Of the eight fields of life, one that will occupy a significant portion of your time and energy is your job, career, or business. What career you pursue and how you engage with your work is one of the determining factors in the quality of your life and your legacy.

While most people are concerned with the mechanics and features of their work, salary and benefits, customers and contracts, there is one question which should come first.

Are you engaged in your work with head, heart, and hands?

According to research on employee engagement, fewer than 30% of employees may be actively engaged in their jobs. Naturally, they are the high performers. But imagine how a team would perform in sports if only two or three of its members were committed to winning the game or playing their best!

You may have observed disengagement in your co-workers. As a manager or business owner, it may be one of your biggest challenges. But the greater challenge, and the one that you can most readily do something about, is addressing the question of your own engagement. Are you on a career path which is worthy of full engagement? If not, what can you do to improve your situation?

A life of quiet compromise

If only 30% of employees are engaged in their work, what of the other 70%? Some are so-called realists, defenders of the status quo. Others may be unhappy, but feeling that beggars cannot be choosers, lead a life of quiet compromise. Many are simply marking time.

Unfortunately, this leads to a situation in which both employer and employee remain disengaged in the workplace. This affects both pay and performance, in that employers pay just enough to keep people from quitting, and employees work just enough to keep from getting fired. That is a fine line to walk, and an easy one to cross.

Crossing the line

The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, written by Leigh Branham and published by the American Management Association, looks at why people do cross the line and leave their job. Branham’s book is well researched and documented, based on surveys by the prestigious Saratoga Institute, of 19,000 employees who revealed their real reasons for leaving. This book addresses the problem of employee engagement with 54 Best Practices for keeping good people in your company.

There are 7 hidden reasons that departing employees give for leaving. In brief, the real reasons are:

1. The job was not as expected
2. There was a mismatch between the person and job skills
3. Lack of feedback or coaching
4. Closed doors or lack of advancement opportunities
5. Lack of recognition or appreciation
6. Stress and life-work imbalance
7. Loss of trust in top leaders.

According to Leigh Branham, 90 percent of managers believe that people leave or stay because of the money, while 90 percent of employees say they leave because of issues related to “job, manager, culture, or work environment.” If this gap in perception were not so great, perhaps those employees would be loyal, not leaving.

The shift to positive engagement

What if these reasons were turned around and read as, the 7 hidden opportunities for increasing employee engagement?

Rather than engaging with your work in a minimalist way, why not turn the process around and make the shift to positive engagement? You can do this at any level from front line worker to business owner, and you can do it at any stage in your career.

The key is to keep your ideas flowing and your passion high. Direct your energy to making your situation better, and be prepared to get more active as you get more engaged.

1. Raise your expectations. When things are not to your satisfaction, rather than disengaging, actually increase your expectations, and you will not be disappointed. Sometimes all you need to do is ask.
2. Increase your skills. If you are finding it hard to achieve something, rather than stepping away from it, seek to increase your skills, knowledge, and experience. New technology can often extend your reach.
3. Get feedback or coaching. If you feel cut off, rather than further isolating yourself, actively seek out advice or support. If you keep your eyes open, you will find abundant resources available to help you.
4. Take initiative. If you are finding doors and avenues closed, rather than turning back, keep looking, keep asking, keep trying to find new ways to move forward and the passage will open up for you.
5. Give recognition or appreciation. If you are feeling unappreciated, rather than feeling sorry for yourself, why not try giving appreciation to others. If you are sincere, you will find that the more you give the more you will receive in kind.
6. Seek Life/Work balance. If you are feeling stressed by imbalance in your life and work, or by a mismatch between your work and values, then do what you have to in order to restore the balance. You cannot be effective if you lose your balance.
7. Build trust. If you are troubled by lack of trust, do what you can to restore it. Lead by listening, keep your promises, be dependable.
8. Engage head, heart, and hands. If you feel disengaged with your work or career, you can almost always do something to improve the situation by getting more actively involved mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Your business, work, or career is one of the eight major areas of life, or fields of engagement, which lends itself very well to strategic planning with the Mandala Chart. To help you apply this to your business, download a PDF template called OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENGAGEMENT. Use it as a reminder that you have at least 8 ways in which you can make the shift to positive engagement, which will make you happier, more productive, and better able to serve others.

Although business is just one of eight fields of engagement in life, it is affected by and also has an impact on the others: health, finances, home, society, character, study, and leisure. That is reason enough to get and stay positively engaged.

Look at the image of black squares in rows and columns, and count how many black spots you see. While there appear to be many, in fact there are none. When we focus on the figure, we easily ignore the ground. In this optical illusion, the intersections appear to be sprinkled with black dots, which pop in and out and shift about the image with a dizzying effect, purely as a figment of our imagination.

If you calmly focus on any one of the white dots, you can clearly see that it is white, and that the black and grey dots are an illusion. If you focus on the central white dot, and gradually let your field of peripheral vision expand, you may be able to see an expanded range of dots as they are white, without any flickering dots on the screen. This is a challenging shift in focus, because it requires you to see comprehensively the big picture, the details, and the relationships all at the same time.

Easy to get lost in business

The lack of comprehensive vision causes confusion. This happens to many people who enter the world of business. Whether you are an executive or someone on a career path, if you don’t know where you are and where you are going, you may easily find yourself lost in the cross winds.

The flickering mentality leads to a pursuit of short-term profits without regard for consequences. Large organizations and governments which engage in short-sighted or greedy behavior can wreak havoc on the economy and the environment. The pursuit of the flickering dot mirage creates stress, and over time the process tends to chew people up and spit them out.

Itoh Motoshige, Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo, says that to understand economies today we need a flexible focus, the ability to shift appropriately from the bird’s eye Macro view, to the insect’s eye Micro view for detail, and to the fish’s eye for changes and interrelationships. This is precisely the power of the Mandala Chart, which enables you to shift perspective and focus with ease.

A world of opportunity

The Mandala Chart can help us regain our bearings by seeing our business comprehensively, and what role we want to play within it. It also helps us refocus on the interfaces and spaces between things and people. Because the majority of people are too busy pursuing the mirage to really recognize reality, this is where the opportunities are.

What is typically presented as a good opportunity in business, is often actually an opportunity to be part of somebody else’s business plan. Most of these so-called opportunities are so easy to duplicate, that they lead right to the red ocean of competition for slight edge advantages and dwindling profit margins. If customers are unable to distinguish between brands or quality, they will naturally gravitate to the lowest cost option.

True opportunities are never obvious, because they exist in the spaces between. They represent the world of possibilities and new combinations, and come to life when an entrepreneur or enterprise recognizes and fully engages their potential. This is why so much innovation happens at the leading edge of technology, through interdisciplinary collaboration at the edges, and through networking and mastermind groups.

An ancient principle

The Principle of Comprehensiveness is the second of eight principles in the Framework of Wisdom for the Mandala Chart. Two concepts which help define it have roots in Buddhism, particularly the branch of Esoteric Buddhism which introduced the Mandala to Japan.

空 (kū), meaning empty as the sky, which in fact is full of stars, galaxies, and infinite possibilities. In Japanese painting, architecture, traditional and martial arts, space is a powerful entity. It is also an essential idea in Buddhism, often mistranslated as emptiness, but more accurately representing the infinite potential of that which is without form. The realization of this potential depends on the second concept, which is how you engage with this potential.

縁 (en), meaning edge or relationship, which can also mean the opportunity which is abundant in the intersections where people and ideas meet. It may also be thought of as the present moment and space, which is where the past transforms into the future. Think of how often things have developed according to the people you met and the decisions you made at the time. Yet this is an ongoing process, not a final verdict.

The Mandala itself has roots in India, Tibet, China, and Japan, where it was introduced in the 9th Century by a Buddhist Priest named 空海 (Kūkai). From the sixty-four frame (8×8) structure of the Diamond World Mandala, a National Treasure from 9th Century Japan, it is easy to see the roots of the Mandala Chart. The imagery used then represented the iconography of Esoteric Buddhism, as a graphical way of looking at the Buddhist universe with flexible focus.

Back to business

How then do you apply this to business? Once you understand the importance of flexible focus, once you learn how to look at things comprehensively, then you need to fix your eight compass points for business, and place them in the framework of the Mandala Chart.

How you determine those points depends a great deal on your type of business, your role in the business, and the field on which you play. To get you started, try downloading the PDF template Refocus Your Business, which gives you eight coordinates likely to apply to any business:

1. Mission
2. Current Projects
3. Profit Plan
4. Markets & Products
5. Organization
6. Human Resources
7. Meetings & Communication
8. Management Strategy.

Jot down some key words for each which apply to your business, and spend some time trying to see your business comprehensively, looking for new opportunities in the spaces between, for new ways to connect and integrate each of these elements.

The next time you find yourself getting tired, confused, or stressed by your job or business, look at your Mandala Chart. See if you can take your mind off of the flickering dots illusion, and refocus on the substantial opportunities that exist in the spaces between. Be sure to write your insights down. What you discover will calm your mind and benefit your business.

In my last post, I talked about the pillars of success to help start your venture.  In order to make sure that the pillars stay up, you have to have a solid foundation, which are the principles of the leader.  These principles are: integrity, credibility, attitude, teamwork, excellence and vision.

In order to become a leader, you must have integrity.  Without integrity, you won’t have any followers.  Your integrity is your brand not only within your company, but in the marketplace with your customers as well.  As a leader, you are constantly building it and making it better.  You create, maintain and build your integrity throughout your career, but it only takes one unethical act to destroy it.

As you build and improve your integrity, you start gaining credibility not only within your organization, but with your customers as well, as you keep and fulfill on your promises.  You can’t have integrity and build your credibility without the right attitude.  You need to know how to build people up and help them overcome challenges and go above and beyond to not only create opportunities but create success as well.  An organization with smart people with the right attitude in an organization will go much farther than an organization without.  Sounds simple, but great people with the right attitude are the hardest, and most important, assets to find in a business.

A leader with integrity, credibility and the right attitude with a group of people following them who also have the right attitude must be able to create a teamwork environment.  Employees who are able to effectively work together allow a company to accomplish tasks and meet goals that would be very different, if not impossible to do, as individuals.

Being the leader of a company, you must strive for excellence.  You should constantly push to improve your product and services in the marketplace.  Not only listen to your employees recommendations, but more importantly, your customers as well.  Use these recommendations to continually improve your products or services.

In doing all of this, don’t forget about your company’s vision. Always remember it and ensure that your colleagues and employees practice it, believe in it and share it with your customers.  As a leader, you must be able to not only share the vision with others but also make sure it its being followed and practiced.

We all have skills and capabilities that help our organizations, but none of us are perfect.  If you can master most of these, along with the pillars of success, you will not only be an effective leader, but will create a company with effective employees helping you build a successful business.

Tired of doing things you regret? Wonder why the behaviors continue even though they sabotage your position? Vacillate from submission to aggression when making business deals? Want to stop all this and just stay on your unique path? Wonder where the Hell that path is? Well this is where myth comes into play. Let’s see what you can do.

Specifically, in this blog we’ll circle back onto the first in this series and expand on the purpose of myth as well as set the stage for the next series of blogs dealing with personality and traits. Sounds like we’re going a long way from improving business performance. Bear with me – we’ll get there.

Three Levels of Truth

Some background is needed. There are three levels of truth:

• The Unspeakable
• Principles
• Rules

The Unspeakable refers to the wonder of the universe and being a part of it. It fills your being and is so overwhelming words fail. Yet that is where we have the deepest most meaningful experiences. Think of that feeling you get after riveting an audience with a presentation that covers something much bigger than you – a presentation the preparation of which you disappeared into and then became the instrument through which the presentation was channeled. How would you describe that feeling? Words usually fail. That’s an example of the Unspeakable and participating in it.

Principles are needed because unless you are a hermit there’s the need to express the Unspeakable so you can communicate and make life richer through community. It’s an endeavor that is incomplete, flawed, and frustrating but one that relentlessly pushes from inside to do it anyway.

Principles are essentially a dim yet powerful reflection of the Unspeakable.  Music and poetry exist in this space as well. If you’d like a more engaging expression of this spend $0.99 at iTunes and get a copy of Billy Joel’s River of Dreams and click on this link to see the lyrics.

The Rules comprise the lowest level of truth and derive from Principles. While even further from the Unspeakable rules, when done right, reflect it sufficiently to conduct daily business. Think of a contract. There’s no such thing as a perfect, iron-clad contract because if there were one, it would trap the Unspeakable in a verbal box. The trick, though, is to create the best set of rules you can to support spending more time connected to the Unspeakable in the business community.

Symbols and Cymbals

Back to mythology. In the first blog of this series I talked about needing a personal mythology in order to make sense of life, especially major transitions. There’s another important function of myth – the reconnection with and discovery of what is rich, powerful, and beautiful within you. So, myth works both from the outside in and the inside out simultaneously.

That inward journey can be quite challenging. It’s the realm of symbols. The words “symbol” and “cymbal” have the same root, the Greek “sumballein” which means “to throw together.” Nothing nice and neat about it! Think of those crazy dreams that feel so real. But that is where the richness comes into play.

In business, Excel, Powerpoint, Word, etc., are typically tools for being analytical and precise. In other words, generating the rules. And as stated before those rules only get their meaning by being a reflection of the Principles which reflect the Unspeakable. (This argument refutes the idea this mythology stuff is a waste because it seems so soft or fuzzy and far removed from the Rules.) If this fails to occur rules are a trap. Run!

By going into your shadows and reclaiming the pieces of yourself that parents, teachers, society, bosses, etc., said were useless or detrimental a reunification and integration occurs which – voila – reestablish your connection with the Unspeakable. (See Nietzsche’s Camel, Lion, and Baby in the Mythology blog #5.) Then you can trust that your Rules are, indeed, a reflection of the Unspeakable. When you clang your personal cymbal there will be a joy right along with the professionalism that adds to life!

If you are trying to find your cymbal and want to make some noisy music send me an e-mail at gwmonti@mac.com or visit www.ctrchg.com.

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Life and business have a lot to do with how we navigate. Where you go, who you meet, and how you spend your time, makes an enormous difference in the quality of your life and your legacy. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a compass to guide you where you want to go, rather than drifting with the tides and currents?

In The Dash Poem, Linda Ellis speaks of the value of a life not being measured in the dates on the tombstone, but by what happened in the dash between those years. With its reminder of the urgency and opportunity in life, this poem has touched millions of people.

The Mandala Chart gives you a flexible focus framework for looking at that dash, and for doing something significant while you are in it. We have already looked at the Principle of Interdependence in the 8 Frames of Life, Health, Business, Finance, Home, Society, Personal, Study, and Leisure. At the same time, each of these frames is actually a stage for a drama that unfolds over time. Whether you think of time proceeding on a linear timeline, or in repeating cycles like the seasons, you might agree that time is not a noun but a verb. It flows like water, flies like an arrow. It heals all wounds, and wounds all heels.

What you do with time, and how you engage with it makes all of the difference. Time is amorphous like an ocean. As long as time remains a subjective sensation, it is very easy to get lost at sea, as many people are. To get your bearings in life, it helps to have a compass and a map. The function of the Mandala Business Diary is to apply the power of flexible focus to the passing of time. This tool is designed to help you become a power user, learning and applying all of the principles of the Mandala Chart in the process of life work planning.

Although it can function as an ordinary day planner, containing a calendar with the weeks and months of the year, as a tool for the Mandala Chart it has far greater potential. Your skill in using the tool will improve with your understanding of the Mandala Chart.

The Mandala Business Diary was developed in 1979 by Matsumura Yasuo, founder of Clover Management Research and of the Mandala Chart Association. It has a popular following in Japan, but is different from other day planners in several important respects.

Mandala Chart format

It begins with a Personal Planning Chart containing the 8 frames of life, and a Mandala Chart for your business or working goals. Each week is laid out in a Mandala Chart format, with the central frame for Weekly Objectives and Results, surrounding frames for the 7 days of the week, and the 8th frame dedicated to a Review of Weekly Progress. There is also a MEMO section for notes and illustrations.

Multiple entry process

Whereas many day planners have you make an entry once, checking off To Do items as you go, the Mandala Business Diary has you make entries of the same information in several different places. The reason for this is to track your activities with flexible focus. The significance of an item becomes clearer when you can view it alternatively in the context of a day, a week, a year, or even a lifetime. There are also ways of tracking whether or not your goals are integrated synergistically in the 8 frames of life. This prevents you from falling into typical goal traps based on short-sighted vision or outside pressure.

Flexible time frame

The Mandala Business Diary contains a Year Planner, a Monthly Schedule, Weekly Activities, and a Mandala Chart One Hundred Year Life Plan. There are pages for Checklists, which enable monthly measure of your progress toward chosen objectives, as well as pages for free note taking. There is also an expanded Mandala Chart for looking at the bigger picture of 8 x 8, or 64 frames.

The Mandala Business Diary is published annually in a bilingual format, in Japanese and English, and of course the calendar year is in common use. There are a few pages of tips in Japanese, but not as much detail as found in this column. It is published in Japan, but can be ordered through Amazon.co.jp. Don’t be thrown by the appearance of Japanese characters on the Amazon site. Just follow these instructions, and while international shipping rates apply, Amazon ships products all over the world.

Although the process of using the Mandala Business Diary is not complicated, it does take practice to master it as a tool for flexible focus thinking and planning. The force of habit has a strong and unconscious grip on your thoughts, attitudes, and behavior. Without understanding the reason for the design of the Mandala Business Diary, it is easy to skip certain sections and revert to using it as a simple day planner. What we do with our time is what we do with our life. Ultimately, that is what determines the quality of the Dash that connects the years in between.

The Mandala Business Diary fits in your pocket or briefcase. It is a great way to capture insights and observations in one place as you plan your life work. However, if you don’t have the Mandala Business Diary, I have created a makeshift version of the Weekly Activities Mandala, which you can download to get started.

There is no problem starting the Mandala Business Diary mid-year, because in any case it can takes months or years of practice to fully integrate the process into your life work planning, and to fully engage with the 8 frames of life. Just start where you are, and create good habits by using the Mandala Chart in your daily life. Then watch the power of continuous improvement begin to work its magic over time

Another life lesson from my venture moving from the corporate world to self employment. So far a very liberating decision but filled with unexpected surprises. For the most part getting the business side set up and running has been relatively smooth, but personal finances have been a great challenge.

This has been made complicated by the fact that we are relocating to start the business, one of the drivers for making the change is to reduce the mortgage burden we have today by moving to a cheaper part of the country so that we did not overburden the business in its start up stages.

Having a solid credit score, 6 years of banking and mortgage history without any blemishes any yet when inquiring for a mortgage on a new house all the large banks would not even complete the application process because of being an entrepreneur  and self employed. Being self employed means the banks need 2 years worth of company trading records, P&L and Balance sheets. This requirement has been a result of the collapsed subprime market, but also driven by the fact that most banks want the option to sell the loans they originate to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These two institutions, a little shy after the meltdown, have raised their criteria and this has flowed through the whole lending chain to the retail banks we approach for loans.

At first I found this very frustrating that I was being measured by the lowest common denominator, by someone sitting behind a computer asking yes/no questions until the computer told the operator to stop. Then I had a conversation with a good friend, he enlightened me to the reality of the current economic situation where so many people have lost their jobs and their only option has been to set themselves up as self employed businesses doing freelance work in their trade  – anyone can get a business incorporated and print business cards, but if they have not completed any regular business then they likely don’t have a secure business plan to lend against – thus the 2 years business record requirement.

During the application process, I began asking lots of questions and found this out about what it means to be self employed.

• If you are listed as the owner of an incorporated company or LLC
• If you have more than 15%  ownership you are self employed
• Even if you have a regular salary, the fact that you are self employed means that you bring into the equation an element of risk in your ability to service a loan, until you have 2 years of accounting records to share.

If are thinking of relocating and are starting a new business, try and arrange some of your financing before you begin the new operation – loan officers prefer steady track records to the unsubstantiated hype of a new entrepreneur.

Another option is to explore local banks that originate and hold the loans themselves. While the general application criterion is much the same these banks take a little broader assessment of your projected finances for a sacrifice in interest rate.

How to avail of opportunities that you cannot see?

by Himanshu Jhamb, May 17, 2010

Himanshu had a thought provoking moment when a long time friend wanted to invest in one of his ventures. It brought home for him the question of how you can be an opportunity to others. The answer lies in providing what others are looking for, i.e., be of value to them. On the flip side, you need to do the same to recognize value in others and build relationships. The two work together to increase your capacity. more…

Leadership and Mythology #2: The mystical and co-opetition

by Gary Monti, May 18, 2010

Can you compete and co-operate with somebody at the same time? If you are having difficulty with this concept, think about Apple, Microsoft, Google, Intel, Yahoo, etc. Do they only compete, or sometimes co-operate too? To be an effective leader, you have to balance competition with co-operation. more…

Performance Procrastination

by Guy Ralfe, May 19, 2010

Guy, donning his new business owner hat, has to take charge and take action. He had to deal with an employee performance issue and concludes that bearing short term pain is good for the long term gain. Of course, dealing with employees is an art and science – there are way too many considerations in play. But ultimately, it all boils down to the question: Is the employee pulling his or her weight and, are you getting your value for the money you pay them.  more…

Flexible Focus #2: Are goals traps or opportunities?

by William Reed, May 20, 2010

Goals are overrated. Yes, you read that right. In the western world, there are several traditional ways people think of goals and work towards achieving them. Following them, you either miss the big picture or miss the details or simply follow a beaten path. Flexible focus, epitomized by the Mandala Chart, is the product of eastern spiritual thinking. It is a philosophy that enables you to be free of your goals. You are not goal free, but you approach them in a detached manner that removes your bondage to your goals. more…

Author’s Journey #22: Use one sheets to sell books and build your profits

by Roger Parker, May 21, 2010

One sheets are single page, 8 ½ by 11-inch, marketing documents used by authors to promote their books and build their profits by attracting speaking invitations and promoting their coaching and consulting services. In this post, Roger tells you all you need to know to create one sheets.  more…

We have all been in that situation where there is someone that is not pulling their weight, which places a constraint on the group’s overall performance. We often like them as people but not as much their performance, but we humbly tell ourselves things like “rather the devil we know than the devil we don’t” or “it would be too much of a disruption to replace them now”

To share a recent event, we hired a support staff that was pleasant and capable of most of the tasks required of the role but just not able to grasp the importance and flows of the business. What resulted was them performing the tasks they understood and all the things they struggled with were reassumed by those that were performing the tasks before their hire.

From a management perspective, some components of the operation were running smoother as there was a dedicated resource working the admin function; however from an operational perspective we had increased our operational overhead without increasing our service delivery to the clients which was the core objective of the hire.

After more than 4 weeks of training, the employee resigned. We wondered where we were going to find another employee and the loss suddenly felt enormous considering the investment to educate the recruit. Time to start again…

A quick search of craigslist.org produced a resume, a quick call the following day had the interview  and hire conducted before  noon. The following morning the replacement employee began – a mere 48 hrs and a new employee was in training. Within a week the replacement employee is competent at all the required tasks and adding depth to the operation in areas not considered possible with the earlier recruits.

To our clients there is a noticeable improvement, to the operations staff a confidence that the back office will be taken care of and a new capacity to produce has been facilitated – exactly the original objective of the hire.

On the flip side, do not forget that if the employee is not able to perform, they will know it and it will also be producing a stress for them always being behind or not knowing if their position is secure or not.

In these situations it is both beneficial to the organization and the employee  for the employee to be  relocated or replaced. The longer you procrastinate taking action, the more the focus is on the cost incurred as opposed to the cost of lost opportunities and the decision to take action becomes insurmountable.

Be decisive for your organization and your customers  when selecting and assessing performance in a role.

How do you cross thresholds in business life? This can be a daunting question. Boiling everything down to key components and making a balanced, constructive decision is the goal of a good leader. There is a drawing on both personal and group mythology to arrive at a sustainable goal.

So what’s this “mythology” stuff about? Sounds touchy-feely, fuzzy, and far removed from business. It is anything but that. It is about surviving, thriving, and protecting your business especially if social networking is important. How so?

Time to dive in and take a look

The previous blog mentioned four aspects to mythology:

• Mystical
• Physical
• Sociological
• Psychological

Here we will tackle the first one – mystical – and look at a form it commonly takes in business – Co-opetition.

Is It Really So Mystical?

The mystical really isn’t so…well…mystical, as in transcendental. It actually is very practical – close to the ground. The word “mystical” is used to describe both the awe felt and stance taken with regards to business life. This stance is based on simultaneously accepting the rough and tumble aspects of an environment that also provides opportunity to not just survive but to grow and thrive. Finding a way to balance cooperation and competition, co-opetition, is a good example.

Co-Opetition

In their classic book, Co-opetition, Brandenburger and Nalebuff apply game theory and view the business world in terms of PARTS (Players, Added value, Rules, Tactics, and Scope).  First there is a collective effort to add value and build a bigger pie (cooperate). At the same time, as the pie grows and benefits to all increase we might work to control the pie and get as much as possible (competition) without driving out needed stakeholders. Sustaining this environment is co-opetition.

Another radical idea Brandenburger and Nalebuff introduced was the concept of a complementor.  A player is a complementor when a customer values your product more when in the presence of that player’s product. Think hot dogs and mustard at a baseball game. One promotes the other.

But can a complementor also be a competitor? (Here’s where you give the classic project management answer, “It depends.”) Go beyond hot dogs and mustard and think of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, etc., and their relationships.

Is there a version of Office for the Mac? Does QuickTime run on PCs? What about Adobe and Apple regarding Flash?

Imagine describing all this to the uninitiated at a party. It is a bit awe-inspiring and finding a fundamental view for explaining everything consistently can be a big challenge… OR you might even say, It’s mystical!

Have Some Fun!

Can you see how important the mystical is? You can have some fun with this. Have a discussion with a group of friends based on the following. Imagine three people. One believes is cooperation-only. Another believes in competition-only. The third believes in co-opetition. Now, ask the question, “What paths could their businesses take?” Watch and see what you show each other about your fundamental beliefs.

Share you comments! I’d like to know what you think. In addition to commenting on this blog you can also send a response via e-mail to gwmonti@mac.com or visit www.ctrchg.com.

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An earlier Change Leadership blog asked if you have an internal compass.  Later, a Leadership Cancer blog asked you to list your tribes and associated role in each. These are part of a broader, critical question, “What is your personal mythology?” This new series will explore this question and how various answers impact us, people around us, and our business.

The importance of this question in everyday life was explored by the American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, who saw 4 distinct aspects to it:

• The mystical
• The physical
• The sociological
• The psychological

Mythology – What It Is And Isn’t

Before jumping into the 4 levels, lets try to understand what mythology is. We all go through dramatic, catastrophic periods in life, e.g., birth, death, marriage, parenting, establishing careers, etc., and have a desire to make sense of it all. This is what myth is – sense-making. We enter the world of mythology when we develop stories about our experiences. When there is a collective, tribal effort to develop one story combining all the truths presented the mythology takes shape by transcending the individual story.

So, mythology is simultaneously personal and communal. Teams work well when they share a common mythology and can tell stories that have powerful, emotional truth. Leaders excel when they can tap into these myths and awaken the team into seeing how moving forward with the project is in the individual and collective interest.

As used here mythology is a desire to find a simple narrative in the chaos of life. This is in contrast to “myth” being used negatively as a way to spin a situation, which is essentially distorting the context for personal gain (lying). Even at that, though, by looking beneath the spin a leader can see the mythology that provoked the distortion. This is very valuable information to have in capitalizing on opportunity, holding a team together, dealing with conflict, and responding to adversaries. When we understand the myth behind a statement we give ourselves a chance to let go of emotional reactivity and moral judgments and can respond in our best interest.

Mythology – Who Needs It? Why Bother?

Let’s bring this down to earth. Try this. Ask someone, “Would you give me an update on your project (or work)?” Sit back and listen. Later, come back and ask the same person, “Would you describe the best day you’ve ever had on this project (or at work)?” When they have finished ask, “Would you describe the worst day you ever had on this project (or at work)?”

Contrast the two methods: the progress report versus best/worst narrative. Which has more information? Which has more meaning? Which will convey a richer context? Which will give you a better sense of how the project is faring and what it is really about?

Don’t get me wrong. I am a huge believer in earned value and other methods that provide succinct accurate information. I also believe, though, that those reporting methods get meaning from the mythology that underpins them. That is why risk management is so important. It gets the story out. But I digress.

In the next blog we will start looking at those 4 levels of myth and why they are important to a businessman or -woman.

Share you comments! I’d like to know what you think. In addition to commenting on this blog you can also send a response via e-mail to gwmonti@mac.com or visit www.ctrchg.com.

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