The Living Organization: Redefining Business Purpose and Success with Norman Wolfe

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The leaders go, great, I'd like to delegate more, but I can't

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because they're not capable.

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I say, well, they're not capable because you haven't developed

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them to be more capable.

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And I'm not talking about their skill set, I'm talking about their maturity.

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How well are they systems thinker?

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Can they see the big picture?

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Can they make decisions for the whole?

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You've kept all the knowledge to yourself all these years.

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Um, uh,

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What if the key to extraordinary business success is hidden in plain sight?

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What if companies are more than just machines, but living organisms with unique

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energy fields that fuel their performance?

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Today on seek, go create, discover the magic of the living organization

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with Norman Wolf, our guest through his journey from a struggling team

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leader to a sought after consultant.

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Norman uncovered a revolutionary model that reframes how we

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can think about business.

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Join us as we learn how to define your company's soul for purpose and uncover

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the secrets to sustainable success.

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Norman, welcome to seek, go create.

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Thanks, Tim.

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That was a wonderful introduction.

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I

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I'm looking forward to our conversation.

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am looking forward to it too, man.

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You've got such a rich, anyway, this whole concept of the living organization.

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We're going to dive into it shortly is just so fascinating to me as

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I've been studying it I actually saw it even this last weekend.

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Some work that I was doing.

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we'll talk about that later on, but let's kind of do my, I don't even know

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if I could call this an icebreaker anymore, because it's sort of a weird

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question, but you have a choice.

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The first question that I ask, Would you rather answer what you do?

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Kind of the networking question that we all get when we're out and about,

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or Who you are, which one do you choose and just go right into answering it.

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well, what pops up in my head is, who I am.

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And I'd answer it by saying, I guess I'm a seeker, is appropriate for your podcast.

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How's that?

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I've always, been described as a map maker.

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I'd love to unravel the secrets of life I have since my early 20s, and

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try to figure out how do we as people.

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creating the results we create and how can we get more of what we

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want less of what we don't want.

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and I've delved into all sorts of fields of interest disciplines from physics

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to spirituality and, Trying to figure out how do I make life work being a

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seeker, the curiosity and passion for understanding with, this notion of being

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able to frame ideas, complex ideas into simple, hopefully understandable ideas,

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I guess is how I would define who I am.

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Thank you for tying into the, to the title of our podcast.

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I appreciate that.

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and I do feel like.

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intentionally.

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I do feel as if it was heartfelt and not just some kind of, you

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know, trying to blow smoke.

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Thank you.

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I appreciate that.

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Can you recall when you first realized that you were someone who was a seeker,

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someone who asked questions, someone who wasn't satisfied with the status quo.

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And on both of you, for those that are listening to this, we're mature.

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we're not a college age or even, in the first half of our lives,

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we're towards the tail end.

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when do you recall being aware of that, being a seeker?

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I know exactly when that happened.

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It was 1968, the summer of 1968.

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the trigger mechanism for me was the, Chicago Convention.

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you probably are old enough to remember it.

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I certainly lived through it.

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I was raised in a fairly modest, middle class Jewish family.

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my grandparents were immigrants from Russia.

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they were evicted during the pogroms.

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growing up, I had this, cultural orientation to the relationship of the

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United States versus Russia, which was the big totalitarian state that was the evil

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empire, and we were the good guys, right?

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And I'm watching the Chicago Convention.

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I remember the thought was

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this is impossible.

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This is Russia, not the U.

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S.

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Something doesn't jive.

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And the thought in my mind was, if this belief system that I had isn't

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true on my current experience, my living experience, what else was I

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raised with that might not be true?

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And that opened the door to, you know, I couldn't live

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with the uncertainty forever.

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I remember actually creating, I was at the time, going to NYU,

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studying mathematics and engineering.

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And I remember having a need to develop some path forward.

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And I created a hypothesis.

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I said, if I'm going to try to figure out the truth to life, the real

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answers, let me start at the beginning.

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and I said, I'm going to start exploring the nature of life.

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Now, everybody around me was saying, you know, everything comes from

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God, and God is this, and, you know.

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But the experience was, there's a lot of different messages.

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You know, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, you know.

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What's the truth?

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You know, where can I find the truth?

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And I created this hypothesis that said, going to believe in the God.

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There's one God, because most people say that.

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I don't know if it's true or not, but it seemed to me if there was one God,

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there was going to be a single message.

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Now, pretty astute at public speaking, even at that age, I realized that when

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you present something to somebody, you want to present it in the context

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from which they understand, right?

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couldn't make up a story that said, well, there's one God, and he's just presenting

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his message through different contexts, which gives birth to different messages.

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religions with different stories.

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But that was just a hypothesis.

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I didn't know if it was true or not and I held the possibility that it wasn't

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true, that in fact there were multiple gods there was one god that was being

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sadistic and giving us different messages.

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So the theory behind that hypothesis was if there is one god and there is

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one message, I should see patterns in all of the different scriptures,

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if you will, or theories, or presentations, that were common.

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Maybe said differently, but they had similar principles.

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Probably spent the next 20, 30 years of my life Just open to that possibility.

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So the that was the trigger mechanism that put me on this journey that even today

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doesn't stop looking for common patterns that could reveal a truth that anyone.

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Perspective doesn't have, in total,

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That's good.

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So 1968, how old were you?

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20 that summer was 20, turning 21.

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Okay.

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And for some people, we might need to give some context to that convention.

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Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed.

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Was it at that convention or right before that?

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Is that correct?

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Okay.

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after that I think, or right after that, like the following.

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So that whole period of time, um, uh, John Kennedy's assassination,

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the Chicago Convention, Vietnam War, Robert Kennedy's assassination,

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Martin Luther King's assassination, a whole disruptive set of events over,

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less than 10 year period of time.

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I was born in sixty three, three days before JFK was shot.

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So I don't know that that timeframe was as significant because I'm a question

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asker too, but I also look for how it fits into some of the bigger systems.

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I think it's so powerful that you just shared what you did about the timeframe.

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So Here's my second big question.

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That was sort of my first big question.

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you're a mature guy.

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You've done a lot of things, seen a lot.

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In 1968, you said you were seeking truth.

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Are you any closer today to finding that truth?

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Or, like me, does it still seem somewhat elusive and you're still searching?

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Asking a lot of questions

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Well, that's a really good question.

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I, a map maker, as I say, collecting all of these comparisons and ideas from

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multiple disciplines, seeking the nature of life, if you will, and how it works.

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I do have some frameworks that I have developed that feel.

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Like it's the truth, but I've also been on this journey long enough to know that

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the minute I find a truth that reveals a whole lot of other questions that

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are yet to be discerned and discovered.

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So, I don't know if there is a single truth, could be wrapped up

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in a nice package, I do feel the framework I developed and live

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by, it's actually embedded in the living organization framework.

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Has a lot of validity and is supported by a lot of different

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perspectives, if you look at it contextually, not so much literally.

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and the reason I love you tied it into the living organization because as I was

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looking at your stuff and I, I know that you and even I and what I do, we apply

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that living organization to companies, businesses, maybe organizations.

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I worked with some ministries and things like that.

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But truthfully, Norman, as I was looking at it, and I love the way this has started

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off, I actually looked at it as cultural.

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I actually looked at it as nations.

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I looked at living organizations in a lot of other contexts with the way you were

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framing it and there, you know, you've got context, you've got the energy, you've

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got other things that are part of that.

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Is that valid?

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Is that something that crosses your mind and all that?

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That, you know, when you talk living organization, it applies to me, my

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family, my business, my company, my country, my region, this 55 and

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older community that I'm in, correct?

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You're absolutely correct, and I give you a lot of credit to be so

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astute to discern its true nature.

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Remember, I sought out to answer the question, how do we create what we want?

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How do we get more of what we want, or I should say, how do we create what we get,

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and how can we get more of what we want and less of what we don't want, basically.

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When you think of a, of a marriage, so again, personal experience.

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I was married and divorced three times and I was going through my third divorce

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and, had a child from that marriage.

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And my wife, my former wife and I, were really committed to making decisions

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based on what's good for the child.

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And so I found, I observed both myself and her making decisions where

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the, I'll call it the desire for being right, or the ego mind, you

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might say, wanted certain decisions.

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But the other part of me knowing that making that decision might give me a win.

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would end up hurting my daughter and I watched her make similar for the good

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of our daughter and that that gave me a really interesting perception

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because okay Like I said, I was married and divorced three times and as I was

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entering my fourth marriage I began to reflect on there's you And there's, well,

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there's me and there's my wife, Jane,

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but there's also that thing we call a marriage, and we start to use the term

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us ness, It's like a, it's like a living thing that, that, that, encapsulates us.

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And what if I applied that same principle of, doing what's good for

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the third entity, in my divorce it was my daughter, but what if I focused on

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the third entity as my, as the thing I wanted to make my decisions for.

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That takes it out of her versus me.

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brings it into us.

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And so any decision I make is good for me and good for her.

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And that became, and so you mentioned it's good for you, it's good for your family.

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Keep going, right?

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And, and so anytime you have a collective of people who come

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together for a common purpose, it gives birth to a living entity.

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So now look at an organization, right?

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You've got a collective of people that come together to form the organization.

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As the organization grows, it's like a, it's like another, like mitosis, right?

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It splits and creates other living entities.

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It's called functional teams, sales, marketing, operations.

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those are collective of people for a common purpose, provide sales for

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the, for the good of the organization.

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And that collective, so now the organization is made up of people

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and it itself is a living person and you just keep scaling it.

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It doesn't matter.

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Now we stop at the business and organization level because that's

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the domain I'm interested in, but it absolutely does apply to

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keep going.

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It's it's companies make towns.

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Towns make cities.

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Cities make states.

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States make countries.

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Countries make people.

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You know, the world.

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it absolutely is.

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You're very astute at being able to discern that.

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And it's not possible for them to operate in a vacuum, and that

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also creates challenges, correct?

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Absolutely.

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I mean, the nature of life is, we call it ecosystems.

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really just a collection of people in interdependent relationships.

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That's what, you know, a simple way of thinking of an ecosystem.

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And we are, we're ecosystems within ecosystems.

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It's all about the nature of our relationships.

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And our relationships have a huge impact on us energetically and, it can either

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attenuate our energy or amplify our energy.

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Yeah, and the thing, I mean, we're recording this in January of 2025,

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it's probably going to release towards the tail end of January, February,

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where in the United States, for those listening here, we will, Be sort

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of having a changing of the guard.

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I am not going to have a political conversation here, but there will

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be some changes with that larger ecosystem that companies operate in.

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I've got a client right now that 100 percent of their

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inventory comes from China.

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We had a strategy session a few days ago, and we've been discussing this

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because we kind of saw this coming.

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There's some very interesting things going on, but that leads to kind

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of 1 other big picture item before we kind of start really going into

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maybe a little bit more granular.

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And that is.

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One of the things we discuss here, Norman, is kind of defining

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success and redefining success.

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And one of the things I think that some people have a goal

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or perception of is perfection.

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I think they're attempting to obtain perfection within individuals,

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organizations, and things like that.

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And because something is living, it's my opinion.

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That number one, perfection is unattainable.

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It's impossible.

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Stop it.

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But my question for you is, how do we measure success within a

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living organization that includes all of those sub organizations

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and those bigger and smaller?

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How do we start going about just thinking about success?

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Maybe not exact measurements, but give us a mindset for how we

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should think about succeeding.

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you mentioned earlier, I think in the introduction,

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the notion of soulful purpose.

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I believe all living beings, whether it's an individual, Really

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come into the world for a purpose.

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we spend most of our lives trying to figure that out.

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I probably found mine

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15, 20 years ago when I started on this journey with the living organization.

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it's not something you can, I mean, it is a journey just to discover

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it, but we all have a purpose.

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I think businesses are a little bit easier because they are

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created with an intention.

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From the beginning, right?

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And in that intention, the owner, founder, entrepreneur starts something and he's

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trying to I mean, there's a few that started just to make money and that's

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the really rare case in my experience most of them see a problem in Society

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in their world and their industry they think they have a way to solve it.

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better than anybody else's That's really the essence Of innovation and

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entrepreneurship, and so every company is started with the seed of an intention,

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which you can call it soulful purpose.

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Why was it created in the 1st place?

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And what problem is it trying to solve?

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If you fall back to that and say, okay, if this is my soulful purpose, how do I see?

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Being successful looks like and we call that a vision of the impact of the future.

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You're going to have a vision of the future of impact.

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You're going to make it.

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It's not really a vision statement like most people talk about.

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It's really a narrative.

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think about 20 years from now or 50 years from now or 10 years from now.

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and you've fulfilled your purpose, or at least made progress towards fulfilling it.

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What changes happened?

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what impact have you made?

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what does it look like?

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Think of it like a journalist is telling your story.

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What does that look like?

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And you combine the soulful purpose with the impact statement the impact

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story, I should say, that you're making.

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And you can always use that to say, are we getting closer?

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Are we making it?

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that defines true success, right?

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Now, there's a lot of other factors it is not only what you're

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doing, but how you're doing it.

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a sense of accomplishment, a sense of growth and development, a sense

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of maturing, a sense of, belonging, those are some other, I consider three

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of the key innate needs of humans.

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we want to grow and develop.

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We want to make a contribution we want to belong to.

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those are other characteristics we can use to define how we are doing it.

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Are we doing it in ways that enable us to feel more human or are we doing it in

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ways that detract from that humanness?

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But as a mathematician, I'm an industrial and systems engineer.

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What we really want to do is measure things better.

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And some of those things you just mentioned, Norman, I'm sorry.

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I'm thinking through, you can't measure those.

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So how do you really know?

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How do we really know if we're succeeding in this living organization?

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How do we like, I mean, even if you're leading it or if

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you're in it, how do you know,

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the very essence of that question stems from what I would call the

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mechanistic paradigm or the machine paradigm, You kind of knew you

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were leading me into that, didn't

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I know that that's where I'm going, man, I'm pushing you.

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I'm pushing you.

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Yeah.

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first rodeo, man.

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know where we're going here.

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It really, just the way the question is framed, comes from the fact

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that we believe everything can be rationally, logically defined.

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That works in the machine paradigm.

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That's exactly what you would do with machines.

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when it comes to a human being.

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That's necessary, but not sufficient.

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There's two parts to us.

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There's the subjective part and the objective part.

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They're both valid.

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It's not one or the other.

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That's a mistake we make in the business world.

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It's the hard side or the soft side.

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That's a silly bifurcation.

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It should never have happened.

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part of the living organization framework is actually designed to integrate the

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two back together like they belong.

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How do you know you're in love with your wife?

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It's not something you can take technically measure, but you know it.

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It's very clear.

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You know it, Businesses are the same way.

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And, what it requires is to re honor.

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We bring back the value of the subjective elements.

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There are ways to evaluate subjective elements of it.

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at the end of the day, it's sort of like the old statement.

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I can't tell you what it is, but I'll know it when I see it.

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And it's okay to trust that.

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part of what we do is teach leaders how to trust their

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gut, how to trust the feelings.

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We actually teach the skill, we call it heart centering.

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Teaching the skill to tune into the subjective elements of life,

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because they're very valuable.

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and especially if you want to do things like create psychological safety.

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You can't do it from the head.

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I don't care how many processes for it and how many structures you put in place.

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The only way I feel psychologically safe is if I feel you get me and

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you honor me as a human being.

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I can only do that for you if I am truly in the place of connection,

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which is really the heart center.

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There's a nuance and a lot of application challenges with it.

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But that's the general path we want to follow.

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You know, one of the things, and I know you've got a background in what we'll

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call large corporate with Hewlett Packard.

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My first job coming out of Georgia tech in the late eighties was with Bell South

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corporation, probably, you know, similar mindset, similar process, et cetera.

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And one of the things that became such a pet peeve of mine, is there were

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comments and I think it was trying to get at what you've developed here, Norman.

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So let me say this and then I'm going to let you respond, was

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within these small pockets of the organization within Bell South, they

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would use terms like we're a family.

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and I would look around and I'm going, you know what, we just fired so and so

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we just, you know, we've got this union issue that we deal with that's combative.

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We just got rid of the leader and we're looking for a new, and I said,

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I don't, and I was young at the time, but I was asking a lot of questions

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like you did and all, and I was going.

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I don't think this is a family to me from talking to you.

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I think that was a cheap attempt at describing a living organization.

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And I think it's caused some problems because I don't

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think business is a family.

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So now that I've gone on my mini rant, what would you like to say about that?

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cause you probably lived through that too, right?

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Oh, yeah, my, I, you know, some people ask me.

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What started your path besides, what I said.

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So I come out of that period of time, to add to the genre of that time.

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Not only do we have all those major events, but we also had

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the hippie movement, right?

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The free love movement and all of that.

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So I was also influenced by that.

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And I come out of that kind of university environment and, go to

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Boydcott Pratt and Whitney Aircraft.

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And I'm literally told.

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Two statements stuck in my mind from the, from back then.

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The first was, I was probably there six months and my, supervising

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engineer came to me and said, know, Norman, when you come to work, you

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leave your personal life at the door.

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Okay.

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How do I do that?

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I'm not sure what part of me I take off and hang up on the, on the hook.

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I mean, I couldn't figure that out.

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Literally.

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It was just, cognitive dissonance, if you want to call it that.

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And the second one, probably two, three years later, I'm kind of in the groove

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or part of a team and we're loving what we're doing was having lunch one day

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and talking about how much we love it.

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Same supervising engineer comes in and says, gentlemen,

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work is not meant to be fun.

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Work is work.

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If it was fun, you'd be paying us to go like you go to Disneyland.

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pay you to work.

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We all looked at each other like, was he nuts?

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That's the cultural norm that I grew up in, right?

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And

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unfortunately, that paradigm, that, remember, paradigm is a way of thinking.

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It's a framework of set of belief systems about how life

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works and how we're successful.

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And that paradigm has influenced generations upon generations to think of

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what is business, what is organizations, what is, you know, And how do we respond?

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It's also very strongly separated.

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employees from the leadership, is another fundamental bifurcation.

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so I say all that is kind of a contextual framework to say what you're dealing with.

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You're pointing out to is this desire amongst leaders, especially to represent

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the organization as humanistic.

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As a family, a caring organization

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and their behaviors, not because they don't believe what they say, but because

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they think of implementing what they say in a certain framework causes that same.

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Cognitive dissonance, that same experience of that's not true that

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I had when they told me to leave my personal life at the door, you know,

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and so that's why I'm committed.

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And all the work I'm doing now is, it's not just coming up with another

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framework, another model, but I'm really committed to changing the paradigm.

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It's sort of like trying to convince physicists to quantum physics is a

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better way of understanding the world.

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And they're going, Huh?

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That doesn't make any sense.

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It doesn't fit the way I understand things.

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And that's the challenge I'm facing with my community of consultants, is helping

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leaders go through that gut wrenching reframing of the way we see the world.

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and it's really challenging.

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So, I see it all the time, what you say.

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I, I experience it.

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And I experience on both sides.

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I experience.

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so used to being cogs in the wheel and going into battle with management Not

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only do leaders have to change, but the employees have to change as well.

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They all have to move into a new way of understanding what their role and

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relationship is to the collective.

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Imagine employees who came to work because they wanted to contribute

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to the purpose of the organization.

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just think of that possibility for a second.

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Leaders wouldn't have to manage them.

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They'd have to help them grow and develop in their capability and

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maturity to fulfill that goal.

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That desire on their part to contribute.

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It's just like me going back to, I wanted to make my marriage successful.

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I was committed to the us ness.

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It wasn't me versus her or her needs versus mine.

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And yeah, all that comes up, but it gets resolved if we all focus on the us ness.

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organizations would actually not need to exist because there'd

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be nobody to battle with.

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management wouldn't see employees as their most valuable asset or

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the most valuable stakeholder.

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I actually wrote a blog arguing that.

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Employees are not the most valuable stakeholder because the

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Hmm.

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by definition is something, somebody or some group that's

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outside of the collective, right?

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My investor isn't part of my organization.

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outside.

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My suppliers are outside.

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My partners are outside.

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Even the regulators are outside.

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So all the stakeholders I deal with.

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Are outside of the organization.

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That's sort of the definition of a stakeholder.

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Well, to say an employee is a stakeholder is to say they're

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outside of the organization.

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Now, just think about that.

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That's kind of bizarre.

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So my article was take away investors, take away, suppliers,

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take away clients, take away all of the stakeholders we deal with.

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And you still have an organization because you have a group of

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people committed to some purpose.

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Take away the people.

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it still exists.

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haven't got an organization at all.

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You don't have an organization.

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You have somebody's, one individual's probably vision.

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that's what you're left with.

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And if that's leadership, they're all alone.

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there's nothing for them to do.

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It's not possible.

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So the collective is really the important thing.

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and we want to shift the paradigm so that leaders and employees really understand

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what the true nature of what it's about.

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It ain't easy because we got so many years of.

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thinking, but where we're going.

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just to add on to it, you see a lot of movements.

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I don't know if you saw Bayer Corporation just completely went

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to, or self managing autonomous teams that completely restructuring.

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A higher corporation created this model called RenderNoid, which

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is micro, micro enterprises.

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Everybody's an entrepreneur working together in collectives.

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there's a clear desire for some movement and our framework helps facilitate that.

Speaker: 00:30:52

but here's the interesting thing about those two examples you just brought up.

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someone younger might go, Oh, this is so new and creative and innovative.

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That's been tried before.

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Correct.

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It really has, many times.

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That's not new.

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No, no.

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And it's actually, it's probably more appropriate to saying

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we're going back in time.

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we're going back in time when the subjective and the objective were,

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were together, they weren't separated.

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scientific revolution basically separated that.

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Right.

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And we've

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So,

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we've got to bring it back together.

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So when someone like you is attempting to change a paradigm,

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you could probably tell where this question is going.

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I, and, and we want to be able to at times know how well we're doing.

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Are we really moving the needle?

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Are we making progress and things like that?

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And I, and I want to kind of frame this and say that there are times that Tim

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can be extremely optimistic and Pollyanna ish and things, um, Things are great.

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And then there are times where I could be extremely pessimistic

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and go, Oh my goodness.

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my goodness, I'm a, I'm a living organism.

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Um, how are you doing?

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how do you grade this paradigm shift to this movement?

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Now, I know you're probably interacting with people that are embracing it, but

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if you step back and look at culture and look at the bigger organization,

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how do you assess the progress?

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well, like anything societal global level, you have to look at long term patterns.

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and I've been around long enough to be able to track many decades of patents.

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And so some of the indicators I use first of all, I don't

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think I'm alone in this journey.

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think I'm but one voice of a, of a chorus of people trying to sing

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in a new way of being in business.

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You've got movements like the Teal Movement and Conscious Capitalism, and

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you've got people like Brendan Hire, Hire Corporation, and you've got, Bayer

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Corporation and Zappos, Birchstalk.

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I mean, there's a lot of, People who are evolving.

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I remember when I left HP in 1988 and started consulting.

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I think it was in the early 90s.

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I came across a consultant out of the East Coast that had an award

Speaker: 00:33:25

called Love in the Workplace.

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Because back then you couldn't even use the word love in the business environment.

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So you actually create a like love in the workplace.

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Now that's not such a big deal because it's okay to use those words.

Speaker: 00:33:44

we saw the creation of B Corps, movement to try to stimulate

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a shift in the paradigm.

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If you will, business is not just about love.

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Maximizing shareholder value businesses about, purpose and you see a whole cottage

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industry of consultants coming around on just all they do is focus on helping

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organizations to define the purpose.

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Now that's sort of maybe five, 10 years old.

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it's sort of declining, but there was a big rise in the purpose cottage industry.

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I wrote the book, it was published in 2011, and, you know, talking

Speaker: 00:34:22

to people about that then, you know, I was like, talking about

Speaker: 00:34:27

love in the workplace in 1988.

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And now I'm having conversations with people like you who get it, who

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see it, who feel it, who sense it.

Speaker: 00:34:37

And so I look at the trend over many, many decades and say, we're making progress.

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I feel in many ways that this movement is beyond all of us.

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It's something life wants to manifest itself.

Speaker: 00:34:51

a shift in the way we've lived for a long time.

Speaker: 00:34:54

That's time for the next step.

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Next iteration of it.

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I think it has a lot to do with you.

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You'll hear me say it has a lot to do with balance.

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So bringing back the objective in the subject of the head and the

Speaker: 00:35:06

heart, balancing opposites, I think that's a big part of what this

Speaker: 00:35:12

next evolution is, is bringing.

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I'm just one voice of a chorus of people making the impact I can in my own way.

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I now have a community of, well, by the end of, the first

Speaker: 00:35:25

quarter will be 12 of us.

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I'm bringing on four more people.

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A year ago, I was, were two of us, struggling a lot.

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and now people are saying, wow, I like it.

Speaker: 00:35:37

I resonate with it.

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I want to be part of that.

Speaker: 00:35:39

I want to help this transformation.

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So those are the indicators I use to keep my life feeling

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like I'm making a difference and all this effort is paying back.

Speaker: 00:35:48

Those are the subjective indicators that I would use to say we're being successful.

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Well, I think the descriptions, the soulful purpose, while I don't use that

Speaker: 00:35:59

language in what I do because of my spiritual background and things like

Speaker: 00:36:04

that, I actually believe that the thought process, and I was exposed to your

Speaker: 00:36:09

stuff a few weeks ago or when you came onto our radar as far as being a guest.

Speaker: 00:36:13

So I believe that there probably is a movement.

Speaker: 00:36:16

And I guess one question I have is, do you think that all that occurred with a

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worldwide Accelerated, accelerated that.

Speaker: 00:36:27

And I'm also going to layer in another question.

Speaker: 00:36:29

Do you also think there's some generational, trends that are

Speaker: 00:36:34

occurring because I'm tail end of baby boomer, you're probably baby

Speaker: 00:36:38

boomer, you know, and we've got this hard charging, authoritative, I don't

Speaker: 00:36:44

know leadership kind of baked into us.

Speaker: 00:36:47

I do wonder if some things that are occurring are accelerating,

Speaker: 00:36:51

what are your thoughts?

Speaker: 00:36:53

yes to both.

Speaker: 00:36:54

I do think that the so called major crises we've had have been stimulants

Speaker: 00:37:03

to disrupt the existing pattern of thinking, causing many of us to

Speaker: 00:37:09

think there's got to be a new way.

Speaker: 00:37:11

I'll go back to 9 11, the Great Recession, COVID, the pandemic.

Speaker: 00:37:17

These are major, major disrupting forces.

Speaker: 00:37:22

prior to the pandemic, there was a few of us that used to do Zoom.

Speaker: 00:37:27

now I don't have to travel anywhere.

Speaker: 00:37:28

I talk to people all over the world, right?

Speaker: 00:37:30

It's commonplace, right?

Speaker: 00:37:31

whether we stay with remote work or hybrid work or go back to the

Speaker: 00:37:35

office, there was a shift happened.

Speaker: 00:37:37

Something new was into the collective, Zeitgeist, right?

Speaker: 00:37:42

The collective culture, the DNA.

Speaker: 00:37:44

So, yes, I think those major events do shift things.

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That's, I think, the major purpose of it is to shift things.

Speaker: 00:37:53

the second part of your question was,

Speaker: 00:37:57

Generational.

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Just some generational things, a younger group, you know, there's

Speaker: 00:38:01

always generational sort of conflict built in with leadership.

Speaker: 00:38:06

And you know, we're having these.

Speaker: 00:38:09

Generations.

Speaker: 00:38:09

We're dealing with this with one of our, organizations right now, that

Speaker: 00:38:13

there's just a different thought about work ethic, different thought about

Speaker: 00:38:16

the office, different thoughts about just the way work gets done, maybe not

Speaker: 00:38:22

right or wrong, it's just different.

Speaker: 00:38:23

Yes, I, I, About, I guess it was maybe a little over a decade ago, I saw a

Speaker: 00:38:31

pattern that I think is still at play.

Speaker: 00:38:35

You're right, I'm at the beginning of the baby boomers, so I'm

Speaker: 00:38:38

at that transition between traditionalist and the baby boomers.

Speaker: 00:38:41

You're at the tail end of it.

Speaker: 00:38:42

It's a pretty long generational cycle.

Speaker: 00:38:47

And one of the things I noticed about myself and then watched a lot

Speaker: 00:38:49

of the baby boomers move into is a desire to seek purpose in life.

Speaker: 00:38:55

You're right, we're hot charging, we were authoritative, we, we

Speaker: 00:38:58

wanted to take control and all that.

Speaker: 00:39:00

But as we move into the 40s, 50s, 60s of our lives, for me, 70s,

Speaker: 00:39:07

meaning and purpose started to become more important than things.

Speaker: 00:39:14

Millennials seem to come into the workplace with a desire

Speaker: 00:39:19

for meaning and purpose.

Speaker: 00:39:21

And certainly Gen Z is known for meaning and purpose is, is

Speaker: 00:39:25

a dominant criteria for them.

Speaker: 00:39:27

So what you have is two very fairly large geographic, excuse me,

Speaker: 00:39:32

demographic populations, seeking to, to view life differently.

Speaker: 00:39:38

No longer is it acceptable to leave your personal life at

Speaker: 00:39:41

the door, so to speak, right?

Speaker: 00:39:42

Meaning and purpose and doing something that contributes to the,

Speaker: 00:39:46

the, the positive of the world.

Speaker: 00:39:48

is important to us Not everybody, obviously, we're

Speaker: 00:39:52

still all individual humans.

Speaker: 00:39:55

I think that has a huge impact on the direction we're moving to.

Speaker: 00:39:58

struggle with it.

Speaker: 00:39:59

we, we struggle with finding balance again.

Speaker: 00:40:01

I mean, think about, not to get political, but even in the just geopolitical climate

Speaker: 00:40:06

we're in, where there's a shift from neoliberalism to more of a, sort of,

Speaker: 00:40:12

more of a conservative, I won't even go so far as to write, balance, right?

Speaker: 00:40:16

We swing too far one way and we got to come back somehow.

Speaker: 00:40:20

I think that the nature of life is always back and forth,

Speaker: 00:40:24

back and forth, the polarities

Speaker: 00:40:28

without getting into the physics of it all.

Speaker: 00:40:30

But the challenge is to find the balance where you're going back and forth in

Speaker: 00:40:34

slighter durations instead of big swings.

Speaker: 00:40:37

yeah, I think, I think we're faced with a number of different forces

Speaker: 00:40:41

happening that's stimulating this change.

Speaker: 00:40:44

That's part of why I said this is beyond individuals.

Speaker: 00:40:46

This is life unfolding.

Speaker: 00:40:48

This is something bigger than us as individuals.

Speaker: 00:40:51

And the more we can get in line with that, more we'll be successful, because

Speaker: 00:40:57

you can't fight nature, so to speak.

Speaker: 00:41:00

Humans think they'll conquer Mother Nature.

Speaker: 00:41:02

I, I'll, I'll double down on my bets on Mother Nature any day.

Speaker: 00:41:08

Well, being a systems guy, myself, I sometimes ask the question, are

Speaker: 00:41:12

we attempting to force something into a structure that's not.

Speaker: 00:41:18

Structured correctly.

Speaker: 00:41:20

you mentioned you had a Jewish family background.

Speaker: 00:41:22

I've studied some of the Middle Eastern culture with Old Testament

Speaker: 00:41:26

and Christian and all that, and it seems to me that there's more of an

Speaker: 00:41:31

integration of all of the factors of life within that culture, whereas we are

Speaker: 00:41:37

a product of the Greco-Roman segment.

Speaker: 00:41:39

Everything in your life, work goes here, your hobbies here, your marriage

Speaker: 00:41:43

here, your children, and I do wonder if that is one of the big hurdles

Speaker: 00:41:47

and I'll ask you if you think it is, or what are some other of the big

Speaker: 00:41:52

barriers that we're facing to continue moving this message farther along?

Speaker: 00:41:59

Wow, big barriers.

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So, first part of the answer to your question, yes, and it goes back to what

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I said, it's the notion of integration of opposites, right, or the balance

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of it, and it's not just in Judaism.

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You look at, Daoism and the Tai Chi symbol, the yin yang symbol.

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It represents balance, and, we talk about how people would love

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to live in a world of harmony.

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Well, harmony, by definition, is balance, One of the biggest challenges

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we have, and it's not just the Roman Greco era that probably started it, but

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I think it really got kicked into with the scientific and revolution, right?

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This notion that we want to objectify, we want the Newtonian theory that we can

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take nature and put it into its, simple.

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clockwork gears and we can understand it and we can control it, ever

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since then we've been living by the scientific, methodology.

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If you can't explain it, repeat it, objectify it, it's got no value.

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But we know that's only partially true.

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I'll never throw out the objective structures, systems, numbers.

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that's half of the, that's the head of the tail.

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We got to bring the tail or the head of the coin.

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We got to bring the tail of the coin back into union, because the coin

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is made up of both sides, right?

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Objective, subjective, head and heart.

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now I'm just going to focus on business because that's the domain I play in.

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some of the biggest hurdles I think, and why the paradigm shift happens, is we

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keep thinking of people and in business as component parts of the machine.

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And as component parts of the machine, as a leader, designer of the machine,

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I define the spec sheets of it.

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What I need for the machine to operate.

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I go to my big box, supply store.

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We call it employment agencies.

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I give them my spec sheet.

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We call them job descriptions.

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you see how we just tied into this whole machine paradigm.

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and I buy these component parts and I plug them into the machine.

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And I say, what you're designed to do.

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Well, that's okay to some degree.

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And it works really good in what I would call operations that

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need very structured design.

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Very defined, very repetitive tasks.

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And that's why it was designed in the 1900s because that's mostly what we had.

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But humans aren't really designed to be that way.

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I mean, we got more than just our, our doing machine, so to speak, right?

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We got relationships, as we talked about, and we got the stories that

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make up our context, our belief system.

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And so

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I look at the concept of maturity, and that's something that's never

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thought about in the machine paradigm.

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If you look at one of the things that makes us capable as people

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to create outcomes, level of skill is one half of it, a level of

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maturity is the second half of it.

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Maturity gives us the ability to deal in more complex environments with

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more diverse points of view, with more uncertainty, and navigate through.

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I mean, as I've gotten older, I believe I've gotten more mature.

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These are some of the things I've observed that happens to me, and how I've changed.

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I no longer fight, for my rightness, so to speak.

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I no longer have to be the expert.

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As a matter of fact, the less expert I am, the more I am, right?

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But that's a maturing process.

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If we take a look at business, what we fundamentally have done is lock

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people in at a childlike state because they're the child and the leader is

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the parent and the leader is supposed to take care of the children and tell

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them what to do and how to do it.

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One of the challenges, one of the blockages I face in shifting the

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paradigm is the leaders go, great, I'd like to delegate more, but I

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can't because they're not capable.

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I say, well, they're not capable because you haven't developed

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them to be more capable.

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And I'm not talking about their skill set, I'm talking about their maturity.

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How well are they systems thinker?

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Can they see the big picture?

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Can they make decisions for the whole?

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You've kept all the knowledge to yourself all these years.

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so much.

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It's time to them.

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Now, I also want to say that, there are environments where that is appropriate.

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And there are, there's some very environments where a very more

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structured environment is appropriate.

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And you're going to have less mature people.

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That's the starting point.

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Even within an organization, there are positions that are starting points.

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Those people will need more direction.

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I don't wanna keep 'em there.

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My job as a leader is to not just move them up through the organization 'cause

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they may grow past the organization.

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My job as a leader, just like as a parent, I want my kids never, don't want my kids

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living in my home when they're 35, right?

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I want 'em to be mature and capable of taking care of themselves.

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Why don't we do that for our people in the organization?

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Why don't we view our role as leaders as developing them?

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So one of the biggest blocks is in the shifting of the

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paradigm, especially in business.

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helping redefine the role for both employee and leader.

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I believe it starts with leader because they obviously set the tone just like

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maturing for most families is a function of the parents responsibility to help

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their kids mature, not let the kids mature on their own guidance from somebody who's

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kind of lived somewhere along the line.

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So that I think is probably the biggest block and why it's important

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to recognize this paradigm shift because that doesn't make any sense.

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What I just said makes no sense if I'm.

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If I view my role as a leader, it's optimizing the machine of production.

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Yeah, I love the term maturity.

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I seem to use the word health.

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Quite a bit.

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I asked, you know, what's the health of the organization maturity, oddly enough.

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And I don't know if I was reading through your book at the time and I got this, or

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if it was just what came to mind, I've got a leadership team I'm working with.

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There's, a few that are on the leadership team and their discussion.

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It's a very young company is no one below our level is taking responsibility.

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They're not being accountable.

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And the analogy I use is like we, and I'm not.

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Stating this in a negative way, they're like they're in middle school

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and we've got to move them up a grade or two so that they can learn how

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to drive and maybe go to the grocery store for us and, and do some things.

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So I love that.

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I love that maturity.

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And I've got a few, I think what I call big questions here as we're

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sort of coming in for a landing.

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The first one, and I would love for you to give maybe a How to proceed.

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Let's just say someone has been listening in and they love the thought of this.

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It's, it might be something that resonates with them, you know, deep

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down in their, their soul or their gut.

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They go, yeah, you know what?

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I've been doing some of that without defining it or, but I want to.

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I want to do more and I know that especially people that are coaches

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like you and me our first thing would say well Give me a call.

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We'll help you.

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You know, we can make that work.

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But let's maybe don't go that self promoting here what

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would be a good first step?

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what's some things that the leader that's listening in?

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Should do next, Norman, get the book might be one.

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We'll talk about that in just a moment, but what are some first

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things to do if they're aware of this,

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Well, I laugh because that was the first thing.

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I mean, this is a complex journey, right?

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And you need a guide.

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So first thing is find a guide.

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I'm available.

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No, just joking.

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but you do need a guide because it's not easy.

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And, one of the things I teach all of our consultants is what I call

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empathy and compassion for leaders.

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Without that, forget it.

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The second thing is whoever that guide is should have a deep

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understanding, not just be empathic and compassionate for leadership.

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But understand that the number one role of a leader is to create the

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results that enable the organization to sustainably grow now and into the future.

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And so we can't just talk about the soft side.

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We have to acknowledge that their role is to ensure the organization is performing.

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So this is a journey.

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I often use the term where we're retooling the production line.

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While the production line is running, we don't have the option to shut

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it down and train everybody and, and now we'll turn it back on.

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And we're, you know, that's, this is an organic process.

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I would strongly suggest that leaders learn how to what we call it heart

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centering, how to start bringing in the subjective element of life

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and to get comfortable with that that to me is a foundational skill

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to shift not only in being a good leader, but being a good human.

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But let's just focus on running a business.

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and, you know, there's a lot.

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We teach a methodology.

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We call it heart centering.

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But, it's really a form of, you know, you can use meditation, you can use

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relaxation, mindfulness, whatever you want to use with heart centering.

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we use a lot of the same principles and practices, but we recognize

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that we're really dealing with the body as an energy field.

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And we're learning how to consciously shift the energy patterns and

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opening to, insight and wisdom.

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it's sort of like, think about those aha moments you have at three

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o'clock in the morning or when you're taking your morning shower.

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Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have a tool or the ability or the

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skill to, Allow you to tap into that wisdom in the midst of a crisis, not

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just the next morning in the shower.

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And so this is a skill, and I want to highlight it as a very practical skill.

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It's not just meditating off and going into la la land for

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peace and calm and relaxation.

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It's actually a very valuable tool.

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So that's one of the places I would suggest people start as a leader is to

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start learning that skill and then the rest of it is applying that skill But

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always keep the eye on the ball that you're here to have the collective the

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organization produce the results necessary So you need the business side of things

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you need these called the soft side of things and you got to bring them together

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into an integrated way of leading.

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right?

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Norm and I, I just realized here with a tail end of our conversation and

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we kind of dove into the deep end of the pool right at the beginning,

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kind of as my almost final question, did we define the living organization

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well during the course of this?

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is there anything else you would like to say?

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I know there's a lot to it and we're about to let people know where they can

Speaker: 00:53:13

get the book and connect with you and all that, but anything that we missed, do

Speaker: 00:53:17

we need to do a definition here as we're wrapping up that maybe we missed earlier?

Speaker: 00:53:23

Well, I think I've touched that.

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I didn't present it in the way that I normally do.

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we, we, we've, you know, as I've said, I wrote the book in 2011

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and it's evolved into a framework.

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that got three component parts.

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It's, it's the.

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It's a new way of seeing.

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It's the core principles, the paradigm shift.

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And what are the principles of those paradigm shifts?

Speaker: 00:53:46

It's like, what are the laws of quantum physics versus, Newtonian physics?

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the second is a new way of leading, which is, six skill sets, and

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it starts with heart centering.

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heart centered communication.

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context, the ability to create that collective context that shifts

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from the old strategy to the new so people behave accordingly.

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So context is a big part, probably didn't get into that as much as I normally do.

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the fourth is improv mindset.

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is, balancing opposites.

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and the sixth is how do, how do we call it leader as coach salt.

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you're still a leader that's sort of directive and all of that, but you're also

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a coach and how do you combine the two?

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and then, and then the, the third element is a new way of creating

Speaker: 00:54:30

results, which is a set of tools that we've developed to facilitate, to bring

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the two together, to bring the, the objective and subjective into work.

Speaker: 00:54:39

With, with some tools that support that effort for you as a leader,

Speaker: 00:54:44

living organization framework, I think, is a, I'll state my bias, I

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think it's a pretty darn good way of proceeding as the next step.

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But there's a lot to it.

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We're going to be coming out with a new website, thelivingorganization.

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com, pretty soon, probably within the next month or two,

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which will explain all of this.

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They can actually go to thelivingorganization.

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com now, but it takes it to my website, quantumleaders.

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com, which starts the discussion, so you can find a lot of information there.

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They can actually get the first three chapters of my book.

Speaker: 00:55:18

for free, download it from quantumleaders, dot com forward slash podcast.

Speaker: 00:55:25

and they can reach me at nwolff at quantumleaders.

Speaker: 00:55:28

com.

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I'm going to encourage.

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People to reach out.

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It's a great fit.

Speaker: 00:55:33

Listen, anyone who's listening in here, what you're discussing, it's a great fit.

Speaker: 00:55:39

There's a reason that we had you on as a guest.

Speaker: 00:55:41

And I think you could tell just the way my mind and my heart works

Speaker: 00:55:47

that, you know, I, I would have no problem arguing with people.

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I'm sure you wouldn't either.

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But there's no reason for us to argue over anything because there's so much in sync.

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And I love that, Norman, we're seek, go create.

Speaker: 00:56:00

You already said you're a seeker at the beginning, but I'm going to give you an

Speaker: 00:56:04

opportunity as my final question to pick one of those words or allow you to, or

Speaker: 00:56:08

force you to, or whatever, how you want to word it, seek, go or create, which

Speaker: 00:56:12

one just means more to you resonates more with you even, even right now,

Speaker: 00:56:16

don't overthink it, seek, go or create.

Speaker: 00:56:18

And why that's my final question.

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I would jump on create, why I think, humans are inherently creative beings.

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We manifest realities.

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learning how to do that, it ties back to the very thing I talked about, create

Speaker: 00:56:34

exactly what you want in life, get more of what you want, less of what you don't

Speaker: 00:56:37

want, And I think that the inherent nature of people is to constantly seek

Speaker: 00:56:43

to improve the environment we live in.

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So create a beautiful world for all of us to live in.

Speaker: 00:56:51

Norman Wolfe.

Speaker: 00:56:51

Thank you.

Speaker: 00:56:52

Thank you for integrating terms like the living organization and

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soulful purpose into what we're doing here at Seek Go Create.

Speaker: 00:57:02

They fit so well, they're so powerful.

Speaker: 00:57:05

this has been a great conversation.

Speaker: 00:57:07

I encourage you to connect with Norman.

Speaker: 00:57:09

He gave you his coordinates.

Speaker: 00:57:10

They're going to be down in the notes.

Speaker: 00:57:12

If you're watching this on YouTube or listening in on your podcast platform,

Speaker: 00:57:16

listen in we are seek, go create here.

Speaker: 00:57:18

We've got new episodes.

Speaker: 00:57:19

Every Monday on YouTube and also all your podcast platforms.

Speaker: 00:57:23

I appreciate all the comments you've been making.

Speaker: 00:57:25

I would love it if you're watching this on YouTube for you to jump down

Speaker: 00:57:29

and give your thoughts on what you think about the living organization and

Speaker: 00:57:34

some of the things we discussed here.

Speaker: 00:57:35

I'd love to hear positive, negative, anything.

Speaker: 00:57:38

I think it's, helpful to have that dialogue.

Speaker: 00:57:41

So, thanks again for listening in.

Speaker: 00:57:42

Until next time, continue being all that you were created to be.