As with the Apollo moon landing program, the goal appeared to be impossible, and no one knew how to do it. The big question for Woody was, “How do we create a set of goals based on the deep personal energy of every team member, in service of three missions – team and team-member growth, the contribution of every team to the community it serves, and taking care of our shareholders?”
Escape Velocity came from decisively turning on its head everything in the culture that was contradictory to the best in human nature. Employees, management, communities, shareholders, and team members melded with one other. Shopping center management teams were told that from now on they would set their own goals without interference. All levels were told that bosses were no longer controllers, gatekeepers, and boundary managers. Bosses were told not to intercede to get their own way, but to engage through helping the teams achieve their self-set “impossible objectives.” These impossible objectives were defined to have less than a 30 percent probability of success. The teams were told to put together operating budgets as usual, and then set them aside, totally going for their objectives, rising and falling together as a team in terms of year-end awards, salary adjustments and bonuses.
With an enormous release of personal, team and collective energy, the company achieved Escape Velocity. Individually and together they established goals they cared about, personally and deeply. Leaders could walk freely into team meetings and feel the success and passion of people working toward goals they themselves had set. It became clear how compelling it was for people to be taking on and achieving the Impossible Objectives they had conceived and committed to, individually and together. They had broken free of the suppressive impact of hierarchical rule, and the tyranny embedded in an assumption that a higher intelligence resides only in the bosses.
Despite a background awareness that in complex systems Collective Intelligence is usually smarter than individual intelligence, the cost of ignoring this became demonstrably clear. Prior to this change, 70 management teams full of intelligent individuals had been behaving in ways that were collectively inept. Through addressing Cognitive Dissonance and recontextualizing their way of working, they tapped into the enormous well of Energetic Awareness that is nearly always available. They put that energy into the service of company, team and individual visions they really cared about, rather than buying into or going along with goals simply because an authority wanted them to want it.
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Breaking free of the pull of Earth’s gravity was once considered impossible, yet has now become a matter of practice and technology. Similarly, it has also become possible to systematically break free of the gravity of culture and identity, in the service of critical business and social concerns. This capacity to “Bring the Overview Effect Down to Earth” is as much a practical matter as it is a human and spiritual necessity.
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