Posts Tagged ‘change’
Loosen Your Grip: Santosha and Riding the Waves of Change
Jennifer Cassidy
Lately, a lot of the conversations in my house start with the word “when”: “when the house renovations are done”; or “when we have more money”, or “when we have more time”, and even “when the kids are older”. It seems that my husband and I are always waiting for something, because something else is always stopping us from getting where we want to go. When I married my dear husband, he warned me about the “Cassidy luck” – meaning that if something can go wrong, it will. It really does seem that we have our fair share of trouble, lately too – house renovations are on hold while we fix the truck, the truck repairs are on hold while we wait for a new part, the new part is on hold while we wait for more money. Sometimes I think “Hurry Up and Wait” should be our family motto.
In the practice of yoga, there are four principles of self-discipline, or Niyamas. One of these principles is that of “Santosha”: the practice of developing equanimity with all things. To put it another way, Santosha is the acceptance that all things are both flawed and perfect at the same time, that everything is part of a larger dynamic system of life and death, and that the only constant thing in the universe is unending change. This acceptance that everything in one’s life is part of the larger system of the universe, and that change and complexity in that system is inevitable, allows the yogi to “loosen her grip” and roll gracefully over life’s bumpy road: the yogi reduces the complexity in their lives by accepting change as part of the process of life. I’ve been thinking that practicing Santosha on a personal level is similar in some ways to using Systems Thinking to work through complexity and change in organizations: in many organizations the most commonly heard words are “when” or “if”: “if accounting would just…” or “when the engineers get the act together…” for example. Systems Thinking means seeing the organization as a system and that everything that you need to solve the organizations problems is achievable by working with the organization as a system, rather than a set of unrelated parts with problems that need to be isolated and “fixed”.
It seems the more I practice yoga and the more I learn about the process of Systems Thinking, the more I realize that these two practices are really about behaving in a conscious manner. The consciousness that is required to practice equanimity in one’s personal life by making the decision to be “roll with the punches” of life and just be okay with what is happening in the here and now, and the critical consciousness that is required to practice Systems Thinking by leveraging change in an organization to produce positive results, are similar. In terms of outcomes, yogis know that physical and emotional abundance is the reward for practicing contentment with what is here and now, with being equanimous with the unending change in the world. Similarly, Systems Thinking practitioners know that the reward for equanimity within an organization means working with an organization as a whole system and consciously making decisions that put the organization in the position of riding the crest of constant change, and the reward is the same: abundance follows.
So, taking a little from my yoga practice and a little from Systems Thinking, I’ve been trying to see my household as a system in which change is not a disruption but more of a way of being. I’m trying to start conversations more constructively: instead of “when” I’ve been practicing saying “how” or “why”. I figure knowing the system means knowing how to make constructive decisions about the system rather than getting off on a track of discontentment about what is happening now: what is changing too fast, and what isn’t changing fast enough. I’ve even been thinking about a new family motto: In mutatione pax…Peace in Change!
Douglas Cardinal and Profound Change
Marilyn Herasymowych
Henry and I have always been fascinated with change, specifically with the kind of change that is profound and transformational. In his book, The Dance of Change, Peter Senge defines profound change as “…literally moving toward the fundamental. In profound change there is learning. The organization doesn’t just do something new; it builds its capacity for doing things in a new way – indeed, it builds capacity for ongoing change. … It is not enough to change strategies, structures, and systems, unless the thinking that produced those strategies, structures, and systems also changes (p. 15).” By the late 1990s we had experienced just how hard it was to create the conditions for profound change to occur, and to hold those conditions in place so that the change could be sustained.
On November 6, 1999, we were facilitating an action learning seminar in Ottawa, and were delighted to hear that Douglas Cardinal, a famous Canadian architect, would be the guest speaker in the evening. We had just spent the day with leaders, showing them how action learning is a process that creates profound change, but requires discipline and rules or controls to work. That evening, to our surprise, Douglas Cardinal would support what we had said with his own experience in creating a form of architecture that was itself a profound change. But, it wouldn’t be until I had had two cancer diagnoses that I would reconnect in a much more personal way with what he told us that evening in Ottawa.
In the mid 1960s, Cardinal saw the future in architecture. It was the computer – specifically the computational power of computers. In order for him to continue using his organic curvilinear designs on a larger scale, he would need the help of software that was not yet invented, software that Cardinal himself would help to develop and then beta test, software called computer-aided drafting and design or CADD for short. Cardinal would need one more thing. He would need his architectural and engineering staff to embrace this new way of working.
But his staff did not easily accept this change. They were far too comfortable with their drafting tables and pencils. So, Cardinal removed all of the drafting tables from their offices and broke all their pencils. It was like Cortez burning all of his ships. There would be no way back to the way it was.
Within 10 months of each other, I was diagnosed with two advanced and incurable cancers, both totally unrelated to each other, and both so traumatizing that it would change absolutely everything. Like Cortez, these cancers would burn all of my ships, and like Cardinal they would break all of my pencils. Within days of the first diagnosis, the tumour would almost kill me. The treatment for this cancer would drop a nuclear bomb on my life, creating a landscape with little hope for recovery. The second cancer would nail the coffin shut on what my life used to be. My pencils were now well and truly broken. There was no way back to the way it was.
But like Cardinal’s staff, I would not easily accept my new situation. I would stubbornly hold on to everything I thought my life was supposed to be, including how it was supposed to be after cancer treatment. I would not be swayed from this expectation. I didn’t care that my pencils were broken. I would mend them and life would return to normal. I would get my old life back, and that was it. Even with the death threat of a second cancer diagnosis, I struggled to accept that my life had now changed forever. I knew that acceptance was my only way out of the nuclear wasteland that was now my life, but I just couldn’t go there. Acceptance would require a type of faith that only saints grapple with, and I was not a saint.
Like Cardinal, who never accepted his lot as an architect to build the same old boxes that every other architect seemed to build, I have never accepted myself as a cancer survivor. I don’t want to just survive cancer. I want much more, but what that more now means is still a mystery. Like Cardinal, wanting no boundaries to his dream of building impressive organic buildings, I want a life worth living, regardless of whether or not I survive either of these two diagnoses. And like Cardinal, the software of this new life has not been written yet. I would not only have to write this new software, I would also have to beta-test it, one day at a time.
Today, each day is a struggle to live without my drafting table and with broken pencils. I still wake each morning, believing, for just a moment, that during the night my broken pencils have been mended, and my life is as it was. But then the effort of getting out of bed reminds me that this is not so. Although I still live with my broken pencils, my new future is not about living amongst the wreckage. When cancer broke all of my pencils, surviving was all that I had left. Now I want a life. What that looks like is yet to unfold for me.
Wheeler’s U: The Participant and the Observer
Blog Entry #4 by Marilyn Herasymowych
Marilyn Herasymowych
A new science called cognitive science is exploding with new information on how humans think, and how our thinking gives rise to our behaviours. Cognitive science covers a broad spectrum of science, including brain research, thinking, neurobiology, biochemistry, and psychology. The discoveries emerging from cognitive science are challenging the foundation of what we believe as a Western culture, and what it means to be human. For example, we now know that our minds are embodied, that most of our thinking is unconscious, and that nothing we think about or experience is emotion-free. This changes the way we think about our ability to exercise free will, and whether or not we can be rational without engaging our emotions.
For me, there is no question that this is true. Especially now, with the experience of two cancer diagnoses, treatment, surgeries, and a protracted recovery. As a result of my first cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, I was given the gift of observing what it might be like to die. I was in the hospital, watching myself desperately trying to get enough breath to sustain myself. My lungs were screaming in terror, my chest in shock as water drained uncontrollably off my right lung. It was Wednesday, March 25, 2009, only two days after my first chemo treatment.
I vividly recall having a chest tube inserted into my right pleural cavity to drain the water off my lung. At first, it was all so new to me, something I had never experienced. I had allowed student nurses to be present during the procedure, so there were a lot of people surrounding my bed. I was listening to what the doctor was saying, and imagining what it all looked like. It didn’t take long before I could breathe easily again, as 2.5 L of water drained quickly off my right lung. All seemed to be going well, and everyone left while I rested. Then suddenly, I was watching myself struggling to breathe. I was no longer in my body. Somehow, I was outside of my body, standing slightly beside the bed, calmly trying to figure out what I should do. I saw myself frantically pressing the call button. I saw the nurse rush into the room and clamp off my chest tube to stop the fluid from draining. I watched everything going on with no fear, no emotion, no curiosity – simply watching and thinking what I could do to help. There was my body flailing, desperate to breathe. And there was me watching as if there was no problem.
In his book, The User Illusion, Tor Nørretranders describes how John Wheeler, a famous physicist, summarized what he believed humans knew about the world. His model is called Wheeler’s U (shown below).
Wheeler's U
Wheeler believed that the way in which we observe the universe also helps to create it. For example, if we think in linear ways, we will see a linear universe; therefore, we will create a linear universe. When faced with complex non-linear problems, we will try to solve these problems in linear ways, without understanding why our solutions do not work. If we consider that we are also running in an unconscious mode most of the time, it is small wonder that we cannot seem to solve complex problems or take advantage of complex opportunities. In the situation with the chest tube, I was the observer watching my body (the participant) flailing, desperate to breathe.
But I have also been on the other side, a participant, unable to find the observer in me. When diagnosed with breast cancer less than a year after being diagnosed and treated for lymphoma, the world as I knew it imploded. I was too traumatized to observe what was going on during the surgery to remove the tumour. When the day of surgery arrived, I lost it. I couldn’t hold onto myself, and I became a crazy person, totally irrational and out of control. I went to bed the night before in tears, crying so hard that I couldn’t breathe. I woke up in tears, needing Henry to help me to get dressed. I cried in the waiting room at the diagnostic centre. I cried when I was given a needle with the radioactive tracer. I screamed when the technicians inserted the surgical wire that would guide the surgeon to the tumour. I cried when I got into the car and Henry drove me to the hospital. I cried while I waited to be admitted into the hospital. I cried while getting changed for the surgery. I cried while being wheeled into the surgical waiting area. I cried when the surgeon came to talk with me, and again when the anaesthesiologist came to discuss my situation with my leg weakness. I cried and cried and cried, and cried some more. Then, it was over and I couldn’t cry anymore.
Wheeler’s U demonstrates the degree to which we are thinking and acting from our unconscious. In their book, Philosophy in the Flesh, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson state that most cognitive operations in the human brain are largely unconscious. In fact, it is thought that the estimate now used of 95% unconscious is a serious underestimate. They call these cognitive operations the cognitive unconscious, and describe it as all of the unconscious mental operations and structures involved in language, meaning, perception, conceptual systems, and reason. This 95% below the surface of our consciousness shapes all of our conscious thought. Lakoff and Johnson call this cognitive unconscious a hidden hand that shapes the stories we tell about the experiences we have. Superimposing this 95% unconscious on Wheeler’s U, you can see that the majority of our waking moments is actually unconscious. If we are not aware of how much we do that is unconscious, we can find it very difficult to think and act in a conscious state.
Wheeler's U and the Unconscious
That day in the hospital with the chest tube, I think I touched death, or at least the impression of it. As I observed myself, I was “holding death lightly”, as if it were a new-born child lying patiently and contentedly in my arms. This is an example of melding the observer with the participant in Wheeler’s U, from an unconscious state to a more conscious one.
With the breast cancer surgery, I couldn’t lift myself from an unconscious state to a more conscious one. The trauma was too great, and I succumbed to what was happening, living the nightmare as a pure participant, totally operating from my unconscious. I was numb, unable to breathe, unable to smile, unable to talk. I got better after a few days, but I still couldn’t lift myself into a more conscious state. All I could do was lift the experience into a more conscious state. I could dissect the experience, but I was still completely gripped by the trauma. I kept thinking about how breast cancer is a killer. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I kept seeing my mother’s face just before she died, writhing in agony as cancer ripped out her humanity and her soul. I was losing my grip on reality, drowning in fear.
To find the eye in the storm that has become my life, and to regain some sense of control, I use all of the forms of systems thinking I have available to me. Any form of non-linear systems thinking brings the cognitive unconscious to a conscious level, and with it a sense of control and calm. Systems thinking brings us out of an observer role in a system, and into to the role of a participant-observer within the system dynamic.
Wheeler's U and Systems Thinking
According to Lakoff and Johnson, unless we gain an understanding of the cognitive unconscious, and its effect on our thinking and actions, we cannot easily create new ways of thinking and acting. The key is to bring the cognitive unconscious to a conscious level, to bring us into the role of a participant-observer within the situation in which we find ourselves. Once we are conscious of the fact that we are operating from our cognitive unconscious, we can make choices about what we want to do with this knowledge — how we think and act.
I have few choices now in terms of what I can do with my life. None of these choices, in my opinion, are good choices, and all of them are hard. The trick for me is to be able to live a life worth living, while in the grip of two incurable and advanced cancers, and the side effects of treatment. To me, this means living both the participant and the observer experience simultaneously. I don’t know if I can ever shut off the fear and anxiety that is now so much a part of my life, and deeply embedded in my unconscious. But, this cancer experience has shown me that it is possible to hold both places together, as I did when I had the chest tube inserted in my pleural cavity. The participant and observer don’t necessarily cancel each other out. Rather, they find a way to co-exist.
Note: If you’d like to know more about Marilyn’s cancer journey, check out her blog at www.cancerbrokeallmypencils.com.
Solving Real Problems in Real Time: Action Learning
It is an understatement to say that organizations are experiencing more change than ever before. In fact, most of us are finally getting used to the idea that constant change is a part of living and working within organizations. What is less understood is how to work within the uncertainty, instability, confusion, and loss of control that accelerating change creates. To deal with the conditions that change creates, we use all of the skills, knowledge, and experience that we have at our disposal. However, when we try to fix problems, we can make them worse than they were in the first place. Then, we ask ourselves questions to try to make sense of the resulting confusion: “What is going on? What are we doing wrong? Why can’t we make things better? Why do our fixes not work?” Common answers to these questions are even less helpful: “It’s their fault! We didn’t have enough time or resources to do it right! We didn’t get any help! We should have known what to do!”
The reason that we fail to solve these complex problems has little to do with being smart enough to deal with accelerating change. It has more to do with not being smart in a way that works when the degree of complexity is so high. Nothing that we have learned in the past has prepared us to deal with increasing complexity and the change that it creates. Unless we think and act differently, we will continue to struggle with problems we cannot seem to solve.
If we are to match the speed of change, or, perhaps, to slow it down and to change its direction, we need a completely different approach to dealing with complexity. Action learning is such an approach — a way of thinking and acting that enables us to solve real problems in real time, and to create the resilience required to deal with complexity and change.
Navigating Through Complexity: Systems Thinking
Without question, increasing change and complexity are creating a storm that few organizations are able to weather. As the storm gains momentum, it lashes out in unpredictable ways, leaving many complex problems in its wake. You may deal with the resulting problems by trying to control what you can. You may use tried-and-true methods to cope with the problems and opportunities that the storm brings, only to find that your efforts create little or no change in the situation, and may, in fact, make things worse. You may notice that almost every tack you take works less and less well, making you feel less effective. As change accelerates, it creates even more complexity, thus further eroding your sense of competency.
When you start feeling out of control, you can easily become a victim of forces that you do not understand. It is a vicious cycle: change and complexity feed off each other to create even more change and complexity! The end result can be an exhausted workforce, unable to deal with the overwhelming problems that change and complexity bring.
People are tired of dealing with the constant storm of complexity and its after-effects. This tiredness is a symptom of complexity overload. The symptoms of complexity overload can be found in every corner of the organization ¾ it is only a question of degree. To cope with complexity overload, people navigate through the storm by using current skills and knowledge, which may help them to reach the eye of the storm, but not to clear the storm altogether. Systems thinking is an effective way to navigate out of the storm, and to be prepared for other storms.
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