"We used to timidly nudge the peanut along, setting goals of moving from, say 4.73 inventory turns to 4.91, or from 8.53 percent operating margin to 8.92 percent; and then indulge in time-consuming, high-level bureaucratic negotiations to move the number a few hundredths one way or the other."

The daily challenge described above exhausts the heads and hearts of most managers. Managers are tired.

They’re tired because they lack nourishment—they don’t get the energy that flows from fresh ideas. In an age where information abounds, organizations still operate in a deficit, suffering from lack of fuel. Why are managers not getting the vital source of nourishment needed to execute daily transactions at their peak level of performance?

It is because of how we think. Ironically, we lack the energy, nourishment, and fresh ideas because we don’t expend enough energy: 90% of the time we dwell in a state of sedentary rationality, using only about 5 to 10 percent of our measurable brainpower. Why?

Traditionally, the Western workplace has tended to value shallow, orderly thinking that delivers quick and quantifiable "right" answers rather than the deep, exploratory thought that forces us to ask questions and stretch toward building relationships beyond the "known." We are rewarded for looking logically at the specific parts of a process rather than investigating it as a whole. We are encouraged to snap the decisive judgment even when personal conviction and intuition tell us that something doesn’t feel right with the "obvious," data-based answer.

The push for the right solution right now has squelched the thinking process. The end-driven approach permeates our already linear-focused organizations. The result: thinking that’s fixed in time. The danger is that we get trapped into thinking that the quick fix is the only answer, the only solution, the only way. In today’s fast-moving, often chaotic, electronic community, this attitude spells disaster.

With the shift from industrial-based to knowledge-based enterprises, people--not machines--drive our organizations. Organizations that truly understand and act on this truth place value on the individual’s ability to think. They understand that thinking is an organization’s most precious resource, the primary source of nourishment for fresh ideas for continuous improvement, quality customer service, agile production cycles, and a whole host of other organizational needs.

Total Immersion: Bridging Information and Intuition
What organizations need to remain competitive rests in managers’ abilities to build bridges between acquired data and intuitive wisdom. When this connection is made, these two types of knowledge become integrated, and individuals enter the state of Total Immersion that relieves their exhaustion and allows them—and their organizations—to take energetic leaps.

Taking the Plunge: How Some Companies Do It
General Electric’s Chairman, Jack Welch, once labeled America’s toughest boss, took that plunge. In his 1994 letter to shareholders, he reported that his top managers no longer will rely on just rational know-how but, in fact, will set strategies and goals by accessing the dreams that emerge from their intuitive knowledge bases. He explained this new approach in terms of "Stretch," which he defined as "a concept that would have produced smirks, if not laughter, in the GE of three or four years ago, because it essentially means using dreams to set business targets--with no real idea of how to get there. If you do know how to get there, it’s not a stretch target."

Jack Welch set the tone for his corporate team, giving them license to invent solutions and thrive on uncertainty by trusting their instincts. The results? "We certainly didn’t have a clue how we were going to get to 10 inventory turns (an annual measure of company speed) when we set that target. But we’re getting there, and as soon as we become sure we can do it, it’s time for another stretch...the openness, candor and trust of a boundaryless, fast company allows us to hang those dreams out there, in view of everyone, so that we can all reach for (connect to) them together."

Motorola is another company that has come to understand the importance of using both learned and intuitive knowledge to increase awareness of situations and possibilities, and to enhance productivity. At its paging products operation, Motorola houses both a straight-line, current production model as well as a "white room" laboratory where new production ideas are generated to replace the existing process. The company’s willingness to blend an experimental forum with an already tried and true set-up gives its workers an opportunity to make daily transformational shifts in their thinking.

Making a Place for Spirit in the Organization
A person’s spirit, or attitude, facilitates the shift and makes the plunge worthwhile, leading to a superior performance. Flexibility, awareness, courage, humor, and action are the power sources within individuals that drive their ability to integrate different types of knowledge and encourage others to do the same. The attitudes of management will radiate outward to the organization’s entire culture through its people and either enhance or detract from its overall success.

Marshaling the resources of 1,700 full time and 700 contract individuals, Lee Hebert, Plant Manager at Monsanto Company, created a solid business team model with a 30 percent improvement in salaried productivity. When asked by a group of his peers how he had the know-how to see that his ideas would work, he revealed that his strongest guide was his personal conviction, his own sense of spirit, his ability to know and be comfortable with who he was.

Because he had a sense of his own spirit, and because he demonstrated it publicly within his organization, he was able to push that spirit--and with it, the power--down to lower levels. As a result, plant employees held the authority to develop and make necessary changes to improve productivity. In some cases, their ideas even led to the elimination of their own jobs, but because they had become committed to the project and made it their own, they willingly moved forward with that elimination. Their energetic exploration and invention led them to the creation of new leadership positions that they were then qualified to fill.

It was the spirit of the leader, Lee Hebert, that germinated this success. His flexibility, humor, and personal conviction radiated outward, and he was then able to lead, inspire, and move innovative ideas forward, resulting in tangible outcomes.

Everything Is Connected
I can’t count how many times during a presentation I’ve said, "Everything is connected." What I have begun to ponder is that I didn’t fully appreciate the significance of that phrase until I read Deepak Chopra’s and Margaret Wheatley’s interpretations of the impact of quantum physics on the world today. In the quantum world of photons, the smallest unit of potential, light travels as a wave and yet remains a particle, transformed from non-matter into matter, time into space, mass into energy by nature’s own set of yet unknown laws. The wave and particle coexist in this paradoxical resourceful state, ready to respond to a given context. There is no conflict observed, only the ability to transform huge amounts of potential into a powerful reality—results that work.

The quantum world teaches that there is a deeper level of interconnectedness between potential and reality—where change occurs in leaps, uncertain and unpredictable yet in complete order; where everything is connected in contextual framework depending on the relationships involved and the environment which causes them. Potential energy becomes light through a transformation process, not yet known. However, what is known is that the linear "A causes B which leads to C" model doesn’t apply in our world any longer.

It’s been ten years since I was diagnosed with cancer and underwent harsh chemotherapy treatment. For the past nine, I’ve spent vast hours reading, researching, and gathering bits of information from here and there, driven to find the model: the key to healing. At last I’ve found my answer: there is no model. There is only my experience based on the context of my current situation and the relationships involved in that experience. I’d been trying to find the one solution to rebuilding my body back to the "well-oiled machine" it was prior to having had cancer—to take the broken parts and put them back together again. What I had failed to see is that the parts are no longer the same parts; that my body is no longer the same body; that the context, my relationships, and environment have changed.

During the intensive nine year search, my eyes glazed over countless words, but the discoveries I made while reading new medical research became the payoff for the entire nine years. Psychoneurommonology (PNI), a medical specialty, states that the body is an integrated circuit where all parts are continuously communicating with each other. Through neuro-transmitters and neuro-peptides, every cell is sending a message to every other cell. This chemically connected network works in unison in an inner space, projecting a flow of intelligence literally from head to toe. The medical findings reveal that intelligence is not the sole domain of the mind, but rather each sub-atomic level of our being radiates intelligence: we are totally integrated.

These scientific and medical discoveries are meaningful in terms of moving individuals, and thus organizations, to their optimum resourceful state. For an organization is a collection of connected people, who are collections of connected, integrated cells. The underlying concept of PNI is that the body’s know-how flows from a totally integrated system. What this means is that at the most basic level—our chemical make-up—we have the aptitude to solve operational problems, answer the customer’s toughest questions, and generate innovative ideas to reduce cycle-production time. When we integrate this intuitive ability with learned information and knowledge, we operate using all of our resources, releasing enough potential nourishment to alleviate our exhaustion forever.

A dramatic example of how this inter-connectedness works at an organizational level is Motorola’s strategy of enlisting a minimum of 300 champions in strategic parts of the company to promote new ideas rapidly and extensively through the entire system. The thinking behind this initiative was to create a significant number of advocates (individual cells) to act as awareness-enhancing agents from the top-down and bottom-up; to create a totally integrated system where more than one key champion (the brain) was immersed in the process. This was a major factor in their quality effort’s success.

At American Airlines, employee suggestions have generated over $350 million in savings from their cost-management program, IDEAAS IN ACTION. The program’s success lies in the company’s ability to tap the immense storehouse of employee brainpower. Encouraging an "anything goes" attitude, the program coordinators receive 150 to 200 ideas per day, with a total of 130,000 ideas in the last five years. Using system-wide local volunteers, 85 percent of the ideas were evaluated within 90 days. The potential was there and American Airlines created a meaningful way to harness the energy . They further enhanced the program by transforming the value of rewards. During the five year period, $55 million in awards was given to the employees, and when applicable taxes were due, they were paid by American.

In the midst of the information explosion, where information doubles every ten years, why is it that we think the tiny fraction we see is everything? Why is it difficult to expand what we presently know? Basically, it is in how we were trained. For decades, credibility in the business world has been based on linear models. Industrial history sharply reflects the closely constructed prototypes of Newton’s well-oiled machine model. These castings viewed the world in parts rather than as a whole; multidimensional perspectives were reduced to time and material; and "things" could literally be taken apart and put back together again without significant loss. We’ve built an entire country on this model.

But the events in Newton’s world were unrelated; each occurred in its own department and timeframe. The answers were created with certainty for a specific outcome to last the test of time. Today’s world is different. We live in a new I.C.E. age, with the convergence of information, communications, and education resulting in a networked-world where technology rapidly alters our futurescape daily. One look around you paints a picture of a world built emerging from chaotic interconnections, yet we still cling to the comfort of old certainties. We are relying on outdated models that no longer apply to our current context, relationship or environments.

What the medical and scientific research bring forth are new perspectives on the interconnected world we dwell in. Each cell is a strand in our body’s web of intelligence. When you pluck one strand the whole web vibrates. It’s the same with the quantum concept: each interconnected photon causes ripple-like patterns that reach outward to other energy sources. These fundamental interconnections, these rippling waves are at the base of all creation—the vital nourishment to sustain the optimum resourceful state. That is why Lee Hebert’s publicly demonstrated spirit radiated outward to his employees and led to phenomenal success and commitment. That is why Jack Welch’s corporate team is finding its way toward reaching a goal they have no idea how to get to.

Another example is Wal-Mart. On any given day, about 250 tests are conducted in stores, concentrating on sales promotions, displays, and customer service. With an experimental mind-set, the corporation systematically plucks each strand to see where the most vibration occurs. And who leads this day-to-day organic process? CEO David Glass spends two or three days each week at stores and warehouses, engaged in hands-on implementation. This direct involvement provides a powerful model for total integration.

Moving Beyond Analytical Reasoning: How Some Companies Do It
When we reduce our dynamic thinking equation to a single dimension—analytical reasoning—we risk missing the rippling wave patterns that emerge from our intuitive knowledge base. Here’s what can happen when something as simple and available as the five senses are integrated into a thought process: In pursuit of enhanced customer relationships, U S West Communications held a meeting of 14 market managers. In addition to reviewing the data they’d acquired about their existing customer relationships, the group used sensory exploration exercises to develop thoughts and ideas about enhancing one-to-one interactions. By concentrating on the use of each sense, the managers shifted from their marketing research mode to a more "human" view of their customers--seeing them as living, breathing individuals, not just market segments. Once they had taken that plunge and made the connection between the senses and their customers’ buying decisions, they devised intuitive concepts designed to connect customers back to nature, freeing them for the moment from everyday business pressures while immersing them in the total U S West service experience.

Sensory exploration also led to Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.’s ad campaign, which appealed to the senses to sell cars. The headline read: "A shade, a smell, a sound, a feeling...a voice in the back of your mind." The ad copy went on to probe further, asking the reader, "What does quality feel like? Look like? What should the steering wheel feel like? What should the car look like? What should its interior smell like?" These are questions that managers and their employees can explore in regard to their own products and services.

First Steps: Making the Choice
Building the bridge between acquired data and intuitive wisdom takes practice. It takes practice to see and feel the connections, to be free to make up the answers instead of relying just on the known facts, and to be comfortable with the uncertainty of it all. In one sense, the tangible, concrete evidence and the invisible winged wisdom are totally opposed. But they are also totally complementary. When we allow ourselves to take the plunge and combine the two, we are awesome. And I mean that literally. When integrated and totally immersed in thinking, we’re unstoppable. When we honor and make use of the totality of who we are, the exhaustion melts away. Moreover, we infuse our sterilized thinking with a form of know-how that cannot be seen or touched. It is powerful.

These concepts challenge us to reassess how we think; they provoke us to reconsider all pools of intelligence and question our core belief about the potential of both our knowledge bases. Building a bridge between your rational and intuitive knowledge base requires a dynamic transformational shift; a quantum leap in thinking. The ability to make the shift demands that you get out of your own way. Knowing when to shift enriches your personal mastery, both in its practice and performance. Finally, engaging in a transformational shift leads to a deeper discovery by opening a multitude of untapped resourcefulness. It is called choice.

Choice is our greatest liberating power. It frees us to find out what happens when we infuse our data environment with a sense of adventure. When we play with the stats. Make-up the charts. When we express ourselves symbolically and release the power of imagination to expand the key indicators of a quantifiable universe, when we make up the answers as we go along, the challenge we have is to trust that each encounter will produce meaning that is valuable and connected, if not immediately obvious. This calls on us to be vulnerable--the ultimate risk. But where there is no risk, the outcomes will have no zest, but will only fulfill basic requirements.

When more leaders like Jack Welch free up their managers by making the choice to stop "arguing over these petty numbers in conference rooms (because) they inspire or challenge no one, capture no imaginations," and move toward "stretch targets (that) are making seemingly impossible (dreams) goals exciting, bringing out the best from our team," ⁸ then organizations will reap the zest and not just the requirements; they will dwell in the optimum resourceful state. When they are totally integrated, totally immersed, they will no longer be exhausted.

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