DEEP ETHICS
“People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.”
Michelle Obama
LEGACY
nParadigm organizational change management practice focuses on inner alignment to purpose, passion, and potential as a way to organically emerge in the world. nParadigm sees authentic and transformative leadership as marketing, whether to your internal or external audience. We expand the concept of sales to service. If service is the true focus, sales will be a natural outcome. We are human centric in our approach, whether an OCM engagement or a design.
We believe that lasting success or stability requires integrity, a deep ethic. We refer to this as an honor code. We do not believe in a separation between the personal and the professional. Deep ethics are rooted in who we are as people and who we are in relationship to people. Like the deep ethics of deep ecology, our ethics are based on an environmental or systems perspective.
NParadigm is based on the self-reinforcing and self-corrective nature of the group or group culture. Groups are built upon trust and mutually dependence. If an individual betrays the group in word or action, the group response will call the individual into question. People seek inclusion and avoid exclusion, and so the power of the group is a powerful incentive. Yet the power of the group can also cause personal dishonor when we fail to honor ourselves and what we know.
"I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating." Sophacles
At nParadigm our honor code is one that honors both the individual and the group. Honor is both a noun, meaning “high respect, esteem” and “a privilege” and a verb, meaning “regard with great respect” and to “fulfill (an obligation) or keep (an agreement).” We use these meanings with the additional sense that we honor each other by being fully honest. Only when we relate to each other in honor will we fulfill our individual and collective potential. Our process is built upon an honor code that honors all. Our integrity is integral on an individual and group level. It is our center.
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."
Steve Jobs
Let's talk legacy. Traditionally your legacy is what you leave behind in your will, something given to your heir. This is a definition based on money and property. At nParadigm we define legacy as what you leave to society. It is a value based in connection and relationship. It is an investment in human capital not cold hard cash. While money and organizational excellence are important, we encourage people to look at the whole picture. Beyond the individual, we encourage people to see the potential investment value in others as well as ourselves, to bequest our purpose, passion, and potential to future generations and the world.
Your life is your legacy. Your purpose is the blue print, your passion, the energy, your potential the end result. Purpose, passion, and potential are how you achieve your legacy. In the end, what have you offered future generations. By inverting the traditional model of aligning outward and beginning with inner integrity, nParadigm leverages the positive effect and influence of the organization upon the system, recognizing that integrity is a solid foundation that pays off over time.
Life is about making a difference not a dollar. We know this. At nParadigm we help you make a difference. It is about people not profit—about people as profit. The ROI of the human potential is infinite. When an organization has designed a structure that aligns individuals and groups with their purpose, passion and potential they are maximizing their investment. We start with what is real.
We are finding a new CENTER. The new paradigm reorients humanity to themselves, each other, and the world as a whole. It expands our perspective to include new spheres or circles of influence. This movement into a greater collective perspective and consciousness is happening now, because we are reaching the limits a self-centered world view. In order to survive and thrive as individuals and groups we must have a new perspective: a new paradigm of we not me.
We don't believe that creativity has to be random. Organizational structures can be designed to promote innovation. You can provide an environment condusive to the flow state. With a reframe, an altered perspective, what you may have regarded as an obstacle could be exactly what is required for your organizational shift. Change is inevitable, it is your response that matters.
We encourage failure and transparency. Fail and claim it. If you are being innovative, visionary, you have to be fearless and free. To enter the flow state, you must let go and allow your imagination to soar. There is no space for fear. Now is not the time to play it safe. We must shift. Human imagination and creativity will allow us to enter our new paradigm, a new perspective and way of being. They always have.
"A person who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." Albert Einstein
We know that to achieve our potential we have to utilize both the right and left brain. We have to integrate all aspects of ourselves individually and our group collectively. Our holistic model works with our whole potential.
NParadigm’s labs establish boundaries and repattern unity by creating circles. Working with the symbolism of color, shape, sound, and form to set unconscious conditions, we foster feelings of belonging. Within this environment, we reframe the margin and the center by making the stories of those who have been marginalized central. We listen and learn. We ask and share.
In our circular model, we reinforce collaboration versus competition, between and within genders, races, classes, and orientations of sexuality, politics, and faith. This framework allows the inner and outer work to go forward together based on the recognition that we need to hear and see everyone. Through this 360 process we achieve not only our individual potential but our group potential. This reframe turns the minority perspective from a liability to an asset. It is the spoke of the wheel of progress, revolving and evolving us.
OUR WHOLE BRAIN
CREATIVITY
"Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way." Edward de Bono
"And if you look at society, the way it works, they are creating, from cradle to grave, left-brain prisoners. To advance in this society, you have to be good at passing exams in school, which are taking in left-brain information overwhelmingly. Then you go to the next level, and so on so that by the time you reach any level of significant influence in society or the institutions of society, you are fundamentally locked into your left brain." David Icke
360 DEGREES
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change"
Charles Darwin
Being CENTERED is the key. We all know that balance and agility come from being centered. We can move quickly, decisively, and powerfully from our center, maintaining our center of gravity. We also know what it is to lose our center, but how and why does it happen? More importantly, how can we learn to maintain and regain our center quickly and consciously?
CENTERING LABS. The key to staying BALANCED (centered) is to not focus on yourself. This may sound counter-intuitive, but it is true. When we focus on ourselves we become insecure and unstable. We are hard-wired neurologically, biologically, and psychologically to be in right relationship. Being ego-centered is unhealthy, causing dis-ease and disease. Being eco or community-centered creates a sense of wellbeing that is stable and integral.
Using statistical research as visual data, along with human narratives, we facilitate dialogues across all lines to build communal understanding and empathy. This understanding and empathy is applied both internally to ourselves and externally to others. As throughout nParadigm, this is a model that goes both within and without to connect self and other. Seeing the other as a reflection of ourselves, we work on how we see ourselves to see how we project ourselves onto others. What are our core wounds and fears as men and women, masculine and feminine, across lines of race, class, and orientation?
COLLABORATION
“When you need to innovate, you need collaboration.”
Marissa Mayer
Instead of working off outdated models in which the past is an essential indicator of the future, nParadigm models work off emergence theory and complexity theory. The result is a unique emergent design that provides a theoretical framework for the implementation of systemic change. Again, this is an environmental model in which the system not the symptom is treated, as they are seen to be reflections of each other on a micro and macro level of scale.
We know that design choice is a key determinant in systems and outcome success, so at nParadigm we allow the emergent structure and solution to arise organically as the unique answer to your unique question. It is a model that is based on the group dynamic and the interdependence of the parts to the whole, leveraging this interconnectivity to replicate patterns found in nature within the workforce. For example, positive change can reach a threshold and avalanche. Like a disease, ideas (both positive and negative) can go viral. We teach you to harness this power not run from it.
"This is not a linear fixed process. It is dynamic and agile, allowing and facilitating imaginative solution and hard change." Heather Taylor-Zimmerman
NParadigm’s labs establish boundaries and repattern unity by creating circles. Working with the symbolism of color, shape, sound, and form to set unconscious conditions, we foster feelings of belonging. Within this environment, we reframe the margin and the center by making the stories of those who have been marginalized central. We listen and learn. We ask and share.
In our circular model, we reinforce collaboration versus competition, between and within genders, races, classes, and orientations of sexuality, politics, and faith. This framework allows the inner and outer work to go forward together based on the recognition that we need to hear and see everyone. Through this 360 process we achieve not only our individual potential but our group potential. This reframe turns the minority perspective from a liability to an asset. It is the spoke of the wheel of progress, revolving and evolving us.
"Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential." Winston Churchill
While old paradigms provided answers at one time, the evolution of an organization, just like an organism, requires constant change. This change is accelerating, demanding emergent solutions that transcend the maladaptive instinctual and inherited responses of the past. Similarly, fixed solutions and rigid structures, like hierarchical leadership and top down thinking, can no longer meet the demands of change and the opportunity (crisis) this change represents. The beauty is that the solution is inherent in the problem, and the answer emerges naturally as an outcome.
“In the long history of humankind those who learned to collaborate and improvise most efectively have prevailed." Charles Darwin
We create organizational structures that are sustainable. Working with communities to create their own guidelines for cultural change, nParadigm helps to facilitate community guidelines that will remain. By reinforcing these guidelines and working with them publicly in a group setting, it is our experience that these guidelines become set, leading to ongoing learning and leveraging of many as one. Ultimately, the truth of our fundamental unity—one family, one organization, one world—will not only hold but celebrate diversity as an essential core value.
PURPOSE
“There are two great days in a person's life - the day we are born and the day we discover why.”
William Barclay
RESULTS
Based on statistical evidence that shows that not only our financial but our physical, psychological, and even familial health is influenced by the integrity of our work environment, nParadigm fosters patterns that align our inner values with how we show up in the world. Leadership and marketing are built on inner and outer buy in. The ROI is real.
This integral leadership and marketing focuses on inner alignment to purpose, passion, and potential as a way to organically emerge in the world. NParadigm sees authentic and transformative leadership as marketing, expanding the concept of sales to service. If service is the true focus, sales will be a natural outcome.
By inverting the traditional model of aligning outward and beginning with inner integrity, nParadigm leverages the positive effect and influence of the organization upon the system, recognizing that integrity is a solid foundation that pays off over time.
We are finding a new CENTER. The new paradigm reorients humanity to themselves, each other, and the world as a whole. It expands our perspective to include new spheres or circles of influence.
This movement into a greater collective perspective and consciousness is happening now, because we are reaching the limits a self-centered world view. In order to survive and thrive as individuals and groups we must have a new perspective: a new paradigm of we not me.
“However beautiful the strategy,
you should occasionally
look at the results.”
Winston Churchill
REWARDS
Transparency increases loyalty. There's a common misconception out there about transparency. Too often, companies see it only as a last resort to be used when owning up to a mistake. This approach does not appreciate the true value of transparency. Trust. Customers will be far more forgiving of mistakes if a company has a history of being forthright with all interactions -- not just the negative ones.
Instead of being hesitant to be transparent, businesses should embrace it as way to improve service and increase customer loyalty. A recent study from Harvard Business School took a look at the concept of transparency in a restaurant setting where the cooks and customers could literally see each other during the food prep and dining experience.
The results showed a striking improvement of 17 percent in customer satisfaction and 13 percent faster service when customers and cooks can see each other. This is a fascinating look at the power of transparency, and it indicates that customers are happier when they feel they've been made part of the process. Plus, I have a feeling that if we all knew our customers were able to see our every move, we’d be more thoughtful and precise in the decisions we make.
And it’s not just consumers. Employees put a high premium on transparency in their interactions with different levels of management. It was frequently listed as the top determining factor of their happiness and satisfaction in the workplace. No one wants to work for a company if they don’t know what it stands for and what its long-term plans are. This is just further indication of people’s growing need to know about every aspect that affects their lives.
I believe that more companies will see success if they begin to view their customers as essentially an extension of their internal operations teams. The actions of a single morally corrupt company have the power to paint an entire industry in a bad light. But when you practice transparency, you don’t need to worry about being tainted by association when a company in your industry does something that lacks integrity.
“Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.”
John F. Kennedy
Corporate psychology is an embodied practice. Feelings of separateness and competition cause stress and anxiety, resulting in a loss of productivity, creativity and an increase in health risk. It literally pays to be centered. This practice, however, needs to be embodied—practiced. We have to walk the talk.
For this reason, nParadigm labs are based on an experiential model that repatterns the body and brain through lived experience, both on site within the work environment and at the nParadigm retreat center. The goal is to have the nParadigm patterns stick, a systemic and permanent redirect. Follow up consultations are built into our methodology. Ongoing course work and web-based continuing education are also available.
Working with non-violent communication models, we demonstrate ways of being and talking that foster active and empathic listening so that everyone is heard—and so that everyone feels safe to speak up. Based on evidence that we change when we understand the need for change, nParadigm helps to create a culture of education and communication that positively reinforces sexual harassment and assault guidelines through intrinsic motivation and empathy—an understanding of our shared humanity.
This inner and outer perspective patterns lasting change within communities that is self-reinforcing and self-sustaining. Great risk brings great reward.
