Category Archives: Uncategorized

Get Past Inertia (Part One)

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Arie de Geus, an ex-Shell executive turned consultant, has researched why certain companies over one hundred years old have been so successful. The twenty-seven companies he studied were able to successfully get past inertia, sustain themselves, and grow over time. They managed to withstand economic changes while staying true to their mission, without resorting solely to the tactic of acquiring companies to stay afloat in their market. He found three characteristics common to these successful companies:

Once we start moving in a certain direction or doing something a certain way it is hard to stop or change. That is inertia. And while this is true for individuals, it is even stronger in a group dynamic. If you want to innovate, you need to change. And in order to effect change you need to overcome the natural tendency toward inertia.

Arie de Geus, an ex-Shell executive turned consultant, has researched why certain companies over one hundred years old have been so successful. The twenty-seven companies he studied were able to successfully get past inertia, sustain themselves, and grow over time. They managed to withstand economic changes while staying true to their mission, without resorting solely to the tactic of acquiring companies to stay afloat in their market. He found three characteristics common to these successful companies:

  1. They practice fiscal conservancy.
  2. They are open to new ideas from both inside and outside the organization.
  3. They have established a strong community of values that resonates with their employees, making them feel they can take risks and not be fired if they don’t succeed—the feeling of belonging to a community helps overcome the fear of failure and the anticipation of potential negative consequences at a personal level.

Although point one relates to classic best practices in business, points two and three tell us why play—something not in the typical business best-practices toolbox—is key in a work culture in ensure the longevity of an organization. Openness to new ideas and a fundamental level of trust are inherent in a playful atmosphere, and play is an essential ingredient in generating innovative ideas.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Defining Play

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Bianca Le Mouël

So what is play?  Is it the same as fun?  Sort of. The key ingredient in play is engagement: engagement within your own mind, with another person, or with an object. Play is always a dynamic experience.  Play is really about immersing oneself in a pleasurable activity for the sake of it, with no other particular intent or specific goal.  It can be about immersing oneself in reading a book, drawing, sculpting, or fixing a collector’s item such as an antique piece of furniture for the love of restoring a beautiful object.  Play can be experienced alone or in a group.  In business, observing people play, I have seen the energy in the room immediately become lighter and stronger.  Play creates new ways of interactions, allows a different type of bonding, encourages trust among team members, lowers inhibition, and facilitates, the production of original ideas because people dare to speak up and express themselves more.

The Power of Play

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Bianca Le Mouël

Play is magical.  And profound.  Not only is it essential to our growth and development when we are children and a source of joy throughout our lives, but it is also a largely untapped channel for innovative ideas in the work place.

Play is essential to the survival of organizations in a complex and fast-changing marketplace, as it is a key factor in creativity and agility.  I have used play to help people become more creative, deal with challenging emotions like self-consciousness or even fear, and regain energy, enthusiasm, and hope when their company was going through difficult times.  Play opens the doors to our deeper creative potential, helping us achieve change and implement innovative solutions.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011

What is Intuitive Intelligence?

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Bianca Le Mouël

Intuitive Intelligence is a set of skills I designed that uses intuition to get to the instinctual and nonconscious parts of our minds.  It can be learned and developed, but because instinct does not operate in the same way as reason, Intuitive Intelligence requires unusual forms of learning and thinking.  This is why understanding intuition is key.

Intuition doesn’t seek “the truth” or even “sense.” Intuition is completely open to non-sense.  It dives down into the depths of the unconscious where reason and instinct collide in unexpected ways, and it latches onto hidden connections and contradictions.  Then it brings this information—via an unusual sign, a rare sensation, an unexpected feeling, or a seemingly irrelevant fact—to the surface of consciousness to feed the rational mind and enable logic to work with paradox.  Intuition empowers us to operate in the zone of ambiguity and change, the exact place where imagination and genius occur.

Intuitive Intelligence helps us survive in new and changing environments by incorporating intuition and instinct into our thought process and our business endeavors.  The purpose of instinct is survival.  Its ultimate mission is to ensure the sustainability of our species.  It understands how to collaborate with and with and adapt to our ecosystems. This is its inherent wisdom.  This is why Intuitive Intelligence is so needed today.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

 

How to be successful in chaos

Posted on October 5, 2014 by Bianca Le Mouël

We attempt to interact with one another and arrange our institutions in hierarchical pyramids, because we have been taught that the world fundamentally operates according to physical laws that believe that our minds can and should operate in hierarchical way, the reason directing feeling and instinct. But that thinking doesn’t match up with reality.

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The hierarchical view of the world only tells part of the story. It is a reflection of the classical physics of the atom: a limited, finite, separate, stable entity that is always precisely identifiable in space and time. But in the 1920s, physicist like Niels Bohr discovered that we cannot describe the reality of subatomic—or quantum—particles. These entities are not separate and stable, but random and chaotic. Subatomic particles cannot be precisely identified in space and time except within certain probabilities, and they area entangled in mysterious ways that Albert Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.”

To describe reality fully, we need both classical Newtonian physics and quantum physics. Likewise, to understand how our unconscious and conscious minds work, we need to account for instinct and feeling as well as reason, for both chaotic thinking and linear thinking. As the second decade of the twenty-first century starts, even many scientists remain only dimly aware of the implications or quantum physics for the nature of reality, from the makeup of the physical world to the operations of our minds and their creative processes. That doesn’t leave much hope for the rest of us.

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The good new is you don’t need to fully understand the theory to understand how to be successful in our chaotic world. What you do need is Intuitive Intelligence.