How many times
has the phrase,
"But, in the real world..." been
thrown back at you by someone? It was no doubt designed to stop you in
your tracks so they could avoid confronting
a serious, big picture, issue.
Similarly, you may have been confronted by
people who consider values soft,
"We deal with 'the real world' around
here and don't have time for soft stuff
like values!"
The irony is that people coming from
this space are actually the ones who are
avoiding dealing with the real
world. Bart Kosko, in Fuzzy
Thinking: The new science of fuzzy logic,
points out that people who see the world
in black and white terms -
guilty/not-guilty, right/wrong, etc.
(bivalent logic), are dealing only with
special case extremes of the real
world. Between the extremes of black
and white lies an infinite world of
other possibilities - the real world.
The black and white, binary world of
true or false, guilty or not guilty, only
exists in the abstract conceptual world of
mathematics and it only exists there
because we have arbitrarily defined it
that way through a person-made set of constructs on which maths is based: e.g. 1 + 1
= 2 because we have defined it that way. In the real world, 1 + 1 is always
more or less than two (no two real world items are
ever absolutely identical - additionally, when
real world items are combined, properties can emerge that could
not have even been predicted through a
knowledge of the properties of the individual
components. It is often only in hindsight
(from experience), that one can say what
may happen when entities are combined.
Defining terms and
constructs may work to our advantage in
the abstract world of mathematics,
however, in the real world we face what
Whitehead (cited Birch 1999) calls The Fallacy of the
Perfect Dictionary: Reducing our
understanding of the world to sets of
definitions lacks the power of delicate
accuracy of expression. As Charles Birch
explains (1999, p. 10):
I remember, to my
chagrin, asking Sir Karl Popper what was
his definition of mind. He replied, in
no uncertain terms, that it was no way
to start a serious discussion by
defining terms. Once you do that you
give the impression that you know the
answer before you have started. On
another occasion Popper said that when
people ask him to define a word that he
has used, he usually instead proposes a
different word. When we ask the
question, what is life? we soon realise
that a simple definition will get us
nowhere. What the question can do is to
initiate a discussion of a complex issue
that may bring us to a greater
understanding of the question than we
had when we began the discussion. Blaise
Pascal said, 'Le
dieu defini est le dieu fini'.
How can you define something that is
infinite in finite terms?
The fallacy of
the perfect dictionary divides
philosophy, said Whitehead, into two
schools; the critical school and the
speculative school. The critical school
confines itself to verbal analysis
within the limits of the dictionary. The
speculative school enlarges the
dictionary by exploring meanings and
seeking further insights. It is willing
to have an attitude of adventure in the
face of mystery and ignorance. The
divergence between the two is, suggests
Whitehead, the quarrel between safety
and adventure.
'The black-and-white
world of science...[is] unreasonable, as
when a zealous prosecutor or judge applies
the letter and not the spirit of the law
and you end up in jail if you spit on the
sidewalk or deduct a nonbusiness dinner on
your tax forms or mail-order the wrong
magazine. Language, especially the math
language of science creates artificial
boundaries between black and white. Reason
or common sense smooths them out. Reason
works with greys.' (Kosko 1994, p. 15) We need a grey language
to describe and understand a grey world. The language of
values is such a language.
Stuck in a rut?
Until
we learn the language of values, we are
likely to be guided unconsciously by our values. A former colleague and close fiend
of mine, Rosie Bergin, described living
one's values unconsciously by likening the
life journey to a maze. If we keep going
down the same path in a maze, we will
never get through, continually coming to
the same dead end. To find one's way
through a maze, we have to back-track and
try different paths until we finally
arrive at our desired destination. If we
keep making choices from values that we
hold unconsciously, we will never find our
way through life's maze, as Birch (1999, p.
27), quoting
Singer, explains:
Achievements
of the past can block, rather than
foster, the development of a new, more
desirable intangible sort of good. There
is a word which describes this state. It
is 'addiction'. Peter Singer has
written a book on why people make the
choices of lifestyle they do. He points
out that most of the choices we make in
our everyday lives are restricted ones,
in that they are made from within a
given framework or set of values. The
rich man knows how to be rich and that is
the framework of his choices in the
future. He knows, or thinks he knows
what is of value to him and he continues
to choose in that direction, even when
it brings a sense of emptiness. He
chooses the soft option.
Breaking
free!
When we learn the language of values
and use it consciously to explore any
restraining beliefs we may hold, the
process can be a powerful myth
breaker. 'Myth busting' through values
exploration challenges us to break away
from a world of delusion and false belief
and asks us to confront the real reality -
or as a line in the movie Sister
Kenny goes, "It's what we know that
ain't so that matters."
As an example of
using values for 'myth busting' take a
person who places a very high priority on
money. Chances are they have made this
their priority because they believe it
will bring them happiness. However, there is absolutely
no evidence in the real world that money
brings happiness:
A study was made in
the USA comparing people with two sorts
of beliefs. One group believed that
happiness lay in the pursuit of external
goals of wealth, fame and physical
attractiveness. The other believed that
happiness lay in the pursuit of
intrinsic goals of personal
relationships and contributing to the
community. Which group were happiest?
Answer: those with intrinsic goals.
Furthermore, extrinsic-oriented
individuals had shorter, more
conflictual and competitive
relationships that made a negative
impact on the life of others. In short,
the pursuit of goals for money and fame
led to a lower quality of life than the
goals of relatedness and community
feeling. (Eckersley cited Birch 1999, p.
27)
On the topic of
happiness, Csikszentmihalyi (1988, p. 1)
observes that, 'While
happiness itself is sought for its own
sake, every other goal—health, beauty,
money, or power—is valued only because
we expect that it will make us happy'.
So
if happiness is the penultimate goal, and
money is not the path to happiness, what
is?
Csikszentmihalyi (1988) found a simple
answer:
- It requires consciously
following our values (not those of others
that's been a slave or puppet),
- It
requires challenging ourselves to live our
values more fully,
- It requires
gaining more skills in living our values
so we can keep 'upping' the challenge. (Too much challenge and you
will get anxious or frustrated - the
solution: get more relevant skills. Not enough challenge and you will get
bored - the solution: find more challenge
in living your values.)
One more point: the
path to happiness requires effort! The black-and-white world of artificial
'rational' logic is the easy path. In
life, whenever we trade the expressive
power and accuracy of fuzziness for
black-and-white logic, we over simplify
and thus avoid the effort required to deal
with real reality.
[Actions have costs:]
Bivalence or rounding off trades
accuracy for simplicity. When you round
off, you pay in truth and accuracy and
honesty for what you gain in simplicity
and precision and conformity. Denial
does not eliminate the costs. A little
rounding off, like a little debt, never
hurt anyone. But even a little rounding
off, like a little bit of pregnancy, can
lead to surprises. If you round off too
much, you pay the penalty of bivalent
self-contradiction and land in
paradox...[Paradox reminds] us that
walking through math differs from
walking through the universe. (Kosko
1994, pp. 91 & 97)
Don't
get me wrong. I'm not knocking the wealthy
and I'm not implying there's something
wrong with having money. What I am saying
is, that setting a goal to have lots of
money is pointless because money is itself
not a value. Rather, money is an
information system by which people in our
society indicate to others, through its
exchange, how much they value what people
are doing.
Not even making an
organisational goal of maximising return
on investment to shareholders makes any
sense:
Shareholders' return
on investment has never been a big
turn-on for anyone, unless you're one of
the major shareholders.
The great
organizations know that there's more to
life than shareholder return, even while
they manage that part of their business.
Great organizations are not just
organizations that spout a bunch of
platitudes every morning before the
workday begins. They walk more than
their talk, and they are able to be true
to themselves. They also tend to make
a lot of money. Isn't that
wonderful? Greatness is a commercially
viable proposition that pays of handsomely.
What kind of
organization would you rather work for?
One in which you could express what is
highest in your spirit, or one that doesn't
care for you personally but just needs
someone like you to do a job so it can
make more shareholder profit? Where
would you work? Not too many
people would choose the latter
organization. What does that tell us
about ourselves? That we would rather be
a member of a company that stands for
values, that reaches for its future,
that cares about its people than one
that doesn't. (Fritz 1999, p. 208)
One goal in life that does makes sense is
to find our true purpose. Michael
Henderson (2003) calls this our True
North. Fritz calls this our dynamic
urge:
Our dynamic urge is wired into us. We
don't choose to have it, we just have
it. We can't get rid of it either,
although sometimes we may drive it
underground in ourselves. We cannot add
to it, take away from it, or fake it.
The dynamic
urge is a genuine phenomenon of the
human spirit in which people, no matter
what the circumstances, continue to want
to create something that matters to
them.
...Organizations,
like people, have a form of dynamic
urge. This force exists in the purpose
of the organization. It is found in the
hope people have for the organization.
It can't be manufactured by adopting
certain behaviors. It cannot be declared
into existence. You can't fake it, even
if you are a good faker at other things.
You can't fake that you have it when you
don't have it. When it is thwarted, it doesn't
go away; it smoulders as an undercurrent
of frustration that builds over time.
Many people
have very strong dynamic urges that they
are not able to express in organizations
that they work for, and this is sad,
because they both lose. The person loses
time that would be better spent on being
involved with something that mattered to
him or her. The organization loses
because a person with a strong dynamic
urge wants to join in any way possible
to help create the organization.
When
the organization is filled with people
who have strong dynamic urges and it, by
itself, has a strong dynamic urge, then
magic can happen. We still need to set
up the right structure so that the path
of least resistance advances us toward
our goals, but the juice is there, ready
to be turned on.
I
am a big believer in people being true
to their aspirations and values. I am a
big believer in the organization being
true to itself as well. (Fritz 1999, pp.
186-187)
In
the real world, values
are not 'soft'. The soft option is to
avoid exploring personal and
organisational values, to avoid harnessing
the true potential of individuals, and to
avoid putting in the effort required to
create a great organisation. The
hard, yet worth it many times over, option
is to unfold meaning and purpose for
individuals and organisations through
values - no pain no gain as they say! The
very reason for existence of the
Minessence Group is to make this process
as accessible to people and organisations
as possible. To do this, a range of
values' technologies and resources have
been developed. The very latest of these
technologies for individuals is the True
North PAK: people can go online and
take an inventory of their values and the
book, Finding True North, is
provided as a support resource.
For
organisations, a similar technology to the
True North PAK has been developed. Apart
from enabling people within an
organisation to find their True North, it
facilitates the process of organisations
identifying their own true values and
purpose.
But
in the real world? Avoiding the
exploration of values is soft. Unfolding
meaning and purpose through values is hard
work, but well worth it - just ask someone
in any great organisation!
References
Birch,
C. 1999, Biology and the Riddle of Life,
University of New South Wales, Sydney.
Csikszentmihalyi,
M. 1992, Flow: The Psychology of
happiness, Random House.
Fritz,
R. 1999, The Path of Least Resistance
For Managers:
Designing Organizations to Succeed,
Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco.
Henderson,
M. 2003, Finding True North: Discover
your values, enrich your life, Harper
Business, Auckland.
Kosko,
B. 1994, Fuzzy Thinking:
The New Science of Fuzzy Logic,
Harper Collins, London.
Rowe,
D. 1997, The Real Meaning of Money,
Harper Collins, London.
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