I had another duh! moment yesterday.
The first part of my upcoming book The Natural Enterprise
is about finding meaningful (for you) work. It's essentially about
finding or creating work that is at the 'sweet spot' where your Gift
(what you do uniquely well), your Passion (what you love doing) and
your Purpose (what is needed) intersect -- area 3 on the graphic above.
My agent and publisher, not surprisingly, are hopeful that I will find
my own second career in that sweet spot before the book is published
(we all need to practice what we preach).
So the onset of my
ulcerative colitis last month had me quite concerned. One of the first
things I did was to give up my innovation consulting practice, which I
had initially hoped would be in the sweet spot but which turned out to
be in area 2 on the graphic (i.e. unappreciated) -- and produced far
more stress than was good for me. I had initially thought that in order
to find unstressful work I would have to settle for (another) area 5
job -- something I'm good at, and in high demand, but probably
something I wouldn't be passionate about.
But then I realized
I was thinking about this all wrong. If my Gift and my Passion are
shifting (from really ambitious, exciting work to more modest, local, fun work), the answer isn't to give up
on finding the sweet spot, but rather to (a) redefine the type of work
I am searching for, (b) research and assess the need for that kind of
work, and (c) find work partners, people to make a living with, whose
Gifts and Passions are complementary to my own and who, in partnership
with me, could allow us all to fulfill our purpose while collectively
meeting a currently unmet need.
My Genius (where my Gift and Passion overlap) is imagining possibilities
-- coming up with novel, creative answers to challenging problems,
answers that no one else has, or would be likely to, come up with. I
also have some Gifts that I am not particularly passionate about
(research, analysis, intelligence-gathering, and applying my
experience, learning and other people's stories to solve business
problems) and some Passions that I am not particularly gifted in
(creating sustainable intentional communities, facilitating P2P
information exchanges, and developing personal sustainable living
programs). For me, meaningful work might well include those Gifts I am
not particularly passionate about (provided that isn't all
it includes), and ideally would allow me to learn about, develop and
try out some of the Passions that I am not currently very gifted in.
So, for example, my business partners might be very good at creating
sustainable intentional communities, and that might be part of our
collective Natural Enterprise's mandate, offering me the opportunity to
participate in this type of activity without getting over my head.
My Purpose (what I'm meant/destined/on Earth to do) is fomenting (provoking) change.
Recently my thinking on this has been shifting as well, as a result of
my research on complex adaptive systems. My Purpose may now be more catalyzing Let-Self-Change,
coaching people individually and in groups to understand how to
understand and allow themselves (individually and collectively in
groups) to adapt to and accommodate ever-changing social and
environmental systems, rather than trying to futilely impose change on
these complex, uncontrollable, unpredictable systems.
Finding
the sweet spot all comes down to the iterative, complex challenge of
finding the ideal partners for your enterprise -- those whose skills
and interests complement your own, and which allow each partner to
exercise his/her Gift and Passion and fulfill his/her Purpose while collectively
meeting a currently unmet need. In my experience, sole proprietorship,
trying to do everything in your enterprise yourself, is not the way to
go -- it is unnecessarily tedious, risky, exhausting and stressful.
Much better to share the load with people you love to work with.
This
is an iterative process -- it will evolve depending on who I partner
with and what they have to offer, but my initial thinking is that my
critical role in this Natural Enterprise would be doing one or more of
three things that, for me, are clearly in the area 3 sweet spot:
- Coaching
displaced and disenchanted baby boomers and entrepreneurial young
people in high school and university on finding meaningful work,
including:
- how to find their own area 3 sweet spot work;
- the possibilities and advantages of creating a Natural Enterprise instead of creating or working in a traditional business; and
- the process of researching and establishing such an enterprise.
- Coaching teens in a very
progressive school (one where study is self-directed, not taught at a
lectern, and where you learn by doing and by discovery, not by being
told what to do) in critical life skills (one of which is finding meaningful work).
- Coaching groups and organizations about how to use complex, adaptive processes to deal with intractable problems.
I
am no longer interested in providing services to big corporations:
They're too change-resistant, and for the most part they're part of the
problem, not the solution.
Coaching is an art -- more learning
and listening than teaching, customizing answers based on context and
circumstances, a lot of one-on-one back-and-forth, some brainstorming,
imagining possibilities, telling stories from personal experience, and
a few organized collective activities when group learning and discovery
of diverse groups is appropriate.
My initial sense (though this
could change too depending on who I partner with and their skills and
perspectives) is that the traditional employment and consulting
business models of this kind of coaching are inappropriate for these
applications, for two reasons:
- This coaching is urgently needed, but those who need it cannot afford to pay for it; and
- Government
has a vested interest in supporting this kind of coaching, above and
beyond what they are already doing: It's good for employment, it's good
for workforce education, it reduces the need for social assistance for
those earning too little to live on, and it's good for local business
development.
For that reason I think we might try to persuade
governments to fully fund this coaching, and hence offer it through a
foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to making citizens
better equipped to make a living for themselves. In the US, which is
less inclined to fund such ventures publicly than Canada, we might look
for progressive-minded private sponsors. There may even be a business
model where entrepreneurs and wealthy individuals with the ability to
pay for these services would subsidize those who don't have that
ability.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, and these decisions
will ultimately made collectively and iteratively by the whole
partnership of the Natural Enterprise. The traditional approach to
getting such a venture started would be either (a) wait for some
enlightened government to offer an opening for such work, through the
department of labour, education or business development, and then apply
for it, or (b) make a formal proposal to government suggesting they
provide this service to citizens, and offer to provide it on a turnkey,
not-for-profit basis (I'll probably do that anyway, since Canada does
have some enlightened governments).
But, as I suggested in an earlier article, perhaps the best way to launch this would be convening an Open Space event where anyone
looking to establish a Natural Enterprise would be invited to bring
their Gift, Passion and Purpose, and their wish list, ideal work
description and initial thoughts on appropriate business models, and
let's see what happens. My guess is that a lot of powerful partnerships
could emerge from such an event, and a lot of very meaningful work
created.
Time to give Chris Corrigan a call. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
