WAY OF NOWHERE EPUB EDITIO EB

Nick Udall, Nic Turner

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780007268870
• eBook ISBN: 9780007289011
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

The Way of Nowhere is a business book by the UK's hottest change management consultancy who have led transformations in some of Britain's biggest and best known organisations. An invaluable resource for anyone who wants to make a creative difference in their lives and the lives of people around them.

Inspired by the unique practice of 'nowhere', a community of companies that specialise in co-creation, this is an inspirational book that will help you break through to a more creative and strategic future

Renowned for their world-class approach to innovation, the nowhere group works with a wide range of businesses, government agencies and individuals to develop their creativity to its full potential. Now, their book maps out the groundbreaking ways that anyone can become more productive, playing a more creative role in your organisation while simultaneously nurturing your own growth along the way.

It contains eight breakthrough questions designed to stimulate and enrich our creative capacity, both as an individual and as part of a team. Using examples and tools from their work with some of the UK's largest and best known businesses, The Way of Nowhere shows us how to unlock the underlying and invisible forces at play within organisations, communities and cultures.

With practice, you will discover how these questions and insights can release the latent creativity that exists within – a place where magic can happen – out of nowhere!

the 8 questions

You are about to enter the inspiring-innovation wheel.

May your journey bring creativity and innovation into your organization.

May you return the gift of your uniqueness for the benefit of all.

what is our unique purpose…?

purpose

suspend disbelief
remembering who we are
for everyone

look down from above
holding the wider context
to transform the now

what is our unique purpose… ?

In our many years of consulting, one of the fascinating things we have noticed has been how words and concepts like ‘mission’, ‘vision’, ‘purpose’, ‘DNA’ and ‘ambition’ are used differently and often interchangeably.

Of course, the danger of concepts like these is that they become nothing more than platitudes and strap lines thought up by a small group of clever people in a room somewhere. They are then sold into an organization and are often received as the new thing that management is pedalling this week.

For us, the concept or asset that stands out from the rest is purpose. We don't think up a purpose. We discover, or rediscover, it. It is already within each and every one of us and it is what founds, forms and binds organizations. So, what is our organization's unique purpose? What holds us together and what is the difference we want to make?

The perennial questions Who am I? and Why am I here? are just as relevant to an organization as they are to us all. And when they are held communally by a diverse group of people, amazing insights and revelations begin to show themselves that strengthen resolve, fuel determination and inspire our inherent need to create.

This chapter in the East invites us to get behind the first breakthrough question and catch some initial glimpses of the power of the inspiring-innovation wheel.

allied: purpose

suspend disbelief

remembering who we are

for everyone

Suspend disbelief

One way of accessing the immense creative power of an organization is to believe in the existence of a shared purpose. This means leaving behind the world where an organization's only reason to exist is to grow and deliver shareholder return. Instead we need to enter a world where each business, community and group has a unique contribution that only it can make.

If we are able to suspend disbelief and embrace the idea that every organization has a unique purpose, we have taken the first step to liberating the creative potential of our organization in a way that will enable our people to find greater meaning and creativity in their own lives.

An organization's purpose, beyond profit, is a powerful ally for inspiring-innovation, as well as a guide for making critical strategic decisions. It is fundamental in generating the energy necessary to inspire transformation and in creating the coherence and form necessary to inform strategic innovation. It gives heart to stretch goals and creates edge for the whole business as it strives to fulfil its purpose – nourishing our souls and feeding our ambitions in a self-fulfilling way.

When we connect an organization to its unique purpose, we open a wellspring of inspiration that can raise its communal perspective from the floor to the horizon. Tapping into this purpose-full wellspring is critical when we want to release the creative potential of our organizations and catalyse strategic and cultural change. This type of growth requires a shift in form (strategy) and energy (culture).

Remembering who we are

In response to the ever-increasing pace of change, organizations are constantly developing new growth strategies. If they do not respond effectively at the level of business concept, somebody else soon will.¹

Yet leaders often struggle to communicate these strategies effectively. Very often the difficulty lies not so much in the form or extent of the communication (although this is difficult enough), but rather in the fact that it is just another new idea. Without the appropriate communal and emotional context, a new idea will rarely touch people's hearts and minds.

An organizational purpose has the ability to catalyse change in both form and energy. It has the ability to renew and refocus. Moreover, it has the power to inspire unique strategic pathways which competitors will find almost impossible to follow. Yet to achieve this our purpose must be authentic and resonant. It must create space for people to contribute effectively in their own ways. It must align the hopes and aspirations of the business with those of the people in it.

So, how do we discover this magical purpose? The mere act of triggering an enquiry into purpose begins the quest. Our purpose is encoded in our past and we can catch a glimpse of it in the space between what we care passionately about, what we are good at and what the world values and needs from us.² These first glimpses prepare the organizational field to reveal its purpose but more importantly help the people to remember themselves in the community of which they are a part.

Yet this is unlikely to be enough. A truly compelling purpose requires a co-creative breakthrough, which is best undertaken by a small group on behalf of the whole. Such a breakthrough requires a different form of knowing. We now need to shift our level of consciousness beyond the everyday rational and analytical lens of the dominant culture and expand our intuitive ways of knowing.

While our rational mind stems from our separate sense of ourselves, our intuitive mind calls forth information from the realm of the interconnected, the space that exists between ourselves and others. Both aspects are valid, but our tendency is to depend on the rational at the expense of the intuitive. Purpose, however, is born out of our interconnectedness. It binds us and holds us, and thereby helps reset our out-of-balance reliance on our intellect, encouraging us to trust our instincts and feelings of rightness.

When we are able to let go of our internal dialogue and hold a prolonged intuitive state of profound listening and observation, delicate new insights begin to arise. It sometimes feels that these insights come from a higher source, as they suddenly appear out of nowhere.

For everyone

An organizational purpose is therefore not a rational statement of intent chosen from numerous alternatives. Rather it is born from a moment of true breakthrough, from a deep and complete knowledge. For this type of insight to arise requires us to surrender to the quest on behalf of the people, softening and in some cases dissolving our sense of separateness.

By reconnecting with our interconnectedness we also open ourselves to a genuine Field-generated breakthrough (see my side of the book, page 21). From here our purpose begins to animate the Field and the Field to animate our purpose, creating a natural and compelling gravitational movement propelling the organization forward with dignity, meaning and community.³

distortion: proving

look down from above

holding the wider context

to transform the now

Look down from above

Our ability to truly commit to discovering and fulfilling our purpose is profoundly affected by a natural distorting tendency to constantly justify and prove our worth. This usually manifests in the continual monitoring of financial value and market share. In a micro-sense, this also manifests in cultures that compulsively measure everything. Now these tendencies in and of themselves are not particularly the issue, especially when they are used to define accountability, acknowledge progress and maximize learning. But they often become industries in their own right, creating mechanical and sterile bureaucracies.

There is a fine line between operational excellence that gathers energy and operational excellence that drains energy. The latter is often seen as top management wanting us to do more for less.

For top management the world is indeed about profit and loss and shareholder value and return. But this is not the world that the people inhabit day to day. This points to the critical role of leadership in releasing the creative potential of organizations.

Great leaders are confident of their ability to exchange value. They understand that the more we can fulfil our purpose, the more profit we will generate and the more energy will return to our organization (and its shareholders or stakeholders), enabling us to release even more of our potential. Of course the alternative perspective is to see profit as the sole purpose of an organization which by default keeps people trapped in the world of doing more and more for less and less – something that must be a questionable reason for getting out of bed, let alone going to our edge for an organization.

This points to another manifestation of the distorting energy in this direction: leaders separating themselves from their people by anointing themselves as custodians of the measurement system. In this mode leaders tend to look down from above. The vital skills and experience that could and should be brought to bear in unfolding the potential of the organization become out of balance with the need to monitor and measure. It's like taking the star players out of your football team and getting them to run the scoreboard! In this context, purp...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• contents
• Welcome
• making a choice
• the practice wheel of inspiring-innovation
• the 8 questions
• living the practice
• welcome
• making a choice
• the art wheel of inspiring-innovation
• the 8 questions
• living the practice
• About the Publisher