Forget Your MBA, Just Listen To Your Body
Like the human body, organizations are complex, interdependent and evolving systems. For strategists, learning from the body through self-inquiry can become an effective and illuminating practice to accomplish increased efficiency, collaboration and well-being within an organization.
The wisdom of the body has rarely been taken seriously by disciplines historically ruled by the mind. Collectively, we have over-relied on intellect to solve complex problems, devise solutions, and make decisions. Strategy is one of such disciplines. It would be uncommon to imagine an organizational strategist using body awareness as the basis to develop frameworks, lay out tactics, and organize teams. However, an openness in perspective can bring these domains closely together.
After a decade of practicing strategy, whilst having a deep interest in the nature of the body and its movement, I have come across an unexpected set of parallels that I seek to explore in this piece. The purpose: To spark a conversation about the scope of applications of leveraging our inner study to tackle and solve the issues of the external world.
Cultivating body awareness can be defined as the process of understanding the systems of the body (including the mind), developing practices to benefit it over time, and executing changes with organization and discipline. Analyzing and integrating the lessons that develop from understanding and transforming the body can illuminate strategists with best practices to inform how to understand and improve organizations. It is time to reach beyond business management manuals that deconstruct organizations through the lens of siloed, mechanical functions, and welcome an honest inquiry into organizations as the natural, evolving systems that they are - just like our bodies. Such understanding could enable practitioners to approach organizations as imperfect and habit-seeking, yet limitlessly creative and resilient systems.
To begin this exploration, let us assume two seemingly disconnected situations: Moving one’s body with a goal or intention (such as pointing a finger, or standing on one leg), and leading an organization into performing a strategic action (such as launching a new product, or pivoting into a new market). By inspecting carefully what happens with the body, we can abstract insightful and effective best practices that apply remarkably well into the context of what happens in the organization. Let’s dive in.
Noticing
When the body wants to move with intention, an early process that kicks in is that of simply noticing that there is an urge to move out of stillness. This is the almost instantaneous, pre-intellectual recognition of a yearning or requirement for change. The process might initiate externally through the senses (i.e. hopping over to the side of the road to avoid an approaching vehicle, or jumping up to catch a ball perceived by the field of vision) or triggered internally by the mind (i.e. broadening shoulders from pride, or bowing down from fear). The body is never not noticing. Even during sleep, the body is unconsciously sensing and making micro-adjustments based on the constant surveillance of our internal and external conditions. This sense of permanent awareness not only enables us to move with intention, but also to prevent danger, navigate the unknown, and survive.
Organizations, not unlike the body, are also constantly affected into moving out of stillness. External factors such as fluctuations in the markets, the advent of new competitors, or regulatory changes can trigger the need for movement. Similarly, internal factors such as leadership decisions, technology investments or employee churn rates can elicit the need for organizations to make timely moves. Often, the inability to monitor and analyze internal and external signals, or the delays in acting on them can cause organizations to stay stagnant, loose speed, and ultimately fail.
For strategists in charge of driving adaptability and nimbleness: What lessons might you learn from turning your gaze within? First, we realize that organizations rarely take the act of noticing as an ever-present activity. Quarterly trend reports, monthly sales calls, or yearly off-sites synthesize in snapshots what in reality is a permanently moving landscape. Therefore, signals are often missed, proactivity stifled, and opportunities lost. To move freely and fluidly, organizations must be always-on. Like the body, organizations must create systems of noticing that are acutely and constantly aware of micro-changes in the internal and external environments.
The adoption of machine learning and big data, for instance, is enabling companies to tap into a constant stream of real-time feedback from the market and its customers, though that is certainly a topic ripe for ethical discussion. Similarly, evolved organizations are taking pulse of their employees, beyond the traditional company feedback surveys, and into an attuned, honest and ongoing inquiry into the wisdom of their people. The practice of noticing can help companies become more aware, dynamic and nimble.
Aiming & Scanning
Once the body has noticed a yearning for movement, it identifies a destination or end-state to where it wants to move, scanning the context so that it can trigger the necessary adjustments to reach its goal.
Imagine that you are jumping from one boulder to another on a hiking trip. Once your body has aimed towards the desired destination, it conducts a process of contextual scanning to determine how to invest energy for the leap. Is it windy? Are you carrying a heavy backpack? What kind of shoes do you have for traction? This process is not a rational checklist, but rather a moment of embodied communication in which your body and mind are working in tandem to determine together how to optimize actions towards a desired outcome. With these factors considered, your body is now ready to confidently jump forward with all factors defined, and continue exploring.
Similarly, when an organization is at the foothills of performing a move, a strategist might scan the context by asking: Is the talent pool ready and trained to move into this new direction? Are there head or tail-winds that would change how energy and resources should be invested? Is the organization carrying any "weight”, such as legacy backend systems, or an outdated leadership culture? Addressing these questions with attuned intuition may increase strategic accuracy and follow-through, thus reducing the rate of blindspots and mistakes.
Like the body, organizations seeking to move should work towards defining a clear aim. If the destination is unknown, the organization may benefit from exercises of discovery and play - provided that the boundaries for exploration are safe. A great parallel to illustrate this process is dance: practitioners begin working with sessions of broad, fluid exploration conducted at the studio space. These sessions enable dancers to experiment with their capabilities, try new ideas and identify new destinations. When new possibilities are experienced, dancers integrate their findings into clearly defined choreographies that inspire awe when witnessed on stage. Similarly, organizations should invest in developing spaces for exploration where new destinations can be prototyped and discovered. Often coming to life as Innovation Laboratories, these sand boxes need real pathways to integrate their findings and influence the strategic direction of the organization. When organizations scan their context, build on playful exploration, and execute on a clearly defined aim, their show might get a standing ovation.
Aligning
Body movement occurs as the result of a coordinated effort between diverse systems and parts; it refuses isolation. For instance, assume that you want to grab a jar from the top shelf of the pantry. Once the aim, intention and context of movement have been assessed, the body is ready to collaborate towards moving. A command containing the coordinates and instructions for movement is dispatched from the brain via the nervous system, communicating direct actions to the muscles and bones. At the rate of an instant, energy is sent with efficiency, grounding through the feet, powering the spine, elongating the chest, rotating the shoulder blades, extending the arms and fingers, and finally gripping the jar. What appears as a rather simple gesture is a complex and stunning orchestra of collaboration.
Unlike the body, organizations tend to operate in disjointed silos. Lines of action and decision-making are retained within functional, and hierarchical boundaries, leaving a room for collaboration on the table. A study performed by McKinsey asserts that “nearly 80 percent of the senior executives surveyed in a 2005 study said that effective coordination across product, functional, and geographic lines was crucial for growth. Yet only 25 percent of the respondents described their organizations as "effective" at sharing knowledge across boundaries.” The symptoms of misaligned action and collaboration are suffered across institutions of all sizes, industries and levels of maturity. Studying the body can become a masterclass in alignment and cooperation.
The simple act of walking in a forward motion, for instance, requires communication, alignment and collaboration between complex systems. Understanding it requires us to see the value that exists in individual parts working as part of a whole, and having a common goal. It teaches us about the interdependencies and intelligences that exist between all parts of the body, no matter their size. Studying the body can be a great frame of reference to implement strategies rooted in collaboration, holism, and collective alignment.
Adjusting & Finding Balance
Miscalculations in movement can lead to injury in the form of falls and accidents. For this reason, when the body initiates and finalizes a movement, it fires a series of actions aimed to quickly assess and take action if re-balancing is necessary. The adjustments bypass rational thinking, and directly triggers the limbs to take action and avoid harm. These iterations and course-corrections are as just as important as the efforts and movements that preceded it.
For organizations, re-balancing is often an afterthought. Once strategies are rolled out and decisions-made, there is frequently a lack of follow-through to ensure that reactions are collected, synthesized and integrated. In areas like consulting, project teams often disengage right before implementation, or make minor adjustments once their main recommendations have been presented to the stakeholders. Following up and adjusting after implementing a proposed solution can require additional phases, which are scoped and charged separately.
If organizations behaved like the body, they would invest resources and energy into not only seeing projects through to implementation, but also introducing rapid and distributed feedback loops. Strategically adjusting and re-balancing as movements are performed can provide organizations with the adaptability necessary to fend off challenges, navigate uncertainties, and discover new territories.
Flowing
It would be counterintuitive to assume that, in a lifetime, our bodies would cease to naturally flow from one movement to the next. We are wired to move. Our most primal form of making sense is derived from reaching out and experiencing the world. In words of Haruki Murakami, "I move, therefore I am." The realization that movement is a core part of the human experience is difficult to refute, and liberating to embrace.
Organizations should realize that, as systems of active and changing organisms, they are also inherently bound to the process of movement. Unfortunately, a large number of companies experience how their openness and desire to move erodes with time. Leaders get stuck in their ways, new technologies are dismissed, and operational improvements are not adopted because they seem too cumbersome to implement. The yearning for movement is opaqued by complacency, comfort and confirmation bias - exposing the organization to higher risk of stasis. The strategist's role is to counter these forces by leading organizations into a constant state of flow.
How To Learn From Your Body
There is no shortage of literature and guidelines to learn about systems thinking and strategy from external sources. The internet is filled to the brim with experts and theorists who synthesize and develop new frameworks, tools, and solutions to solve the symptoms and causes of organizational stagnation. The recommendations proposed in this article do not intent to dismiss these resources, but to complement them with the study of the human phenomena, and the rich wisdom of our body.
To begin this exploration, practitioners can choose from a wealth of practices dedicated to the study and improvement of body awareness and movement. Alignment and energy based movement practices such as Tai Chi, Qigong or Yoga enable practitioners to amplify their experiential understanding of the body and its possibilities. They provide a path to achieve a synergistic fine-tuning across the multiple entangled systems of the body, so they can move together in harmony. While an openness to the spiritual aspects of these practices can certainly yield immense value, it is not necessary. Even the most secular of practitioners can integrate lessons from these ancient teachings to transform and uplift their lives.
No studio or gym membership is required to embark in this journey. As an experiment, I encourage readers to simply find a comfortable seat, take a few deep breaths to ground into presence, and perform a 10 minute body-scanning meditation . Taking note of body's internal state can be profoundly revealing and perspective-shifting. Asking ourselves questions such as: "How does the experience of my being in my body relate to the way I experience the world?" or "What best practices that have improved my relationship to my body may I extrapolate to other aspects of my life?" can yield illuminating insights into the nature of complex organisms, systems and environments. As revealed above, these insights can also generate immense value for the practice of strategy.
Conclusion
With these parallels I hope to have sparked interest to continue exploring the relationship between inner study and the practice of strategy for external systems. The topics revisited here are often dismissed from serious interdisciplinary discussions, regarded as too abstract or esoteric. However, as a practitioner of both body awareness and strategy, I have personally gained and realized first-hand value across the intersections of these domains. To that end, I am thrilled to submit this thinking to spark new conversations and collaborations in the embodied strategy field.
In an increasingly isolated and disembodied world, it becomes crucial to understand the principles of living systems, so that we may lead organizations into a future of human prosperity and collaboration. To that end, there is no better learning ground to explore, experiment, and grow than the space intimately available to us within our body. All we have to do is observe and listen.re. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.