Enterprise transformation

What is it?

“There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” Victor Hugo. Since opening its doors in 1987, JMJ has been making transformational programs available to its clients. The original offering, High Performance Technology, brought a powerful transformational technology from the personal development industry to bear on large capital project execution, producing extraordinary results for teams building pipelines, refineries and civil construction projects.

The effectiveness of the technology was no surprise for JMJ’s founders, who had been applying it for over 15 years in their personal lives and 10 years in an NGO dealing with the elimination of hunger. However it was a big surprise to our clients!

In the ensuing 20 years since the initial offering, the technology has developed into a suite of offerings appropriate to both project and operating environments across the spectrum of industries and organisations in the private and public sector. At its heart is a profound understanding and a potent approach to transformation. So let me discuss transformation a bit.

You have undoubtedly heard the old expression, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” And certainly we can see evidence of its validity in all arenas of life. That expression is the antithesis of transformation. Transformation is that amazing experience when nothing changes and everything is different.  It is a profoundly personal experience. At its best it leaves one absolutely clear they are the source of it and their power produced it. When transformation occurs at that level for an individual, life is never the same.

It perhaps has become obvious that Enterprise Transformation must be about something more. Enterprise Transformation is in essence about two things:

• Personal Transformation
• Leadership

JMJ Associates provides access to the first and potent tools to enable the second.
Lets discuss personal transformation first. If you give it a bit of thought I believe you can find an experience of it in your own life. It may not have been a total reordering of your personal reality, however it was an experience of having a new perspective on life or an aspect of it. Sometimes it is produced by circumstances. A near death experience, the birth of a child, a personal loss. Situations with high impact can trigger a transformation. The test is whether you are enabled by the new perspective, or does it leave you resigned. The former is a transformation and those that experience them are clear they are the source of their experience of the circumstances, whether they had anything to do with causing those circumstances. Victor Frankel walked out of the Nazi concentration camp an empowered human being, most others did not. Admiral Jim Stockdale walked out of the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ P.O.W. camp an empowered human being and his leadership enabled a significant number of the other men under to do so as well.

Even more exciting is the fact that it is possible to generate a personal transformation based simply on your intention to do so.

When does it happen?

“I decided many years ago to invent myself. I had obviously been invented by someone else – by a whole society – and I didn’t like their invention.” Maya Angelou

As the above quote illustrates, it happens when you say so. Personal transformation at profound levels occurs when you create yourself as something beyond the body in your chair and its history. It helps to have some tools to support you in that and I’ll talk about them next, however be clear ‘the menu is not the meal’ and conceptual understanding isn’t the same as ‘getting it”. It is my hope that what follows creates an appetite versus understanding.

You and I assume we live in a world that is solid, persistent and very physical. It is not apparent to us that we actually live in a world that occurs to us as solid, persistent and very physical. And it is in understanding that it occurs to us that holds one of the keys to personal transformation. We can take a major step toward personal freedom and personal transformation when we can see that the world occurs to us a way rather than is a way.

You and I can choose how we look at the world. We can say it is a way and we observe how it is.  Or we can say it is occurring to us in a particular way. We cannot do much about the way it is. We can do a lot about how it occurs to us.

There is a story about a Canadian shoe company, Bata, which decided to expand its operations. The company dispatched salesmen to other countries. Two salesmen were sent to Africa. Shortly thereafter one of the African salesmen cabled the head office, “Returning home. Natives do not wear shoes.”. Within a couple of days the other salesman cabled head office saying, “Natives do not wear shoes. Huge opportunities. Send all available stock.”.

The very first thing we can do is take the view reality occurs to us and we have power with regard to how it occurs. By the way, if this is sounding a bit too ‘fluffy’ for you, bear in mind that what I’m saying is completely validated by the last 80 or 90 years of work by leading edge physicists and philosophers.

So what is the source of this occurring world? How does one live in that world? You are. By saying so. It’s very, very simple. However it is not easy. You must develop a new relationship to your thinking and speaking, come to understand your speaking, (to yourself and others) creates the world you live in.

“Words do not label things already there. Words are like the knife of the carver: They free the idea, the thing from the general formlessness of the outside. As a man speaks, not only is his language in a state of birth, but also the very thing about which he is talking.” Eskimo quote

“… I went down into the dust and noise of the eastern market place, and with my brain and muscles, with sweat and constant thinking, made others see my visions coming true. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.” T. E. Lawrence

I have a choice and you have a choice. We can say and do and be what has already been said and done and been. Make ourselves up from the tons of ‘already’ around us. Or we can create ourselves and our world with our speaking and actions, be ‘dreamers of the day’.

Bearing in mind what I’ve said above, it becomes apparent we can consider ourselves as the ‘body in our chair plus its story’, or as our word. What would be possible if we distinguished ourselves as our word? Could that be what Maya Angelou was pointing at in the quote above? What would it give us?

My proposition to you is that it would give us a totally different present and future. We usually live within the model below, which says the future is an outcome.

It is based on a feedback loop where what will happen is ‘figured out’ based on our view of our current circumstances and past experience. In this model the future is an outcome, the arrow goes from the present to the future. This type of future is very useful for efficiency and predictability. However it gives no opening to create a breakthrough or a transformation.

Compare that to a future you create with your word.

In this type of future, one you have declared, the future is a context for your present circumstances and your past. Context gives meaning to content. By your declaration, your word, you generate a very different present in which to act. A declared future is an input future. It’s power lies in the way it alters what you see in the present and the meaning you give the past.

And there you have the answer to “When does transformation happen?” It happens when you say, “I am my word, and my word is ___”. The blank is yours to deal with. The future you declare may be a personal, private matter. Or it may be something grander and more far reaching. The initial step is the same.

If you had run into these people when this picture was taken in 1978, you probably would not have imagined that they were going to exert an influence all over the planet, affecting the professional and personal life of billions of people. They are the entire Microsoft Corporation in 1978.

After a person or a group of people do something extraordinary there are always people who can explain it. What distinguishes great leaders is their ability to stand for a future that doesn’t look possible and enrol others in their stand. Kennedy and the moon. Ghandi and an Independent India. Great accomplishments are understandable after the success. But what did it take to stand for the accomplishment when it was not probable?

So I had a personal transformation, now what?

“Be the change you want to see.” Mahatma Ghandi

Authentic personal transformation demands you ‘walk your talk’.
Enterprise transformation demands you ‘walk your talk’ in a way that enrols and enables others. It demands you be a potent leader, and you need potent tools to be one.

For JMJ Associates the work of Fernando Flores on committed speaking and listening allows for conversations which enable people and generate results. When you use his work in service of a future you have declared, it is powerful structure for fulfilling possibility.

We’ve also found Ken Wilber’s Integral Model shows how the inseparable and yet distinguishable perspectives of interior, exterior, individual and group interact. Using the tools of ‘being ‘ and ‘doing’ that JMJ can provide and looking from these perspectives opens a way to continually work from the whole producing results with increasing integrity, cohesiveness and power.

Now what?
“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” Bernard Shaw

Up to you, really. We are a firm that loves to partner with people who are up to big things and know they have to develop themselves, their people and their organisation as part of delivering the accomplishment.

If you are one of those people, we’d like to speak with you.

For more information about the company, please visit www.jmj.com.