Spooo key!

Maturity

In 1997, participating in Jerry’s Problem Solving Leadership workshop, I knew I found the “missing element”, perhaps even the “missing link” in the professional environments I had played a role in. I already knew, my body knew, and the workshop gave me the words, and some tools to keep myself safe, and focused enough on the “missing link”.

I spent some months developing physical mastery of the received problem solving tools, and discovered some more tools and mastered those before I went to the next workshop, Congruent Change Shop, in 1998, where I shopped for change management patterns, tools, methods, and techniques, that could help me choose again. I wanted to be independent again, as I had been when I was a student, but not as a techie this time.

Workable knowledge

Having mostly worked in research and development and related start-ups, that are always small companies by nature, I needed experience with consulting, coaching and facilitation in and of the “missing link” in at least one big corp for experience. Bell Labs, as summum of an organisation where norms of strict “rationality” support a relatively rigid hierarchical structure and highly competitive culture, was quite the challenge! Dealing with emotional dynamics and encouraging direct expression of feelings seemed “spooo key” to many people in it.

I chose for a split role. I worked half my time in a team with people all trained by Jerry that facilitated the building of cross training and gaining of knowledge within Bell Labs and Lucent worldwide. The other half of my time was spent in development teams in Europe, in the “trenches” as it were, there where it “hurts” the most. I wanted to confront my own issues of belief from a place of body knowing to gain workable knowledge in the “trenches”, believing that is what the Gods on the Mountain wanted to know but simply had no time or energy for. Apparently that information was a verrrry “spoo key” thing for people up top.

My time in Lucent ended when I questioned the complacency in our facilitator team with what I knew. I was willing to confront issues, instead of conforming to its culture.

Self-actualisation

Now that’s a perfect time to go independent again, with new knowledge in me back pocket. I went through the “say goodbye” process to not hold onto any grief, and received a post-mortem acknowledgement from Lucent for “conquering complexity”. I couldn’t help but smile at the irony of that. It made me realise I had made the right choice by leaving.

I started Moebius, a business for supporting the emergence of new paradigms that use more fully humane organisational development as foundation.

Physical mastery

I spent a lot of time and energy learning to apply more fully humane techniques, and gathered even more from Druidry and from Medicine Wheels.

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. — Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha

Consultants of my application field are under more pressure to “produce”, because clients may not be ready to admit the problems in their own functioning. I know, I have been there. I’ve got a whole closet full of “Been there, done that” T-shirts to show for, and no doubt, I will need more closet space for new T-shirts.

The other problem consultants in my field can encounter is that in organisational development, authority relations are not temporarily suspended in deference to my expertise. Authority relations are always active, if covert. And all I can do is my very best, overt.

I committed to ever increasing excellence in everything that I do as a consultant, coach, facilitator, and basically, as a two-legged. Thank you Philip Thunder Panther Trice and Debra Eagle Woman Duwe. This covert authority “thing”, present in internal assumptions, beliefs, and “cover-ups”, I figured out with your help in InterRaven and learning Medicine Wheels practices from you.

Less stress

Life develops what it demands and I can only maintain what I can sustain for myself and the communities I support. I/we need to pay my/our bills. And Satir techniques may be the needed consulting type, but may initially be considered counter-cultural, or even subversive.

When working with such systems, I have to provide a lot of conceptual and emotional support to enable people in these systems to move into the “spooo key” territories of openness, feeling, collaboration, and actual success, as Jerry Weinberg and Pat Sciacca have done for me, as teacher respectively organisational development mentor. I paid forward to a next generation, and those I coached do that too (I hope). I owe nothing, and I am not owed to.

Character integrity

And I will have to maintain my own integrity and that of my services. Practicing inner self-authority and external response-ability is the way that works for me. I feel extremely happy I had the courage to go independent again and that I had the perseverance to follow through on my serendipitous path. Thank you, me. I find my teachers all around me, and everything is connected.

Freedom

So, with the help of Peter Schoonens, Marc Hersch, and the keys, I now have a Controlled Folly flyer (pdf) that expresses my individuality and autonomy by being confrontive and tolerant with cultures driven by illusions of correctness (conditioned thinking and/or behavior), in equal balance. After all, it is not about being “right”. This flyer can work and moves towards resolution. If a particular organisation finds this flyer too “spooo key”, then it is simply not the “right” customer for me (yet), and my time and energy can be spent elsewhere. My services are controlled folly anyway.

Any effort to control the nature of things is ultimately useless.
One who knows this, however, is free to continue to insist on trying.

From here it gets easier …

Consistency and continuity in arenas of success and solution, true power gained in small steps, and success in many directions!

Now who says the ten steps to success are spooo key? The first six steps are not easy, that’s true, and for the required conceptual support I’ll start working on making the existing balancing act handouts more accessible for systems caught in mere mirages of “excellence”. Muhahahahahhhaaaa … Right away.