This is a field wide open to development and ongoing change – the ‘consciousness’ aspect of conscious capitalism can keep developing and growing. After all, what it meant to be conscious 100 years ago was very different from what it means now. There is no limit to consciousness, it’s nature is growth and expansion and it was intriguing to engage with the question of how a business would operate and grow that is founded on that very fact.

 When we get on the roadways, there are all kinds of rules, signs, stoplights, maps, GPS systems, etc. to help us get from point A to point B. It’s a complex matrix of intersections, routes, and alternate routes, cops to direct us, and learned protocols that keeps us from running into one another and creating mayhem.

 So how does this relate to meetings?

 How many meetings have you participated in that felt like rush hour in cross-town traffic, without the guidelines that keep everything moving? You ponder where the meeting went off track, or why the meeting didn’t really get out of the parking lot. Or you might be left wondering at the end of a meeting, how did we get here? What decisions, feelings, or rituals did we follow that allowed some to be passive passengers and others to be such dominating drivers that they alone determined both the route and the end location. Sometimes at the end of such meetings, you just want to get out of the car and start walking, anywhere, just to feel some ground under you or to get back to some task you are connected to.

 Granted, meetings don’t have physical roadways and grids to keep everyone on track. But using the traffic analogy, if there aren’t pathways to follow, as well as some signs, markers, and rules to advise us, a successful meeting can be a very hit-or-miss endeavor.

 A revealing 2009 survey commissioned by MCI Conferencing conducted about meetings across the country asked professionals how many meetings they attended per month and what they thought about their outcome. The average response: 60 meetings monthly lasting one hour each, with 50% of those meetings considered to be a waste of time.

 How do we deal with this sometimes fraught, sometimes boring, sometimes divisive forum without getting lost in dead ends or going down alleyways that take away from our overarching goals, aims, and ambitions? How do we create pathways, stay on course, interact, and gain insight from all of the twists and turns that reality confronts us with as we drive our collective fortunes over challenging terrain?

 We have found at Telosity, in our own meetings and in our work with clients, that our meetings become vibrant tools of productivity when we take advantage of cutting edge structures, systems, and rules of engagement. The experience is that of heading downtown with map in hand. We can be confident that we are entering into a stream of prescribed avenues that will lead us towards our destination and purpose. We’ve discovered that having specific procedures and practices in place can keep us on track while providing a framework to explore and travel forward creatively. Collectively adhering to and being guided through the maze of anxiety, confusion, passivity and overbearance by a process that engenders trust and objectivity, we might just enjoy the ride.

“This is the best team-building method I’ve ever experienced. In my 25 years of social work administration for a company that manages 12 sites throughout New England for elders and those with disabilities, I attend “team building” seminars yearly! Over the years, I’ve instinctively incorporated some elements of this meeting process in my group work and would like to learn more about it.”

Nancy D., Boston

The point Nancy is making is very relevant -  a lot of this work speaks to an intuitive, ‘organic’ sense of how things work and makes that explicit, puts it into a conceptual framework, where none existed before and thus can be replicated and spread across the whole organization.

An interesting subject, and outcome, came up at a meeting today with a jewelry wholesale company we are consulting to. It was in the area of risk: taking risks, big risks, or at least making a decision or taking an action that is perhaps outside the perimeters of someone’s authority. In this situation, as is so often the case, a decision was made within and propelled by many constraints¾time, external agreements, push from the internal chain, emotional stress, the proclivity to make an autonomous decision, etc.  It wasn’t seen at the time that such a decision would affect the company in a big way.

The particular issue that needed to be addressed was around a big order from a major retailer. The person who handles large orders, and in particular orders for this retailer, sent out the product but the shipment was returned because most of the items shipped turned out to be the wrong size. This created quite some tension, particularly because the owner was upset with her employee. Normally, as the owner acknowledged, this employee can be trusted and she is highly valued. That’s why she is the person in charge of filling the orders for such an important client. There was, however, more involved in the shipment of this order than the employee was used to dealing with. And there were things about it that the employee couldn’t have known beforehand. In looking into what went wrong by following a process of disciplined engagement, the outcome proved to be illuminating.

Before we began consulting with this company, risk-taking often backfired. And because so much hinged on the relationship with big clients, when a risk did backfire, the boss would fume, everyone would know it, and the effect would be to discourage employees from taking more responsibility. The willingness to take risks that might benefit the company and the employees’ working experience was sapped.

The owner and employee had no real way to communicate beyond the perimeters of a seemingly sufficient level of routine and responsibility. Besides, they saw each other daily, worked in offices and stations that were in close proximity, and fundamentally knew what the other was handling and administering.  This particular situation highlighted how we can often work together, depend on one another, be functionally versed and competent, and yet be worlds apart.  Especially when the critical manure hits the fan.

Over the months that we have been working with this company and introducing some of the principles of Holacracy, people are now getting more comfortable with the uncomfortable. A space of trust and respect, which they themselves have generated by following Holacratic practices, is making situations such as the one in the aforementioned meeting not only workable but immensely rewarding. They know that from top to bottom, a structure is being developed where their screw-ups are used as information and their emotions, input, and connectedness are appreciated and enhanced. Instead of a bunch of “I’s” each defending their territory, the workplace is becoming a “we,” with the whole company moving together through difficult and taxing stuff. The result of addressing this issue in the meeting was that everyone realized how important communication is in supporting a heightened level of risk-taking.

At these crucial times, what are we trusting? Do we have a culture of real, honest and open communication that is there as a basis for dealing with the out-of -the-ordinary, highly charged situations that require input, updates, breaking down barriers, reactions, questions, pauses, objections, conciliation . . . a lot of just human, organic stuff? And if not, what are we doing to build that?

This situation is indicative of an interesting paradox. On one side, in this changing, pressure-cooker business environment of having to find new and inventive ways forward, we are asked to, and will probably want to take more responsibility and be more creative with all of our experience and skills. We want to take risks; we want to broaden our horizons. And at the same time, with so much on the line, often we either get arrogant or we contract, knowing that we are stepping into unknown territory and are risking a heck of a lot more than just our personal ambitions or creative aspirations.

What the discussion in the meeting about this particular incident turned up, at the onset, was how strong is our propensity to hunker down and be more independent in our decision-making when the stakes are high. But through the enhanced communication inherent in the meeting protocols being practiced, the outcome was a full, forthright and satisfying commitment from all involved on how to move the company forward. At times such as this, if we don’t have an organizational structure in place that can hold and integrate information and human propensities, people will fragment and the company will falter.

In order to meet the future with a liberated spirit and awareness, we need to be prepared for the unknown, and the imaginable. We want to be free to use our imagination, be blunt, raise objections, stick our necks out, be wrong, lose face, know the boundaries for conducive and responsible input, and seek the help of colleagues to unravel complexity and then make the next move.  Every business or organization wants to thrive, and there is no better guarantee for growth and prosperity than maximizing the opportunities and conditions for the imaginable and unimaginable to occur. Creating a trusted, disciplined, and conducive environment that is responsive and agile at every level within a company is a high bar to attain and maintain. But why would we want anything less? Whatever the product or service, the output is usually a pretty good indication of the human ingredients that went into it.

At TelosityOS, this is our mission¾to provide systems, facilitation, and expertise that will provide your company or organization with the tools that can enrich communication and support taking risks, and maximize the potentials for human creativity in order to prosper in an ever more complex future.

So much of the furious pace of change we are experiencing is because our interrelatedness is being constantly “upgraded.” In the world of our electronically interlaced lives, the explosion of information about products, services, news, social media, global trends, and movements is having a tremendous effect on existing systems and administrative infrastructures. Models of business that were perfected for the twentieth century are being retooled dramatically for the twenty-first. The human potential that is being opened up in our, as Thomas Friedman put it “flat world,” demands a bigger and more holistic approach to harnessing data, knowledge, expertise, creative initiatives, and enthusiastic energies. The twentieth-century’s tried and true view of business was that it is a competitive rat-race to the top of the heap. Clear, hierarchical authority fostered this paradigm. Now competitiveness is even more intense, but because of the need to be nimble and responsive to ever-changing realities, the limitations of short-sighted and adamant authority can be detrimental to an organization very quickly.

Many are recognizing that the way businesses function and make decisions needs to change. That doesn’t mean that profit and good management regulations aren’t still a big part of success. But the emphasis is shifting. We have to find ways in which a democracy of ideas is elicited from an ever broader and more open-sourced network. How can hierarchy cease to squash and spoil the opportunity for the company to respond, reinvent itself, and prosper? And how can democracy not descend into a free-for-all of opinionated positions and less-than-inspired bottom-up consensus? The good aspects of hierarchy–having a more comprehensive view of the business, a formal, clear track of authority, and defined job descriptions make sense if those characteristics occur within a truly connected and broad-minded chain of command. And democracy’s power and purpose are fulfilled when people’s liberated input is channeled to inform and steer the overarching intent and vision for the whole.

The time-honored management system has its fundamental obligation to distribute tasks, set the course, and interpret the marketplace. The traditional workforce gets on with the work, endeavoring to produce whatever will meet the job description’s criteria. But now more than ever there is a lot of room and acute necessity to experiment with these boundaries. There are resources at all levels that are untapped, and when these capacities are surfaced, it can shift the notions of how things are done and who does them. This can mean reconfiguring deep DNA. It can often mean working together and communicating in ways that require owners, CEOs and top management to let go of tightly held control and authority. And it can mean that departments, staff, and employees participate and take responsibility beyond static job perimeters and an “us versus them” mindset. To build a lasting, reliable, and open network for ideas and data to flow up and down the hierarchy we need to create safe, productive engagements where everyone is connected to the same process.

What we are looking for, intuitively and practically, are systems and structures that integrate democracy and hierarchy. Top management wants to pull the resources and potentials of its human capital towards a coordinated purpose, and the “shop floor” wants to be free to experiment, dissent, and be heard. Through this process, democracy and hierarchy are equally indebted to the mission. They both need to be energized and transparent. For everyone to feel that employment and business are creative enterprises by their nature, hierarchy and democracy must work together to enable our experience and potentials to take the next leap.

In an ideal world we would just change and adjust accordingly. But old habits die hard. We need practice and some rules of engagement in order to facilitate these changes at all levels. TelosityOS utilizes systems and facilitation in order to harness untapped human resources, and provides a framework for organizational structure and meetings to be able to do this. In the next post I will explain what those structures can look like and will describe the radical creative power made available by defining and organizing meetings according to their various purposes.

What do I mean by ego? I mean it here in the negative sense. In other words, the identification with and focus on oneself in a way that inhibits or obstructs the ability of that individual and the collective - that he or she may be part of –  to develop and mature.

We gave a presentation in Boston recently on some of the principles and methodologies of Holacracy. We spoke about how Holacracy introduces structures and specific steps to meetings, which are strict and at times even ruthless. We described how these boundaries help everyone to stay oriented and focused on the task at hand and how adhering to these procedures keeps the self-important and distracting aspects of ego in check. As many of us have experienced, meetings provide ample opportunity for ego to usurp the process of decision-making and getting work done –  for example, through uneasy self-consciousness, pent-up emotions, boredom and disinterest, dominating through attention-seeking, or engaging in too much distracting small talk.

One person in the audience seemed puzzled and, by the look on his face, clearly wasn’t buying the idea that these and other diversions of ego were necessarily counterproductive. When asked why he looked skeptical, he more or less said that the ego is a discerning and important part of our individuation and a necessary source for creativity.

We realized it was an important point. The presence of a strong ego has given the individuated self the capacity to differentiate and critically sort through our experience. But it can also be difficult and confusing to navigate the insistent and dominating foxholes of ego – aggressive and passive – that undermine the collective desire for meaning and meaningful contribution. The questioner was raising a relevant and crucial question: How does a meeting attract and create a space for everyone’s inventiveness, tensions, activity, and perspectives to be brought to the table without derailing the focus and task of the meeting and the work of the organization?

The practice of Holacracy™ doesn’t focus on improving or liberating the ego. There is space within the various steps in meetings specifically for reactions and objections. These rounds where everything can be vented or released are monitored and facilitated; team members are required to participate but instead of tossing around blame and getting into a process of “working it out,” frustrations, objections, and expectations are channeled so that all input leads to a more authentic discussion of how to consciously evolve the organization in light of its goals and broader purpose. This process results in a very interesting integration of perspectives and input. It means that potentially fractious issues or conflicts don’t get taken over by ego but rather the process allows multiple perspectives to inform and be integrated towards a decision or outcome that is mutually held. That means everyone, by being held to strict guidelines for discussion and participation, is more apt – and this doesn’t happen overnight – to welcome a varied and inclusive interaction that works toward goals and outputs that are clearer for everyone to see and take responsibility for. Remarkably, and almost ironically, by putting the needs of the organization first, the result of such rigorous focus can often be improved relationships, greater clarity of roles, and heightened communication throughout the business.

I don’t know if the questioner was convinced by our explanation and discussion. But he did say he wanted to find out more about how this worked. And that all-important exploration we welcome and are whole-heartedly committed to.

An interview with the owner and manager of Saraswati about their work with TelosityOS

Saraswati is a wholesale jewelry import company selling to stores throughout the United States. Founded twenty years ago by Elisa Mishory, it currently employs five full-time people, and has nine sales reps working under contract. Three years ago, Eva Schuster became the company’s manager, and she and Elisa have worked together since then at the helm of the business. For a while, because of a downturn in the market for silver jewelry, they noticed that their enthusiasm for the work had flagged and that their company culture in general needed new life. In June 2010, Elisa and Eva decided to engage the services of TelosityOS, specifically to introduce a clearer structure and a new way to conduct meetings, based on the organizational practice of Holacracy. Their aim was to reorganize, find the energy to reinvent the business in order to make it profitable again, and evolve their company to its next level of development.

Q: What were the issues that brought you to engage with TelosityOS and to try a new way of organizing your business?

Elisa: We had been thinking for a long time that we needed a way to get our employees working as a team and focusing on the work. Other ways we’ve tried in the past were successful in terms of fostering a sense of social unity but were an absolute failure in terms of focusing on the work. We really wanted people to feel responsible and engaged and excited about what they’re doing.

Q: Has the experience of this change been what you expected? What aspects of it surprised you if any?

Eva: I understood the theory of Holacracy but I had no idea how our people would develop. The way one young woman in particular is changing is a complete surprise. Somehow, you do know if people have the potential to change or not; you have a feel for it. But you never really expect them to flourish in an office structure. That’s the biggest surprise and the biggest encouragement to keep going with this.

Elisa: I am surprised at how fast the change has begun. Again, this one employee in particular who has worked here for six years is incredibly capable, and we have definitely always seen the potential, but I could never find a “way in.” And I’m amazed at how quickly she’s actually made a shift. She had always been very happy to do what she was told to do, but never wanted to take responsibility, and I see that changing dramatically. Her potential and her ability to help take this company forward are really growing.

We have two other people here who are much quieter and harder to bring out, and I’m confident that this process will release them as well. Something I’ve been learning about holocratic meetings is how much it’s been developed to release the strength of all different personality types. These employees normally stay very much in the shadows, but they both have tremendous abilities also. It may be harder to see because they’re naturally so reticent and quiet, but I’m confident that we’re going to see them flourish as well. It’s very exciting.

Eva: There’s one thing that I want to add which is also a surprise to me. It’s not just the employees who get released. I have also been released as a responsibility-holder. One thing that started to come up in some meetings is that I might move into a position doing sales and marketing, which is not something I ever would have thought I could do on a bigger scale. Fundamentally, the people who run the company benefit in the same way the employees do. As somebody who carries the responsibility, you don’t really think about yourself being liberated by a process, because it’s your money and you carry the burden. You think it’s not part of your job description. But this methodology does change everyone in unexpected ways.

Q: Has the way people work together also changed since these meetings have started?

Eva: Completely. Also, we are all women, and with women you usually have a pecking order and underlying tensions. All of that is so reduced.

Elisa: That’s the main way that it’s changed. It’s not necessarily that people are working together per se, but this intensity of pecking order, the positioning, the competition—it’s not the prevailing atmosphere anymore, which it definitely was. We had a recent example of this transformation, where Eva and I were both away for two weeks. In the past, every single time we’ve gone away, it would surprised us again and again how the employees would eat each other alive. It was always a shock, because that’s not what they did in front of us. This time, we were gone for two weeks and that didn’t happen. It’s huge, a huge change.

Eva: They supported each other. They were totally different. We would be afraid to go because we were sure one of the women would undermine the others, and sooner or later we would find out that it was a horrible experience.  This time it was completely the opposite.  One woman in particular totally stepped in. She helped solve every difficulty that arose. Even technical difficulties—the phone system broke down, and they even solved that together, and none of them is a techie per se. Unbelievable.

Q: So has this way of working together affected your bottom line yet?

Elisa: Simply, not yet. That’s really because of the economy. I think if we were in a different industry right now, we might be seeing the effects of that more quickly, but our industry—silver jewelry—is really hurting. It’s just not selling right now in the marketplace. Though I can’t say honestly that our bottom line has changed, that doesn’t indicate that there’s any issue with the changes we have implemented. It certainly has made things more effective here. If we were busier, I am confident that we would be able to respond to it. We’re ready; we’re poised. But we’re waiting for the market to allow us to take advantage of that.

Q: What other changes have you noticed?

Elisa: There is a shift of focus. The focus before was very relationship oriented. What was generated between employees was a certain kind of social closeness—this was a high value in the company. Relationships outside the company were also highly valued—what everyone was doing outside of work. This has dramatically changed.  It’s not that relationship isn’t important; it’s just that there’s much more focus on the work, not the individuals. There’s more focus on we can do. We’ve made a lot of changes on the level of daily operations, and I think it’s time now for us now to start getting into the strategy level. If we had tried to do that earlier when things were still very focused on the feeling-good part of being here, people wouldn’t really have been available to start to look into strategy in a big way. The fact that they’re really engaged with the work now makes it possible for everyone to contribute much more fully than they would have before.

Eva: One interesting thing is in the past, the employees would often bring tons of cake and eat lots of sweets together. That has completely stopped and our conversations are much more focused. When we stopped to look at what our highest value is here at Saraswati, it’s beauty. And that value is being shared much more now with each other. It could still change a lot more, but I can see even by what the employees buy that their sense of beauty is changing. That’s exciting, because it’s a higher value than just sharing cake and cookies and doing something that you actually don’t feel good about at the end of the day.

Elisa: There is another thing that is important to talk about. Right at the beginning of working with Telosity, or shortly after we started, new ways of working emerged. We started to learn how to follow the “tensions” in the business as signs that something needed attention; we learned that usually those tensions were a result of a particular role not being filled. One of the first tensions we noticed was related to losing our sample board designer. An important part of sales in our business is creating sample display boards for our reps to use when they sell. This is a creative process that has always been done by one individual. We weren’t managing to get that job covered so our sales reps weren’t getting the samples that they needed to sell, so this was a huge tension.

Through working with TelosityOS, basically a whole different way of working emerged. We decided to try it for the first time as a collective process where we engaged all of the employees. There were all kinds of inner sensors saying it could never work, but the spirit of Holacracy says if it’s not going to do any harm, why not give it a try? I spoke with a friend who has had a lot of experience in the whole realm of creating samples, who said, “I can’t see how this is ever going to work, because you have to have present one person’s style.” But we went ahead and took two days with everybody in the company working on the boards and it was a phenomenal success. We did twice as many as we anticipated and released a tremendous amount of tension, not only for Eva and me but for everybody in the company. Because everyone had been wondering who’s going to do this job? Who is creative enough to do it? It seemed like it was a huge lack. And actually when we did it together, every single person had something to contribute to it. This was a major surprise.

We still are in the market that we’re in, but we were able to get all of our sales reps new boards in time for the fourth quarter season when previously we weren’t heading there at all. We were heading toward a huge amount of failure because we couldn’t figure out how to take care of that problem. Through Telosity’s coaching, and through the unique spirit of Holacracy, which says let’s creatively find a workable solution based on the reality that we’re facing right now. The concept of dynamic steering says let’s try it, even if it’s not necessarily perfect. Every intuition was saying it wouldn’t work, but in trusting the process we thought it could be worth a try. And it ended up being the solution.

Q: A left-field creative input—

Elisa: —that we simply wouldn’t have gotten to without the methodology.

Q: You mentioned the spirit of Holacracy. Is there anything else you can add about what you perceive that to be?

Elisa: Dynamic steering really sums up the spirit of Holacracy. It’s not the way we usually think. Basically, any solution that arises in response to a tension, if you collectively find there’s no concrete reason not to do it, you give it a try. This provides much greater agility than we’re used to having in business. Instead trying to predict and control everything, where you attempt to anticipate every consequence, instead we try and then we adjust to whatever the consequence actually is. It releases a much greater creativity because you don’t have this fear of going down the wrong road—because you’re working in a much more agile environment. We’re always adjusting to what the reality is, instead of what we’re projecting reality to be.

Q: That’s great. It sounds like you’re finding lots of new capacities. Have there also been challenges in implementing this methodology? And if so, what are they?

Elisa: Giving up power. The shift in structure from being the captain of the ship to being a member of the company circle, not the one in charge who has the last word on everything. That’s challenging. It’s a worthwhile trade-off, but it’s challenging.

Eva:  The challenge in this new structure is it shakes your deepest unconsidered opinions and values. Employees, management and owners—it wants everybody to create, to relate more to the joy and the creativity of life than anything else. And that is a challenge because it’s related to your bread and butter and also to what you identify with. But then you get so convinced by the method that you want to start to dynamically steer yourself as well. When you start working as one whole company circle, you don’t really think that you, as the responsible person would also become a circle within yourself that wants to be dynamically steered.

Q: To finish up, what would you say to another business owner about your experience with TelosityOS and Holacracy? What would you like them to know about?

Elisa: I would say that from everything that I’ve experienced so far and the potentials I feel can still be released, I’m convinced that this is the wave of the future. It is such a healthier and more holistic relationship to business than any other approach I know of. What turns me on about this is that I think it’s a model for how people can come together in organizations, and that has implications for culture as a whole, even beyond the culture that you create in your organization.

Eva: My position in this company is more of what you could call the second in command. So if I were speaking to someone like that, I would say, you know, your ambitions have gotten you to second place, which is pretty amazing. But this gets you and everybody to first place. It takes care of so much more than how you make your money. You as a person become a lot more whole. This method unlocks a creativity in you and in your boss and in the people you’re responsible for—and how the company is positioned in the world—that you could never reach, however ambitious, however smart, however educated you are. You’d never get there with the ambitions that got you to where you are now, so do everything you can do to convince your boss to implement this, and then let go!

Elisa: This may sound wildly idealistic, but after this experience and seeing the changes in the employees and so on, this has shifted the relationship to work from just a mundane 9-to-5 thing. It actually puts people in touch with purpose. I can’t quite explain how it does that but I think that the way everybody is held and the trust that’s released shifts people’s relationship to life. Again, it probably sounds idealistic, but I feel that what we’re doing here—the kind of changes that you see in employees and in yourself—isn’t just about the relationship to the organization. It carries beyond that to a level of fulfillment and purpose that’s leagues above what people normally experience in a work situation.