You ask profound questions here and leave many provocative ideas, all beautiful gifts. Indeed, what do we lack? What are we searching to buy? What could we buy that might fill the holes. In the very process of the search we become like the items on the shelf, things. So it takes someone, a kind of cultural shaman like yourself, to enter the field and help change the “trance.”

What you say reminds me of a story that Robert Bly used to tell about a village where it had not rained in a long, long time. A shaman was called and arrived from far away only asking for a hut on the edge of town where he might meditate. After three days of meditation, the rain suddenly began to fall and the villagers rushed from their huts to thank and congratulate him for this feat. He replied, “Oh, the rain? The rain comes when the rain comes — I didn’t have anything to do with that. It’s taken me all three days just to get the village centered!”

May you be called to “bring the rain” to many places. Many best wishes.

Our leaders are in a trance that is reinforce by the official view of their role: to extract resources to make as much money as possible. As long as the only metrics are of the financial aspect, production, sales and profits, we forget a major element: corporation are a living context where human beings come together around an idea they want to contribute too and make a living out of.

We collectively and individually create a place where we live. Unfortunately, we often treat each other as if we were production devices, to pair with a kind of machine, we become things.

As long as we stay in that trance, we will act accordingly, killing our spirit, our uniqueness, our humanness.

I have been invited to go to repair the climate of some workplaces that were so damaged, peoples disengages, skepticism rampant, climate toxic.

All I did was to change the trance by which they were operating. I treated them as human beings, contributing in their own way to the collective life and to the purpose of the organization. I proposed a different set of sunglasses (filter). I offer them a purpose that they would like to contribute to.

And it worked: spirit came back, trust came back, good will came back. It was not that complicated, it did not need long training, lots of experts, big money.

In fact, training was always going on as we worked differently together. I kept it simple, I expressed my appreciation,I instill joy in the work. I was the change that I wanted to see in them.

We tend to complicate things, with large plans, schemes, structures and other means to stay in the same trance even though we see that it is killing us.

We need to remember that we create life, first. We create a context that can foster more life or one that is so toxic that it kills life.

What we collectively need to do is to change our trance about work.

I have a question for those who never have enough money/status: what is money/status a substitute for? What are you lacking to need so much energy? Money is energy. But it can become a symbol of something else. Why do you need it in such a quantity ? What is missing ? What are you so afraid of ?

Disdonc

Like you, I am searching for better answers in business model reinvention, tweaking the ‘Ohana in Business model we have used in MWA, for I still place my hope in business enterprise: Those Wall Street and Walmart fiascos are not representative of business in total. There can be heart and soul in business, and in a business which is profitable.

While it is a struggle to “begin with the end in mind” right now as we search for an answer, for we aren’t completely sure of our vision specifics, I think that focusing on the value of our reinvention journey as teams of people, will bring us the quickest relief while getting us back in touch with our humanity. Thus “small and nimble, small and nimble” has become this chant in my self-talk, and not to ignore big business either, but to put that faces-in-teams view back within it, and faces which are smiling, proud of the work they do individually, but also proud of the team they were within.

I don’t want our sense of entitlement to come back either, and still feel that reality check was a silver lining in this dark cloud, so another mantra coming back for me is about teams working “on the business, and not just in the business.” We need creativity and innovation which is borne from co-authorship, where no one in a business sits on the sidelines bench-warming and squirming, and for me to be actively working on this right now versus hand-wringing while worrying, the small and nimble, values-aligned team approach is where I am concentrating my efforts.