3.5 Flourishing Organisations – Business Excellence: What it Means, What it Looks Like, How it is Achieved

Flourishing organisations are mostly positive organisations.The evidence is clear; there are win-win-win benefits from taking on the “flourishing” approach – win for the business, win for our people, and win for our customers and the community at large. So, what does flourishing actually mean? Fredrickson and Losada[1] define it as, … to live within an optimal range of human functioning, one that connotes goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience.It sounds great and we should all be doing it; right? Unfortunately, the natural human tendency is to be three-to-four times more negative than positive, and the motivation to defend a loss is twice as powerful as the possibility to gain. So, based on those numbers, the required magnitude of change in culture and environment could be six-fold or more. With that magnitude of change, I still have the words of Sue Langley (from the Langley Group) ringing in my ears, You better be practicing this stuff in the good times, because you’re really going to need it in the tough times! Even in the good times, it can be hard to get over the natural human tendency to be negative, as a recent conversation with a business owner of a reasonably successful med-sized organisation testifies. I was talking about creating a flourishing organisation, and I received a sharp rebuke, So, who the hell is going to tell everyone what they are doing wrong? If I take my eye anyone, even for a moment, were just going to go down the gurgler!The evidence however, is that catching people doing the right thing at least three times more often than finding faults, will generate better-performing organisations, as the title of an article[2] so aptly puts it, Will You be there for Me When Things Go Right? A study by Fredrickson and Losada[3], found that there was a tipping point that moved an organisation from languishing to flourishing, and it was a positive-negative ratio of 2.9:1 or more. It is however, not a linear relationship, and there was also an upper end to the ratio, where at 11.6:1, ... the beginning of a disintegration of the dynamics of flourishing first starts to appear. So, to answer the business owner’s comment above, there needs to be some balancing negative consequences, but nowhere near as much as what most human beings think is appropriate, or indeed feel is natural.nbsp;Why is this the case? Why do humans respond so well to a positive environment, but are naturally critical, cautious, and negative? We have to look to evolutionary biology for an answer. Think about our DNA; it has been evolving over millions of years and has kept us as a species alive despite our limited physical prowess. In early human times, every day was literally a matter of life and death, and so our negative responses had to be highly tuned and constantly scanning the horizon for danger, and our fight-flight-freeze responses had to be swift. The fight-flight-freeze response triggers our brain to releases adrenaline and cortisol, both of which prepare our bodies for a short-term response. The key is that it is meant for a short-term response. Studies however have demonstrated that long-term exposure to these hormones will cause harmful affects to our bodies, such as an increase in heart disease and even a shortening of life[4].What has happened in more modern times, is we have substituted real physical threat, with psychological or emotional threat, and created environments where people can be in constant threat-response mode. Fredrickson’s broaden and build theory[5] explains why it is important to move out of environments that are constantly stressful, anxiety raising, and combatant. Apart from the growing evidence that it is causing long-term health issues, it also limits our ability for strategising and generating creative solutions (see the Broaden-and-Build Theory funnel graphic above).Earlier investigations postulated that there didn’t seem to be a purpose to positive emotions such as playfulness, joy, and even happiness itself[6], but as Fredrickson went on to argue, the human brain is too resource hungry and physiologically expensive, not to have developed those emotions for a purpose. Another way to look at this is depicted in the four-quadrant graphic below, which maps the level of energy against a negative-to-positive scale of emotions (adapted from Mood Meter, which is a great app for understanding and tracking your emotions and assessing the triggers). Our evolution would suggest that all emotions have a place, but it seems that in our modern environment, the utility of our emotions have become confused.I studied Sports Psychology in its early days of academic development, and the critical elements then, were to visualise success and winning, and control your self talk and emotions. In our new era of positive psychology, the key change has been to recognise all emotions as legitimate, not to try and suppress them, and avoid labelling them as “good” or “bad”. How does this relate to the working environment? As Brown recommends in Dare to Lead[7], we have to start with the assumption that people have positive intent and want to do a good job, but in many work environments, that positive intent is turned off when people get to work. So what goes wrong? Firstly, many organisations, either deliberately or accidentally, create stress and tension, which our primitive DNA translates as a physical threat. Secondly, there is the speed of reaction which the brain reacts to a perceived threat, versus the slower engagement of the reward part of the brain. Threats in organisations could be as simple as missing a deadline, a confrontation with a co-worker, fear of being fired, missing out on a promotion, and many others.It makes sense that a threat stimulates a response almost instantaneously, i.e. if survival depends on the fight-flight-freeze response, then it better happen quickly. Similarly, it makes sense that positive states will take longer to engage because there is no immediate urgency. As I often say to organisations, the non-urgent, but important things, are often put off or postponed because the urgent and important, and sometimes the urgent and trivial, take precedent. This also seems to apply to creating a positive emotional state, i.e. it is important, but it takes time and is not urgent.Fredrickson goes on to describe why creating positive environments might have evolved the way it has. As I mentioned above, we shouldnt label emotions as good or bad, but we can label the resultant behaviour as good or bad.Lets go back to our pre-historic, cave-dwelling ancestors, as an analogy. The red quadrant would have been useful when defending the tribe from other tribes, killing the beast to eat, or evading the hungry lion. These would have been episodic and short-lived events. I have theorised that the blue quadrant, would have been characterised more by flight, e.g. the woolly mammoth has been brought down, but the hunters are still not safe. They would have needed to work fast and diligently to dismember the beast into parts easy enough to carry back, while keeping a wary eye out for other predators whod want to steal their prize. Indeed there is evidence to show that if people are doing error-proofing work, or checking the detail, then this emotional state produces better results.It then becomes interesting, in understanding what value there is to the green low-energy but positive-emotion quadrant. It has been suggested that this is important for restoration and recovery, and there is evidence that it has an undoing effect on negativity. To continue the analogy, the hunters are back to the safety of the cave, have been able to satiate their hunger, and start to wind down. When that happens, the adrenaline and cortisol released during fight-flight-freeze is replaced by dopamine, which is a key hormone that stimulates the pre-frontal cortex. The pre-frontal cortex is the part of the brain responsible for thinking and logic, and balancing against the impulsive reptilian part of the brain. It does however take a longer period of time, and hence the importance of this low-energy / high-positive quadrant is to chill out until balance has been restored.Finally, we can then close the loop with the yellow high-energy / high-positive emotion quadrant, in that it is important for being collaborative, creativity, generating ideas and options, and strategising about long-term survival. For our cave-dwelling ancestors, this would have been how to better survive the hunt tomorrow. Coming back to today, isnt this an area where we want to be spending more time in our organisations, i.e. protecting our longer-term organisational survival?If you buy that arguement, we then need our organisations to set the climate up to foster and hold onto a positive state, and give people the techniques for recognising and managing negative emotions.For example, one technique I often use is RADD, which is designed to anticipate and appropriately leverage my own, and others, emotions. RADD has four steps:Recognise the emotion: the Mood Meter table above describes various emotions based on whether they are positive or negative, and whether they are low or high in energy, so this is about getting good at recognising emotions and understanding what triggers them.Acknowledge the implications: as the Broaden-and-Build Theory suggests, negative emotions tend to limit response choices, and, positive emotions tend to create a broader range of responses and increases available resources and options.Have a dialogue with yourself, and / or others, around the implications and pros and cons of that emotional state, e.g. Im really anxious because I have a report to get done this afternoon, and I havent even started! Question for oneself or someone else: Have you ever been in this situation before? Answer: Yes, and I got the report done in time, so relax and just get started.Defer the negative emotions by changing the environment. Question: Whats stopping you getting started? Response: I am just getting so many interruptions -- OK, I get it, I wont go home, therell be even more interruptions there, but I can go to the library. Also, adding to this, there is compelling evidence that shows that deliberately creating positive emotions, will reverse the negative state, and this reversal, will last a long time post the initial reversal.One of my triggers for high-energy / high-negative emotions, is driving home after flying in from a work trip. While I usually love driving and find it cathartic, I am prone to a bit of mild road rage after a trip. I am usually fatigued, desperate to sleep in my own bed, and missing the family, so anyone in my way or slowing me down, automatically puts me in the red quadrant. Psychologists call this an “amygdala hijack”, and it is where negative emotion bypass the thinking logical part of the brain, and go straight from the reptilian part of the brain to the body. In my case that is straight to my mouth and an obscenity escapes without any conscious thought. Suffice to say, since Ive been using RADD, my drive home is far more pleasant than it used to be.We also however need to be mindful of the type of people we have in the organisation. Carole Dweck[8], describes two types of mindsets, or more accurately, varying degrees of five characteristics that define either a “fixed” mindset or a “growth” mindset. The simple difference is that “fixed” mindset people believe that intelligence and capability is static or fixed, and “growth” mindset people believe intelligence and capability can be developed. This leads to fixed-mindset people wanting to look smart and make everything they do look effortless, and growth-mindset people wanting to continue to learn and develop throughout life.Studies show that developing a “growth” mindset increases productivity, creates motivation and enhances relationships. “Growth” mindset people see their genetic capability as just the starting point for growth, where “fixed” mindset people, see it “… as the hand you’re dealt and stuck with.” The important thing is that mindsets are “beliefs” and in experimental conditions, have been shown to be malleable --nbsp;it is the old saying, “If you think you can, then you can; if you think you can’t, then you can’t.”The five key elements of fixed” and “growth” mindsets are how people deal with challenges, obstacles, effort, feedback and criticism, and success of others (see the table to the right for a broader description).As a colleague made a quip recently, that the test question to ask about whether you are fixed or growth in mindset, is, When you leave a meeting, do you leave the people in it less energised than when it started, or more? Ouch! That hurt, because I know that Ive contributed to deflating meetings at times.What are a few of the practical things you can do to start to create a flourishing organisation? I’m going to dig deeper into this in the next couple of weeks, but a summary is:Ask that culture question I referred to in a previous blog. Is it a keep your head down environment, or is it a broadening environment that builds positive energy, and stimulates and rewards ideas and creativity?Set up the culture to catch and acknowledge people doing the right things, and I dont mean, compliments, such as, You look great today. I mean, statements such as, Wow, the way you handled that customer complaint, not only followed our protocol perfectly, the customer seemed really happy at the end.Show off what is working well. There is compelling evidence from Sports Psychology, that people exposed to how to do it right, out perform teams who are shown their weaknesses and given feedback on their mistakes.Identify people’s strengths and intrinsic motivators, and allow the organisation to leverage them.Network map the fixed and growth mindset people and develop the growth mindset people to positively charge others. This is counter intuitive, but evidence shows that if you spend more time on your high-performing people than the poor-performing people, overall the results are better.Get serious about monitoring emotions and leverage them for not only managing peoples stress levels, but also developing the techniques for unwinding negativity.On a final note, positive organisations are not soft organisations. They are goal driven and have the same issues as every other business. The difference is that they are tapping into human strengths, creativity, as our DNA, as it was meant to be used.Thanks for reading, and I look forward to next week, where I’ll explore how we can develop high-performance teams ... and its not in the traditional way you might already know.If you like what you read here, please share with your network, and also, if you see areas for improving the quality and relevance of the content,nbsp;please feel free to share your comments and questions.https://www.oliverwight.com/[1] Fredrickson, B.L. and Losada, M.F., (2005), “Positive Affect and the Complex Dynamics of Human Flourishing”, American Psychologist.[2] Gable, S.L., Gonzaga, G.C., and Strachman, A., (2006), “Will You be there for Me When Things Go Right? Supportive Responses to Positive Event Disclosures”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.[3] Fredrickson, B.L. and Losada, M.F., (2005), “Positive Affect and the Complex Dynamics of Human Flourishing”, American Psychologist.[4] Fredrickson, B.L., (2003), “The Value of Positive Emotions”, American Scientist.[5] Fredrickson, B.L., (2001), “The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology”, American Psychologist.[6] Fredrickson, B.L., (2003), “The Value of Positive Emotions”[7] Brown, B. (2018), “Dare to Lead”, Random House.[8] Dweck, C., (2019), “Mindset”, Little, Brown Book Group.[9] Porath. C and Pearson, Porath, C. and Pearson, C., (2009), “How Toxic Colleagues Corrode Performance”, Harvard Business Review.#excellence #paradigms #competitive #integration #IBP #positioning #decisionmaking #coach #gameplan #training #strategy #innovation #lean #planning #vision #mission #values #discipline #mindset #positive #wellbeing #communication #change #transformation #flourishing