10. Boredom

Only boring people get bored. The idea behind this sentiment being that a curious mind will find ways of extracting interesting and new thoughts out of any situation. The first time I was made conscious of this, was during a series of inter-cultural creativity workshops that I ran in Soweto during the early 90's. With so little experience in running workshops I was worried that the township kids, mostly between 8 and 10 years old, would get bored. My friend Iaan gave me the wisdom that Africa teaches you to be resourceful, and hence, never bored.

But what happens if the system is stacked against you? "The Lottery of Birth" a film by Raoul Martinez makes a very provocative statement that the education system in America is designed to create "drones," and trains young minds to endure boredom. It creates the right pre-conditions for the massive army of non-thinking support staff that have to work in zero value added roles for the rest of their lives. Disengagement is a pre-condition for surviving in such mindless tasks, so the school system through standardisation of testing and reducing expectations to the lowest common denominator, teaches millions of kids (and thus employees) to give up on the idea of an engaged, meaningful contribution to work. Predictable repeatability sucks the incentive to engage and contribute from even the most resilient soul. Boredom is thus the opposite of active engagement. The state we fall into when we are not exercising our conscious thought and developing new knowledge or value. The fatal trap is when boredom becomes an acceptable neutral, unchallenged state.

As a manager it thus becomes an essential part of your cultural mandate to ensure that boredom is not a condition that people need to submit to. Question why it is happening, where you have failed to engage the team fully? Is it due to a sense of helplessness? The team giving up because they don't think they can make a difference in any case? Is it a function of underutilising the skills and experience of your most expensive resource? Seek first to understand why you are boring them!

If we view boredom as the inverse barometer of engagement we can begin designing for a work environment that positively applies this knowledge. Which brings me back to the township kids. Boredom can be applied as a creative state. You begin to view objects and situations differently when you creatively escape from boredom. The knuckle bones from a dead sheep become toy cars. A coke can becomes an aeroplane. The slightly out of focus disengagement lets in a different perspective on how to apply the resources at hand. The bored cubicle workers who channel their un-suppressable creative urge into covering a colleague's cubicle entirely in post-it notes. Can we find ways of being more attuned to employees tuning out and channel it towards productive creativity? What are the triggers for disengagement and can we use disengagement to actively stimulate innovation? As a matter of fact, isn't it the boredom of college education that is actively has lead to "the spring of start-up culture?" Bored kids used to start bands, now they write apps. How might you turn boredom into the trigger for your next product breakthrough?

9. Serenity

At first sight serenity appears to be the antitheses of busy-ness. With all the value creation, productivity and active verbs circumscribing success, the calm certainty of serenity seems like an exotic luxury. Business does not feel comfortable with the concept of calm radiance, the idea that activity can hide in inactivity, and potentially be far more profound.

Serenity in the individual is far easier to see and understand than serenity in organisations. We can imagine the quiet meditative mind of the samurai certain CEO. Never rasing her voice, always in masterful control of the facts and a clear vision of the organisation's future, almost as clear as the cutting analysis in their sparkling eyes. But what image do we have for serenity in motion, in the flux and flow of systems, budgets and departments? Perhaps it becomes easier when we think of the root of serenity as being clarity and radiance.

I was intrigued by a recent article that explained how a focus on designing for noise reduction created all kinds of innovations. Noise, at its core, is created by the friction of molecules rubbing against each other. This is released as heat and noise. If the design were integral, without odd bumps and grinds that sap energy through attrition, an elegant and far more focused solution emerges. Most importantly, by treating noise as a sign of wasted energy (a sign of friction or interference) you improve the overall design. Instead of just putting heavy silencers around the noise 'problem' engineers aim to eliminate the source of the noise.

The friction and tension that builds up between purpose and practice, when they are not aligned, is like a rubber band stretched between two diverging points; it will stretch and twang. Most often expressed as political conflict, a negative culture or stressed and demotivated employees who adopt compensatory behaviors in order to try and  release the tension.
Serenity in an organisation would be the same as a noise free mechanical system. By having everybody aligned, we remove the obstacles and hurdles that get in the way of clarity. There is a clear line of sight between the purpose and the practice of an organization. The symptomatic friction from mis-alignment and barbed unresolved edges give way to a sense of calm and clarity. Dynamic serenity then comes from integral alignment, around purpose, around vision, without the need for heavily engineered interventions that simply mask or obscure the core disposition.

How could you go about designing a static free culture, aligned simply around clarity and confident radiance? What are you doing to go beyond masking the friction symptoms to mis-alignment towards creating a more integral organizational design? 

8. Surprise

My first surprise in writing this was to find out that the root of the word surprise is "seizure." Romantically I had always assumed that it was the combination of 'sur-' above, more, extra.. and prise. More than you expected. Most of management though seems to view surprise with the seizure mentality. Surprises are to be avoided.

In HR the mantra is: No surprises. You should never walk into a performance review and surprise either the employee or the manager with “news.” Surprise is usually an indication that communication has broken down, or else the discomfort and misaligned expectations would have been aired before the meeting. The disorientation and dropped jaw silence brought about by being ‘seized’ with unexpected information leaves everyone feeling uncomfortable and grasping for an appropriate response. In these unguarded moments, many accidents can happen.

In board meetings, quarterly calls and the slow grind of production the mantra is: No surprises. Many a CEO has felt the sharp sting of shares tumbling when they announced earnings outside the scope of expectation. You can be punished for missing the target in both directions. Too much is as bad as too little. Hence the pseudo obsessive expectation management where analysts are left in no uncertainty as to the course and tempo of the good ship Reliant. To deviate from projections is a considered a sign of bad management. If your internal communications and planning process were up to scratch, you would not have mis-projected. Pumping out the steady product of profits requires a finely tuned harmonious symphony of expectations.

In marketing and sales the mantra is: No surprises. Although the marketing folks love creativity, they place very strong boundaries around how far you can go in stretching expectations and trust. Quality is the by-product of consistency. Trust is built through years of sameness, as the marketing executive who launched “New Coke” will no doubt tell eternal generations of eager re-branders. In most cases marketers will apply a coat of creativity to “delight” the consumer. Woe betide the poor agency creative who surprises the client with real daring and a departure from the script. Starting from a point of being startled and disoriented is never a good place to start when asking the client to fork out hundreds of thousands of Euros/Dollars/Pesos.

And what is the leading cause of corporate death? Being caught by surprise. The slow kind of surprise that takes years of denials and false confidence to gestate. It is the fast shock of surprise that saves the frog in the boiled frog analogy. When a frog is placed in hot water (though I don’t recommend this), it will jump out in shock as the sharp temperature difference triggers his flight instincts. Raise the temperature gradually and the frog will stew slowly and comfortably to his death. (I have yet to meet someone who has actually done this, but the story is instructive).

By managing surprise out of the system organisations often set themselves on the slow road of decline. No one wants to be the person to bring bad news to the boss. Very few promotion opportunities exist for mythbusters who leave management slack jawed. So how do we encourage a corporate response that is alert and engaged with unexpected threats and surprises? How do we encourage ways of suspending comfort to shake hands with the charging bull of surprise?

If we view surprise as primarily a function of information and not just emotional shock, it becomes easier to design for. The difference between what we know and what we experience is the source of surprise. This is where all the juicy new learning takes place. Emotionally we are primed to have heightened senses and focus when we are met with surprise. You never forget a decent surprise.

Surprise is the key not only to understanding the impact of a current event but also an amazing lens through which to view firmly held beliefs and heuristics. Surprise is the pattern breaker and because our thoughts are so locked in established patterns we hardly ever get to see these entrenched paths, for we are walking in them. As one of my clients once said: “I am comfortable with what I know, it is what I don’t know that scares the living daylights out of me. Tell me something I don’t know.” 

By viewing surprise as a source of learning we open up ourselves to a more positive engagement with it. I have long been an advocate of “exception reporting.” By asking your reports to highlight the top five things they didn’t expect, you encourage a culture of learning. Weak signals at the edges become informative beacons of trends and subtle movement that would ordinarily be buried on page 15 of a report. At the end of workshops I also routinely ask what most surprised the participants. Not what did you like/not like/could we do better. By focusing on the surprise you quickly get a sense of what stood out, the unintended consequences that created an emotional response. What moved them from the quantity of “known” to an area of growth. Evolution has trained our minds to pay special attention to these little flashes of friction. We anchor surprises in our mind exactly because they contain new information. Choppy little waves that don’t drag the resourceful ship off course but actually build better balance and responsiveness when they are harnessed.

Are you seeing the extra gift in sur-prise? Are you encouraging a team culture that is sensitive to the signals at the edge? Do you encourage moments of surprise as the momentum to learn or are you slowly numbing and dulling the organisational systems of improvisation? How might you encourage sharing and dialogue with a dropped jaw? 

7. Anticipation

The Costa in Derby's Westfield centre had a dishwashing incident today. The consequence was that all coffees had to be served in take-away cups. The friendly Barista handed me the coffee and was about to put a plastic spill cap on it when I said: "I won't need that, I'll be drinking it in." The response, a friendly but firm: "I am afraid I cannot give it to you without one, in case you spill it and sue me."
This is the power of anticipation. At every table people were sitting with a substantial number of wasted and unnecessary spill caps promptly removed by all the patrons. The idiocy of this could not be explained to her. The chances of spilling a porcelain cup of coffee is just as high if not higher but they have no problem serving that without the legal loophole, or is that a stopgap?

It reminded me of the monkeys and bananas scientific experiment. A group of monkeys were put through a behavioural experiment to better understand the cultural acquisition of a specific learnt response. The experiment starts off with 5 monkeys in a large cage. In the middle is a ladder, atop which are suspended a bunch of bananas (at this point I started getting suspicious but I stuck with it). The researchers would stand with hoses, ready to douse ALL the monkeys as soon as one attempted to climb the ladder. When the monkeys grabbed a banana, the researchers would spray everyone with extremely cold water. Apparently cold water is something that monkeys really don't like so they were soon conditioned not to take the bananas. After a short period of time not a single monkey attempted grabbing a banana. First objective achieved.
Then they started swapping out monkeys. A new unconditioned monkey is introduced, and a conditioned one is removed. It didn't take long for the new monkey to go for the ladder and the bananas. The others, in horror grabbed him, snarling teeth and all and beat the newcomer up. It doesn't take long for the new ones to conform. This cycle goes on and on, until eventually all the monkeys are replaced. Now you have a room full of monkey that won't touch the bananas and none of them really knows why. None of the new ones would have experienced the ice cold water.

This story was wonderfully narrated to me by Dominique to explain how corporate mythology can paralyse thinking and stop people taking personal responsibility by using the excuse that "it is the way we've always done things here." My take-away was also that anticipation has the ability to completely block our present moment awareness. We stop taking in data from our real experience because our expectations are so strong that we stop questioning and experimenting. This phenomena is well known in psychology as observer bias. In extreme cases the researchers will literally be blind to data that does not confirm their expectations. In such cases expectations reinforce our established views and we get self fulfilling prophecies.

So what does this mean for one of management's favourite sports quotes: "A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey players plays where the puck is going to be." Strategy is expectation. Anticipating and benefiting from what the competitive landscape will do in response to our actions is one of the things that sets great business leaders apart. For the best leaders this is not just an intellectual act of projection, but a real visceral emotion. The thrill of the hunt, blood rushing through flaring nostrils as the anticipation curve builds to frenzy.

Anticipation, as an emotion, engages our faculties with excitement, thrill and a real sense of feeling alive. The belief that the next hill is the last one to climb before we get the great Gin & Tonic of promotion, quickens the step and makes the extra effort easier to muster. Positive anticipation, like love, makes the world a more beautiful place. The subtle colour shifts in the sky become signs of the imminent spring. The second cup of coffee becomes proof that the client is on board. We interpret events in a momentum of good will.

Leaders as great story tellers are masters at harnessing the positive power of anticipation. Strumming up the symphony of hearts to march across the dessert to a promised land in song and celebration. (Or as prophets of doom, setting fire to the burning platform of fear and anxiety). Self help books from the Bible to the Secret have understood the pattern that anticipation governs intention. Intention guides attention and attention is the conduit of energy that shapes our actions, events and relationships to others. If my anticipation is driven by fear and anxiety the way I approach others and share ideas will be constrained by the need to protect myself. If however my anticipation is fuelled by a positive rush of acceptance, collaboration and growth, my actions will be more expansive. Anticipation becomes the ground tone to switch a melody into a particular key.

As a leader, how do you ensure that the sense of anticipation strikes the right balance between motivation and masticating monkeys? The heightened sense of 'next,' feeding off the clarity and presence of 'now.' Can you move beyond 'managing expectations,' built around the lowest common denominator of fear, to opening up the passion and 'shiver of antici..............pation'. Taking off the protective spill caps of fragile ego and seeding the celebration of cocktails all round.

6. Submission

Everything you see and touch which has been produced by modern man is the product of submission. It most probably started before the pyramids and will remain true long after spaceships take us to other planets. Mankind's greatest feats of collaboration are made possible by subjecting our individual efforts towards achieving greater goals. Through submission, the individual becomes part of the collective to exert an effort and create a synergistic impact. Your toothpick, your iPad, your shoes and so an, are all fundamentally the product of people saying: “yes, I’ll set my individual agenda aside for a while and submit my efforts to make someone else’s idea or a bigger idea work. I’ll follow instruction and take orders because I know that what will come out at the end is better than what I can achieve alone.”

Art and inspiration are at their core a process of submission; eschewing rational control to transcend the ‘logical’ boundaries of our experience. One of the purest forms of this personal submission remains for me the art and dance of Bali, where the performers submit completely to the art. The less there is of the individual ego in the performance, the more the ‘pure art’ shines through and connects the collective with something more profound. Only by letting go do we get to grasp something greater than ourselves.

Over the last year I have also been able to enjoy the creative and uplifting side of submission. My inherent bias has always been one of suspicion towards authority and imposing control over others. So it was with quite a bit of trepidation that I took up swing dancing last December. By dancing as I leader I had to confront my hang-ups and frustration with leadership in a new and unfamiliar territory. The dance only works if as a leader you feel confident and communicate your intention clearly. It also requires that the ‘follower’ submits completely to this intention. Not only do you have to be clear in providing direction, you also have to create a sense of trust, that you will not lead the follower into harm or make them loose face. When you are clear about creating a shared experience, that you are not simply dancing for yourself the music can begin to flow effortlessly through the steps. Contextual submission can have great rewards when second guessing, doubt and concerns are removed. Partners who have strong wills and have cut independent paths through life, can flow effortlessly into twists and swing outs when they sense that both parties are following the same goal. And make no mistake, as soon as they step out of the dance, the full independence and strong will is not diminished. 

In management there tends to however be the tendency to confuse submission with subjugation or servility. The fact that you have submitted your efforts and energies towards achieving a group and business goal does not mean that your thoughts, questions and feeling are enslaved or invalidated. Where status is defined by job descriptions and titles, people may be confused into believing that employees are submitting themselves to the authority of the role. In certain cultures this is accepted without question. The limitations and risks of this unquestioning submission to an authority, defined by title, has been clearly demonstrated in the studies of the impact of culture on plane crashes. The deference inherent in Korea’s culture was found to be a key factor in why flight engineers did not contradict the over-tired and exhausted captain’s instructions to fly the plane into the ground.

When submission is however aligned with a higher purpose we release the complete faculties of our ability to improve and iterate on the design. It may be strange but for this reason I like working with German teams. You can speculate about the drivers and causes of Germany’s specific sense of ‘fairness’ but I have found that it has a profound impact on team dialogue. The value I see in working with German teams though is simple: they provide push back. By submitting to the greater ideal of ‘fairness’ great effort is made to ensure team members are heard and that people don’t ride roughshod over the others just because of their title.

Over the last 15 years of working across the Atlantic I have noticed an increased submissiveness in the teams in America. At first I thought it was just political correctness or yesmanship cloaked as being agreeable. But in the last five years I have the distinct feeling the submissiveness is driven by a deep sense of insecurity. People are quite literally so afraid of loosing their jobs, health care or homes that contradicting the boss has become a serious career limiting move in many companies. The impact this has on innovation and implementation is disastrous. In the military an air force general will offer contextual submission to one of the lowest ranking officers when they assess if planes can take off and land. The junior soldier on the tarmac makes a call on visibility. The general up in the tower may see blue skies and rainbow unicorns but if the soldier says no, the greater goal of safety ensures contextual submission is respected.

In many businesses there is no clearly defined over arching goal. Submission defaults to status, legacy or social norms, making open contextual learning and exchange, especially around unpopular topics like risk and failure, extremely hard. More often than not the attitude will be “what exactly do you know? You’ve only been here two months.” One of the greatest strengths I observed when working with P&G was how they countered this impulse by always ensuring that the person with the highest status speaks last. This way the team had to express their views relative to the idea or facts on the table. Their comments being framed in terms of how it moves the team closer to achieving the shared goal. If the leader had spoken first they would instinctively try and subject their views to what garners favour.

The first rule in the way of the samurai is to lay down your body and mind and earnestly esteem one's master. This is extremely good advice, well placed. When we know what our efforts are in service of, what we are submitting ourselves to, we can release huge amounts of talent, energy and creativity in unexpected ways. Choosing the right beneficiary (in the Hagakure called 'retainer') is therefore not a task that should be taken lightly.

Does your team know what they are submitting their energies and thoughts to? An overarching ideal bigger than status, title or market share? Are you creating an environment of trust that allows both contextual submission of senior managers and empowers juniors staff to honestly share their insights? How are you designing for submission?

5. Anger

Anger is no stranger to management. As a matter of fact, the more I researched for this post, the clearer it became that anger in some way is almost a prerequisite for management. Not only do we ascribe higher status and power to people who display anger, it also contributes to better outcomes in negotiations. People who get angry get their way more often than people who don't... and we willingly allow them to do so. A well crafted and executed application of anger seems to be the golden ticket to the top. No wonder that studies have shown the C-suite to contain a disproportionate number of psychopaths. I don't think anyone has managed to escape a meeting with a manager who "flipped out," "freaked out" or simply used the stage of your attention for their unfettered blood rush of indignation. And since the publication of Steve Jobs' biography, just about every wannabe start-up CEO has no qualms about confusing passion with aggression. It looks like Steve's more lasting contribution to society will be a legacy of asshole CEO's. Should we simply accept that anger is part and parcel of the animal instinct or is there a more inclusive and useful outlet for this energy?

Anger's motivational capacity is an evolutionary necessity. Very few emotions can lead to such strong passion and action. It was anger that drove to the massive societal changes in the Arab spring. Episodic outburst of rage are great at mobilising the adrenaline and getting to action quickly. Whatever caused the rift between the brothers Adi and Rudi Dassler, the outcome was the birth of the modern sports marketing industry. The anger that triggered Rudi to storm out of the house and set up his rival Puma to Adi's adidas, fueled an intense battle for over 30 years. (Rumour has it that it might have had something to do with what happened between Rudi's wife and Adi while Rudi was at the war front).

In this story lies also a cautionary tale about the fundamental weakness to anger's motivation. Like a bull with a thorn in his side, we obsess about our perceived cause of anger. Neither Rudi nor Adi saw the tsunami of Nike coming.  The downside is that anger limits our capacity to take in and process new information that is not directly related to the target of our anger. We literally get tunnel vision. Anger also biases our perception of others, reducing our capacity to accept the help and support that may lead to a better outcome. The animosity between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates is another anger management story. In a battle to control the future of personal computing, both were blindsided by the collaborative power of the web (Steve Jobs perhaps less so). Like an athlete using anger in defeat to motivate greater commitment to training, we should channel our anger not to just beat the glaring target of our anger, but to improve the thing that led to our failure.

When anger is properly expressed and channelled into action it is very useful, almost essential in our work environment. If you care enough about something to get angry it means you have a desire to bring about change. The death and cancer of organisational culture however is unexpressed or passive aggressive behavior. Just look at the list of behaviors associated with passive anger: Dispassion (fake smiles from your Subway sandwich maker), Evasiveness, Obsessive behavior, Psychological manipulation and Defeatism. And why do employees feel this deep anger that leads them to adopt such negative behaviors? Lack of involvement? Not being listened to or supported? Unresolved issues being brushed under the carpet? The list goes on. Where do these life sapping issues find a forum and productive channel for expression? The fact is that if they are allowed to fester the outcome is a toxic work environment where more effort is put towards protecting egos than building value. If we use the Hindu perspective, that Anger is simply unrequited desire, we can start at the opposite end. What is the desire, what is the reality that people would rather experience, and let's work back from that actively.

What fascinates me about anger though is how easily it is manipulated and how incredibly sensitive it is to perceptions. Our sense of injustice, rage and anger is completely dependent on what we know. For example, you get back to your car in the parking lot and there is a long scratch on the passenger side. No note of apology, no sign of the person who should be apologising. Your anger shoots through the roof and you start thinking about all the way you'd like to get back at them! Damn assholes, how could they. You are fuming all the way home and slam the keys on the table. Getting angrier and angrier as your rage finds not outlet. When your partner walks in and says that they were really sorry but they haven't had time to tell you that they scratched the car last night on the way back from the office party. Aha, you have a new target and you can vent towards your partner for their consistent sloppiness and generally annoying disposition. However, the scratch came from avoiding a reckless truck driver trying to overtake another truck on a narrow stretch of road. If they hadn't swerved out, they would most likely been killed in the accident. In a few seconds your anger has gone from rage and visions of divorce to shock and sympathy. Flighty and fanciful this little daemon in our hearts. Framing and contextualising anger then becomes the first step towards channelling our emotions towards change.

Can we ensure that there is a constant and respected flow in the productive expression of anger as a desire to improve?  How do we broaden the framework of this dialogue to channel effort towards real transformation rather than an obsessive one-upmanship with our identified target of destruction? There is more to the management of anger than simple anger management.

4. Amazement

Amazement suspends us in disbelief. That critical moment where all your experience and expectations are proven wrong by something that seems illogical, out of this world... amazing. The doorway to a new path of experience that delights and astounds us. I think back at the first time I saw the internet. After years of isolation in apartheid South Africa, the idea of having unconstrained access to people all around the world simply went against everything we were led to expect. Here I was having a real time online chat with someone in Australia, in the same conversation as two people from America. It simply blew my mind. I was captivated and couldn't get enough of this amazing new feeling of connection and freedom.

When I think of amazement I also think of George Boole and how we apply our subjective logic to expectations. In a neutral case we start off believing that there is a 50/50 chance that two outcomes can happen. If we have never seen the sun rise, and landed on planet earth we would ascribe a 50/50 chance to the sun rising tomorrow. After repeatedly seeing the sun rise we forget about the possibility that the sun may not rise tomorrow. Repeatedly being exposed to one outcome gives us a belief in near certainty. We forget about all the options and so, we aren't amazed by the fact that the sun does rise again. Children don't suffer from this bias of deeply rooted expectation. They have not become blinded by repeated exposure to "the way gravity works." Dropping a spoon is amazing! Dropping it again is still amazing! Watching mom get upset at picking up the spoon every 3 seconds, marvelously amazing!

Amazement however is not written into the corporate vision of many companies. We associate this pursuit with the creative industries like Disney and Pixar, who function as imagination factories. But what about the solid performers that serve to fill so much of our life with the mundane? What role can mystery and surprise play for the Unilevers and Proctor & Gamble's of the world? Why do they ignore an emotion that so captivates us? That shakes us up so deeply and prompts immediate curiosity and engagement? There is a lot of lip service to "you'll be amazed at how clean your kitchen surfaces are," but what about a real emotional shift in the experience?

Creating this magical feeling in consumers is not an accident. It requires a very special sense and corporate culture. "Good" is simply not good enough if your objective is to amaze. Cirque du Soleil has it written into their mission statement. A core value is "to extend the limits of the possible." Apple recruits the best and brightest on their ambition to make a dent in the universe. You have to believe that magic is possible if you want to make it.

Amazement is by its very nature extra-ordinary. "Business as usual" is the antithesis of amazement, wonder, awe. For a manager amazement is unnerving, because by it's very nature, the pursuit of amazement will take you to an unpredictable place. By letting go of firmly held beliefs of "how things are done" you don't make many friends in the predictable, rational world of quarterly reporting. Perhaps the route back to amazement can be understand through good old Mr. Boole and the sense of wonder unlocked by a child like beginner's mind. To pursue the beginner's mind where we can see a 50/50 world of possibilities, untainted by "the way we always do this." In my experience you don't reach this state of awareness by doing simply rational activities like "blue sky thinking" or "imagine the business burnt down and you could start from scratch." These activities are useful but don't shift the emotional space in which the employees expectations reside. You have to shake them out emotionally and for this there are few tools as useful as analogous immersion.

Three years ago I did a project with the maternity unit at a large New York hospital. As you can expect the nurses were very empathetic to the experience of their patients, this being one of the most wondrous and beautiful moments in any person's life. The Boolean trap however meant that the nurses became jaded and disconnected from the patient's view. The sense of amazement and awe was gone and the service quality suffered accordingly. We ran a workshop where we took the nurses through 5 ananlogous activities, to simulate the emotional state of a patient and bring about empathy for the real emotions at play. One of my favourites was a sensory conflict activity. The nurses had to read a short story while listening to a James Bond audio book. They were told that there would be a multiple choice test afterwards. The had all the time they needed to read through the story. It was after all difficult to pay attention with the distracting noise of the audiobook in their headphones. Once everyone had read the story, they received the test, based as you would expect on the James Bond audiobook. Why? Because this simulated exactly how nurses were verbally giving instructions, whilst patients had to read through admin papers and fill out forms. The standard quote: "I don't understand why the patients don't 'get it,' I told them a hundred times." Once the nurses were confronted by their own sensory overload, they were at first stunned, then amazed at how much impact such a small detail can have. The experience brought real amazement, but what is even more powerful is the level of engagement and creativity the nurses then applied in redesigning the patient experience. By shaking them up emotionally, through an analogous, yet relevant experience the sense of mystery and awe could return. They were brought back to the beginners mind and could view expectations and outcomes in fresh ways. Amazement as a design tool.

What are the analogous experiences you and your team can undertake to bring back the sense of awe in what you do? How can empathy unlock creativity in things that you have become blind to?  Can you see the experience again for the first time? Can you find delight by dropping a spoon? Let go of expectation and take a road to the destination you can't see.