Can you spot where your next solution will come from?   Do you believe it’s already in your ranks?  

In the context that you have everything, or in this case, “everyone” around you that you need to succeed: Can you imagine your solution coming from one of them?  The Plexus Institute just published Inviting Everyone: Healing Healthcare through Positive Deviance, a 198-page book with process and case studies on how numerous healthcare organizations invited everyone to a “solutions party,” with a beneficial hang-over.  Based on the thinking that everyone (there’s that word, again) contributes to the success or the miss-step of an organization, ALL staff contributing to an injured system, ALL staff (that’s another way of saying; “everyone”) meet in a “safe” environment that invites/encourages/expects authentic conversation.  The Leader, knowing the solution is in the conversation, listens at and below the surface and seeks the “positive deviance” in the system.  Once found, the Leader encourages its growth.   

Every time a Leader admits, in thought or in words, we can’t…he/she is correct. 

Every time a Leader believes, in thought or in words, we can…he/she is correct.

Leadership Presence.  What does your presence evoke?  What does the mere mention of your name stir in the hearts and minds of those you lead?  I’m referring to your ”dominant message” in this context?  In your presence, do people expend energy to impress, defend, cover, or otherwise react in a way that is less than moving forward?  Or do people sense your genuine support in expressing and achieving their best work.  Are they inspired?  What’s your energy like?  You can be sure that your energy is felt by those around you.

What drives you?  What’s your motivation?  What sits at the base of your thinking, prodding you to action?  In a world of duality, your “what”can be “boiled down” to one of two things: fear or love.  Knowing the difference results in night and day.  

As a leader seeking the future, consider the following:  

“Put attention on what is alive with freshness and vitality.  Do not put your attention on what is dead, repetitious or dull.”  

Simple formula for Performance [P = p - i] :              

Performance = potential – interference  

Tim Gallwey’s ”Inner Game of Work observed that “performance rarely equals potential.  A little self-doubt, an erroneous assumption, the fear of failure (or success), was all it took to greatly diminish one’s actual performance.”  

We all deal with interference, internal and external.   What’s yours?

OPTIMUS Thought for the week of August 8, 2010.  

As a Leader; What is your “sense” of how things are going? 

The thought this week is not directed toward the “direction of things,” rather it’s about “your sense” of the direction of things.  How do you see/feel/think of ”your sense?”  What is “your sense?”  What does “your sense” represent to you?  Where does “your sense” originate?  Is “your sense” trustworthy?  How does “your sense” relate to “your mind/heart/body?”  How does “your mind” think about “your sense?”  Are they separate?  Are they connected?  Which do you rely on more, when?  When does “your sense” out shine your intellect, and visa versa?  What do you do with the information you gain from “your sensing?”   Many leaders have expressed that they ”sense” things going in a different direction, yet are unclear about that direction.  The future is not clear to them. 

We give our “sense” credibility as observed in our leadership actions, demonstrated by a more cautious and conservative decision-making.  Can we tap into “our sense” to gain greater clarity, and determine our next step?  Here’s the question:  If we sense that things are headed in an unknown direction and we believe in “our sense” enough to influence our decision-making as leaders, then can we also tap into “our sense” to influence a clearer direction?  As leaders, can we use “our sense” as a credible source to help lead us?   What would the outcome be if a group of leaders who collectively”sensed” a change in the direction of their respective industry would be willing to work at the level of sense, to sit/share/work with others in the midst of the “collective sense,” and be open to whatever “the sense” reveals?

Paint a stripe on the outer most portion of an airplane propeller, and start the propeller’s engine, you see a ‘solid’ circle of that paint color, even though you know that the circle is not solid. In fact, the circle is ninety-eitght percent space.  Yet, you see a ‘solid’ circle.  Now, can you imagine a horizontal propeller spinning fast enough so you could actually stand on it? 

Albert Einstein was ‘intergalactic’ in his questioning, theorizing, and discovering, that is, ahead of his time and out of this world.  For thousands of years man functioned within the understanding that energy was different/separate from matter.  Einstein’s many curiosities, one of which was to know the mind of God, propelled him into a scientific, quantum archeological dig, searching for the building blocks of life.  In the search, he concluded that energy and matter were one and the same, that any demarcation was thinner than man’s imaginings, and in fact was what man imagined.  At the sub-atomic level a particle would be present at one moment and gone the next, only to reappear a moment later.

The “now you see it, now you don’t” nature of matter in its relationship with energy creates.  Matter is nothing more than manifestation of energy, an expression of energy if you will.  Energy is activity or vibration, a thought or spirit.  Energy is the substance of space, space abounds as expressed by Chopra  “within atoms, subatomic particles are separated by vast distances, so much that an atom is 99.999 percent empty.”

Consider “the smallest object that we can see, even under a microscope, contains millions of atoms. To see the atoms in a baseball, we would have to make the baseball the size of the earth. If the baseball were the size of the Earth, its atoms would be about the size of grapes. If you can picture the earth as a huge glass ball filled with grapes that is approximately how a baseball full of atoms would look.

The step downward from the atomic level takes us to the sub-atomic level here we find the particles that make up atoms. The difference between the atomic level and the subatomic level is as great as the difference between the atomic level in the world of sticks and rocks. It would be impossible to see the nucleus of an atom the size of a grape; in fact, it would be impossible to see the nucleus of an atom the size of a room. To see the nucleus of an atom, the atoms would have to be as high as a 14-story building!  The nucleus of the atom as high as a 14-story building would be about the size of a grain of salt.  Since the nuclear particle is about 2,000 times more massive than electron, the electrons revolving around this nucleus would be about as massive as dust particles.

The dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican is a diameter of about 14-stories.  Imagine a grain of salt in the middle of the dome of St. Peter’s with a few dust particles revolving around it at the outer edges of the dome this gives us the scale of subatomic particles. ”

Physicists theorize that those dust particles revolve around their nucleus so fast as to create the image of a ‘solid’ sphere, the subatomic building block of life.  Now, look around you applying that image to the things within eyesight.  Then, look at you.

So, if matter is 99.999 percent space, is thought 100 percent space?  If so, that leaves a .001 percent difference, a sub-atomic line between matter and energy. 

Our thoughts produce the matter we have today.  Changing our thoughts give us something different, better, tomorrow.  Our power is in our choice of thinking.