Building A Mindful Team

Dr Norman Chorn

You want a beautiful team?

YOU WANT TO BUILD A MINDFUL TEAM?

You’re probably aware that mindful people are more productive and creative, make better decisions, and cope more easily with stressful conditions. And now you want to see these characteristics in your teams at work - right?

Well, that makes a lot of sense - except that we cannot simply train individuals in mindfulness and expect that to result in a mindful team! Mindful individuals do not necessarily make a mindful team. Teams are not merely a group of individuals who work together. Teams are complex systems of processes, structures and patterns of behaviour. So, what is mindfulness and how do we create a mindful team?

WHAT IS MINDFULNESS IN AN ORGANISATION?

Mindfulness is generally understood as being aware, focused and open to experiences in a non-judgemental way. In an organisational setting, it enables individuals to purposefully direct their attention and energy to the things that matter for the organisation. This is obviously a good outcome for an organisation. The neuroscience of mindfulness includes three key processes:

‣ Sense-making: how to see and make sense of the world around us

‣ Neuro-plasticity: how to rewire the brain and create new neural pathways to learn new things

‣ Bio feedback: the connection between the brain and body that allows us to receive information through our whole body - ie all our senses.

When applying these principles to a team, three processes stand out:

‣ Framing: how to define and scope the challenges faced by the team - and how these should be addressed

‣ Team learning: how to facilitate the learning and decision making processes within the team

‣ Connecting: how to connect the team to the rest of the organisation and enable meaningful information exchange.

HOW TO BUILD A MINDFUL TEAM?

The mindful team purposefully directs attention and energy to those things that matter

to the organisation. The factors that enable this are:

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Dr Norman Chorn is a strategist and organisation development practitioner with the BrainLink Group. He uses principles of neuroscience to address the challenges of developing strategy in a complex and uncertain environment. His particular areas of focus are strategy in conditions of uncertainty; organisational and cultural alignment; and strategic leadership.

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Part 3: Accelerate Performance With Strategic Alignment - Develop The Appropriate Culture

By Norman Chorn • 27 Mar, 2023

In my previous article "Accelerate Performance with Strategic Alignment - Define the logic of your strategy", we demonstrated the alignment between the market and business strategy by matching the logic of the market with the logic of the strategy. The Explore logic emphasises a market where customers seek new solutions for emerging requirements. The strategy responds by exploring new opportunities and driving for growth. The Exploit logic occurs in a more stable market where customers seek lower costs and reliability of supply. The appropriate strategy focuses on operational efficiency and building close customer relationships. Culture is key to shaping the capabilities of the business to successfully implement strategy . It drives the way that people behave, decisions are made and actions are taken. It determines, therefore, the strategy that is actually realised in the market, as opposed to that which is merely intended. We make a key distinction between the desired culture and the appropriate culture. The desired culture is what people may choose because it sounds attractive and in vogue. However, the appropriate culture is the culture that is required to successfully implement the chosen strategy. Often, these can be different. For example, people might seek to develop a culture that is ‘innovative’, ‘flexible’ and ‘empowering’, but this may not be the appropriate culture needed to successfully implement the business strategy. DEVELOP THE APPROPRIATE CULTURE FOR YOUR STRATEGY Developing the appropriate culture requires a deliberate emphasis on certain cultural attributes and making trade-offs on others. As we will see, the attributes that are traded off are usually the opposites of those that are emphasised.

Part 2: Accelerate Performance with Strategic Alignment - Define the Logic of your Strategy

By Norman Chorn • 27 Mar, 2023

In Part 1 "How to Accelerate Performance with Strategic Alignment - Understand the Logic of the Market" we outlined different market conditions and defined them in terms of two overarching logics — Exploring and Exploiting . To briefly recap, an Exploring logic is one where customers are seeking new solutions for emerging needs. It’s all about change and action. An Exploiting logic occurs in a more stable market in which the issues are about lowering costs and working collaboratively with customers. It’s a market that focuses on stability and cohesion. FORCES THAT SHAPE YOUR STRATEGY Clearly, it is one of these two logics — or a combination of both — that will shape your strategy as you operate in these markets. See figure 1 below that describes how these logics will form your business strategy: