{"id":249,"date":"2008-06-13T19:46:43","date_gmt":"2008-06-13T19:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php\/2008\/06\/13\/your_blind_spot\/"},"modified":"2008-06-13T19:46:43","modified_gmt":"2008-06-13T19:46:43","slug":"your_blind_spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/?p=249","title":{"rendered":"A Different Kind of Blind Spot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the first edition of <em>The Spiral Path<\/em> &ndash; the companion newsletter<br \/>\nto my Spiral Path blog.<\/p>\n<p><em>In this newsletter, I  refer to the concepts of Quantum Leadership&reg; and<br \/>\nThe Spiral Path&trade;. You can find out more about these concepts on my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chriscurnow.com\">website<\/a>.  <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Over the last half a year I have given a lot of thought to what I might write<br \/>\nabout in this the premiere edition of The Spiral Path. I&rsquo;ve written<br \/>\nmyself notes and possible titles have come and gone in my mind. In the end<br \/>\nthough, I have come back to my very first thought &ndash; the concept of our<br \/>\nBlind Spot. I am heavily indebted to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiralpath.com.au\/books\/archives\/2007\/06\/theory_u_leadin.php\">C.<br \/>\nOtto Scharmer<\/a><a href=\"#Footnote\">*<\/a> for the central insight<br \/>\nof this article as well as many of his words that I will quote directly.<\/p>\n<p>\nWhen we think about our blind spot, we think about something that is in front<br \/>\nof us but we can&rsquo;t see it. A colleague I was discussing this with recently<br \/>\nobserved &ldquo;it&rsquo;s something we don&rsquo;t want to see.&rdquo; There<br \/>\nare certainly many of those, but I want to talk about a different view of<br \/>\nthe blind spot. Something that is within the range of our perception but is,<br \/>\nin fact, invisible.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\nBefore I explain what I mean by that, let&rsquo;s start with why it&rsquo;s<br \/>\nimportant. The current global geo-political situation presents serious challenges<br \/>\nfor humankind. Our friend, Otto Scharmer, puts it much better than I could:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>We have created a<br \/>\nthriving global economy that yet leaves 850 million people suffering from<br \/>\nhunger and 3 billion people living in poverty (on less than two dollars per<br \/>\nday). The poor of the world &#8212; about 80 percent of mankind &#8212; live on 15 percent<br \/>\nof the world&#8217;s total GNP.<\/li>\n<li>We invest significant resources on our agriculture and food systems only to create<br \/>\nnonsustainable mass production of low-quality junk food that pollutes both<br \/>\nour bodies and our environment, resulting in topsoil degradation of a territory<br \/>\nas large as India (the equivalent of 21 percent of the present arable land<br \/>\nin the world.) <\/li>\n<li> We spend enormous resources on health care systems that merely<br \/>\ntinker with symptoms and are unable to address the root causes of health and<br \/>\nsickness in our society. Our health outcomes aren&#8217;t any better than in many<br \/>\nsocieties that spend far less.<\/li>\n<li>We also pour considerable amounts of money<br \/>\ninto our educational systems, but we haven&#8217;t been able to create schools and<br \/>\ninstitutions of higher education that develop people&#8217;s innate capacity to<br \/>\nsense and shape their future, which I view as the single most important core<br \/>\ncapability for this century&#8217;s knowledge and co-creation economy.<\/li>\n<li>In spite of alarming scientific and experimental evidence for an accelerating<br \/>\nclimate change, we, as a global system, continue to operate the old way &#8212; as<br \/>\nif nothing much has happened. More than half of the world&#8217;s children today<br \/>\nsuffer conditions of depravation such as poverty, war, and HIV\/AIDS. As a<br \/>\nresult, 40,000 children die of preventable diseases every day. (<a href=\"www.spiralpath.com.au\/books\/archives\/2007\/06\/theory_u_leadin.php\">Theory<br \/>\nU<\/a>,<br \/>\npp 2-3)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This situation represents a serious threat to most organisations. It certainly<br \/>\nmakes it difficult to plan with any semblance of certainty. These issues<br \/>\nare central to many organisations (eg governments, NGOs, aid organisations<br \/>\nand environmental groups) but none are exempt. Business is increasingly<br \/>\nrequired to respond to environmental and social concerns. Many would argue<br \/>\nthat regardless of government regulation, it is good business to do so.<br \/>\nAt a deeper level, most of us are concerned about the kind of world we will<br \/>\nleave to our children. We can&rsquo;t divorce what we do from 9 &#8211; 5 (if<br \/>\nanyone still works from 9 to 5) from the kind of world we are creating.<br \/>\nSo the challenge is to do good work and do good business in an environment<br \/>\nin which we feel very little sense of individual control.<\/p>\n<p>\nThis is where the blind spot comes in.<\/p>\n<p>\nSince it&rsquo;s his idea, I will let Scharmer provide a definition:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;&#8230;the place within or around us where our attention originates. It&#8217;s the place<br \/>\nfrom where we operate when we do something. The reason it&#8217;s blind, is that it<br \/>\nis an invisible dimension of our social field, of our everday experience in social<br \/>\ninteractions.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You might want to go back and read that again.<\/p>\n<p>\nIt is the place where our attention originates. You and I may give a great<br \/>\ndeal of thought to what we give attention to but do we think much about where<br \/>\nthat attention originates? That is, what is it within us or around us that<br \/>\nleads us to pay attention to one thing and not another?<\/p>\n<p>\nI find it a very difficult question to answer but at the same time I have a<br \/>\nsense that it is a very important question. There are times when my awareness<br \/>\nof this spot is acute. I can&rsquo;t describe it but I am aware of it and when<br \/>\nI am aware of it my decision making process is different. I become aware of<br \/>\npossibilities that I had never thought of. I am sure you have had similar experiences.<br \/>\nThere are times when time, at one and the same time, both speeds up and slows<br \/>\ndown. Things are happening quickly but I seem to have the ability to act in<br \/>\nslow motion. (<em>cf the work of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiralpath.com.au\/2008\/06\/csikszentmihaly.php\">Csikszentmihalyi<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>\nI think this is what Otto Scharmer is talking about with his concept of the<br \/>\nblind spot. This awareness.<\/p>\n<p>So what has this to do with<br \/>\nresponding to the global issues I quoted before? I believe that as groups of<br \/>\nus become aware of our blind spot &#8211; the place where our attention originates &ndash; we<br \/>\nwill become far more creative within our sphere of influence and generate possibilities<br \/>\nthat weren&rsquo;t there before.<\/p>\n<p>\nOur sphere of influence may be, by our own account, quite limited but as we<br \/>\nbecome aware of our blind spot we influence others, both within our organisation<br \/>\nand outside it. The first impact we will see is that our own organisation,<br \/>\nor our part of our organisation, becomes more creative and what I like to call<br \/>\ngenerative. Scharmer suggests that we begin to create the future, or more accurately &ldquo;we<br \/>\nbring into being the future that is seeking to emerge.&rdquo; This is a challenging<br \/>\nconcept but at the same time I find it quite exciting.<\/p>\n<p>\nRegardless, this creativity and generativity both makes our organisation (or<br \/>\nour part of it) more effective and that very effectiveness addresses in some<br \/>\nway the global challenges that face us. For example we may find a more cost<br \/>\neffective way to produce our product that at the same time reduces greenhouse<br \/>\nemissions. Or we may develop a pricing structure that makes our product more<br \/>\nwidely accessible and at the same time yields a higher margin.<\/p>\n<p>\nThis is a simplistic representation of complex interactions that become possible<br \/>\nwhen we intentionally operate from our blind spot but I hope it serves to illustrate<br \/>\npotential scenarios.<\/p>\n<p>\nAt the heart of all this is the very foundation of leadership. Whether you<br \/>\nare in a formal leadership position or not you have the potential to influence<\/p>\n<p>\nAs Scharmer puts it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> &ldquo;The essence of leadership is to shift the inner place from which we<br \/>\noperate both individually and collectively.&rdquo;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\nHis challenge then, to each of us is to make this shift, to find our blind<br \/>\nspot and operate intentionally from it. From this we will become more creative<br \/>\nand generative in our work and our organisations and we may just be surprised<br \/>\nhow much capacity we have to influence others. <\/p>\n<p>\nHow we do this is an article all by itself. <\/p>\n<p>I leave you with this closing thought from a completely different source:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The outward work<br \/>\nwill never be puny<br \/>\nif the inner work<br \/>\nis great.<br \/>\nAnd the outward work<br \/>\ncan never be great or even good<br \/>\nif the inward one is puny and of little worth.(<a href=\"#\">M. Fox, <em>Original Blessing: a primer in creation spirituality<\/em> 1983<\/a>) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<div> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If you would like to follow any of the<br \/>\nthoughts in this article further you might like to check out these <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiralpath.com.au\">links<br \/>\nand further reading<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em><a name=\"Footnote\"><\/a>* I will refer to many authors and commentators<br \/>\nin these articles. I do so with the usual disclaimer that their views are<br \/>\ntheir own and don&#8217;t necessarily represent mine. I include these references<br \/>\nbecause I think the author&#8217;s work is interesting and thought provoking.<br \/>\nIn this particular case, while I find Scharmer&#8217;s work fascinating, stimulating<br \/>\nand challenging, it concerns me that his work results in the establishment<br \/>\nof another &quot;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.presencing.com\/\\index.html\">institute<\/a>.&quot; There<br \/>\nare many schools of thought that relate or overlap Scharmer&#8217;s. These schools<br \/>\ndon&#8217;t revolve around the ideas of a single person rather the development<br \/>\nof a whole way of thinking resulting from the contribution of hundreds<br \/>\nor thousands of people over time. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the first edition of The Spiral Path &ndash; the companion newsletter to my Spiral Path blog. In this newsletter, I refer to the concepts of Quantum Leadership&reg; and The Spiral Path&trade;. You can find out more about these concepts on my website. Over the last half a year I have given a lot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,3,8,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-innovation","category-leadership","category-purpose","category-quantum-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}