Strategy vs Reality: Navigating the Pains & Gains of Narrowing our Organizations down to Goals and KPIs.
The Brafe Tuesday sessions are designed to be a deep sharing space, where we confront the challenges of breaking away from the status quo and creating real, fundamental change. These gatherings provide an opportunity for us to explore the dissonances that arise between our entrepreneurial vision, our teams, and the systems within which we operate.
Arriving
The session started by actually arriving not only in the space, but also within ourselves, our thoughts, emotions and physical being. Coming from various different contexts of our day to day life, we zoomed into the now and connected consciously with ourselves.
A meditation guided us into the awareness of our collective space, inspiring us to tune into the qualities this space would need to be safe enough for us to show up authentically and share vulnerably. Through ever-repeating questions, Ally led us into an imagination of the best possible we-space we could potentially create together. When all of us have arrived individually arrived before, we have by now arrived into our shared space as a connected group.
From this collective state, we explored the topic of this brafe tuesday: As entrepreneurs, our journeys are often a balancing act between strategic planning and the unpredictable waves of reality. What does a strategy mean for ourselves personally? How much attached or detached do we experience ourselves with it? How do we hold the dynamic of a plan and the creative chaos within your self ? How does our own tendencies reflect on the entire dynamic with your team ? What would be the best possible way for a change making entrepreneur to hold this process within themselves and for an organization at large?
Relating
After being introduced into the dimensions of the topic itself, we found ourselves deeply immersed in this interplay of stability & uncertainty, of structure & chaos, of productivity & creativity, surrounded and accompanied by a community of fellow change-making entrepreneurs.
With old and new people being present, we started sharing our very own experiences with the topic, either on stage in front of the entire group, our with our triads. There is a format which has helped us to dive deeper into our explorations with each other and relate in our sharing.
Sharing from first person Experience:
Everybody shared from their very personal experiences with the topic. There was no space for what you have potentially heard about others. Focusing on your very own experiences allowed for a very raw sharing. I have been able to explore, while sharing, my own relation to the topic of navigating uncertainty for myself and others. And while sharing my own experiences in this, I could feel my body reacting to it - my blood pressure going up, my muscles tightening, and then again relaxing into deep breaths.
While I was sharing my story uninterruptedly, I was able to realize my very own struggles attached to the topic presented and how they impact me, and my surrounding, even beyond my entrepreneurial context.
Active Listening
Once it was the others persons turn of sharing their experience with the topic the one listening would fully tune into this persons exploration, curious to find out what they would explore next about themselves. Once you have overcome the trigger of crafting your own story in your head that would sound nice on your turn of sharing, and fully connect and relate with the other person, it feels like magic. We seldomly gift each other with our utmost attention and its phenomenal how much more you can relate to once you to.
In a triad one person was exploring an perspective on the topic, that triggered such sense of hope and freedom within me. I have never approached the emergence of strategy as radically as this person does it. Just listening this persons deep struggles, frustrations, and how he has overcome them through a deep mindset shift, my entire self got excited.
Non-Judgemental Resonance
After each sharing, we would provide resonance to each other. Not so much on how we liked or disliked what the other person was saying and rather what emerged within us while listening and how we could learn from that.
For me personally, I could experience how my body reacted when one person shared about a deep frustration they experienced when they realized a very strong attachment to a plan, which then went wrong. I could literally feel the disappoint within myself. I could also explored where this disappointment within me came from: it made clear to me how often I have fallen in love with a plan, a solution … more so than the problem itself. What a realization.
Including More…
In the end, we came back together in the big group and heard some voices from the sharing and explorations. There has been a big appreciation for the space itself, the quality of sharing, and the opportunity to take time for this sort of exploration. Some were surprised about the depth of the topic, as it sounded so functional in the first place. Others were moved by their own and others openness in their explorations.
It shows the importance of acknowledging different dimensions of our experience and that they are interlinked:
The experience I make in the context of my role as an entrepreneur
The experience I make on a very personal & individual level
The experience we make as a collective as a group
The experience we make as part of a system we engage in
The entrepreneurial world follows a pace with only little time for reflection on these deeper levels. And as we are running, we miss to see and integrate essential parts of ourselves and lots of the complexities around us. This is why we then experience spaces, like brafe.space, as unconventionally slow and profound.
Yet the questions remain: How do we enter back into our roles and environments after these reflections? What would it take to meaningfully integrate our insights and make them part of the various roles we play ?