Dear Michael

Letter Two

Michael, I sensed at our session that some of your team are getting excited by the potential they see for themselves, their families, Western Engineering and the common good.

Your two follow-up questions addressed below allowed me to reflect more deeply on what we are attempting to convey, not only to you and the team but to others interested in deepening their experience of Possibility. These are thoughtful questions.

Question One:

“Can this understanding be taught, or must it be discovered by oneself?”

‘Doing what works’ and ‘doing what matters’ are teachable. What really works and really matters dwells within the realm of Possibility. We must see Possibility first.

We can pick up the basics of ‘what works’ and ‘what matters’ around the kitchen table. We can also do apprenticeships, traineeships, degrees, MBAs, PhDs and our learning in the ‘school of hard knocks’.

I grew up with loads of ‘what works’ ideas about business from my dad. Mum knew more than a little about ‘what works’ and much about ‘what matters’. The known is, therefore, being passed on and becomes our known – that is, our conditioning – good, bad and indifferent.

However, neither was conscious of what really works and what really matters. I sensed that Mum (one of the sweetest humans one could wish to meet) searched for that more profound experience all her life.

Like most who become conditioned to be right-leaning, it seemed that ‘doing what works’ was all that mattered, so long as I figured out what worked best.

However, intuitively, for whatever reason, I still searched for ‘what matters’.

By age 34, I was digging deeper into and exploring ideas and philosophies new to me around ‘doing what matters’.

My leaning then shifted towards the left.

In recognising that my focus had been on ‘doing what works’ and that this wasn’t fulfilling, I thought that improving my life must lie in ‘doing more of what matters’.

Understand, Michael, that this is my retrospective insight on how I lived in the world back then. I didn’t have these phrases, words or ways of looking at business or organisations. These insights popped into my head much later.

However, before that and for the first time, I felt ashamed of my extreme-right ideas and, as I said, started leaning heavily in the direction of the left.

Then, in seeing Possibility in my mid-40s, although I didn’t understand what was occurring within my mind, I came to see that the left, in its unique way – focusing on ‘what matters’ – was making the same mistakes as the right-wingers, in their unique way, focusing on ‘what works’.

However, still not seeing enough, I figured that simply merging ‘doing what matters’ and ‘doing what works’ would fix what ailed businesses, organisations, and me and what ailed the world.

However – as is often the case in my life – I was wrong. I was still trying to take the best of the known (right ideology), put it with the best of the known (left ideology), and expect that to work and matter. I was still operating at that mechanistic level.

Much later, I saw that the so-called ‘centrist’ approach didn’t work when push came to shove. The reasons became apparent when I went from the known into the unknown – from my conditioning into the realm of Possibility.

THE PENNY DROPPED

The context for creating sustainable design: Possibility.

As said, it was much later that I saw that I had been looking at what I needed to ‘do’ to fix businesses and organisations (and my life) at the level of belief, knowledge and experience – trying to merge one unsustainable ideology (set of conditioned theories) with another.

Lightning struck once more. Listening to a radio program one Saturday morning while gardening, I saw that there was ‘more’ to creating ‘sustainable design’ than I, or most others on the left, right, or centre, understood.

And that ‘more’, necessary in creating ‘sustainable design’, didn’t lie in any ideology or textbook and couldn’t be found anywhere in the world of knowledge, beliefs, opinions and judgements.

It was another of those ‘out of the blue’ moments when my mind cleared, and I saw some old ideas that I held in an entirely new way.

During that radio program (which had nothing to do with businesses or organisations), I experienced a flash of clarity. I saw why applying either ‘what works’ or ‘what matters’ or trying to integrate the best aspects of both ideologies would still miss seeing businesses or organisations (and my relationships) functioning at the deeper level necessary for sustainability – designs that serve the common good.

In that moment of insight, the rest of the jigsaw pieces fell into place.

It hit me: the convergence of ‘doing what works’ with ‘doing what matters’ occurs naturally within Possibility, the context of kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense. That’s what would ‘really work and really matter’. The context is what makes the difference every time, all the time.

That is what I hadn’t seen up to that point and had been looking for.

This highly functional, efficient operational context, a context of Possibility, which existed within my mind (and in the minds of everyone else in businesses and organisations), was the answer.

Seeing Possibility was the context within which the business and organisational world (and the rest of the world) needed to operate to be sustainable.

It was available and had always been so. I hadn’t seen it because my conditioned mind acted as a block. I had been looking in the wrong direction. I had been looking backward to the known. The answers we seek to our crucial questions always await us in the unknown.

I accidentally slipped into the unknown and saw something fresh.

I hadn’t seen what had suddenly become so obvious earlier.

We seem to have many rooms in the house of our mind, and the light goes on in any room or set of rooms, or the whole house, whenever it does.

There is no order, and there are no rules.

It was evident at that moment, triggered by that radio show, that the convergence of these long-established ideas and concepts, being worked in a state of Possibility – kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense (that I named ‘doing what really works and really matters’) – would empower any individual or organisation to see business and organisational life, and life in general, in all its manifestations, from a higher vantage point.

And a vantage point from which everyone could create ‘sustainable design’ for all situations.

Question Two:

“How can I know when I’m working from the realm of impossibility – ‘doing what I think works and what I think matters’ or from the realm of Possibility – doing what really works and really matters?”

Good question, Michael. Challenging answer.

Left-leaners, Michael, focus more on the process – e.g. how we treat people and how they feel.

Right-leaners focus more on the outcome – e.g. what is the goal, how and when are we going to reach it, and where are we at?

Possibility-seers understand what to do in any given situation with any given problem, considering both process and outcome. The forgoing is an oversimplified explanation, but it gives you a clear sense of the distinctions.

We tell what state we are in by how we feel. Our feelings are our inbuilt compass pointing to our state of mind – a condition of Possibility or impossibility.

If we think kind, understanding, wise and common-sense thoughts, we will experience the corresponding warm feelings. We’re in the head and heart space of doing what really works and what really matters.

The deeper emotions, such as kindness and understanding, supersede all others. The higher vantage perspectives of wisdom and common sense replace other views.

We entertain thinking that creates those feelings when we feel fear, anger, stress or anxiety. The thinking and the feelings that accompany those emotions do not, in the main, serve us or others well.

Equally, when our knowledge, beliefs, opinions and judgements around doing ‘what matters’ or ‘what works’, we will feel driven like a human machine, disconnected from our more profound experience of kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense. At its extreme, this state allows humans to commit inhumane acts.

Whether limiting ourselves to doing ‘what works’ and or ‘what matters’ or unleashing the power of what really works and what really matters, the following two lists describe the corresponding states of mind.

OUR CONDITIONING OF ‘DOING WHAT WORKS’ OR ‘DOING WHAT MATTERS’ IS FLAGGED BY ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING:

• Operating from a context of fear – however subtle;
• Feeling worried, concerned, lacking clarity or being preoccupied;
• Mindlessly doing what we have always done – imprisoned by our training, education or conditioning as if it’s the only way;
• Being driven by any ideology – we are certain that this is ‘the truth’;
• Pretending to listen to others while judging what they are saying as wrong or right;
• Vacillating, giving in to perceived or actual pressure;
• Having no sense of distinction between substance and style, what is true, or what is false;
• Promoting our greater glory;
• Promoting some external authority as the ultimate one;
• Swayed by either maintaining the status quo or popular opinion;
• Doing our best to control others and life in general;
• Feeling separate or disconnected from others and nature;
• Exploiting others and nature;
• Seeing ourselves as unique or special;
• Thinking the circumstances of our life have or are in this moment creating our experience;
• Being self-absorbed.

In summary, we are lost in and limited by our conditioning, lacking the free-flow feeling of unlimited Possibility.

FROM THE REALM OF POSSIBILITY, ‘DOING WHAT WORKS AND MATTERS’ – ‘REALLY WORKS AND MATTERS’

In any aspect of our life, being in a state of Possibility enables us to see what really works and what matters in every situation.

In creating sustainable design, we:

• Operate from a context of kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense;
• Feel confident, clear-headed, passionate and present;
• Do whatever we do, free from the limitations of our training and conditioning;
• Our training and knowledge are still ‘on tap’ but not ‘on top’.
• Listen deeply to ourselves, others and to life;
• Are in alignment with our wisdom and common sense and thus not subject to pressure;
• Champion the advancement of the common good;
• Don’t follow unthinkingly or ‘toe the party line’;
• Act in the best interests of the common good – standing to be counted when we see the leader or the party line ‘out of alignment’;
• See beyond the status quo and, therefore, to what is possible;
• Know that Life seems to have a mind of its own, and don’t try to exert power and control;
• Feel connected and a part of others and nature;
• Experience a reverence for others and nature;
• Understand that we are unique individuals but ordinary in the grand scheme of Life;
• Are awake to the fact that we are creating our life via our thinking;
• Embrace both ‘outcome’ and ‘process’ in the context of kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense;
• Embrace both the imperatives of the ‘financial’ and ‘human’ costs in the context of ‘doing what really works’ and ‘doing what really matters’ in finding a way forward that supports both.

In summary, what really works and really matters is discovered or rediscovered by surrendering all that we believe to be ‘the truth of the matter’.

So there you have it, Michael! After almost *65 years of my life, 50 (believe that or not) of which involve the world of businesses and not-for-profit organisations, I discovered that in that world (and in our personal life), ‘doing what works’ or ‘doing what matters’ are ideological constructs. Thus, they are machine-like ways of looking at and engaging with life. They neither build sustainable organisations nor create sustainable relationships.

Those who agree with and conspire with us in our shared blindness do so out of fear.

These are relationships based on our mutual dependence and are thus weak and unsustainable.

The convergence of both what works and what matters, within the context of doing what really works and what really matters – the realm of Possibility – is the way of being in and contributing to a world that is ultimately sustainable.

It is such a simple solution to solving such monumental problems.

As such, presenting this understanding has its challenges!

From experience, at first blush, we can dismiss it as simplistic or unworkable.

The more entrenched or sophisticated the opinion or belief, the more ‘pie in the sky’ this seems – though, in reality, it is pragmatism at its best.

The only way we will know if this is the answer we are looking for in our business, our organisation or our relationships is if we see into The Realm of Possibility and look from that vantage point at ‘what we believe works’ and ‘what we believe matters’. Kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense imbues our being from this state of mind.

To see Possibility requires us to suspend all belief. That’s what it takes to access that state of mind.

However, for your sake, the sake of the people you work and live with, and for the sake of humanity, it is worth dedicating our lives to its unfolding and transformative power.

It will create healthy organisations and a world begging for completion.

Warmly … John

P.S. *At 81, Reviewing and editing these five letters to Michael for inclusion in A World of Possibility, it is now 66 years I’ve had the privilege of working in the world of businesses and organisations.