A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2008 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

The are two basic issue on how individuals fail the organization. One is that an individual takes a job that is not their passion and/or they put survival above their deeper needs as to what give them life. So in the end they survive but don’t live life. The second is the individual does not gain self mastery.

Choosing survival over passion: Although it may be necessary to put survival over the deeper needs, in the long run, focusing on survival will affect the individual and what they are capable of doing. However, through no fault of the individual, the individual may have never learned or have been able to find and/or experience what gives them passion and enthusiasm for life all they had in this life were role models who survived.

To be perfectly honest, in many ways the author failed the organizations of which he was a part although he had would be described as good employee with a relative successful career with many of the traditional awards and accolades. Exactly how he failed the organization is that he did not consciously discover as his deepest passion until he was forty-four years old. In many ways, he stumbled upon it. Yet he danced around it all his life. In fact, regardless of what is job description said, he routinely performed that passion and always ended up advising and counseling individuals to get in touch with the passion of their life and helped individuals to find it.

Several times in his life he came very close to accessing his deepest passion but he didn’t actually find it and access it until he was forty-four. The question is "Why?" Actually there are two answer to this question. One answer was because he was running on programming as to how he thought the world worked and who he thought he was in the world rather than paying close attention to what was being communicated inside of himself. Yet, he had a very personal way of following in inner feeling about what he did in life that he followed from job to job.

The issue was that he was never taught there was something more to life that finding a career and it had to deal with accessing, embracing and being the life that was inside his being. Yet no matter what job he was in, he was pulled to work a certain way with individuals. Fortunately his particular way of working with individuals usually served the organization so what he did outside his job on company time never become an issue.

In any case, it took a good part of that forty four years to "burn off" the falsity of the programming he received in his life. As the author looks back on his life, the life he was taught to live only gave him part of what he needed to know. What he felt he needed to explore in life is what gave him the pieces that the life he was taught to live did not give him. It took Forty four years for the pieces to come together. It took forty four years simply because of what he thought would continually take him away from what he felt. It was only when he chose to act solely on what he felt did he find his true passion in life.

What he gave all the organization of which he was a part prior to this time was good but it was only a shallow form of what he was able to give them if he had accessed his passion. Without that passion, a part of his mind was always somewhere else rather than focused on the job. When the author realized this about himself, he asked to have his job description and responsibilities change to reflect this finding. Fortunately his supervisor agreed and, more importantly, the supervisor felt the work the author was doing for the employees was essential given all that changes that were occurring in the workplace.

The issue here is the individual’s performance and whether or not the individual knows and/or can feel the part they have been asked to play in life. Have they pursued the skills to play that part and whether or not those skills align with the needs of the organization.

The unique creative spirit within each individual is much like the combination of a musician and their instrument. No two combinations are exactly alike and each will have a different range of capabilities and style and it is a choice one makes at to whether they come to intimately know their instrument and learn to play its depth and breath. However, each accomplished musician, along with their properly designed instrument, can be expected to perform within a relative well defined envelop of performance.

Similarly for the normal working environment, each worker will have a defined envelop of operation. That envelop of operations should consist of their routine work in which they are expected to be fully capable of performing. In the same way an accredited doctor, engineer, certified public accountant or any other professional can be expected to perform within a standard envelop of operation, each worker is expected to fully perform to the requirements of the existing job. For an effective organization, each of these jobs must have their pedigree back to the intention for the organization. On this note, it is important to review each and every job description to see exactly how it is helping to accomplish the mission of the organization for does it serve some other master or authority, including a supervisor or managers personal desire that does not necessarily help the mission.

Here again, all that the organization does should be traceable to the goal of the organization. For example, to say the equal opportunity office of the organization is tied to an outside regulatory authority and does not really serve the mission tells us a lot about how the organization views people and society in general. It is telling us the organization is out of phase with the environment in which it finds itself. If there are disconnects in this pedigree we have no assurance that job being performed is in alignment with what the organization intends. Ultimately the process discussed here is consistent with standard organization theory. The salient difference is in starting with the organizational intention as opposed to an organization vision or goal. It is to look at the "why" that lies behind the vision or goal and why is the vision or goal is written such that it can allow for disconnects between positions in the organization and its goals

It is here that Orchestrating the Organization begins to differ from standard organization theory and the art of the orchestration becomes important. To have an effective musical performance, the musician’s spirit or soul must be part of the performance . That is, their emotional involvement must be in the music, otherwise the performance is hollow and spiritless. The emotional aspect is what allows the spirit to flow forth into form. Intention is fueled by determination and desire. Unless the individual’s intention for being employed within the organization is in alignment with the organizational intention and what they do in the organization aligns with the individual’s life purpose, the individual and the organization will be emotionally disconnected. No matter how hard one works to bridge the gap, it cannot be crossed and either the individual, the organization or both will suffer.

Ultimately, the emotional energy of the worker will not be fully supportive of the efforts of the organization. The worker may be present but they will not be engaged. The less engaged, the less attentive the worker will be to the details of the job and the more penal type actions may be necessary. The amount and significance of the disconnect will depend on how big a difference exists between the intention of the organization and the individual. The reason way so many people volunteer their time and energy to an unpaid effort is that the individual’s intention and emotional energy are seen as being fulfilled within the volunteer effort. Ideally, a worker should be doing a job that they would be willing to volunteer to do if pay or the need to make a living were not an issue. If an individual can honestly say they would not volunteer to do what they are getting paid to do, then they are in the wrong job. If the worker’s intention and emotional energy are not fulfilled by the work they are performing you will not be able to get a sustainable quality product in the long term.

Not obtaining self mastery: In orchestrating the organizational performance, the first level of performance is individual accomplishment and is about an individual becoming an accomplished master of the part to be performed. Here this mastery is both their individual life and the role they play in life and their part and role in the organization. Orchestrating the Organization is about getting these two to align or be in alignment the best one can.

The accomplished individual makes their instrument or part "come alive" with nuances and subtleties and involves the integration of both their technical skill and their unique personality. The individual intimately knows themselves and what they can and cannot do, and what they are, or are not, capable of providing both in their own life and in, and for, the organization. The accomplished individual has obtained reasonable balance between the spiritual, emotional, mental and physical aspect of their being. They know what fuels and sustains their fire and how to contain that passion within the confines of the part that needs to be played and they are aware of how the job does or doesn’t support their needs and how they do or do not support the organization.

The accomplished individual knows what the workplace can and cannot provide them. An accomplished individual has done the personal work to align the four aspects of their being (spiritual, mental, emotional and physical) and keep them in alignment. The goal is to get individuals to make decisions based on what is best and balanced for both the organization and the individuals and to move away from individuals making organizational decisions based on their own unbalance and wounded self, such as a manager who has the personal need to control, as opposed to a control level justified by the work to be performed. It is about the individuals who do not allow their personal fears to dictate how they respond to events within the organization. For example, an individual who needs attention to meet self-worth needs may be constantly positioning themselves into the "front" position or lead role not because they are the most appropriate person to lead, but rather solely to fulfill their personal needs. In doing so, the organizational performance suffers.

Change and the prospect of change can significantly impact the area of fear and how and individual responses. As change occurs in the workplace, the fear of the uncertainty begins to rob the worker of their emotional energy. One cannot assume that a new proposed job will meet the worker’s intention and that the worker will be capable of performing as before. The new job may in fact be moving the worker farther away from their individual intention only adding to the disconnect between the worker and the organization.

From the perspective of organizational change individual performance in change involves having learned both the skills and the way of performing to make any internal adjustments relative to the four aspects of being necessary to accommodate the change. The most common problem here is that a person’s self-worth and identity are tied to their organizational position and as that position changes, the individual’s identity is threatened. Any change will involve the breaking of some old habits and the formation of new habits more appropriate to the task at hand. If the individuals are already reasonably accomplished individuals, most of the effort at this level would involve coaching in these new ways of performing and ensuring that they are living at the edge of their abilities, constantly expanding how they see themselves and what they are able to accomplish as a individual with the organization. Development of completely new skills and abilities may or may not be required and is determined by the depth and breadth of the proposed, or imposed, change. Here again, a self mastered individual will have little difficulty in coping If however, an individual is poorly accomplished, it may be necessary for the individual to get professional counseling on their particular issues, since the proposed change could be more than their ego can handle. In most organizational change, often little consideration is given to how and individual’s identity is impacted by the change and how they will ultimately response to that loss of identity.

Related topics
The impacts of suppressing or denying the creative spirit
Employee misuse of an opportunity

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