Part 2: Journeys towards thriving

So by now you’ve already read part 1 . There might have been some recognition. Some of the descriptions brought a smile to your face. We can’t leave you hanging there. This one explores the possible moves and what they look like? What do they feel like? Who are the inhabitants of these four quadrants of paralysis, escape, parenting and thriving. And how do the ones not already thriving get to thrive?

The thing in any ecological system is that it’s geared towards homeostasis. This is not a static state but one that consists of constant adjustments, in relationship with its environment. As long as the environment is experienced in a particular way the homeostasis remains the best available strategy. If the environment shifts in some way, even in the perception of it, the best strategy for being in the environment will also shift. Things remain the same for very good reasons, because they work and adjustments are tricky for that very reason: ‘everything’ is geared towards keeping some particular thing happening, just the way that it is.?

Like a thermostat (the classic cybernetic example) where the heating elements will be on or off depending on if the actual temperature is below or above the set temperature. In that case the thermostat controls the heat but, please note that, the heat also controls the thermostat. Dynamic. Self-correcting. Recursive. In order to change the temperature however something needs to shift, typically someone changes to the set temperature.?

Another example is in a body where a number of systems are in homeostasis within pretty narrow parameters considering that a body is made up out of billions of billions of cells, that in turn form our vital organs and nervous system. In this case the output of the system is life. One could argue that a team and organization has a similar dynamic, incredibly complex and yet it reproduce whatever the participants of the team or organization believes to be the reason for their success so far. That could be a culture, a behavior or a certain metric, like profit.?

At this point there is a fair risk of sub optimization. We tend to fulfill certain variables for parts rather than the whole. Usually because the whole is difficult to measure. Optimizations vary depending on what we are measuring, or in other words, they vary depending on what parameters we are aware of. The trap of only looking at what is measurable is a common trap, indirectly it sticks in a paradigm of believing that actions have only direct effects, and that these are the most important parts to keep track of. Second, third or fourth order effects, things unfolding over a longer time horizon become invisible since they do not have singular causes. What can seem to be ‘good’ right now, like being the segment leader, might not be ‘good’ later if the segment is going away (lex Kodak). So with that said as a bit of disclaimer and a wink saying “we know this isn’t simple” we’ll continue into the archetypical moves in the framework and see what we can discover. We will take a look at the different paths towards thriving and what those could look or feel like.

What you will also notice during this read is that we’re not pointing to skills necessarily. Rather attitudes, mindsets, virtues or attributes (e.g. Rich Diviney’s work) that you can modulate (upregulate) with certain practices that you undertake. This would be in line with the cutting edge of organizational research as well as neuroscience. As we change the way we see the world, the way we make meaning, new possibilities and potential arise from (or even emerge from) there. As you change, the world changes. This is congruent with the idea of the organizations (and the self) as an ecosystem, rather than a machine. Another fundamental assumption that we make is that in order to change any system one has to change oneself in it. Therefore many of these examples below will be first person accounts rather than large organizational ones. Trying to depict the inside view, and how one feels or what type of situation one could find oneself in as part of these transitions. Personal change is mandatory, the organizational response is voluntary and either an individual will drive the change in her context or perhaps decide it’s time to move, time for a new context as a result of the inner change. If there’s only? talk about the change we want to make, we might make some superficial attempts and none of us starts behaving differently. It is unlikely, perhaps even impossible, that any transformational change has taken place. It’s the transformation we are going for in this piece. You are afterall reading a text about thriving. There is nothing modest about that ambition.

GETTING CURIOUS: PARALYSIS TO PARENTING

One of the journeys takes us to the right, but it’s not up to the right, rather just to the right. Breaking free of paralysis is not easy. You are afraid and your system, the homeostasis you are currently in, is signaling that now is not the time for rash moves. Actually it’s saying that you need to stay wherever you are right now or things might get worse than they already are. Just stay paralysed, the known is better than the unknown even if the known is uncomfortable! That is the language of the behavioral patterning or the conditioning you’ve acquired. As far as you know, you are one of the (very) few trustworthy people in the world. If you want something done properly you do it yourself, in a controlled fashion. It’s just that right now, you don’t feel in control, which in turn makes it very hard to do anything. Hence the paralysis.?

The situation becomes unbearable. It’s almost crushing. But then. There is a lucky break. Perhaps a passion project pops up. A dream project - and you get to play a role in it. It’s so much fun. You love the project so much. The love sparks something that allows you to move. Curiosity. Neuroscience shows that curiosity and fear cannot exist simultaneously. They are mutually exclusive in our nervous system. In fact one of the more successful (and recent) therapeutic interventions for patients with severe panic anxiety is teaching them a method to become curious about what is going on inside them. Panic anxiety can be described as a state when something triggers anxiety and then we get afraid of the anxiety because we think we “know” where it will take us. The increased fear about the anxiety is triggering further anxiety and on you go until you are more or less incapacitated. The intervention? Become curious. As the first panic sets in, the patient is invited to get curious. Where do you feel it in your body this time? Is it different from last time? Where are all the places in yourself that you can feel this sensation? These questions bring you into the present moment and break the downward spiral of anxiety and the fear that it triggers and then self-perpetuates. It allows you to function. To get there however, takes practice.?

It means the first time you probably need help to get out of the loop. Or you need a lucky break, something that triggers your curiosity and distracts you. What comes to mind is how Douglas Adams describes learning to fly in “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”. Flying is when you jump and forget to land. The first time this happens to the main character he jumps off a cliff and is distracted, I think by a cow in a flowery couch (who wouldn’t be distracted by that?), he forgets to land and hence he is flying. Curiosity can do that to us. Make us fly. Out of Paralysis. Other paths than ‘the lucky break’ would be practices of mindfulness or equanimity. Dancing, martial arts or climbing are yet other examples of practices that bring you to focus on this present moment rather than something off in the future. Anything that will spark compassion or love might break you out of the paralysis. But in this case we run to the right but have yet to ascend out of our need for control. As we find love in this case, we still think we are (the most) competent, stewards of our own destiny. Of the whole team’s or company’s destiny actually. No one can do it better than us. If you hear a shade of arrogance in there, it is because it’s not unlikely that you are suffering from some of it if you’re caught in the parenting quadrant.

KNOCKED OFF THE PIEDESTAL: PARALYSIS TO ESCAPE

Now we’re back in the lower left corner. We’re paralysed by fear, desperate to remain in control. The world is just so incredibly incomprehensible. Not only that, it seems to be speeding up. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it. The brittleness makes you afraid that it will break, the ambiguity inhibits your ability to maneuver, the non-linearity throws off your sensemaking and the incomprehensibility is just overwhelming. Welcome to the BANI world seen from a fearful nervous system with an ambition to control one's surroundings. Something happens to you though. It’s not really a lucky break. You’re knocked off your feet. A younger colleague comes in with better solutions, you are relocated in the organization into a new department with a wider scope, out of your expertise. Or something less dramatic, like you joining a new team that has a different way of working that challenges you. There’s a certain sense of surrender. You yield control, not that you had a choice. The fear is still present but there seems to be very little, probably nothing that you can do to stay in control.

Strangely, as you give up, something happens. There are these little segments of work that seem to become almost better, either just your own delivery or your part in the team’s delivery, there is a different way things get done. It looks like what people talk about when they speak of co-creation. This is new. And it’s the best work you’ve ever performed. You still feel like most of the world isn’t quite making sense, but through a stroke of magic you have modified your way of working. You gave up some of that need for control and found, well, flow. You cannot quite comprehend it still. It feels like a lucky break. You work hard, not letting yourself relax, you are afraid of falling back into your old ways. And everyone knows “no pain, no gain” and your internalized Luther is on your shoulder and keeps whispering encouragingly that “hard work is a spiritual undertaking”.?

Work is going well, your surroundings see you as successful, you are really hitting your targets. Perhaps you can feel that you derive a little too much of your identity as worthy or successful from your work persona but it doesn’t seem to be a problem you need to deal with now because it’s going well. Deep down you’re still afraid of being found out as the control freak you know yourself to be. You’re afraid that the lucky streak will end and that you will fall back to your old ‘stuck’ self. So you better keep working hard. Keep your head down, don’t enjoy it too much. The work is what you are, and it feels like others ‘have it in for you’, especially younger and up-and-coming people. There is no way you can relax now, then you’ll fall behind. Everyone knows there is not enough in this world, it's a zero sum game and either you have or you don’t. We need to keep working to make sure we have enough for when the rainy days come. Because they always come. The more you make, the more the feeling that you could do more for others pops up, but you squash it. There can’t be any other way for me to avoid the dark thunderous clouds that are on the horizon. The answer has to be more distance between you and ‘the others’, it’s important to keep running, keep accumulating wealth so that when the time comes you’re safe. You can escape.

COMMITMENT TO STAY: ESCAPE TO THRIVING

So you’re a runner. There is no such thing as enough. ‘More’, ‘bigger’ or ‘better’ were all considered as viable options for your middle name. And you can’t stop winning. Actually you can’t stop. Because if you stop you know, deep inside you you’re afraid that ‘they’ will catch up with you. So you keep going. Until. The pattern repeats: you break, you find a guide or something you love doing. This is not dissimilar from Joseph Campbells the Hero's Journey. In this case what you need to cultivate is your capacity for love. And very likely the road to love will at some point touch your curiosity. Finding something that catches your attention. Something worth staying for. Something stronger than fear. To stop escaping there must be something worth stopping for. A thing that allows you to turn around and face whatever is chasing you. Or let you see the actual world you live in. A significant proportion of the middle class population in WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) countries would inhabit the Escape quadrant. Either we are running to make something out of ourselves or we are running to not have to face the consequences of our behaviors.

In this case, you find your calling. So, you stop, turn around and find out there is nothing to run from. The courage that it took to stop and look around was the biggest leap of all of them. Now that you aren’t running anymore, you are free to start cultivating the muscle of love. Letting the passion for what you do take you to ever greater heights. There is of course also the possibility that there actually are monsters from your past that you will need to face, and eventually make peace with. It’s not uncommon that we stop, look around and then start running in a different direction. Instead of being with what is, we find a new calling that is worthwhile chasing. We haven’t really managed to break our pattern of running, rather we are chasing after something else. It’s no longer money and riches but rather spiritual or intellectual currency that is in our scope now.?

Also there is the matter of words, they matter sometimes. Like using the expression ‘overcoming fear’ it implies getting over it to move on, whereas lots of psychological research especially in the field of trauma is pointing in a slightly different direction. Fear is best metabolized to the greatest extent that our bodies allow us. Rather than overcoming heroically, humbly being with it might be a more constructive way of expressing how to work with fear. Accepting it, surrendering to it and there by allowing it to let it’s hold of you go. This is true for individuals as well as groups. Jashca Rohr and his Field-Process Model points directly at this dynamic in group facilitation work if you’re curious. This might entail making peace with old foes, internal as well as external. Usually the ones within are the more elusive ones. Finding someone to help you on your journey is probably the right move. Fear is fickle and tricky. A real trickster energy, especially when you pull it out into the light. It will do what it can to sliver back into its original place, in the shadow. As mentioned, opposing it typically just have you running in a different direction. The challenge is of course to stay. To accept the task that you find meaningful, and engage passionately, with love. That acceptance and surrender will allow you to thrive.

Dealing with fear is tricky and it’s an iterative process. Therapy might be a way, coaching another. If the patterns are from a very young age, some of the latest research and therapies relating to trauma suggests working through the body. Somatic experiencing and similar therapeutic forms or with the more unconventional but up and coming psychedelic assisted therapies have proven to have excellent efficacy to handle fear and trauma from an early age. What they have in common is that they allow you to stay and be with your fear instead of letting you get away with it or replace your coping strategy with another one, and eventually freeing you from it. The particular pattern of escape is very much ingrained in our current society and could even be derived back to the origins of the corporatist ideals many of us hold (for more on that check Life.inc by Douglas Ruskoff). Our current moment tells us that fear is normal. And as we’ve mentioned before in this article, context matters. Especially when we try to change our patterns. The invitation is to find those you are accountable to, then stop and be with whatever comes up. Simple, not easy. But it will get you thriving.

LETTING GO: PARENTING TO THRIVING

Back now in the lower right quadrant. Controlling but loving. Parenting. Engaging in the world with that perfectionist mindset of ours. The one that has served us so well up until now. Tending and caring for every piece of the puzzle. Nothing slips by without us having laid a hand on it. Other people cannot be trusted, and we have the proof to show it. Just look at what happened the last time we didn’t control everything, it ended up being a mess. It was not that long ago, it was.. well it seems that we cannot remember the last time we didn’t actually control everything. And so perhaps… no, no way! Unless I control all of it then what is my contribution? What do they need me for?

There are a couple of paths out of this trap. Since there is passion and love for what is being done one could imagine that an event that makes it clear that the control that I am exerting over the thing (project/ workstream/ innovation) is actually suffocating the project, organization or the like. And in waking up to that and realizing that we have a choice to make: either the project fails or we release control. In such a situation the love for the project itself might incentivise us to reduce control and with some luck that gives a couple of early wins that will motivate us to move up, towards flow and deepen our feelings of safety and trust. Another path would be by finding a guide. A coach or mentor. Someone you respect or look up to that has practices that you can engage in to find your flow. A third path could be a breakdown. Sickness or involuntary stillness in one way or the other. Inability to keep a tight control, rather we have to focus on the differences that make a difference. Providing just the essential parts of us, while noticing what happens. This might let you discover that you retain your value as a leader in the eyes of the team (no threat to your ego or identity there) and that the efficiency, quality and output of your team increases. The reprogramming has begun. As we surrender control - because it is surrender - there is a sense of letting go. And with that letting go comes the flow.?

A personal experience has been to notice what happens when I start paying attention to the breathing out, prolonging the out-breath and letting the inbreath stay short. This is partly what is done in techniques called boxed breathing (there are several patterns available online, here’s a good podcast from Huberman ). If you do boxed breathing with an extended outbreath, neuroscience has shown that it calms the nervous system and further relaxes us. Doing that instead of breathing in a little further, holding a little more, struggling to keep that extra air down, with one’s lungs already full. Allowing the natural movement, the breath out, and allowing our attention to follow the exhale, focusing on the sense of letting go, changes our state. Especially if you have a strong patterning where control is your way to cope with stress, you need to find practices that suit you so that you can regulate your own nervous system. Breathing, meditation or other embodied practices could be the way to stay with your newfound trust and avoid overwhelm. Stretched so that you find the exhilarating thrill of learning, but not smeared out way too thin. Stimulated but not overwhelmed. Stay with the outbreath, keep relaxing and before you know it you’ve stopped parenting your coworkers, team members, leadership team and instead you are in flow. You are thriving.

THE ADVENTURE TOWARDS UNCONDITIONAL TRUST

This is the greatest leap. This is work of the imagination. I have personally oscillated between the other quadrants many times but never engaged directly in the move diagonally up and and to the right from paralysis towards thriving, releasing both fear and control at the same time. I’m imagining that when it occurs, perhaps the arrow isn’t so straight, perhaps it looks more like a flight of stairs. But if it didn’t… imagine.?

This paralysis is crushing. It’s clinical, or about to be. Every single crack, every beginning of a movement is being countered and pinned down. There is literally nowhere to escape in the polarity. But who says you have to be stuck in a polarity? What if there isn’t a polarity at all. We imagine that this journey is of spiritual proportions, regardless of how the person undertaking it sees it, this is anagogic, enlightenment type stuff. As it seems the world is preparing to tighten the ratchet strap another round, you decide to shift. What you are trying to do shifts. This is what I hear in Nora Bateson when she describes going into the exploration around the questions we ask. It could be like the parent that instead of trying to do everything in their power to get the kid through 5th grade, which is crushing the child's curiosity to learn, decides that they will focus on making their kids fit for life. “Fit for life” might mean making it through 5th grade but it probably means a lot of other things too. Letting the child follow their curiosity for instance. It’s the decision to finally, actually go see the doctor or the therapist when you’ve felt overwhelmed for too long. Or to make that hobby a career or just close the computer and go to sleep instead of crunching out that last slide that was expected of you. In all of those movements there is a reframe, a perspective shift towards either some form of not letting the fear dominate you. An inkling of self-love. Or a letting go of control. There is a move towards trusting your experience, that you will be able to wing it, that you have done enough. Where it begins is a mystery but there is that word, enough. That word is important. Either delivered with the boundary setting, expressive ENOUGH (!) or on a slow exhale and a relaxation, “I’ve done enough.” In both cases there is a recentering. A care for self. A trust that it’s not in the actual thing that the differences that make a difference appear but rather between the things. And in that initial, unexpected shift. Downward, to the left, backward. You notice there are more directions available to you. You’re not stuck at all. Sometimes pushing harder is not going to do much to shift the stone. Sometimes placing that little rock under it, preventing it from rolling down and taking a break makes all the difference.

This is what the Immunity to Change (Robert Kegan) framework is trying to get at with its testing of our fundamental assumptions. Once we have done the subject-object shift and can take a look at what is holding us, and then discover the assumptions we have made and begin to test them to see if it is as it seems, if we go against those assumptions bad things will happen. Naturally usually there are few or no bad outcomes from the tests, telling your boss you don’t agree with that particular suggestion or that you have a different opinion did not result in you getting fired, perhaps she even appreciated your honest opinion. We could change more than we thought. It’s not trying to change the world as it is but rather the world as you see it. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Very few things are what they seem to be, more often they are what you have made them to be.?

A systemic example that Thomas Bj?rkman uses in his book The World We Create is this: Imagine money. You wake up tomorrow and have no money. All the money you’ve collected over the years are just gone (or worthless). Nothing left. How do you feel? Are you alive or not? Now imagine that is the same for all money everywhere. It’s now useless. Could we figure out new ways of living? Probably. Now, imagine this. You wake up tomorrow, not being able to breathe. All the oxygen is gone. Overnight the atmosphere changed and there is no longer oxygen. How do you feel? Are you alive or not? As you try to think you notice you can’t breathe and that actually, you are dead. This is provocative for many. But it makes the point. Money is something we have agreed on is important, a collective imaginary. It’s tricky to navigate this system without it. Your life would change drastically, most likely, but it would not physically kill you. If there was no more oxygen, we would die. Quickly. This is true for many contexts we engage with daily.

The journey up and to the right most likely goes through this type of awakening where another path becomes possible. It might lead through a path of increasing your self-awareness. Or perhaps you are dropped into a context where there is psychological safety. Or you find a practice that increases your trust. Either way you find space through a mental shift and in that space you begin to discover trust. That decreases your fear and it increases your focus on the relational. And that requires that you let go of control, just for a little bit, to understand what is going on there. And then you’re in a positive motion. Step by step or revolution by revolution you are ascending. These new perspectives blind you but the process carries you, your eyes need a moment but gradually you get used to it. You stop fighting the ox (in the 10 oxherding pictures) and you start becoming friends with it. Eventually you can ride it home and then forget about it. Everything has changed. You’re thriving.??

CONCLUSIONS

In this part 2 we have explored some of the moves in the 2x2 that we are calling the ?P-framework. The framework is a prism through which one can view the self, the team or the organization. The purpose is to spark a generative discussion and also give some general themes on how one feels in the quadrants and what could allow us to move between them.?

This part 2 has gestured some of the moves between the 4 quadrants, Paralysis, Parenting, Escape and Thriving. For more detail on the quadrants see part 1. Here are the journeys described in this article:

• Paralysis to Parenting: You face your fear. It does not hold you anymore. Either due to something that happened, like you forgot to look for the ground as you jumped and you started flying i.e. you lost yourself in the work. Or you received guidance or got to shift contexts. (Getting curious)
• Parenting to Thriving: In the parenting quadrant you are still directly or indirectly calling the shots and in order to start thriving you need to either have a breakdown (e.g. burnout), find a good mentor or love the project more than you love the control over it and see (and accept) that you are actually holding the project back. (Letting go)
• Paralysis to Escape entails gaining some flow, moving out of the control paradigm either willingly, through guidance or through a lucky break. Even though you’ve found flow, you aren’t able to shake the fear. (Knocked off the pedestal)
• Escape to Thriving entails realizing some things are worth sticking around for. Finding love for what you do and letting love lead the way. (Commitment to stay)
• Paralysis to Thriving is the real aikido and takes a master guide or a deep personal crisis, sometimes both. You start moving because of a circumstance, something happens in your surroundings. A new perspective becomes available to you. Your entire world changes as a matter of your perspective. For some mysterious reason you are one of the few that have the self-worth and self-compassion available to you that allows you to navigate straight up and to the right. (The adventure towards unconditional trust)

The centerpiece as we have seen in the journey descriptions is cultivating psychological safety, which has a number of different traits. For more detail on the research look at Amy Edmonssons work on the topic. Self-awareness cultivating practices, meditation, inquiry, communication techniques e.g. training feedback, active listening or nonviolent communication training and strategies for regulating your state e.g. somatic work, breathwork, boxed breathing etc. However, strategy only gets you so far. We have cited the work of Robert Quinn earlier and one of the cornerstones in his book Deep Change (1996) is that any transformation in the organizational context has personal implications. Always. It means that you are going to have to follow where your organization is going or get left behind. If you yourself start the journey and it proves not to be contagious then you might find yourself looking for a new context. Either a new team or a new organization.?

Transformational change is a practice. The practice is more like attribute development; it requires you to go to the limit and feel like you are on your edge, go just beyond and then integrate. When the practice gets dull you are most likely going to have to find a new one that brings you to your newly evolved limit. What seems clear from the research however is that transformational change is not an innate talent that you are born with. Some might come to the practice more easily than others but that’s about it. Transformational change takes work. Not necessarily hard work as in pushing hard but rather the hard work of surrender.

This work is abducted based on experience. If you are curious about it you can find the authors Amit Paul and Helena ?nneby through engaging with Innerworks - a start-up that works specifically with curating meaningful work and self-aware organizations. If you would like to explore this framework deeper or if you have experiences that fit into this map - get in touch! We’d love to explore!

THE END