Making Sense of Change at Home and Work

By Dawna H. Jones
People have been brought to their knees by an inexplicable series of events in their personal lives: financial loss, unexpected deaths, and health issues that ignore age. Business organizations face engagement issues, stress related illness, and ethical issues that provoke transparency and accountability, along with agile response to uncertain and complex market and innovation conditions. Turbulence reverberates through the many planes of our earthly existence with rising awareness that doing what weve always done isnt enough. Planetary disruptions, natural disasters increase in frequency and magnitude. Large complex global issues like climate change, food supply and diminishing biodiversity openly confront assumptions about our relationship with the world we live in: as above it or an integral part of the web of life. The context for life and work is changing. Personally or organizationally, there is no escaping the pressure to evolve. The global financial crisis has called into question existing approaches to corporate governance. Corporate collapse, disproportionate bonus payments and job insecurity have all contributed to a growing distrust of business. i Science offers insight. In fractal geometry we find that the universe is actually built on self similar images meaning if you can understand one level of organization, say the level of atoms or molecules you can understand the next level: cells, people, organizations, civilization. Patterns express themselves through each of these different levels. ii-Dr. Bruce Lipton There is much hope. Hearts open to help countries hit by devastating earthquakes. Business leaders move to embrace conscious capitalism and stewardship principles. Rising to the surface is insuppressible desire from the hearts and souls of personal and professional lives to contribute, to work with others and create solutions that improve our relationship with ourselves as a global population and with nature's resources. The power is in our hearts Natural and manand minds. made disasters are Day to day we live our lives in patterns, mostly habitual which reinforce a limited time-bound sense of our place in the world. As the pressure to become more flexible increases, inflexible thinking relays it to employees who crumble from the stress or leave to find better balance. The majority of limiting habits operate beneath conscious awareness both personally, in the subconscious and organizationally, in the systemic beliefs leaving both poorly equipped to handle the unexpected. Disruption serves the purpose of opening up portals: the space between one state and another, where you can observe the value of the patterns and intentionally alter them to better serve. Experiences, whether deemed good or bad, all present openings for self-examination and reflection regardless of whether you are an individual or a company/organization. True to the replicating patterns in nature, the need for growth and evolution is expressed by employees and
Dawna Jones 2010- Making Sense of Change at Home and Work by Dawna Jones dawna@FromInsightToAction.com Twitter: EPDawna_Jones (Evolutionary Provocateur) Go to www.FromInsightToAction.com for programs/services to assist individuals and companies in their evolution. Page 1
increasing in magnitude.

pushed by increased complexity. What looked black and white is now grey. Complex issues seem impervious to strategies designed for superficial problems. Deep change is underway and it compels deep learning and expansion. We are part of a living system. By understanding how the scientific and spiritual principles apply to strengthen the human spirit, co-creation is facilitated and accelerated. Dr. Bruce Lipton, cellular biologist, put it this way:
If you can understand the dynamics of how 50 trillion cells can provide for a healthy human being and apply this to a corporation, to a nation, to the world the rules for making a successful organization are expressed in the human body. It is important that corporations look inward begin to say. Can I find an understanding in there that I can apply to my corporation? They are parallels. Every living system has the same requirements. Whether it is IBM or the human body you still need the same things to survive. I am hopeful that as we go deeper into the science and as corporations understand the mechanics of biology and physics that by applying these principles to our business organizations that we will be able to create as successful communities as the human body.

My own experience proves this to be true. The twenty-five years of coaching personal growth and facilitating group performance, turned out to be a learning lab for recognizing repetitive patterns in people's behavior and in organizational dynamics. Universal human addictions were reflected in stuck organizational dynamics. I witnessed the repression of talent stemming from the belief that people had to be told what to do. As I observed organizational and team dynamics move one step forward and two back, I realized that I was really facilitating energy and beyond that, the health of the human spirit. There were a lot of invisible forces operating The innate intelligence of unseen. It called for a higher level of personal mastery since I needed a cell is replicated in the to support the collective deep dive beneath polarized issues to explore human body, the and learn from the apparent conflict. It was not easy to master, yet the organizational body, and the constant opportunities to practice allowed creative exploration of how planet. to draw out and sustain the best. Sometimes it was a simple matter of surfacing awareness that harmony is not achieved by avoiding conflict. With clarity, a more constructive approach could be adopted. The science made even more sense when, after delivering a series of leadership programs, my colleague and I became acutely aware that the client organization's default of centralized control sabotaged any efforts to achieve the innovation they envisioned. Sure enough, when a crisis hit, all trust in management judgment was retracted and decision-making retracted to central authority. This was incredibly instructive. It told me that companies are like people: they operate from a set of beliefs and assumptions that, for the most part, they are totally unaware of. Given the fractal nature of replicating patterns, it showed that there were invisible set of beliefs and assumptions buried in the working environment that, as the subconscious does for people, produced the results. All these observations combined to reveal the Big Picture with depth and breadth. Organizations showing signs of illness: stress-related, depression, oppression weren't healthy enough to function in ambiguity. Systemic beliefs were operating unseen and untouched by mental maneuvers on the surface. People were being fixed by training when the cultural container set the limits and impacted behavior. Opportunities to strengthen key relationships were being missed.

Dawna Jones 2010- Making Sense of Change at Home and Work by Dawna Jones dawna@FromInsightToAction.com Twitter: EPDawna_Jones (Evolutionary Provocateur) Go to www.FromInsightToAction.com for programs/services to assist individuals and companies in their evolution.

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I devoted all my time and energy to uncovering solutions. A couple of questions hatched: What does it take to realize our full unbounded potential? Why are we here and what can we do collectively we cant do alone? What happens when we take down the walls of limiting belief and to allow possibilities to run freely? The obvious starting point was to shift the level of consciousness through self-actualization. It required moving well beyond my comfort zone. Then, the unexpected hit my life Once upon a time I owned things. I had a retirement savings plan, a home, investment properties and a great place to live. Yet my inner world had too much drama and not enough joy or fun at least that is how I experienced it. Outwardly, it looked pretty good. At some point however, my body let me know that a change was necessary. Too much energy was going out and not enough was coming back in, especially to my heart. Burnout. Then from 2003 onward, revenue and possessions began to fall away. Internal pressures to express my creative talents were colliding with invisible pressures to evolve. Up to then, I had been running a reasonably successful facilitation and consulting business for well over ten years. Yet I felt exhausted and trapped on a gerbil wheel. Something was missing. No matter what I did toward manifesting my dreams and my goals it didnt work. Worse, loss was often the result. Propelled into a confrontation with my shadow side, my fears, insecurities and deepest wounds came to the surface for transformation or transmutation. I noticed emotional patterns in my personal life I wasnt happy about and a dissonance between my negative outlook and how others saw me. It became clear that in order to be more effective in life and to serve from a deep place, I had to unite the lessons of the shadow side with the rest of me. It was time to get myself out of the way. As all I had worked for fell away I needed more than inner strength and resilience to attain the level of deep trust. I needed to let go, surrender to the process. Every layer I uncovered revealed another, then another layer where attachments disguised insecurities. As I identified and released each one, trust stepped in and inner freedom bubbled up. It was the biggest leap of faith I have ever done in my life. It was a series of leaps. Little did I know how much my personal process would directly inform how people and organizations can increase functionality when the going gets rough. There is no longer any division between personal growth and professional and organizational capacity to achieve a higher purpose. Personal growth drives organizational growth focused by higher purpose and service. Never doubt the difference you make or underestimate the wake you leave as you move through the world. If you are an entrepreneur and your business is less than one hundred and fifty employees, you are a walking culture maker. A small shift in your thinking makes a big difference to well-being and subsequently performance. Business has always assumed its purpose is to be the economic engine and so has conveniently left out variables that, when factored in, would widen perception of reality. The humanist value of care and compassion for others, including nature, has been dismissed as

Dawna Jones 2010- Making Sense of Change at Home and Work by Dawna Jones dawna@FromInsightToAction.com Twitter: EPDawna_Jones (Evolutionary Provocateur) Go to www.FromInsightToAction.com for programs/services to assist individuals and companies in their evolution.

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'soft' consistent with the Industrial era. Interestingly enough, it turns out that the qualities business tends to dismiss as soft stuff are the qualities that power phenomenal results. Investment advisor and author, Jay Bragdons LAMP index (Living Asset Management Performance) is comprised of seriously screened companies. He explains:
The LAMP index is a list of companies managed on an emerging new mental model where the firm operates as a living organism dedicated to value creation rather than a profit making machine. This reflects an important distinction in the way companies value their assets. Living assets are people and nature. These are fundamentally different from non-living capital assets. This is premised on a respect for life. Its a biocentric world view where the firm sees itself as integral to the web of life not separate from the web or above it. Thinking in evolutionary terms I see this as a major adaptation in capitalism; a radical departure from the bankrupt and now dying industrial model of capitalism where the total cost iii of this system now arguably exceeds its benefit.

I first interviewed Jay in January, 2009. At that time, LAMP companies outperformed the Morgan Stanley Capital World Index by 11 basis points. At the beginning of 2010 when I asked Jay for an update he said,
Globally, fewer than 4% of exchange listed companies operate from core values of care and compassion. Most people believe this approach to business is "soft." But, when done with deep commitment and professional competence, it produces hard results. In 2009, for example, the Global LAMP Index, which tracks such companies returned 44.56%, far surpassing returns on the S&P 500 (+26.46%) and the MSCI World Index (28.01%). Over the past decade the Global LAMP Index iv returned 98.03% while those other benchmarks lost money. LAMP index companies align the ends with the means and while doing so embrace their role as stewards of Life serving to contribute through: better ecological stewardship, more stable employers and business partners, more reliable vendors from a buyer standpoint, better investments and we get better neighbors. The companies that practice Living Asset Stewardship are more responsible v neighbors and they are better generators of tax revenues.

By aligning core values with the intention to serve a higher purpose, infinitely beyond selfinterest, they are rewarded by the market. Striving to survive is being replaced by stewardship and reverence for all life. Profit (defined more broadly) follows. The deep level of trust that underpins all successful relationships, including economic transactions, is strengthened. Care and compassion is a universal field of energy sourced in a larger vision: one much greater than us. There is huge opportunity. Jays research shows that 4% of public traded companies and countless more privately held companies are on to something. There is still plenty of room to grow. Companies with one foot in command/control and the other in the idea of triple bottom line feel the pressure increase as disillusioned employees leave or suffer from stress-related illness. The twenty to thirty year olds in the workforce bring high levels of creativity, no respect for rules of limitation and a high value for collective and collaborative teamwork. To embrace the high level of creative collective talent available within all generations in the workplace, we must improve our capacity to use uncertainty to increase flexibility grounded in values, trust and purpose. The new consciousness must be intentionally and collectively nurtured.
A business leader who views business activities only as producing a product or service for consumers in order to maximize near-term profit will look at social and environmental Dawna Jones 2010- Making Sense of Change at Home and Work by Dawna Jones dawna@FromInsightToAction.com Twitter: EPDawna_Jones (Evolutionary Provocateur) Go to www.FromInsightToAction.com for programs/services to assist individuals and companies in their evolution. Page 4

performance as discretionary costs. Business leaders who take a narrow view of social and environmental obligations will be drawn to quick communications fixes, largely symbolic charters, or purely technical compliance programs... What consumers, employees, and investors are demanding is a conduct of business that takes into account the effect of its activities on all its stakeholders. This requires creating a consciousness of greater connectedness with one another and with nature and an understanding of global problems that involves feeling and intuition as well as thinking. The resulting mind-set will change planetary ethics from a blip on the corporate vi radar screen to a mainstream way of thinking and acting.

Compassion forms the connection between all living things. It is compassion for the Self and for others, especially those whose view differs from your own, where the advanced skills of higher consciousness and the ability to live "oneness" through compassion is lived; not as a figure of speech or ethereal concept. There are three directions. 1) There is a shift underway from linear thinking to seeing and perceiving holistically. This engages creative thinking and agility to shift perspective in an instant in order to see the dynamic interrelationships and interconnection. The Big Picture and all the interrelationships becomes the backdrop for decision-making. 2) By using interruptions in life to grow Global work teams remove geographic and political boundaries freeing ideas to serve where they are needed. toward self-actualization, you achieve a state of higher fulfillment which, in turn, releases joy and deeper knowledge. Workplaces can progressively inspire and support fun, caring and high performance relationships through contributing innovation that matters. 3) Collaboration comes naturally making the complex issues we face become less daunting. Remaining open, even when skeptical, permits exploration, experimentation, and discovery of the core creative talents you hold. Trust deepens. Well-being expands. By understanding the importance of epigenetics: how the working and mental environment influences genes and how DNA changes in response to its environment, the power to reclaim or maintain health and vitality is situated in your choices about how you lead your life. By paying attention to the quality of working relationships and wellbeing, businesses can intentionally sustain working environments that support achievement. During the many years I have been consulting, I have been advised many times to separate business from personal. That logic works in a Newtonian world where all things are separate and not connected. It doesnt work now. To maintain separation defies biology, physics, spirit at work, the dynamic of life, and the natural desire to contribute. After spotting Eckhart Tolles book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Lifes Purpose on the dash of a police car, it felt like we were ready to see things differently at multiple levels to merge duality into a more unified state of consciousness - one that can see reality through a wide angle lens. Knowledge cannot be contained within boundaries. Because knowledge functions in networks, seeing the whole system and your place in it, cognitively and emotionally, frees insight and foresight to guide and direct. Mechanical engineer, Itzhak Bentov, was able to retain his childlike vitality of vision and see the world as a single untangled web in which all parts are connected in a grand pattern.vii Bentovs work was grounded in knowledge of the self as the route to all knowledge. He knew that the unfolding of consciousness, that is, spiritual evolution, opens up this latent knowledge. In Bentovs view, encoded in our reality, this knowledge appears at first on the threshold of consciousness as vague feelings, eventually becoming clearer as spiritual evolution proceeds.viii
Dawna Jones 2010- Making Sense of Change at Home and Work by Dawna Jones dawna@FromInsightToAction.com Twitter: EPDawna_Jones (Evolutionary Provocateur) Go to www.FromInsightToAction.com for programs/services to assist individuals and companies in their evolution. Page 5

What exactly is the imperative? First, the incidence of stress-related illness and stress has reached proportions that endanger not only individual well-being but also that of communities, businesses, and the planet itself. We are unnecessarily creating many of those issues, mostly from unrecognized fear. The habit of separating things to the point where inter-connections are imperceptible means talent and opportunity get overlooked. Second, all but those completely absorbed in day to day survival are cognizant of the state of the world and our relationship with sustainability. Tim Flannery in The Weathermakers points out, Whether we are crossing the road or paying the bills, it is the big, fast moving things that command our attention. But seemingly large issues sometimes turn out of be a slide show.ix This naturally begs the question: What does the future hold? Fortunately, as the mystics say, the answers do indeed lie within. Third, there is no shortage of crisiss to work with at all levels: natural disasters, corporate, organizational or personal. Unless we learn how to use those to evolve we miss the moment. Most powerfully, there is recognition that creative energy cannot function in a disconnected and uncompassionate environment. When people do work without being engaged, or using the need for financial security as a rationale, their health or some other indicator will ultimately sound the alarm alerting the need to align their personal intention or purpose with what matters. Addressing the interdisciplinary and cross-sector issues globally or locally, calls for collaboration. Mass collaboration is impaired when mired by mindsets that cannot stretch to the occasion. The shift is underway and it is inevitable. Business is well positioned to take a higher level of leadership, by being empowered to contribute far beyond self-interest. Agility is essential and it is powered by each person who reads this article You. The process of self-discovery increases ability to see and perceive through different lenses and to do so without instigating the rational mind to block the unfamiliar. Metaphorically and statistically, one person is losing his eyesight every five seconds. One million people in the world are blind... And a million more people are becoming blind... Lifestyle changes, pollution are affecting the eyes, deteriorating our vision, causing early blindness.x Think of yourself at the eye doctor's as he or she flips up different lenses to check the accuracy and focus of your vision. Through multiple lenses a more expansive picture of your world comes into To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild focus.
flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour. William Blake

Activate the discovery of your true capabilities; instigate a higher level of leadership from business or communities; accelerate the shift from individual self-interest to collective collaboration on the most complex of problems. Expand capacity to learn and lead your life with agility; so that you know your place in the world and can recognize solutions that already exist, but do not operate within the old paradigm. By deepening knowledge of your Self, you become the driving force behind endeavors that serve all Life. Whatever the nature of the disruptions in your personal or organizational life, you can trust that they are there for you to dive deeper to retrieve your innate knowledge; expand the periphery of your vision on life; see the world within and beyond you as a living system with unlimited potentiality. It is about seeing holistically without limits. And it is a matter of choice. The difference between what we are doing and what we are capable of doing would solve most of the worlds problems. Ghandi
Dawna Jones 2010- Making Sense of Change at Home and Work by Dawna Jones dawna@FromInsightToAction.com Twitter: EPDawna_Jones (Evolutionary Provocateur) Go to www.FromInsightToAction.com for programs/services to assist individuals and companies in their evolution. Page 6

Reshaping Corporate Governance to Incorporate Sustainability Neela Bettridge Audio interview with Dr. Bruce Lipton, June, 2006. iii Evolutionary Provocateur interview with Jay Bragdon, January, 2009 iv Conversation with Jay Bragdon, January, 2010 v Evolutionary Provocateur interview with Jay Bragdon, January, 2009 www.managementissues.com/provocateur.asp vi Laszlo, Chris. The Sustainable Company, Island Press, 2003, page 24-25. vii Bentov, Itzhak. A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation, Destiny Books, 2000; Essay on Cosmology by Edgar Apgar, page 97. viii Bentov, Itzhak. A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation, Destiny Books, 2000, page 3. ix Flannery, Tim. The Weathermakers. Harper Collins, 2005, page 2-3. x http://sreedhareeyam.com
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Dawna Jones 2010- Making Sense of Change at Home and Work by Dawna Jones dawna@FromInsightToAction.com Twitter: EPDawna_Jones (Evolutionary Provocateur) Go to www.FromInsightToAction.com for programs/services to assist individuals and companies in their evolution.

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