point
Ramkumar R S

Co founder, Director

Mango Dvm, Terratech, m3i

Chasing The Puck - The Mystery Of Visionary Leadership

Chasing the puck

(Published by TiE Chennai – May 2012)

Ramkumar R S
 

The article will take less than 3 Minutes to read, and you will go back with a completely new perspective about Entrepreneurship, Visionary leadership and Team synergy.

1.      Visionary leadership

I skate to where the puck is going to be," Jobs said as he introduced the long-rumoured iPhone, "not to where it's been."

2.      Team work

Steve Jobs was actually quoting Wayne Gretzky, an Ice Hockey player and Coach. Wayne’s original quote went something like this : “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be”.

But how do you figure out where the puck will be, particularly in a high speed sport like Ice Hockey, or in a fast changing world of business and economics?

We know there is some mystery and magic to visionary leadership and team synergy. But how does this magic or miracle actually happen?

3.      Collective Intelligence

William Morton Wheeler, American Entomologist, a leading authority on social insects and social behavior of ants wrote in 1911: “seemingly independent individuals can cooperate so closely as to become indistinguishable from a single organism”. Wheeler saw this collaborative process at work in ants that acted like the cells of a single beast he called a "super-organism".

MIT Centre for Collective Intelligence - defines this as “Groups of individuals doing things collectively that seem intelligent”

Collective Intelligence is a phenomenon that applies to a wide variety of living and social systems : from bacterial colonies to ant and termite colonies, from sports teams to social systems, from nation states to the earth’s ecology.

But how do you connect and tap in to this collective intelligence of your team or organization, nation or market?

4.      Inner Voice and Listening to your heart

According to Steven Covey, the 7 habits of highly effective people were all about effectiveness. The 8th habit is about moving from being effective to being great.  The 8th habit is to “Find your voice and Inspire others to find theirs”.

5.      Quotes from Entrepreneurs, Scientists and Management thinkers

There is a state of clarity about and connecting to what is emerging, to an inner knowing, where in a sense there is no decision making. What to do just becomes obvious and what is achieved depends on where you are coming from and who you are as a person. – Brian Arthur – Economist

Action that originates from this connection with source appears without conscious control, even without the sense of me doing it – a spontaneous product of the whole, and such action can be shockingly effective – Rosch – Cognitive Scientist

When we stay connected to this larger field, what I call as the “Sacred mind”,  our actions become part of a larger pattern of synchronous developments that could have never been planned and are even difficult to explain after the fact --- Christopher Bache – Teacher and Transpersonal Psychologist

The least noticed and most important capacity that sets apart some of the most successful leaders – concerns their capacity to tap in to and focus on a larger intention. When these leaders reflect on their own actions, a different source of action becomes evident. This source lies beyond their preconceived plans or narrow self interest and often beyond their past experiences. – Peter Senge in his book Presence.

I have experienced this element – the evolving future field – as a being that is actually looking at me. In the moment you feel that gaze, you feel the world stopping. After that you are no longer the same. –Otto Charmer, Author of Theory U and Co-Author of Presence.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. – Steve Jobs.

Demystifying Visionary Leadership and Team Synergy

The reason why a great hockey player is able to instinctively go where the puck will be is not because he is great. A Great hockey player is created by a Great team, and a Great team is created when every one in the team are synergistically connected as ONE. They are connected to the collective intelligence of their team and they are in fact behaving like the cells of a single organism – and the TEAM is that Organism. The TEAM guides each individual player to go where the puck will be. And that guidance from the TEAM’s collective intelligence comes to the Individual players – not only from their physical senses, but also from deep within themselves.

Cohesive teams with a common purpose, behave like living beings. Their intelligence and influence over their constituent parts cannot be explained away as mere summative effects. 

It is a myth to think that science is only about Analytical deductive reasoning. That is only one direction of science. The physical sciences are just one aspect of it.

The other direction of Science is Systems, Synergy and Emergence. The science of leadership and entrepreneurship, the science of societies and humanities, a science driven by empirical evidence and shared experiences.

Summary

If you are a member of a cohesive team that plays as ONE, the TEAM that emerges has a SOUL that  can gaze at you, (like You gazing at your finger) pay attention to you, guide you, relate with you and emote as much as you.

Most of the time, we keep chasing the puck, while it eludes us just when we go near it.  Instead when the Soul of our Team or Organization, is directing us and we the various parts are behaving as the cells and limbs of that common Organism, we can co-create a future that looks impossible from an individual perspective.