The Business Case For Focusing On The Essential

The True Self center of the IAMX Compass is a tool that shifts organizations into alignment with their best performance, one individual at a time. It starts with personal alignment with your essential self – your Best Self as defined by you.

The results for people who regularly work with True Self are radical – a complete transformation into creating your work and life exactly as you desire. Likewise in an organization, individual by individual, we can transform how we conduct business by amplifying best practices, leaving behind once and for all the practices that deplete people, resources and the planet.

We use the True Self Process to talk about what is essential versus what is drama, and thus create awareness of our attention. What we focus on is what we create. So the choices we make in our focus are critical to the results we achieve.

Most business people would easily agree that they want to achieve the kind of results that are possible when the people involved in the business are performing at their best. But too often, our problem solving natures pull us into a focus on ‘fixing the drama’. Which results in more drama!

You know you are focusing on drama when you are blaming others, your choices are driven by fear, or you are struggling to achieve what you want.

The alternative is to focus on what is already working well, on your strengths, on what you can appreciate, on the positive – what we call ‘the essential’. Here’s a view of the most common words our clients have used with the True Self Process:

The more attention we put on being our Best Self, on acting from a calm and centered place, on supporting people in being their best, the more best case results we can achieve. Focus on the Essential is the single most important leadership skill to have.

One of the tricky aspects of Focusing on the Essential is that it’s looking at something intangible. It’s like putting your trust in the wind: you can’t actually see it but you can see the effect it creates. How do you put your trust in something like the wind?

Two things are critical:

  1. Personal experience with an Essential Focus
  2. Organizational understanding of a collective Essential Focus

You can put your trust in Focusing on the Essential when you see for yourself the results: the increasing ability to create your experience exactly as you want. Unless you learn to trust what happens when you focus on your own personal Best Self, you will not have the clarity, confidence or courage to guide others to their Best Self, let alone be able to model the behavior for others.

You can put your trust in Focusing on the Essential when you understand the benefit of doing so for your business, and the organizational cost of a drama focus. A simple cost / benefit analysis is needed.

The benefits of focusing on the essential:

  • Full engagement
  • Energy
  • Creativity
  • Innovation
  • Health
  • Productivity
  • Focus
  • Sustainability

The costs of focusing on drama:

  • Exhaustion
  • Health issues
  • Boredom
  • Stress
  • Insomnia
  • Detachment
  • False limitations
  • Decreased performance
  • Sabotage

Yes, the cost of drama is high and as a whole we have spent many trillions of dollars trying to fix problems with a drama focus. Think about the results: we focus on resolving conflict by fighting wars, we focus on healing by battling illness, we focus on interpersonal challenges by managing performance. In each of these examples we spend huge sums of money only to create more of what we are trying to resolve. Sure, there is good in the process, but the ultimate result is more of the same problem.

A focus on drama creates more drama.

Please, please, please know that in exploring these examples of drama I do so with great love and understanding for why people undertake drama oriented approaches. I understand. I see the results. I want something different. I know it’s possible. We have a better way…

The better way is to go back to step 1 above: personal experience. Instead of focusing others, my invitation is to simply focus on yourself. For example, if you are a leader and you are not getting the kind of behavior you want from your colleagues, stop focusing on them, focus on yourself, and get yourself back into alignment with your Best Self. I can assure you, any issue you ‘see out there’ is a reflection of turmoil that exists within yourself.

Here are some steps you can take to act on the business case for Focusing on the Essential, both for yourself and an organization:

  1. Make it personal. What is your personal point of pain? What is the businesses point of pain? Identify a compelling need for change for BOTH.
  2. Paint a picture. Use the True Self Process or some other way of demonstrating the benefit of a Best Self focus, and the cost of drama. Emphasize that a different way is needed to achieve results that are liberated from the constraints of drama.
  3. Bring hope. Ask yourself what you really want. Ask others about what they want. Start with your desire for something better. Be relentless about seeing the Best Self in yourself (first!) and in each person you work with.
  4. Keep it simple. Stay clear by being at your own Best Self. Drama is confusing and creates complexity.
  5. Take a stand. Be a leader for yourself and others – by being at your Best Self and by coaching and challenging others to be their Best Self.
  6. Become an expert. Being able to shift from drama to essence over and over will give you the confidence to coach and lead others.

In summary, people have become confused. Many people think that you solve a problem by spending time, money and resources battling the issue. Our premise is that no problem can truly be solved at the same level of consciousness that created the problem. Only by first shifting to our Best Self and inviting others to their Best Self, can we address the root cause of all problems which is a disconnect in our alignment with our essence.

As people remember that time with their families, their happiness, and their sense of well being is most important, we have an opportunity to help translate these realizations into more evolved ways of conducting business by returning to a Focus on the Essential.

Will you play a part? How are you creating more evolved ways of conducting business?

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