Consciousness 2017 – Interactions are more important than entities
Continuing with our theme of Consciousness from the previous year, our annual Customer Summit Consciousness 2017 was held at the Ritz Carlton, Half Moon Bay, California, on the 20th and 21st of July 2017. With 90 distinguished representatives from 50 global corporations in attendance, including Sean Brady (Deputy Director, Software Engineering) from the Department of Defense, Pentagon, and the Mayor of Half Moon Bay himself, Consciousness 2017 was an enlightening and empathetic celebration of the broader Mu Sigma community.
The theme for this year’s summit was Networks, Entities and Interactions, coming out of a white paper written by Dhiraj earlier this year. The state of the industry is changing rapidly, and so is the nature of our clients’ problem space. Through years of existence, their organizations have scaled, leading to higher sophistication that has introduced increasing complexity into their systems. This has led to an increased vulnerability to high stakes challenges, such as disruption. To challenge the inherent complexity faced by scaling businesses, one must now look at an organization not as a hierarchical structure of people working in silos, but as a network of entities interacting with each other across functions. This need changes the way businesses need to think about how they operate, and more importantly, how they make business decisions across the strategic, tactical, and operational spectrum.
For Consciousness 2017, we partnered with the McChrystal Group, founded by retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal of the United States Army and his associate Chris Fussell, who shared their experiences and knowledge on how organizations and teams should be managed in today’s world.
The agenda spanned over two days, consisting of a Fireside chat of Dhiraj with Gen. Stanley, a couple of Dialogue Sessions revolving around the main theme of the Summit, a talk by Chris Fussell, a guided meditation session, and a presentation on Enablers of Confidence.
The consensus was that lack of consciousness is not only a real problem for today’s organizations, but that Organizational Consciousness needs to be considered as a journey that requires careful and continuous nurturing. The role of leadership in any organization should be to not just create an environment that facilitates the flow of information across teams and individuals in all directions, but lead by example in creating a culture shift as well. A culture that doesn’t punish failure, but promotes experimentation, a culture that encourages vulnerability and open feedback, and most importantly, one that focuses on the whole organization working towards being conscious when the interactions between various entities in the network take the forefront.
From the Summit, we are seeing three broad desired outcomes that organizations need to achieve, in order to become more conscious:
- A more agile organizational structure built on the foundation of interdependent, cross-functional teams focusing on interactions that enables fast and effective decision making on the front-lines
- A mindset and culture designed to enable confidence throughout the organization, guided by a clear organizational mission and driven by leadership
- An environment with the right people, processes, and platforms to create balance between short-term efficiency and long-term disruption
Thanks to all of you who attended the Summit. For those who couldn’t make it, hope to see you in Consciousness 2018!