Thriving FROM Work Is Possible

Thriving FROM work. I am actually better off, in many ways, because of my time at work. Is this possible? It seems to run counter to the high levels of disengagement globally in the workforce. And, it is true in many places.

Our team at Harvard’s Center for Work, Health, and Well-being has developed a robust way of testing the level of thriving from work. Our brief survey (30 items in long form, 8 items in short form) explores “the state of positive mental, physical, and social functioning in which workers’ experiences of their work and working conditions enable them to thrive in their overall lives, contributing to their ability to achieve their full potential in work, home, and community.”

The survey has been applied to workers in the USA and now in Latin America. This statistically validated measure has now been robustly validated in Spanish. If you use the questions from the short or long forms of this Thriving from Work survey, in English or Spanish (go here for the different versions and a user manual), please let us know and share what you find.

It is possible to thrive from work, and here are some of the ways we are finding that are living within organizations today.

#thrivingfromwork #isclarity #bigyes #leadershipforflourishing

Lots of People Know A LOT about Ecosystem-Wide Flourishing–Help Us Find Them

The 2023 World Agreements for Ecosystem-Wide Flourishing Report describes what people are learning, everywhere across the globe, about how to lead their lives and organizations in ways that everyone is better off through their interactions with each other and the natural world.

That report described what my colleagues have found from surveying what over 164,000 people have said about their experiences in groups in 126 countries. Those were responses from the Agreements Health Check survey. For 2024 we are adding many more responses to our survey. We would like to add yours.

Have you used the Agreements Health Check survey? If you have please let us know (1) that you did, (2) where you applied it (what country, and what kind of organization), and (3) how many people you surveyed.

We invite you to share those responses with us and with the global community of the Institute for Strategic Clarity, through a Zoom call, a video interview, and maybe a joint publication.

2023 World Agreements for Ecosystem-Wide Flourishing Report

How Do I Deal with 17 SDGs and 9 Planetary Boundaries All at Once?

Working with 17 goals and 9 boundaries seems to be impossible. To tackle this seeming impossibility, most groups pick the goals or boundary that matches their focus area.

This is great in that it both (1) gets people excited about big goals, like the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 9 Planetary Boundaries, and (2) it helps them find peers with a similar focus.

The problem is that we have one planet. A planet with 17 somewhat interrelated goals to address global sustainability of people and the planet. A planet with 9 boundaries that we cannot pass without dire circumstances. So, we need to address all 17 goals within 9 boundaries at the same time. For that we need a set of basic principles to guide how to work with all of this at the same time.

My colleague Adam Hejnowicz and I propose 4 foundational guiding principles for a flourishing Earth system, so that you can take on 17 SDGs within 9 planetary boundaries, all at the same time. It is possible.

In the following open-source (free) article, we describe the context, the 4 principles, and a couple of examples. We welcome your reflections on our proposed guiding principles.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/basr.12349

2023 World Agreements for Ecosystem-Wide Flourishing Report

What is the state of the world’s agreements?  Some of it is grim, and a lot is not.

It is time to tell the story of what is now clear across the globe.  There are people everywhere who have figured out how to live from abundance, inviting and manifesting—cohosting—love in its infinite expressions every day.  They are generating ecosystem-wide flourishing in pockets all around the world. And, now we know how to find them and learn with them.

The Institute for Strategic Clarity (ISC), in collaboration with its global community, has gathered over 164,000 responses to the Agreements Health Check survey, describing groups from 126 countries.  In addition to a series of scholarly and practitioner articles and chapters in books, a summary of this data is now being shared through the 2023 World Agreements for Ecosystem-Wide Flourishing Report (https://bit.ly/2023WAfEWFReport).

We are grateful to Matthew T. Lee for his editorial support and for suggesting the more embracing term “Ecosystem-Wide Flourishing,” and we are grateful to all of you who have supported the gathering of this data and telling of these stories.

4 Most-read Posts in 2023 and since 2009

In 2023 the 4 most-read “Reflections of a Pactoecographer” posts focused on getting better organizational results with a unifying purpose and the unique contributions of everyone involved.

1. What Do We Mean When We Say Something Is Political? — Recommended Readings
2. A Common Object-ive Is Not a Deeper Shared Purpose — How to Know the Difference
3. Ecosynomics and Why You Care
4. The O Process for Collaborative Alignment

Of 538 “Reflections of a Pactoecographer” posts since August 2009, the 4 posts you most read explored what we actually mean when we say what we know we can do. Two of the 4 are also in the most-read list for 2023.

1. What Do We Mean When We Say Something Is Political? — Recommended Readings
2. 4 Questions that Changed the World, Again and Again
3. The O Process for Collaborative Alignment
4. From a Theory of Change to a Theory of Impact Resilience

Which is your favorite post? Is there one you share the most? We would love to know.

What Gives You a Competitive Advantage Has Evolved. Have You?

[Extracted from our recent article “Leading Towards a Healthy Ecosystem” in Developing Leaders Quarterly.]

A company’s continued existence depends on its ability to differentiate itself, create a competitive advantage, and create barriers to protect its competitive positioning. Or does it?

How a company creates that “advantage” has shifted over the past fifty years, continuously increasing in required complexity (see figure below).

From understanding business models in the early 20th century to sustained profitability and efficiency by mid-century. Then profitability within a set of competitive forces attacking those profits, in the late 1970s. Then reengineering in the late 1980s to leverage operational excellence. Then the triple bottom line and ESG to positively impact society and the planet, with sustainable profits across an interdependent value chain, where “collaborative” advantage is becoming the secret sauce to enduring success.

This all leads to today’s ecosystem focus, where a company’s ecosystem of stakeholders is better off because of the company’s presence; and the company’s vitality is ultimately dependent on powerful partnering relationships; much greater complexity amongst a greater set of tradeoffs.

In our recent article “Leading Towards a Healthy Ecosystem” in Developing Leaders Quarterly, we describe how this evolving definition of competitive advantage affects the definition of your ecosystem and the responsibility your ecosystem of stakeholders expect of you.

The Numbers Tell The Story. Which Story They Tell Dramatically Changes Their Impact.

The numbers tell the story.  A very common statement.  The proof of the pudding is in the eating.  We know what is actually happening when we get the evidence from the results of our direct experience. That’s what the numbers show.

Whenever someone says this, it is obvious what they mean.  Right?  Nope.  There are at least 4 levels of what they mean.  The “numbers” tell the story of what is right-here right-now, or what is supporting the right-here right-now, or where the supporting is coming from, or what the right-here right-now is here to support. Let’s look at each of these.

Right-here right-now.  Nouns.  A reflection of the immediate past.  The capacities already developed that are available right-here right-now.  Having enough of the right-here right-now affects the viability of the effort: whether it has enough to continue existing.  This “the numbers tell the story” person means that they can see it and touch it, not that other wishy-washy stuff.

Supporting.  Verbs.  Inflows and outflows of what is moving.  The noun is a snapshot of what is moving in and out.  The development of capacities and relationships among the nouns.  Having the net-positive inflow of more resources than are flowing out increases the stability of the continued existence.  This “the numbers tell the story” person means that they can see the existing flows affecting what they can see and touch, in addition to the capacities available right-here right-now. Verb capacities and noun capacities.

Source of supporting.  Potential.  Inspirations for the new possible, seeing pathways for manifesting the possible, and what the outcomes might look like. Resilience in the face of uncertainty reflects how one sees how to respond and bounce-back or bounce-forward when the context changes. This “the numbers tell the story” person means that right-here right-now they can see a future herenow and ways to get there, testing and developing the supporting activities for the eventual capacities, in addition to those supporting today’s viability. Potential and verb and noun capacities.

Here to support.  Purpose.  Reminding oneself that the reason for an effort is to achieve something.  That something is the organizing principle, the unifying purpose.  Survivability comes from aligning the system with the emerging reality, staying focused on the purpose.  This “the numbers tell the story” person sees right-here right-now how the potential, verbs, and nouns support alignment with their deeper purpose. Purpose and potential and verb and noun capacities.

All four say the same thing–the numbers tell the story–yet each is describing what they see “numerically” of very different worlds.  Which do you mean?

Your Continued Health

Will you continue to live? What is your current health? What is your ability to continue to generate that level of health or improve on it? There are four levels of your ability to continue to exist, each building on the previous level.

Viability. The most basic level is viability, your ability to extract enough resources from somewhere to survive another month, avoiding the risk of imminent death.

Stability. At the next level, you are able to focus on the stability of your resources, developing systems activities that sustainably generate more inflows than outflows, avoiding the risk of unpredictable instability in your current health.

Resilience. The next level builds resilience on top of this stability, innovating how you generate higher and higher value, transforming your health and what it means in your life, avoiding the risk of obsolescence.

Survivability. The highest level we have found focuses on survivability over the long term, continuously evolving how you support flourishing across your changing ecosystem of relationships and interactions, avoiding your own extinction.

Each of these four levels requires different capacities, structures, and processes.

You can see how we apply this “ability to continue to exist” to organizations in my recent article in Developing Leaders Quarterly with David Dinwoodie.

2023 State of the Global Workplace: Recommended Reading

Gallup. (2023). State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report_The Voice of The World’s Employees. Gallup: Washington, D.C.

Our colleagues at Gallup have published their 2023 report on the state of the global workplace, looking at the workplace experience of 122,416 people across 160+ countries. 

The study shows that 23% of people are engaged at work, which means 77% are not. Gallup estimates that low engagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion, about 9% of global GDP or the combined 2022 GDP of Japan and Germany.

Gallup’s top findings for what to do: (1) focus on the 59% of quiet-quitting (disengaged) employees who already work for you and want to be engaged; and (2) improve management, with poor management being the lead driver of disengagement.

I recommend you look through the data, what people around the world shared about their experience at work.

#leadershipforflourishing #thriving from work #isclarity

Navigating Complexity and Learning with Agility: Recommended Podcast

Pivoting quickly in an ever-shifting context, towards your deeper purpose, with agile learning and delivering outcomes. This is now the daily task of leadership at all organizational levels in all sectors. What are people around the world learning about how to do this well? On purpose, engaging, and results. 

In this fun podcast with Maureen Metcalf, MBA, my colleagues Suzie Lewis, Dr. David Dinwoodie, and I explore what we are seeing globally about practical ways that leaders are generating flourishing ecosystems in navigating complexity and learning with agility, based on our 2022 article in the Harvard Deusto Business Review.

#bigyes #innovativeleadership #leadershipforflourishing @isclarity.org

https://innovatingleadership.podbean.com