All Systems Have One Goal

I have been working with “systems” for a very long time and I truly love systems. Some systems are technical, some are personal, some are organizational, some are natural. There are systems throughout the Earth and throughout our lives including our educational system, mathematics, science, our healthcare system, our political system and our religious system. I believe all these systems have foundations that are almost identical.

Technically, a system is defined as a set of principles, procedures, or things working together as parts of an organized framework, method, interconnecting network or mechanism. This is a useful definition when I consider the skills and methods I write about and teach. All these skills are built on an organized framework that provides the user with a tool to use in problem solving.

But if every system is essentially a framework – can we exchange one skill or application for another? Or blend multiple applications into something new? Yes – I think we can, and I think it happens every day.

We may start with one skill or methodology – but that tool alone often does not provide the most comprehensive result. For example, take an athlete who wants to train for a competitive tournament. His or her coach designs a training system to prepare the athlete to perform at peak during the tournament to increase their chances of winning. But is the training system the only tool the coach uses? No. There is also a nutritional training system, a stress reduction system, a practice system, etc. Each of these systems provides a focus in a complementary way to the individual’s performance. One system alone won’t suffice – you can’t train the athlete to perform while they are eating junk food three times a day.

Let’s blend another. In Human Resources, we talk a lot about work/life balance. “A good work-life balance,” according to Chris Chancey, career expert and CEO of Amplio Recruiting, “has numerous positive effects, including stress reduction, a lower risk of burnout and a greater sense of well-being. This benefits both employees and employers.”

There are many prescriptions for work/life balance including: accepting work/life balance is unique for each individual, finding a job that you love, prioritizing your health, allowing yourself to unplug, taking a vacation, making time for yourself and your loved ones, setting boundaries and work hours, setting goals and priorities and sticking to them. But suppose we blended two “systems” to produce a new approach to work/life balance – such as Feng Shui – which is about creating balance in your living environment – with analytics.

Feng Shui has five (5) key elements. First – there is “growth and vitality.” Growth is a characteristic of you as an individual. Why? Because how much, how often and in what way you want to grow is entirely dependent on your personal preferences. Perhaps you want growth opportunities at work, or perhaps you want growth opportunities in an outside interest. Either way, your employer cannot guarantee satisfaction in this area – you must define it for yourself. Then once you have defined it, you must seek the opportunity that fits your needs. The definition is your “growth requirements” and this correlates to “business requirements” in a work context.  When you define your growth requirements, you identify what’s most important to you, how critical it is and how its prioritization in the same way business requirements define what the organization needs. In my work, achieving 75% of your requirements is a reasonable goal. Working on achievement of your growth requirements increases your vitality. Vitality is defined as “the state of being strong and active; energy.” So just as achieving 75% of business requirements increases efficiency, so – too – achieving 75% of your growth requirements should increase your positive energy.

Next in Feng Shui is “passion and energy.” What activity would you spend your time doing for free? Is it oil painting? Is it accounting? Is it caring for others? Is it mowing the yard? What is it that makes you completely forget about time, other priorities, distractions, hunger, etc.? What absorbs you completely, so you freely give your energy to it? Suppose you could combine growth and passion? Both generate energy – how much positive influence would you bring into your life if you found a way to give this practice to yourself? From a business context, if an organization can provide opportunities for employees to pursue a passion that impacts their performance at work, the result is often brilliant. I think of the development of the Internet, home computers, scientists, journalism, non-profits, etc. There are numerous stories about the innovation and camaraderie of people working on projects they are passionate about and the innovations they achieve together. Imagine the joy and energy created by such activities!

Feng Shui then asks us to consider “stability and balance.” To perform our best, and to access growth and passion and energy, we need to operate from a stable foundation that provides balance. When we are off-balance – our personal relationships are chaotic, we are worried about our health, our children need extra support, our job is unpredictable, our finances are unstable – we cannot focus on growth or passion. We slip into survival mode – our position on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (below) slips down. During these times of instability, we must work to re-achieve balance and to intentionally bring more positive energy to us. Chaos breeds instability and negative energy and we must put effort into counterbalancing with positive energy as much as we can.

I would add the skills and methods I write and teach about here – in the stability and balance category. When you are trying to solve problems, especially in the already stressful urgent environment of work, reinventing the methodology every time is tiresome and unreliable. By using a tried and tested methodology to conduct analysis and identify potential solutions, you don’t have to add stress and worry about how to gather data and analysis. The methodology is already built providing you an accepted, justifiable process.

Next, using the systemic method of Feng Shui, we encounter “precision and intelligence.” I think this element can be translated into balancing your emotions and your intelligence. Trusting either your emotions or your intelligence alone can never achieve balance. Humans are highly emotional beings; we operate with a great deal of instinct and intuition – even when we deny it. Our senses are always perceiving signals all around us, whether or not our intelligence is aware of it. In fact, studies have found that humans make almost 90% of their decisions emotionally. But emotions are imprecise. So to balance this high emotional state, we need to actively insert methods of analysis and reasoning into our decision making. Together, the balance of intuition plus intelligent data helps us make better decisions that have a stronger foundation in objective data, but are also influenced by our intuition and perceptions. For example, perhaps you conduct a technical assessment and determine objectively that your computer system needs to be replaced. But your intuition is picking up lots of signals that tell you your organization is not receptive to the cost of the product or the project. Consequently, your goal shifts from pushing the project hard – and taking a chance it is completely discarded – to socializing the project gently and slowly to convince the executive team without the stress of asking for money yet.

Finally, the Feng Shui system focuses on “wisdom and abundance.” As emotional beings, humans often spend a lot of time focused on their feelings and are often focused on their “lack” of abundance. The news we are all exposed to every day is full of humans who are angry, suffering, or struggling. But wisdom begins to come when we realize that abundance is easy if we stop training ourselves to think that abundance is “out there” somewhere. Abundance is not a thing or an accumulation of things or a position. Abundance is a mind-set; a way of viewing the world that says “I – just like everyone else – am worthy of abundance and balance. And I have the wisdom to know that I already have it.” We each already have it because it is inside of us, waiting for us to acknowledge it, embrace it and let it out.

What does “wisdom and abundance” mean in a work context? I think it means attempting to have the wisdom to recognize that abundance is achieved when…

…we find satisfactory ways to grow and participate in our passion,

…which then creates vitality and energy,

…that improves our stability and balance,

…that can be used to integrate our emotions and our intelligence to improve our decision making,

…producing more wisdom and acceptance of the abundance that is available to everyone. It’s a system.

Feng Shui is about creating balance in your living environment. Business systems are about creating balance in your work environment. It’s all the same goal.