Flourish Notes

Remember when we listened to the radio! In recent years many people no longer “tune-in” to radio. In the era of radio there was AM (amplitude modulation) and FM (frequency modulation) stations. The sound of FM was typically crystal clear compared to the AM stations. AM stations seemed to have a lot of interference and noise (even most of the content was just noise :)). However, AM was a lot cheaper to broadcast compared to FM, so everyone initially jumped on the AM frequencies. Eventually the listening audience realized AM was not the way, so more and more stations moved to FM. FM content also tended to be much more focused on particular themes and interest areas. In a way businesses today are like stations still broadcasting using AM. They know they need to change and do business in a better way. They are ready for a new model – FM!

From a business perspective FM is applying a Flourishing Model (FM) to enterprise design, development, operation and improvement.

I am constantly thinking about and being asked what is flourishing, what is a flourishing enterprise, what is a flourishing city, what is a flourishing leader, and what is a flourishing person? In the past I would always hesitate because I wanted to answer all of these questions in the same way. I needed a model that could be applied to all contexts and at the same time provided value and direction on how to move forward. I needed a model or a framework that I could use to answer the questions and help set people on the right path to flourishing whatever the context.

The Flourish Model (the new FM) is my attempt to provide singularity to the answer of what is a flourishing ‘X’. Where ‘X’ is one of individual, group / team, enterprise, community, town / city, province / state, region, nation, world and the planet.

This and coming posts will attempt to chronicle the delineation, testing, and application of the Flourish Model.

I was in a meeting today related to a higher-purpose initiative at a national level. We were pursuing an idea that would require massive sharing of ideas, methods and potentially even sharing of intellectual property from a large variety of individuals and enterprises.

The meeting led me to reflect a little about the current state of a scarcity vs abundance mindset. I have read a fair amount about scarcity versus abundance (some science-based, some not) and have been involved in many collaborative initiatives over the years. Even more so in the last five years.

I like to think I have an abundance mindset, but I do slip up occasionally. I still tend to worry too much about mis-using intellectual property and even conflict of interest. It’s kind of built into my system partially through my own, but also experiences of others that have been shared (through abundance mindset!) with me.

Perhaps an abundance mindset and the sharing of resources that typically occurs in collaborations when you have an abundance mindset still makes me a little nervous. I think I have this nervousness due to what Adam Grant says about givers and takers, and those in between. My experience is that many pro abundance mindset people are pro because they are takers. This obviously sounds harsh and of course I hope this is disproven as I continue down the path of collaboration and sharing with abundance thinking. When I take this perspective I also realize I need to broaden my definition of what is shared within an abundance mindset in any collaborative situation. Sharing is more than ideas and intellectual property. Sharing can also include time, personal networks, knowledge, experiences, stories, funding, and other things. Even though I may perceive an individual as a taker and others as givers, there is a really good chance that any sharing or exchange is happening at different levels where the perceived taker is also being a giver.

There is no doubt that an abundance mindset is good for flourishing and improved well-being. As a collective we are making progress in moving from a scarcity to an abundance mindset. This is strongest on higher-purpose initiatives like flourishing and improved well-being. I think COVID-19 has made us realize we are all in this together. We need to collaborate more, we need to share more, we need to help others flourish and improve their well-being. Linked to all of this is a need to develop a stronger abundance mindset for all. The idea of abundance and including abundance into our way of thinking and operating models is a challenge for many.

An abundance mindset is well proven to support flourishing of individuals and teams. High quality connections, sharing and trust are mandatory for successful teams. I think most would agree, abundance mindset is key to making teams and teaming work. The concept also seems to make sense for integrating into a flourishing enterprise. Flourishing enterprises take an enterprise integrated stakeholder perspective. What does that mean? They recognize that for any flourishing enterprise, everything you do must be done considering the value co-creation and co-destruction as well as impact on all stakeholders. The full list of stakeholders are:

• clients
• employees
• suppliers and partners
• community
• owners and investors
• towns and cities
• regions
• provinces and states
• nations
• the world and society, and
• the planet

The list recognizes that enterprises exist within a much larger ecosystem. The challenge with an ecosystem view of the enterprise and for todays complex challenges (“wicked problems”) or global or grand challenges massive collaboration is required. A level of collaboration that includes competitors and even competing interests. Competitors, and organizations with competing interests should also be added to the list of stakeholders.

As I reflect on the abundance mindset, and get beyond the obvious advantages of abundance for individuals and teams, I start to realize some of the challenges of the abundance mindset for enterprises that want to flourish and contribute to a higher purpose goals while remaining viable, growing and remaining competitive. In the past business management experts have explored techniques to support the competitive situation. The one that comes to mind is Coopetition.

Ultimately, we all have to realize that the end goal is flourishing and improved well-being for all. We need to focus on that with an abundance mindset and a system-wide (all stakeholders everywhere) perspective where radical sharing occurs.

Author’s Note: just reflecting and writing this makes me realize I still have a ways to go in building an abundance mindset when collaborating with others. I’ll work on it!

Most private, public and civil society organizations create a longer term vision that guides their mission, their strategies, their business models and value propositions, people and actions.

There is a trend to limit the vision to perhaps three years at most, due to the amount of change occurring around us. Any business vision has a shelf life. There may be a much longer term higher-purpose that guides the shorter- term vision. Currently, you see the higher-purpose / vision connection with many larger organizations dealing with today’s local and global challenges. However, something is still missing. We need a different type of vision. A vision that recognizes a much longer-term picture of where we must be to deal with larger challenges (in most cases perceived as longer-term) , but also supports where we think we need to be in the shorter term based on managing within current situations.

An example in my world and many other parts of the world would be healthcare. It seems you can never invest enough in healthcare. Can consumers and providers of healthcare ever have enough money invested. When is enough, enough? Is there no upper limit? Is slowing the pace and eventually reducing the levels of investment real? Could that happen through efficiency and effective improvement (along with quality improvement)? Most if not everyone would say no. I don’t know the answer, however I believe that we do need to take a longer transformational / transitional perspective.

As in the case of healthcare we need a 20-30 year vision of what healthcare should look like. My feeling is that we must truly move towards preventive care versus our present reactive care approach. Preventative care must include physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, economic and environmental fitness. Prevention concepts, learning content, and interventions need to be integrated starting as early as possible so that a preventative healthcare mindset is part of our lives from day one and carried with us throughout our lives. Our healthcare, needs to become our responsibility, not the systems responsibility.

We still must have shorter term visions that guide us in achieving results required for the current and near future environment we exist in. However, we need accept that radical change is required and we need to make considerable progress on a longer term vision to an ideal future state while at the same time achieve towards the shorter term visions.

I propose we need a transformational/transitional approach to vision. We need much longer term, more radical visions of what we are really trying to accomplish. While at the same time we need to execute on our shorter-term vision. As an example, we need a vision of healthcare that could result in reduction or no increases in healthcare funding through a refocusing on preventive healthcare. Unfortunately, we tend to bury our heads in the sand and keep asking for more money or reducing services. Since we have a global mindset of short-termism we just try to survive the short-term and never really try to fix the real problems because real solutions require time and change of mindset. There would be many real world constraints on achieving the healthcare long-term vision identified above. .However we need to steal from the design thinking world and treat these constraints as “wonderful constraints” that guide innovative thinking in problem and solution development.

So what is a transformational/transitional approach to vision? A quick summary is:

• we need a 10, 20, or 30 year vision (depending on challenges we are dealing with) for complex, big challenges.
• we need ‘n’ interim visions (that get us to the longer-term vision)
• we need current target vision for the next 1-2-3 years (that better positions us for subsequent vision and longer term vision goals and outcomes.
• we need to know the linkages between these visions, the outcomes desired for each, budgeting
• Visions need to be acted on through mission, strategies, goals and objectives
• Progress towards each longer-term vision needs to be measured and managed.

As the Flourish Rebel I am experimenting with methods, outputs and tools to support the transformational/transitional approach to vision.

More to come.