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Arupa, a Trainer, Speaker
& Innovation Coach is one of the world's leading authorities in
business intuition and developing intuition skills in the workplace.
She has authored over 100 international business feature articles on
intuition, innovation, management and training in leading
publications. Read her article below to learn more. Intuition
As a Sustainable Business Advantage - Sure as the sun will rise on another day, the current economy will change, suitably and often unpredictably. The early 2000's upward surge in technology and just as unwittingly it's consequent downward lurches in negative profit went contrary to the grains of most analyst views. Could it be that analysts are just as reined in by unsubstantiated information as non-analysts? Just how relevant in today's unprecedented and changing world business economy is the analyst view? For all the facts, market studies, corporate reports, knowledge and information, it can still be... wrong! The challenge of highest magnitude is most certainly the following. How can we create a totally sustainable business ecology? Are we valuing the right things? What we ignore during an "up-time" (like real sales and profits) are the very things that come back to haunt us during the down. And like gravity, until we learn to defy it, there is always up and inevitably down. I continue this article by way of a "logical" solution looking for ways to defy gravity. If we become gravity we are no longer subject to its forces, and thereby proceed forward with an understanding of it's principles; what works with it and what works against it in that context. There's no point going against gravity unless you have the capability to build a metaphorical spacecraft that uses natural laws to go beyond it and in order to build it it cannot be the product of a limited imagination. The use of intuition in business, I believe, is such a craft. It's value in business is probably immeasurable, and it's worth is infinite. Put this way, it probably costs us a lot more, $, stress, time, resources, not to implement intuitive business solutions than it costs to implement them. And the rewards are certainly an investment that outperforms implementation. I venture to say we could have saved 7-10 of the last 20 years of progress and effort at the start of the "technology-age" by including intuitive solutions instead of allowing the "merely knowledgeable" to lead. Instead we lost intuitive confidence and deferred. It's no secret in the global economy today that we are at the most unprecedented time in our history together, that we have enough technology, know-how and capacity to blow ourselves up or to heal every imaginable human want and to potentially invent any device or thing. Clearly we give destiny a choice of direction according to our imagination (which is largely limited to benchmarking and incremental improvements these days), our collective will and the desires of our souls. But in order to do this, there is ONE BIG THING to overcome - our overvaluation of intellectual intelligence and subordination of intuitive intelligence. Let me make the distinctions between the two. Intellectual intelligence is the product of rational thought, known information, facts, details, past performance, etc. The qualities of inspiration, love and desire, while useful, are not required. Intuitive intelligence is quite another thing. When clearly apprehended it is superior to all states of intellectual intelligence. It appertains knowledge from a far vaster awareness, engages the heart beyond space and time, reaches into the domain of unknown events, people, and imaginative potential. It is unlimited, occasionally glimpsed fleetingly but tellingly by all of us. For the most part, and in business life particularly, we are highly functioning impaired people. Only because it seems "normal" to us, we continue. Our current business thinking is rarely recognized for what it is - a habit, of thoughts, meaning, values, assessments, and consequence. Aside from the motivation for profit, most business vision lacks inspiration. The highest imagination, the highest outcomes for a positive pollution-free environment, the highest outcomes for improved health and quality of life will reap the highest rewards. Oh the money will be there of course, but it becomes a consequence of imagination rather than the primary driver. And as a consequence there will be muchmore in the way of profit too. We have to completely reconfigure ourselves and the notion and ecology of business. Then everything will change. We already know this. Whole-scale changes in individual awareness have already happened. Rarely do we dare speak of this in a traditional business environment. But we need a place to start. Here are 8 powerful levers for intuition in business. 1. Recognize Intuition as a Smart-Skill Which Can Be Developed. INTUITION - What is it? Most agree it is a sudden insight, certain knowledge that arrives without "effort", or an inspiration. Intuitive intelligence is a self-referencing system with our own cosmology and meaning. Having an intuitive experience is like having a conversation with truth and sourcing one's own higher power. Unlike "facts" which presume a reliance on someone else's information, intuition is a direct experience and, in that, is self-evident and self-validating. It is either meaningful or it is not. The personal experience of intuition varies from episode to episode, person to person. Often poly-modal, it engages sight, hearing, implicit knowledge, or a variety of sense experiences combined. Sometimes it dream-like and has "other-worldly" qualities. Often it is accompanied by a sense of peace. A typical outcome involves learning something relevant you already know implicitly but are not aware of consciously. Usually intuitive intelligence simply arrives but cannot be induced at will. At least, that is the popular notion. But can we? Given my experience with Intuita MindWare techniques the answer is an emphatic YES! Intuition is a skill, a life skill, a business skill and the sooner we get that the better off we will be. And it is immensely valuable - many successful CEO's posses a high level of intuitive ability. Current learning competencies in organizations are mostly exogenous, which involves taking in knowledge from the external. By contrast intuitive intelligence learning is indigenous - requires an internal learning focus. Implicit knowledge is "revealed" rather than "processed" by the mind. Intuitive learning is accelerated by getting "impediments" out of the way and enhanced through self awareness practices, of which there are numerous approaches, such as yoga, meditation, martial arts, mindfulness training to name a few. Learning is extracted via intuitive processes, learning tools, practices and exacted through application. Unlike fact learning which is rarely questioned in today's busy and dismissive business environment, "trust" becomes the major learning issue. 2. Shift from validating Intuition to developing Intuitive Capability. We need to reinvent the language of business, in it's current form, a predominantly mental approach, intellectual, and derived from reductive science where closed variables, closed systems and logic are norms. Most business planning, projection and decision making models are still based onthis arcane language. But science herself has evolved towards a recognition of open systems, interconnection and relationship. Deep rooted objections to intuition can overcome by "scientific proof" of validity. But open systems don't fare well with scientific reasoning. The old paradigms no longer fit the realities that are becoming evident. 3. Build an Intuitive Language for business & organizations that helps to create/sustain a more Intuitive Culture. Support Whole People with Real Commitment and engage the business practices that accompany this. This issue involves WISE DEPLOYMENT OF HUMAN CAPITAL. We stand on a "precarious mountain". We have more technology/info than we can apply with less insight & wisdom than ever before. Underneath the "Talent Retention Issue" there are some hard realities to endure. They are as follows: This is more serious than it seems. The real issues are psychological. and have less to do with your corporate strategy than you think. Modern business has a very dogmatic way of disarming personal mythology and meaning for workers. This is an affront to the soul. This approach unfortunately doesn't come to terms with the fact that you cannot employ "partial" people and probably hails from the factory era, where hiring was for "hands and feet" while now it's for "brains". People want freedom, both political and economic. Implicit manipulation exists in currently accepted HR development models in that personal opinion, aptitudes, meaning is relevant only as it pertains to a specific beneficial outcome for the company. With economics in a large way replacing religion as the supreme power over our lives, economic freedom is the last vestige of unrequited selfhood that the human soul quests for. Given freedom and choice, people will find ways to pursue work or life activities that fulfill their hearts. Quietly they go, voting with their feet. Taken in a different light, many more overtly fruitful outcomes are possible from an intuitive approach. A whole employee will be happier, more truthful, suffer less stress and when he/she commits himself to a project, it is real. This is so unlike the feigned professional commitment most workers today express. They might have the suit, the language, the company attitude, but it's phony, it's not who they are, it's a role that is played for status and salary. The companies/organizations who will lead success will find a way to help people fulfill their dreams in a variety of ways -- through developing the potential of their employees/staff partners, inspiring commitment with a large vision, and having more open and honest communication style that fosters real cooperation. 4. Recognize the True Costs of Bad Business Ecology and the value of providing emotionally healthy workplaces and processes. Next we have to face the human cost of bad business ecology, too much work/tasks, not enough depth, low emotional investment/caring by companies. The real cost of stress is in the billions, and difficult to measure directly. At least 10% of today's workers are "clinically depressed". The low attention span of today's workforce is alarming. Here are the realities that have an impact on innovation: a.) Impaired people
cannot innovate well. Human capital does not exist solely for the purpose of economic exploitation. The fact is that the "human undertaking" at its roots is a spiritual being. Devotion to a career, employment, or other role or vocation comes ONLY after this. We like to pretend the only reason a person is valuable is for their work. BEING human is the real work, and the more difficult path. How many workplaces exist where you are valued for being your best? At work we value status, money, freedom of assignment, location, office size, decision-making power, and access to information or technology as the end result. And we have the slimy self-serving kind of organizational politics that accompany this mind-set. No wonder people are leaving in a quest for something that they find purposeful and meaningful. The ideal of wealth posited by our economic system has not lived up to our dreams. We have more material things at the price of less time, more stress and less quality of life, leisure and family -- and we think we've got a real bargain. Even developing nations can improve their "quality" of life with more employment, but the real danger is that they become economically "colonized" by more prosperous nations who prefer to believe the "dream" still exists, even though existing proof from high numbers of depressed, stressed and medicated workers tell a different story. There are both risks and opportunities that arise from evolving an innovation culture and a more intuitive workplace. Business leaders fear the inevitable power shifts from having less control over workers, changes in decision making processes, and potential errors that may arise (however they are still occurring) and that some good employees might leave they're leaving anyway). Opportunities result from having more personal meaning, higher commitment, creative solutions, and employee who co-create success, healthier workplaces, and low implementation costs. 5. Practice Creative Surge. Focus more on application with less analytical information and more imagination. Next we must OVERCOME OUR USE OF TECHNOLOGY. We've become technologicallysmart but creatively & practically dumb. Technology, information, tasks and role demands on the job compete for attention. The more "noise" there is, the less clear and effective we become. We need to change the way we mentalize data which is linear and hails from the Industrial Age. It's done in a linear, factory assembly line way, we take information in to a big bin, then we sort it, categorize, sift it, and some workable solutions emerge at the other end. There are no surprises, no guts, no glory, no passion. In fact we display a strong preference for information process automation over change. Human beings are really more like radios - they take in broadcast signals from everywhere. Intuition is like a tuning station making signals clear and cutting through noise and meaningless information. Intuitive solutions involved sourcing from many areas, both known and unknown, solutions emergein a creative, non-linear way. They are multi - directional, may go apparently backwards, forwards or through dimensional strata. Surprises are important. Opportunity inevitable. Change certain. Self-aware people are better listeners, change agents, relationship builders, partners, are more anticipatory, proactive and trustworthy. 6. Recognize the heart as an instrument of superior intelligence and perception, the source of true intuition engagement. We need a CHANGE OF HEART. It seems we have perfected the art of bloodless heart surgery in the workplace. Performance expectations can be met and exceeded without it's involvement. Singularly this is the "root cause" of stress. Try this short experiment. Experience in your own senses the thought of "having an intuitive culture" vs. "working as you do today." Feel the difference in your heart. Which one gets you more inspired? We need to respond to the heart. Heart intelligence is superior to intellectual knowledge. It is non-local, non-temporal and unlimited. We cannot afford the luxury of dismissing vital knowledge that lies outsidetraditional knowledge domains. Instead we must allow ourselves to be "guided by rightness", to cultivate emotional investment and personal meaning,making sense with the heart. 7. Get specific with Innovation Capital. Start Innovation with Innovators, supported by Innovation Competencies, Learning Curriculum and Development Plans. We must develop suitable competencies to attain innovation. Typically they are "self"-competencies. While many organizational learning efforts are aimed at the collective, to be effective, innovation must begin at the individual level. Organizations don't innovate, people do, individuals do. We can jump-start the development of these innovation competencies in a committed direct way -- turning people into innovators, specific ideas into inventions. The future is all about unleashing innovation and invention capacity. To dream, then create. To move a concept from the unimaginable to the imaginable, to the conceivable, and finally the created. For this we must create the organizational supports for achieving it, such as training, establishing both curriculum for innovation and priorities via an innovation training plan. Intuitive intelligence plays a big part here, probably it is number 1 on the list. But there are also several more constituents. After all, once a company has trained for skills in communication, leadership, and decision-making, what is left? The remainder of non-technical training is to extend the creative capabilities of workers and executives. There is no end to this, it is a continuum worthy of investment. 8. Shift from the Descendant View of having an "Inherited Vision of the Past" to an Ascendant View of the Future" where anything is possible "ex nihilum", out of nothing. To attain new visions we must engage our imaginations. The current business practice is adaptive innovation based on implementing incremental improvements. Thus we proceed on the basis of an "inherited vision" (someone else's, usually the industry norm) is operating dictum. If we dream only adaptive dreams we encourage limitation and discourage invention. Pure innovation is something else entirely. It is a new dream, a fresh vision. Our innovation practice can change if we move from a descendant view of the future to an ascendant view. All human performance evolves from actuating a dream in a way that is personally meaningful. Ultimately everything was made from nothing. What's Your Plan of Action? Hope to see you as our client soon! Get my Intuition Self-Coaching Program TODAY with a Special Discount Bring Intuition & Innovation Training to my Organization Learn more about our Individual & Corporate Programs Join an upcoming Coaching Conference or get Private Coaching Buy
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Arupa is a Speaker/Trainer & Innovation Coach who is the author of the new international business book "Ting ! - A Surprising Way to Listen to Intuition & Do Business Better" and Intuita MindWare, a self-coaching program to develop intuition smart skills. Her company Intuita provides Innovation Learning events as well as complete e-learning programs for Management & Talent-Force Development. Email her here or visit www.intuita.com
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