Thought of the day: Personal happiness as an eco-system

I had wine with a good friend who extended my eco-system analogy to describe his nirvana. 

I think the theory is contingent on coming from a place where everyone is well intentioned and good at the core of their person. As Robert Deniro says "I don't play bad guys. I play people who make choices that are different from other people's". So coming from a premise of good we must work to understand why each person in their unique combination of circumstances makes the decisions they do. And if we can't understand at least we have respect that that was right for that person at that time in that circumstance.

From there we theorised that, with so much available to stimulate us and so much expectation of a benefit on every experience, perhaps the answer to happiness is to build an eco-system where each experience or enagament is balanced or balances an element of another. And in this way create create an equilibrium for ourselves which is happiness. As such we should make decisions and choose to engage with people and experiences who positively contribute to balancing and maintaining our own personal eco-system. For example when I bought a new puppy recently my nephew said to me that he wasn't sure if he could love Mimi because he loved his cat, we discussed that there is no quota for love, we don't run out and it can be shared with out loosing any of its power. Do we forget this along the way? Do we apply it to all parts of our lives?

What might this approach do for the way you love, relate, play, work, travel?

Businesses as an eco system

Wikipedia Defines an Eco system as "An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system." 

Could there be a more succinct way of describing all of the living organisms individuals, business, customers, stakeholders and non-living components systems, policies, procedures, hardware to name but a few of the labels we attribute to running an organisation. 

So often in change management one or more of these is overlooked as minor or unnecessary. And yet I believe all of them are interacting in their current state for a reason. Not necessarily a good, productive or healthy reason but a reason none the less. Broken systems will create, hire, adapt, work around or show symptoms of the inbalance impacting its ability to function as an efficient system.

When managing change this thinking may seem overwhelming. My approach however is rather to keep my eyes, ears, fingers and mind open during the changes. In this way you maintain a high degree of sensitivity to the subtle but related changes as they happen. Just as an ecosystem will work to rebalance itself over time, if us humans don't push it too far to begin with and keep out of the way.

Regular small changes interspersed with major shifts in direction are therefore my preferred implementation method. This thinking is somewhat similar to agile development which introduces a product in many small rapid iterations which are as independent as possible but contribute to the whole. Independence is key to keeping the whole system moving towards the desired end state while removing what any excuse for inaction. Too often people I observe people paralysed by not knowing where the right place to start is. Taking no action is worse than a small mistake. And if you make no mistakes you probably should just have thrown the original out and gone with your vision in one foul swoop!

Finally a note on planning. As an engineer we were always taught to know, analyse then act. Unfortunately the reality of change management is in my experience you are almost always acting without all the information, in a time poor environment which cannot wait for the analysis but demands action anyway. Recognising the decision paralysis that this leaves many intelligent people in is key, as is that pesky thing called gut instinct. For this reason analysis paralysis and incredible plans but a complete lack of action are all too common. 

So my advice is take the information you can get, analyse what you can in the time and with the resources available and then act in small incremental steps with your senses on high alert for the shifts in the system you are tweaking. Then do it all again based on the change you see. 

Some related thinking:

- Agile development