[Neurons] 2009 Meta Reflections #56

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Meta Reflections #56

Dec. 28, 2009

 

 

THRIVING ON CHAOS

The Need for Self-Actualizing Leaders

 

In 1987 Tom Peters wrote a book by the title Thriving on Chaos.  As the
co-author of In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run
Companies and then A Passion for Excellence: The Leadership Difference, Tom
Peters has been a leading thinker in the field of business for many decades.
As with many other seminal thinkers in fields, I went back to read Thriving
on Chaos to more fully understand Peters and how the fields of business,
leadership, and management had been changing over the years.  I went back to
read a classic, but was I surprised.

 

What was the surprise?  The biggest surprise was the relevance of the book!
Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution was anything but
"old."  Beginning from the idea of "a world turned upside down" Peters wrote
over two decades ago as if he had a crystal ball into today.  And to offer
practical guidance, he couched his ideas as prescriptions for the
revolution.  The major sections of the book indicate the relevance of the
book:

            Creating Total Customers Responsiveness 

            Pursuing Fast-paced Innovation

Achieving Flexibility by Empowering People

Learning to Love Change: a new view of Leadership at all Levels

            Building Systems for a World Turned Upside Down

 

Foreseeing the changing of the world, Peters writes about the difference
that numerous factors are making and will make: technology, globalization,
information explosion, the change of the work force as people develop, etc.
He writes about the importance of quality and flexibility, the need for
flatter organizations, a new focus on service, customers, and
responsiveness, the need for empowering people for making decisions, solving
problems, facilitating innovations, and adding value.  The book is as
current as any book on the market today in terms of offering practical steps
for creating a cutting-edge company.

 

Of course, I read the book through a particular frame-through the lens of
Self-Actualizing Psychology.   This is the psychology that uniquely governs
everything that we do in Neuro-Semantics and the psychology that created
NLP.  And it is also the missing frame that pulls together almost all of the
initiatives in business to become more effective, productive, and
profitable.  That is, what all of the pioneering thinkers in business,
leadership, organizational development, management, etc. have been building
up to for decades and have tried to articulate in so many different ways-is
pulled together and given a governing framework by Self-Actualization
Psychology.

 

There are many factors contributing to this: the rising of the standard of
living, the increase of a more educated work force, globalization, etc.
These things have not only advanced our technology, they have affected human
consciousness itself.  Human consciousness has been evolving and growing and
rising to new levels of awareness.  And this has been changing businesses
and the way we do business.  And this evolution is just beginning.  A new
human being is in the process of emerging.  The time is coming when the old
forms of leadership (authoritarian command-and-control) and the old forms of
work (hierarchical, bureaucratic, leave your brain at the door, do what
you're told without questioning, etc.) will be completely irrelevant.

 

Self-Actualization Psychology focuses on the nature of people under
conditions of health and growth.  It's about human nature when it moves
beyond the animal level of the lower needs to the truly human needs- the
drive for meaning, for meaningfulness, to make a difference, to create, for
beauty, order, excellence, legacy, and all of the things that makes us fully
alive and fully human.  It focuses on how we become fully what we are
capable of becoming.  Unlike all of the other schools of psychology which
provide models that explain how people go astray and suffer various
distortions and pathologies, Self-Actualization Psychology models excellence
in human nature.

 

What Self-Actualization Psychology offers business is a very powerful and
unifying framework.  Even though many of the details of a humanistic work
place has been envisioned and described, the framework has not.  The
framework has been missing.  What business needs is the framework that
explains the reasoning why the best companies are creating flatter
organizations, firms that empowers people, that is customer focused, that
seeks to add value, that recognizes the many forms of meta-pay that we can
create in the workplace.  The emphasis on quality, participative management,
visionary leadership, deep democracy, recognition and engagement of
employees- why all of these things makes sense in human psychology.  

 

These are the elements and expressions of people at their best.  They are
descriptions of people who move beyond "the jungle" of the lower needs and
seek to contribute, make a difference, and find meaning even in their work.
And surprisingly, Tom Peters wrote about the details of the new twenty-first
century workplace in 1987.  He foresaw the need for several completely new
attitudes- for managers to treat employees, suppliers, and customers as
partners in a common endeavor.  He foresaw the need to not only deal with
change, but for leaders and people to actually love change and develop the
capacity for a flexible adaptiveness.  He foresaw the shift to constant
innovation at all levels in an organization by everybody, the use of
self-managed teams for leading innovation, the importance of engagement, the
de-bureaucraticizing, the remaking of middle management's role, the
elimination of humiliating Mickey-Mouse rules, the deference to the
front-line, and the ultimate importance of listening by leaders.

 

Pretty incredible, wouldn't you say?  In the book, Tom Peters writes- 

"The chief reason for our failure in world-class competition is our failure
to tap our work force's potential." (p. 286)

 

And that's why we need Self-Actualizing Leaders and Companies- which is what
the book, Unleashing Leadership (2009, $25) is about.




 

 

--- Meta-Coach Trainings coming 2009 - 2010

                        

 

 

China --- 2010

      Meta-Coaching in two parts --   January 17-22 and May 9-14  (6 days
each time): 

Includes also Module II (Coaching Genius).  

            Guangzhou, China:  Sponsor: Team Huang --- supported by
Neuro-Semantic Trainers: 

Mandy Chai and Wilkie Choi   For Chinese---   yeshow at 163.net .  For English
speakers: 

Mandy Chai: chaimansun at yahoo.com.hk 

 

 

Mexico --- 2010

     In two parts --- March 4-7 (March 3 for Team Leaders) and April 15-18
(April 14 for Team Leaders). 

     Sponsor: Salom Change Dynamics-  www.salomchd.com  (55) 30930687 ---
emilia at salomchd.com

 

Trainers Training --- in NLP and NS --- NSTT

1)    January and June --- Hong Kong:  January 25-31 and June 4-11.
Contact Mandy Chai: chaimansun at yahoo.com.uk 




2)    June --- Grand Junction Colorado:  June 19-July 3.  Contact Dr. Hall:
meta at acsol.net 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

(ISNS) International Society of Neuro-Semantics

The International Meta-Coach System

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA

1 970-523-7877

      <http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com 

       <http://www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com/>
www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com 

       <http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org

       <http://www.meta-coaching.org/> www.meta-coaching.org

       <http://www.ns-video.com/> www.ns-video.com 

 

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