Make integrity profitable.

Make integrity profitable.

I recently read an MIT Sloan Management Review article that cited a research study examining ten factors that influenced managers’ decisions to promote their employees.

They surveyed nearly 9,000 people in 383 companies. While the article was focused on leadership and goal-setting, I was struck by something else: They developed a list of the top ten factors that influence promotions.

Number one on the list of factors that influence promotion was “Past performance.” Makes sense to me.

Number two: “Political connections.” Hmm.

Number eight out of ten on the list of what factors led to promotion: “Acting with integrity.”

This is bad news.

If integrity is not crucial for promotions, what incentive do leaders and employees have to act with integrity?

There’s personal self-incentive, of course, but not much of a systemic one.

This has ramifications. We are influenced by the systems we operate within.

I focus on the intersection of self-development and systemic evolution, and to me, this is one of those intersections that we need to examine.

Pitting personal integrity against organizational priorities—and earning one’s livelihood—is a slippery slope.

What if integrity were profitable—at every level of one’s career?

What if we were expressly rewarded for it?

It almost seems crude to suggest we reward people for what we should be doing naturally… but then again, it’s mindboggling to me that we tolerate the sweeping breaches of ethics and integrity that are going on in plain sight.

If integrity was groomed throughout one’s career, would we still produce so many leaders who lack it?

To be fair, I have no doubt that the success of many individuals and organizations is due in part to their integrity—it’s good business for people who want to do good business for good humans. And, this research study is just one study. But it just might point to something larger.

We need organizational integrity to be non-negotiable.

This makes it easier—not harder—for individuals working within organizations to prioritize integrity together, creating the best possible dynamic: a symbiotic relationship based on shared integrity.

P.S. While we’re at it, let’s make war unprofitable.

Learn from nature’s patterns: torus

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Learn from nature’s patterns: torus

A tree.

A human body.

An earthworm.

The Everything Bagel. (Anyone?)

Perhaps the universe itself.

What do these have in common? 

They’re all examples of the torus, a rotating, regenerative, self-perpetuating… doughnut.

A tree grows up from the ground; as it grows through seasons and cycles, it sheds leaves and disperses rain off its leaves, both of which nourish the roots and soil it needs to continue to grow.

A regenerative, self-nourishing cycle. Its own decay + shed serve its continued growth.

Human bodies, even earthworms do the same thing.

We ingest nutrients, they nourish and sustain us, then we release that sh*t back into the soil to fertilize what we need to grow to continue nourishing us—so the cycle continues. 

So beautifully symbolic. Such rich, earthy wisdom.

How can the pattern of the torus be useful? Ask yourself, in both a literal + metaphorical sense:

• What nourishes you? Are you proactively growing that?

• What do you need to shed in order to continue to grow?

• What healthy, regenerative systems + cycles can you create that continue to supply the nutrients you need without depleting the source?

• What systems and cycles do you see that are NOT self-sustaining?

As we continue to examine nature, nature feeds us back: with foods, beauty, wisdom. 

Regenerative cycles have an innate balance.

How can you find balance in relationship with yourself and the world?

Be the doughnut you wish to see in the world. 

Create what you desire, don't just push against what you don't

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Put your energy into creating what you want to see in the world, not just against what you don’t.

Here’s something interesting:

The root words of “control” are contra and rota, which mean “against the wheel.”

The roots of “influence” are in and fluere, meaning “in the flow.”

Control is against.

Influence is flow.

We are so much more powerful in a flow state, when we are riding with a current we desire—even if we’re trying to redirect it—than we are when we’re pushing against a current, a force, or someone else.

Pushing against something by attempting to control or overpower actually reinforces the polarity and strengthens each opposing force.

If we’re not careful, we become entrenched in the pushing itself and don’t put any energy into where we’re actually trying to go—which deepens that groove of polarity.

“What we resist, persists.” This is why. This is the trap of the binary.

If we ride the current—or create it—we’re accepting what is AND adding our input to help direct it. It gets us out of the polarity of for/against and into some other possibility.

Choosing not to push against doesn’t have to look like surrender: it can look like transformation.

This is one of the reasons I work with my clients to focus on what they are FOR, how they desire to move the needle—and not just on what they are against.

For sure, there is plenty of work to be done in the world for those of us who hold a vision for a more beautiful planet—but true power comes from creating new possibilities.

Power is drained when we focus solely on resisting the old.

The power of creation amplifies itself. The power of control drains itself.

Make sure you are directing as much energy as possible to the NEW possibility, the one you are here to help create.

This is why I often use creativity as a gateway for self-development + systems evolution with my clients—to get us into our own unique flow of authentic power.

It’s our truest power because it’s generative, procreative, and evolutionary—not just a resistant stance to an external force, which creates a closed, binary system.

Doesn’t it feel more fun to be wild, playful, and expansive to create something with that energy than to try to control everything?

Aren’t there more possibilities in creativity and generativity than there are in destruction?

What’s the thing that only you can create? That’s your r/evolution.