a studio presenter holding up a mobile phone live on air for five minutes so they could listen to the outpouring of grief from Dr Abuelaish. Israeli tank shells had just hit his home, killing three of his daughters and a niece. "What have we done to them?" the doctor cried. "Why, why?"

A week or so later Dr Abuelaish talked to his friend Rabbi Yitzchak Yellin: “Military actions,” said the Doctor, “are not useful between people… “.

The Rabbi replied: “So what’s the solution?”

“The solution is to listen to each other and to be serious.“Replied the Doctor.

“It’s too complicated.” Responded Rabbi Yellin.

Laughing, Dr Abuelaish said: “Oh wow too complicated, well make it easy. Can you make it easy?”

You can watch the story here or read the transcript.

The First Step to Scenius?

What must we do first? As Dr Abuelash exemplifies, the true fight lies in overcoming ourselves not overcoming others. When we apply this principle scenius becomes accessible. Every spiritual orientation including Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Judaism say that the true way lies within. The true crucible and jihad (in the classical sense) lies in overcoming ourselves not overcoming others. When we apply this principle scenius can operate freely. The “seriousness” Dr Abuelaish calls for relates to overcoming not the intractable nature in the world, but the intractable conditions within our own hearts.

The second step is not to perpetuate the problem that we see, but to adopt the proven approach to be the change that we want to see.


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This post is dedicated to my friend Peter B and the scenius that emerged through our dialogue.

At Freedom’s Way we build online tools, which help us to “listen and be serious” and to unlock the rich potential hidden in our lives and communities. The tools make it easier and the process enjoyable. These tools are free for personal use because we believe wellbeing is a democratic right available to all.

Ultimate Life: from Defined to Destined Being

A quote I have spent some time with has spoken profound depths to me and is often quoted by researchers and practitioners of optimal performance and I wanted to share it with you. It is from a man called Martin Buber who wrote a book called I and Thou.

“Our thinking of today has established a more tenacious and oppressive belief in fate than has ever before existed. No matter how much is said about the laws we hold to be true of life …. At the basis of them all lies possession by process, that is by unlimited causality. But the dogma of process leaves no room for freedom whose calm strength changes the face of the earth. This dogma does not know the man who surmounts the universal struggle, tears to pieces the web of habitual instincts, and stirs, rejuvenates and transforms the stable structures of history.

The only thing that can become fate for man is belief in fate. The free man is he who wills without arbitrary self-will. He believes in destiny, and believes that it stands in need of him. It does not keep him in leading strings, it awaits him, he must go to it, yet does not know where it is to be found. But he knows that he must go to it with his whole being. The matter will not turn out according to his decision; but what is to come will come only when he decides on what he is able to will. He must sacrifice his puny, unfree will, that is controlled by things and instincts, to his grand will, which quits defined for destined being.

Then he intervenes no more, but at the same time he does not let things merely happen. He listens to what is emerging from himself, to the course of being in the world; not in order to be supported by it but to bring it to reality as it desires.”

The question is how do we quit defined for destined being? And, what does this shift look and feel like within oneself and one’s life? That is a big question and I have tried to answer those questions in my book Freedom’s Way and I have tried to convey the experience through the interactive tools at Freedomsway.net. However I wanted today to explore these two questions through Buber’s perspective and language.

Destined being – is not modeled on key performance metrics but on beingness, and having the vision, courage and patience to allow the project to unfold at its own rate. The project can be a life, a relationship, a product, or a business. The project cannot be disturbed by foreign standards – not my standard, not some outside authority, not my peer group (Nietzsche talked about the need to rise above disturbances in his prologue to Thus Spake Zarathustra and the three metamorphoses.)

Creating an environment that enables the vision for the vision’s sake is imperative. It is the razor’s edge of astute creativity and optimal performance because the idea that evolves is allowed to take form in all its potency – it is the vision’s voice, not our voice. Insecurities, fears, conditioning, anima or animus inflation have no place. What starts as an idea or a question incubates and starts to slowly take form. An interior critical mass develops around the idea or question within ones beingness. It does not happen from one day to the next but organically, decisions day to day start to quietly shift their focus, value systems begin to evolve, and priorities undergo a radical re-establishment.

As we begin to step into the tracks of our destined being fresh thoughts start to bounce against other thoughts unleashing a fresh outlook, inspirations follow generating another round of thoughts followed by evolved outlook. This spiral continues until the incubation matures to a point where we feel ready to implement.

Joseph Campbell, one of the great minds of the twentieth century, created a legacy with his message: follow your bliss. The world’s wisdoms teach us, he said, that if you follow your bliss, the world will begin to operate in a different kind of way. Doors will open, helpers will emerge, and paths will appear out of nowhere. This most certainly has been my experience of moving from defined to destined being.

One of the ways to identify whether the idea or question is real or meaningful is to ask ourselves whether it feels like a calling. Does the idea pull on your heart and enchant your mind?

In the case of creating a new product or service, if the question or idea is a calling and we decide to pay heed to the call, slowly the idea will incubate into plans and strategies – at its own time. At some point comes the task of turning those plans and strategies into something tangible. And the same spiral process begins again throughout the phases of building, testing, marketing and finally delivery (or sales*). Relationships bounce against relationships unleashing new contacts and meaningful exchange with like-minded individuals, new opportunities follow generating new pathways to serve. What started as an interior experience is reflected outwardly as the business unfolds - in its own way.

Dante’s layout of the journey in the Divine Comedy reflects this journey from inwardness to outwardness. The voyager begins his quest by traveling into the dark recesses (fear, insecurity, disgust, judgment, and torment etc) only to travel so deep that he finds himself emerge in the higher spheres where he is welcomed to Heaven. This is the paradox of optimal living: the deeper we journey toward our heart the more we come to be a meaningful part of the world.

Joseph Campbell said echoing the message of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita:

“Life as an art and art as a game – as action for its sake, without thought of gain or of loss, praise or blame – is the key, then, to the turning of living itself into a yoga and art into the means to such a life.” (Myths to Live By). It is a universal message and also aligned with good science.

The Bhagavad Gita, the core of yoga, said create for its own sake, absent of attachment. Love for love’s sake, create for creativty’s sake, and be for being’s sake. Stay out of the mind set of reward. If we stay pure to the craft and true to devotion to the vision, the rewards will follow – in their own way.

Business is no different – the most resilient companies of the world focus on what they want to create and how they want to serve, not what they are going to receive as a result of that investment.

When we locate our inner-coordination and turn our living into a yoga, we enable the world to respond in likeness – finally it can welcome the individual we were always destined to be.


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Footnote

*I like the word “delivery” as opposed to sales for two reasons. First, the word sales has come to hold a very definite meaning and culture, which from my perspective is often about selling the product to a consumer irrespective of whether there is any true value. It reminds me of a story a friend recently related to me. He had been talking to a person who had been a part of the mortgage sales boom in the States prior to the credit crisis. They were discussing the effects of a system of lending which we now know (and Warren Buffet predicted) contributed to the crisis and the destructive effect this style of lending had had on the lives of mortgagors and the economy. The mortgage sales guy said: “As I see it it wasn’t’ so bad. The banks made money and the salespeople made money. Two out of three aint bad.” (not to mention he failed to see it was actually two out of four when one takes into account the economy, and the effects we have all directly or indirectly felt).

We live in a culture that endorses either expressly or by our actions this kind of mentality. Enron and the behavior of its traders for example was a larger than life example of this undercurrent, which runs through modern business. We have been taught to think that the “sales mentality” is acceptable and the best way to work. Leading research into optimal business performance would disagree. (Take a look at Peter Senge’s ongoing work (embodied in The Fifth Discipline), and the work of Standford researchers Collins and Porras, authors of Built to Last). Real business with longevity and true value starts with the idea to serve society. I like the word “delivery” because it connotes serving the customer, and the implied usefulness of the product has been assumed months or even years before the product is even ready. The perceived intrinsic value inspires and drives the team to create something of truly significant value, and then to ensure its delivery and place in society.

Want to Make the World a Better Place? Be Happy.

In city life it is easy to forget that simple small acts like a smile can make a significant impact. The butterfly effect has told us that we can effect radical changes in society through small acts but much of the “how” was a big question mark. A new study recently published in the British Medical Journal has revealed that human happiness is not the province of isolated individuals but quite the opposite, the health and wellbeing of one person affects the health and wellbeing of others.

Whether you are happy depends on whether others in your social network are happy. Happiness, according to the findings, is not merely a function of individual experience but is also a property of groups of people. Your happiness is associated with the happiness of people up to three degrees removed in your social network. Your happiness uplifts not just your friends but your friend’s friends, your spouse’s friends, your sibling’s friends, even your neighbors’ friends.

Indeed changes in your happiness can ripple through your social network and generate large scale in the network giving rise to clusters of happy individuals.


The twenty three year study reveals that:

• Happiness spreads from person to person

• Clusters of happiness form within social networks

• Clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness. It is not just a tendency for happy people to associate without other happy people.

• This means that if you work at being happy, the benefit of this hard work is enjoyed by your local network, and other social networks, which orbit your network.

The quality of the connection

The research also revealed that the better connected that you are to friends and family the more likely you are to be happy in the future. We do not know why this is so. Perhaps it can be inferred that connectiveness sows the seeds of happiness. The degree to which one is connected right now determines the investment we make in our own happiness for the future. Connectivity encourages togetherness, sharing, vulnerability, affirmation, and love – all strong fertilizers for happiness. I can certainly say in my life, particularly over the last ten years, that my attitude toward connecting with others has certainly been proportional to my happiness and sense of wellbeing.


The happiness safety valve

You may be thinking, “does that mean I need to surround myself only with happy people! ” The answer is no. The beauty of this happiness phenomenon reflects what we have known intuitively for a long time - happiness is infectious, sadness a lot less so.

Happy friends, according to the report, have more of a reliable effect on a person’s happiness than the number of unhappy friends. Each additional happy alter (People who are happy in the local network) increases the likelihood of happiness, but additional unhappy alters has little or no effect. Happy alters consistently influence ego happiness (the happiness of each person in the local network) more than unhappy alters (people who are unhappy in the local network). The social network effect of happiness is multiplicative and asymmetric.


How happy?

The research suggested that when a person switched from unhappy to happy – the chance of other unhappy people becoming happier increased markedly. The probability of nearby friends being happy increased by 25%.

But this also gets more interesting. Not all “friends” regarded each other as friends. When the friendship was mutual, the likelihood of the unhappy friend becoming happy increased by 63% (the range was between 12 and 148%). When the unhappy person regarded the happy person as a friend but not the other way around the likelihood of happiness was not as high (I couldn’t find a percentage).


What does this all mean?

Even the writers of this report, seasoned scientists who can tend to be excessively skeptical about the impact of wellbeing on health are excited. They see this data as having far reaching consequences on public health. Increasing the happiness of one person, they say, could have a cascade effect on to others thereby enhancing the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of the intervention.

The other interesting piece of news is that all of this data was gathered prior to the internet age. The internet as Van Wishard said is an “emotional conveyor belt.” The concept of “local” is not what it once was. We can use the internet to actively widen and uplift our network and thereby effect the networks orbiting our network and so on.

Social activist and global Elder Desmond Tutu recently said “Each one of us can make a contribution. Too frequently we feel that we have to do spectacular things, and yet if we remembered that the sea is actually made up of drops of water, and each drop counts – each one of us can do our little bit where we are and it is those little bits that can come together and can almost overwhelm the world.”

A Small But Effective Way to Support the Iranian People

Hi there, I promise a new post is on its way.

In the meantime you may be aware of the current crisis in Iran oriented around concerns of whether the election was legitimate and the consequent oppression of peaceful protesters. If not, you can get up to speed by clicking here. Amnesty has set up an online campaign, which at the click of a few buttons allows you to lodge your concern with His Excellency Ayatollah Khamenei.

It is a small but effective way to support the Iranian people and human rights.

The Value of Forgiveness

This morning I picked up a book The Age of Unreason. I like to refer to it now and again. The author, a visionary business philosopher called Charles Handy, offers many stimulating ideas about where we are as individuals and as a society and where we can go. By chance I read a small section titled “The Missing Forgiveness”:

“ I asked an American the secret of his firm’s obviously successful development policy. He looked at me straight in the eye. “Forgiveness,” he said. “We give them big jobs and big responsibilities. Inevitably they make mistakes, we can’t check them all the time and don’t want to. They learn, we forgive, they don’t make mistakes again.”

He was unusual. Too many organizations use their appraisal schemes and their confidential files to record our errors and our small disasters. They use them to chastise us with, hoping to inspires us, or to frighten us to do better. It might work once, but in the future we will make sure that we do not venture far enough from the beaten track to make any mistake. Yet no experiment, no test of new ideas, means no learning and no change. As in organizations, so it can be in families.

The evidence is quite consistent. If you reward the good and ignore or forgive the bad, the good will occur more frequently, and the bad will gradually disappear. A concern over trouble in the classroom led to research into the way teachers allocated praise and blame. About equally, it seemed, except that all praise was for academic work and all blame was for behavior. The teachers were coached to only give praise, for both academic work and good behavior and to ignore the bad. It worked. Within a few weeks unruly behavior had almost disappeared.

More difficult than forgiving others is to forgive oneself. That turns out to be one of the real blocks to change. We as individuals need to accept our past but then to turn our backs on it. Organizations often do it by changing their names, individuals by moving house, or changing spouses. It does not have to be so dramatic. Scrapbooks, I believe, are useful therapy – they are a way of putting the past to bed, decorously. Then we can move forward.”

Interacting with oneself, one’s partner, one’s family, and one’s colleagues with an attitude of forgiveness is a powerful way to evoke change within oneself and the world. In my experiences working with people I have always tried to encourage rather than criticize. It is hard. However, it is incredible to see the difference that affirmative behavior evokes in a family or a team environment. For example in my life my brother and I resurrected an old bond we both believed in. At Freedom’s Way my colleagues and I continually affirm and forgive each other, which has lead to a powerful culture within the company driving audacious vision and innovation. We have a way to go too, we can always affirm more and forgive more which infers that we can make our culture and consequently our results stronger.


In stressful times it is particularly tempting to lose sight of conscious vision driven behavior and descend into base responses – criticism, a pessimistic outlook and impatience are indicative that we are out-of-center. Listen to these markers within yourself and stop. Step out of the space and take ten long deep breaths. In the morning spend ten minutes communing with your values and your vision. If you don’t have a vision or you are having trouble remembering it go and take the Vision Driver. As Joseph Campbell once said "a life with substance has to be earned and fashioned from within, not received from the world as a gift."


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If you would like to start thinking and acting at home and at work in the way discussed in this article we have developed a few tools. The tool for work is called the Freedom's Way Meta-Analysis for Work. The tools are free and have already inspired countless people from countries as far flung as Afghanistan, Australia, France, India, Iran, France, Mexico and the USA.