The Direction of Intention

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Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I found these notes in my archives. They are from a conversation I had with Joe about a model for business people – a common trap in business practice: pretending that complex challenges are simple (or merely complicated). I’m not sure where Joes thinking begins and mine ends. That’s what I love about my conversations with Joe; we enter conversations together and populate a field with possibilities:

OLD WORLD THINKING (outcome):
1. Articulate a vision.
2. Write a plan.
3. Execute.
Guess what? The world moves too fast now. If you follow this strategy you’re likely to be out of business before you get the plan written. And if you do get underway, you’ll play catch-up and put out fires from day one.

NEW WORLD THINKING (process):
1. Populate your “field of possibilities” and keep it always in view.
2. Show up with passionate presence.
3. Engage and evolve in constant dialog with opportunity.
The result: you create something you could never have envisioned or planned. It fits, it’s grows organically, it leverages unforeseen opportunities, and it integrates into the structure the fluid dynamics of pace and change; two aspects that define our present world.

These notions apply to individuals as well as business practices. It is another way of asking, “Are you focusing on process or product?”

The old formula for creating success was built on a computer-like model of the mind. Program the end result, push the first domino and that’s what’s supposed to happen. Real life – contemporary life – doesn’t work that way anymore. The event horizon is too close.

The new model of the mind is a dynamic system in constant, implicit, mutual engagement and co-creation with reality (how’s that for a string of words!). The word to notice is “engagement.” The more you engage, the clearer and more compelling your desire becomes, evolving in concert with pace and context (reality), becoming an ever-more powerful expression of who you are becoming and what you are creating. You are free of attachment to outcome, open to the dance, powerful in innovation, new forms of collaboration and flourishing passions.

We live in a fast moving river – rushing faster than at any other time in human history. The old systems are getting creamed (have you noticed?). People are getting creamed, too. It is a complexity that requires engagement in a dynamic dance, not a simplicity pretending a recipe is good enough.

Filed under: Emergence, Truly Powerful People |