Deep Work Needs Inner Work
How Mindset and Mindfulness can Foster Organisational Culture and Resilience
„If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive — no matter how skilled or talented you are.” — Cal Newport, Deep Work, 2016
The rise of individual (self-centered) mindfulness
There have been lots of praise on the concept of “Deep Work” since the publishing of Cal Newport’s publication on Deep Work. There is a reason for that. Deep Work reminds us that significant work can be created only where there is focus and the enemy of focus are some of our today’s work habits and our work environment — constant digital connection, new work environments like open spaces with multiple sources of distraction. Besides these, there is also the issue of personal focus. Most people today are easily distracted and cannot focus on one thing for so long without hopping from one trendy thing to another, as though they were skimming through a dozen TV channels.
The need for a conducive serene environment is non-negotiable in Deep Work. Even in places like the train or on a plane, one can find slots for Deep Work. Due to movement constraints and limited disturbances from neighbours, one may find some time which could lead to moments of deep concentrations.
At the core of Deep Work lies the ability to focus and so it’s all about one’s self. Here is where Mindfulness comes into play — the ability to slow down, find deep concentration, staying calm and building resilience to fulfil a specific task for a specific time. This does not mean that you may not take a break like in the “pomodore” method after 15–20 minutes of concentration — this can be very rewarding too. But to create things in Deep Work modus irrespective of the environment you are in, is a skill that can be learnt and a habit that can be developed. If you train this skill, it can become a habit, a ritual that logically produces results.
The rise of collective resilience
At the same time, organisations are looking for ways to build resilience on a corporate level, as forecast systems and KPIs can only measure what they are meant to observe. Organisations are trying to find methods and systems to build resilience for dealing with and reacting to unexpected events. In this stream, “Highly Reliable (Resilient) Organisations’ ‘ (HRO) have developed, mostly in critical areas such as clinics, chemical producers, the army and other areas.
Both streams have different natures, one is individually coined, the other one comes from an organisational responsibility and organisational development level. What can we learn from both?
How to Use Mindfulness for Deep Work
The basic ingredients for Mindfulness are slowing down by becoming aware of one’s self and finding focus on the body and mind. That’s why Google and SAP call it “Search Inside Yourself”. In this program, the basic foundations for Mindfulness are taught and this starts with:
- Empirical scientific and clinical research findings based on research in the area of mindfulness-stress-reduction (why mindfulness has an effect on your emotional intelligence, your work habits and your ability to interact with the people around you)
- Personal training and application of meditation methods, such as breathing and dealing with constant thought interventions.
Why Mindfulness is Important for Corporate Mindsetting
Organisations and companies today are searching for new approaches on how to drive their company culture towards more openness, towards building an atmosphere that fosters creativity, as a basis for innovation and an approach to master today’s complexities.
The main drivers for the development of HROs are well known items for all types of organisations and businesses today:
- Dealing with (Hyper) Complexity
- Reciprocal interdependence across many units, levels and environments
- Large numbers of decision makers in complex communication networks
- Multiple and redundant control and information systems
- The lack of “holistic” accountability systems
- High frequency of immediate feedback
- Compressed time factors
- Too many priorities: more than one critical outcome that must happen simultaneously
Since IBM´s 2010 CEO Study and the ongoing work of IDEO‘s founders (creative confidence), creativity has remained the key competence for the challenges organisations are facing in the 21st century. As we know, creativity first and foremost needs a culture of curiosity, openness, experimentalism, and an error-tolerant atmosphere. Secondly, people are the carrier and ambassadors of culture. The question remains, “how can organisations achieve this kind of atmosphere that leads to a sustainable and self-developing corporate culture?”
One approach that companies like Google and SAP boldly undertake is the training on Mindfulness. If Mindfulness reduces stress, enables people to interact more kindly and less aggressively rather than to interact on short-term emotional reactions and also enables people to find more self-efficacy for concentrating and processing Deep Work, then the chances for a new or revised corporate culture is set. This in turn leads to more creativity, effectiveness on long-term and strategic tasks and in the end, to more content employees. In summary, one could say: the organization becomes more resilient on a collective (corporate) level. As we know, completing tasks and seeing results is one of the most crucial items for being satisfied with one’s personal work.
How can Organisations Make the First Step
Firstly, organisations have to think about which mindset they would like to develop and in which areas they need to work on their corporate culture in the light of the company‘s strategy. This should be built on the key challenges the organisations have identified or are in the process of identifying for the next few years. Analyzing the corporate culture is a complex task, but methodologies such as the Organizational Corporate Inventory (OCI) can be used to apply a standardized and scientifically sound approach.
- Developing a Collective Mindset Framework
Based on these findings, we suggest a dialogic approach. A collective Mindset is a pattern but it must not be fixed in every detail. The opportunity is to use what we call a “Corporate Mindset” as a framework to establish a communicative process within the organisation. This does not mean that the Corporate Mindset is negotiable. It is fixed in its core items based on a process of strategy alignment which in most cases will be worked out with the management and different levels of the leadership but also potentially with representatives of the organisation. This provides the chance to adapt the Corporate Mindset in a second step with divisions, units and teams within the organisation. We suggest establishing a matrix based on the core items of the Corporate Mindset and to teach and enable the leadership to develop its own sub-items and applications for their department and teams. For example, if an item of the Corporate Mindset is openness, its subsumption into different areas of the organisation might look different. An area of logistics might find other sub-items for openness (for example more people oriented) and applications (for example more informal work for the team culture) as the product management department (for example a sub-item could be more innovation culture and an application would be more time slots for learning new methods and to work out new solutions and approaches). - Developing Resilience and Mindfulness on an individual level
In parallel to this, the company would offer Mindfulness-stress-reduction-based initiatives to the leadership (as culture needs role models) and to the employees on an individual and broader level. This will need a closer look on the work structure and time schedule within the organisation. Most organisations we look at, people are constantly dealing with their time limits, lack of resources and open job profiles already. In this case, the leadership first has to establish resources prior to the initialisation of such programs. If this step is worked out appropriately, it provides the chance for more diverse groups within the organisation. - Developing Resilience and Mindfulness on an organizational level
To build resilience and mindfulness as a corporate initiative, there are several approaches. Organisations can use open methods such as “Working out loud” to foster informal communication and open time resources for self-development and organisational learning. We would also suggest looking at the meeting structure, as meetings consume a lot of time of people in leadership but also administration roles. Groups can learn to build resilience by understanding a) system theoretical approaches, meaning the ability to see reality as an ongoing construction by communication and b) to understand the need to incorporate an observation and “sensing” mode to analyze the organizational behaviour (“People know what they think when they see what they say“, Karl Weick).
That can be done by applying routines such as “check-in” and “check-out” procedures if rendered in an open communication attitude. Further there are routines such as “merkaat boards”, where teams will take a look at cultural indicators to identify dangerous developments.
Edgar Schein in his “Talks at Google” appearance offered an alternative definition to Mindfulness as opposed to the general notion that Mindfulness is all about meditation. Schein defines Mindfulness in connection to culture as situational awareness of how culture inside of us and around us (organizational, team, company level) is dominating our thinking. He goes ahead to explain what culture really is and how it determines or predicts our behaviors. Culture, he says, “is the accumulated learning you’ve had in your group experience” and being aware that our decisions and behaviors are informed by such accumulated learning is simply Mindfulness.
4. Evaluation
Systems for evaluation and supervision need to be established in an approachable (practical) manner. Information based on KPI have to be defined and communicated on an agreed schedule towards the management and employees.
We hope we could help you on the matters of Mindset, Mindfulness and Corporate Culture. For more visit www.lumen-partners.com
