Principle #1: Good bones

Good bones start with a well-designed and constructed foundation. When I lived in southern Louisiana, a foundation needed to be termite proof if it was to survive. When I moved to Los Angeles, I discovered how important it was to have a flexible foundation, so it can dance with the earth during an earthquake. Environment must be taken into account if your vision is to survive the test of time.  

Covid-19 has liquified the status quo and revealed the malnourished bones of our structures–

where we are out of balance and out of integrity  and whether we have put our mission into action in all aspects of our system design. We have clear feedback on how resilient and creative our organizational systems are.  It’s as if our current VUCA world (volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous) has acted as an organizational MRI.

Does your organization have ‘good bones’ and provide an environmental foundation for your worthy vision and mission?  Do 20% of your collective actions inspire 80% of the results you need to manifest them?

Generate Group Genius focuses on actualizing your mission by guiding your teams to unleash their innate genius collectively.  This natural capacity is resilient, creative and responsive to unexpected conditions. Human intelligence illuminated and ignited by organizational design creates a sound, flexible, resilient foundation that can support decades of growth.

Have you ever planted a garden? If you have, you know how essential the creation of good soil is. The produce will never be better than the quality of the soil. The soil is the foundation of the garden.  Similarly, your people have the capacity to be a powerful foundation for your organization building the good bones the organization needs to thrive.

 

Principle #2: Form follows function

Your function is based on your highest aspiration, expressed through your vision. What do you offer society through your organization? What is the purpose of your existence? 

Your mission is an explicit statement of how you accomplish your vision. Have you designed your mission to benefit people, profit and planet equally?  Or are you designed as a one or two-legged stool?  Are you wobbling? 

Does ‘form follow function’? Have you designed your systems to be congruent with what you really want?  

Is your organization a living work of art? Do you and others show up for work enthusiastic about what will be discovered that day?  Do you leave work energized or drained? How are your vision and mission moving forward each and every day? Do all employees throughout your organization know what the mission is? Do they know how their daily tasks relate to its accomplishment?

The Generate Group Genius mission is helping leaders and teams thrive. 80% of what we do can be tied directly to that clear statement.  Including this blog.  🙂

 

Principle #3 Human & nature-based design 

Does your organizational design resemble the flexibility and resilience inherent in all nature, including human nature?  Most organizations cannot answer this question in the affirmative.  With few exceptions, our existing system designs come from a philosophy several hundred years old, reified during the enlightenment era when science and nature were separated. The industrial era reinforced our mechanistic orientation to systems design, establishing productivity as the primary goal along with a desire to conquer nature. As we enter a new era our systems need to be designed in cooperation with nature if we are to survive.

I often hear people talk about the inherent greed and power-grabs built into human design. I don’t buy it.  Yes, there is evidence for it everywhere, because humans have been forced into inhumane, inflexible environments so unlike our nature that we have adapted in order to survive. We often show up in a work environment that makes no room for our inherent intelligence, creativity, and abundantly inventive problem-solving capacities. 

The cost of stress in the US workforce has been estimated at $300 billion annually by the American Institute of Stress. Antidepressants are used by 16.6% of people ages 40-59, according to the American Psychological Association. This jumps to 19.1% for adults over 60. Nearly 1 in 2 Americans take multiple prescription drugs daily, and we are all aware of a major illegal drug epidemic in the US. These statistics reflect an unhappy, unhealthy society that has been inadvertently designed for distress rather than for joy and creative expression.  We can change this trajectory, and must do so, if we are interested in building resilient organizations that model thriving microcosms of society.

Generate Group Genius unlocks the innate creative intelligence that many of us have carefully locked away so we can cope with our unnatural environments. Let’s liberate the better aspects of our nature by creating environments that honor the innate human design that thrives naturally.  For one brief second, let’s imagine unleashing group potential that has the capacity to change our lives, work and world for the better.

We are here to guide you if you want to improve your answers to any of the above questions. Request a complimentary consultation.