CONSCIOUS ORGANIZATION
CONFERENCE

People generally know what the right thing to do is. So why do so many people get stuck in doing what they know rather than what the Right Action that will make a difference.

This is not a time-management problem. If it was simply a case of time-management, given the thousands of programs, books, tools and apps out there, you would think it would be “managed” by now.

One of the key measures of productivity and performance we use with leaders and organisations is the RIGHT ACTION RATIO.

What percentage of the past week were you working on what was requisite?

Teams and organisations get stuck in routines, constraints and distractions which pulls the individual people into the pit.

A conscious leader creates clarity about what is requisite, what is the Right Action, that will make the biggest positive difference? A conscious leader removes distractions and impediments. The time and energy that is saved is not used to do more work, but to build the capacity for reflection, to conduct authentic retrospectives, hold uncomfortable conversations, tap the energy trapped in conflicts and use it to transform ways of thinking.

It is a shame that we have to add the term ‘conscious’ to leader, because this is what great leaders have always done. The reason we need this term is to move leadership development out of the pit of ‘behavioiural training’ where checklists, nine-box grids, preformulated steps and stages are used to define leadership.

When leaders are fully present in the moment, paying attention to themselves, their context, their environment, their colleagues, the people they support, the people who support them and the customers they serve, they do not need to parrot a so called ‘best practice’ from somewhere else– they become the ‘right practice’ by doing what is requisite, right here, right now.

There is a reason why the great sages of all time used parables and stories rather than checklists and best practices. Through the stories, they were getting people to draw out principles and think for themselves, and do the right thing.

This is not to say all checklists, models, frameworks and techniques are bad. The point is to be aware of what is our True North, what is the Right Action (requisite) and how do we either use or adapt these solutions from other places in our own unique context, process and relationships? How do we create transformations that matter? The irony is that those ‘best practices’ were created consciously. To turn them into instant solutions, to be followed blindly destroys their very essence.