Early Conundrums and Enigmas Transcended
Sense-making is responsive in meeting diverse challenges, so we make sense common. Coherent and cohesive teams reduce conflicts; fewer complaints, less disruption or downtime, and less chance of angry staff, workers, or costly litigation. A conversation crafter helps build coherent & cohesive teams to garner premium results; time savings and value-added benefits create financial gains for your alliance, project owner, contractor, subs, and/or organization.
I’ve had some amazing opportunities to learn sense-making patterns and processes while raising a family, finishing a BS degree, and serving our Church as an Elder. My first exposure and opportunity were in the aerospace industry in my mid-20s, managing a $ 7 million/month production desk for commercial spares with over 800 items. I led a 35-member department in reaching the numbers, unknowingly, just because I treated people with dignity and respect.
I reached the top of others’ priority lists because I understood structure and systems, yet I applied interpersonal skills consistent with the golden rule. It just made sense to me, however, in a command and control environment there was a lot of aggression present in the general activity of others attempting to meet monthly numbers and OEM requirements for military and commercial aircraft. It did not make sense, and the corporate culture was bereft of essentials for long-term results with individuals. The burnout and sour attitudes were nearly ubiquitous.
A couple of years later, after much depression and finding solace, I had the opportunity to produce and host a public access TV show sponsored by the Christown Lions Club with an all-volunteer crew trained by the local cable company. We called it One World, with the intention of peering into the lives of people and professions to uncover what keeps us afraid, angry, ignorant, and immobile toward reaching our dreams and goals. We produced 120+ shows with guests that spanned the gamut of personal and professional activity. I felt like I got a Ph.D. in interpersonal relationships as I learned to weave guests conversations into sense-making reality.
Creating Opportunities for Excellence
Like many, my early endeavors didn’t work out so well and I misjudged people and situations, including my own. After a devastating divorce, corporate and church expulsion simultaneously, I had the opportunity to choose my future engagements without fear of potential pitfalls, knowing many of them from recent experience. I vowed to continue to follow what worked, whether I could fully explain it or not.
I’ve enjoyed time in coaching, construction, education, events, manufacturing, music, theater as well as start-up businesses and developing organizations. I’ve led events, seminars, and workshops for business owners, entrepreneurs, and instructional designers. The construction industry was particularly adversarial until the introduction of ‘partnering’ in the early 90s. AZ DOT saw a reduction in litigation costs, dropping from $19 million to less than $1 million within two years.
The principles of partnering include the hard and soft skills represented in the top graphic, which are essential for any sense-making activity. In the mid-2010s, I was introduced to coursework developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called ‘Transforming Business, Society, and Self;’ joining 32,000 students around the world. Theory-U, developed by Otto Scharmer and Peter Senge, was the core of the activity. That model was nearly the exact process I’d learned as a ‘partnering’ facilitator.
Culminating Activity and Co-Creating a Future
Some 45 years after a spiritual awakening as a teen that I’d kept quiet about for decades, I learned that my early naïve and innocent notions in aligning with my life’s path actually set up future opportunities. After a time I learned to just go slow, enjoy the flow and let activities and engagements be determined by the synchronicity of their arrival. It truly is the philosophy and psychology of optimal experience.
Sense-making is determined by our ability to sense, which is far beyond the activities of the brain and thinking. In many respects, it has to do with not thinking.
The notion of ‘nothingness’ brings terror in the minds of many, instead of freedom beyond their imagination to co-create opportunities to do such things as change the world collaboratively for the better of all. Is that even possible? Sure it is.
If we look at the progress of time, circumstances, and opportunities, we can observe our evolution toward understanding a bigger picture in which we are all bytes or pixels that merge into a beautiful picture, hopefully.
We’re all electronic; electromagnetic force fields are generated from the core of our Being, unconscious of that activity for the most part. Quantum science has lifted the veil, apocalyptically. It sounds too sci-fi for incorporation into our physical reality, yet it’s being done moment by moment. It’s observable and replicable.
