STRATEGY CREATIVITY AND MINDFULNESS
Professor Robin Matthews
Guest Lecture to HRM students
RANEPA Moscow May 2015
DRAFT
Please cite if you use the paper
Stress mindfulness and productivity
It is easy to see why mindfulness has become popular in management. In the UK more than 70
percent of doctor’s time is spent dealing with stress related problems; depression, addiction,
anxiety and physical disorders rooted in stress. Stress accounts for a similar proportion of
absenteeism from work, motivational problems, conflict, poor performance and inefficiency.
Stress is correlated inversely with productivity and mindfulness techniques seem to alleviate
stress.
Merely as a technique for managing stress, mindfulness fits the obsession of management with
increasing revenue, productivity and efficiency. But the heritage of mindfulness makes it a
potentially more inspiring entrant into management. It emerged from long traditions that
combine intuitive and analytical modes of understanding.
Here we try to clarify this potential by relating mindfulness to business strategy, using the
concept of organizational grammar and a mandala, the Strategic Enneagram. We use the
Enneagram mandala on executive programmes, postgraduate research and as a consulting
model with large and small organizations internationally. Over the last decade Economic
Strategies has published many studies and applications the Enneagram mandala.
Strategic decisions
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The terminology of game theory is useful here. According to game theory terminology,
management is a co-ordination game; concerned with co-ordinating decisions made at various
levels of organizational hierarchy, or at various nodes in the organizational network. Such coordination is impossible without formal rules such as procedures, structures, hierarchies and
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Strategy is a rather militaristic term describing decision making by firms and all kinds
organizations. Decisions in even small organizations involve large numbers of variables;
inputs, outputs, relationships with customers, suppliers, distributors, competitors, partners.
Decisions are made at many levels of an organization. Only in a Robinson Crusoe economy
would one person be responsible for all decisions. In hierarchical organizations, typically one
group is responsible for high level decisions about marketing, finance, human resources or at
the very top level, strategic decisions and another group is responsible for implementing high
level decisions. In network organizations, decisions are distributed throughout the network. A
large part of management work is concerned with co-ordinating decisions made by many
different people.
architectures that link these formal rules together. Additionally and perhaps more important are
informal rules such as cultures, mind sets and habits of thought, internal programming and
conditioning.
Even simplest personal decisions involve huge complexity, impossible to carry out without
rules. I will refer great variety of rules of the game that condition behaviour as organizational
grammar.
For convenience we will drop organizational and refer simply to grammar, but remember that
the function of grammar is to organize, introduce stability, convey information, or attempt to
achieve these things. These are positive aspects of grammar. But we should remember two
further aspects of grammar. First grammar may be dysfunctional. Precisely because of its
positive aspects it acts as a kind of corset constraining new thinking and new ways of behaving
and stifling the creativity required even for survival when for example business conditions
change dramatically or when we face crisis situations personally. Second, and this is very
important too, for the most part we are unaware of grammar.
Mindfulness
We expand on other dimensions of grammar later. For the moment we focus on personal
grammar, habits of mind, since they are the focus of mindfulness. Mindfulness is a technique
aimed at awareness and acceptance of personal conditioning; that is awareness and acceptance
of personal grammar. The concept of the present moment features largely in mindfulness
techniques; becoming momentarily aware of the present and accepting it for what it is; being
able to say or think this is the case, without familiar internal narratives of judgement, guilt,
regret, feelings of what should be so, or ought to be so or if only it were so, or for somebody
else the grass is greener. Rene Magritte’s picture captures precisely the objectivity that
mindfulness aims at.
Momentarily is an important qualification on the ability to achieve mindfulness. It can only be
achieved momentarily because very soon, almost instantaneously internal narratives kick in.
The idea behind mindfulness is that if moments of mindfulness occur frequently enough, the
destructive aspects of personal grammar can be neutralised without destroying the constructive
aspects, Mindfulness itself becomes a habit and stress can be alleviated.
The two main constructs of mindfulness are attention and acceptance. Attention refers to
becoming aware of the thoughts, feelings and the flood of internal narratives. Acceptance
means accepting their presence non-judgementally. Accepting non-judgementally is important
and difficult. It is difficult not to feel frustrated when the mind wanders into daydreams,
embarrassment, resentment, regret - if only I had done this or that instead of what I did - selfcongratulation or guilt. If we are observers of ourselves we are observers of these things too.
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Mindfulness involves techniques for stopping the flood of internal narratives, usually at fixed
times during the day. For example, many techniques resemble things taught by George
Gurdjieff, Peter Ouspensky and Alfred Richard Orage in Russia, France, the United States and
Britain early on the twentieth century; becoming aware of breathing, the rhythm of the in breath
and the out breath; quietly sensing our bodies, relaxing from scalp, the face, neck shoulders,
arm, first on the left side then the right, down through our thighs, legs, down to our feet and as
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Mindfulness techniques
if possible, allowing the ground to absorb our tensions; or just becoming aware from time to
time of where we are and what we are doing – being here now, being in the present- so much
time is spent in thinking about what we will do tomorrow, or tonight, forgetting the present; or
a teacher may suggest that at the end of the day, we review the events of the day, usually
beginning at the end and working backward to the beginning.
Returning to grammar, mindfulness techniques all involve distancing oneself from the
conventional grammar by becoming aware of how it rules us. Mindfulness as well as those
listed above include cognitive behaviour therapies (CBT), neuro linguistic programming
(NLP), pilates, dance therapies, role play, meditation, certain martial arts. These are only a few
techniques. There are many others. We may construct such practices for ourselves, but usually
this is difficult because the techniques we construct are likely to include the things that caused
the stress in the first place.
Mindfulness is a late entrant into management. But techniques of mindfulness, draw on a long
tradition in mysticism; Buddhism, Judaism, Sufism, Taoism, Zen, Catholic, Protestant and
Orthodox Christianity. Mindfulness is a subset of techniques developed by mystics over many
years. Mysticism is associated with the perception of the unity of all things. The mandala is an
important technique to be found all mystical traditions.
The enneagram as a mandala
Mandalas are symbols, used in Hinduism and Buddhism to focus attention, an aspect of
mindfulness and to develop creative or active imagination.
Geometrically, enneagrams are a class of nine point figures. The strategic enneagram referred
to here, is made up of an inner triangle and an irregular hexagon, a six point figure. It originates
in Sufi psychological and mystical teaching, the Pythagorean number system and traditional
religions. In the twentieth century the enneagram was developed by Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and
more recently by John Bennett. The Strategic Enneagram is symmetric. It is based on recurring
decimals; 1/3 (0.3333…) expressed in the inner triangle and hexagram based on 1/7
(0.1428571428571….), 2/7 (0.285714285714… and so on.
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Nothing is perceived directly, but everything is perceived indirectly via a grammar.
Approximately, grammar describes ways of looking at things, organizing things, or making
sense of things. Creative imagination is to see things from the perspective of a different
grammar, to understand differently and perhaps as a result to begin to organize and structure
things differently. Mindfulness is very similar. It is a set of techniques for simply observing
habitual often unconscious behaviour not judgementally; that is observing them from the
perspective of a different grammar.
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As a mandala, the Strategic Enneagram, illustrated in figure 1, is used to focus attention, which
links it to mindfulness and to developing creative or active imagination. Mindfulness has been
recently imported into management thinking, from Buddhism, as a technique for reflection and
managing stress. Active imagination was developed by the psychologist Carl Jung as a
technique understanding that comes from intuition and imagination rather than purely logical
processes. The philosopher Bertrand Russell illustrates the idea; the greatest scientists, he says,
use a combination of imagination and logic. They are able to bridge science and mysticism and
visualise problems through the active imagination and see solutions that would not be otherwise
apparent.
The Enneagram methodology is framework for analysing strategic problems and designing
creative strategies, combining intellect (analysis and logic) and imagination (creativity and
intuition). Application of the Enneagram mandala, to management to business and strategy
reflects the proposition that spiritual and mystical aspects of life are not separate from material
and practical aspects. Probably creativity cannot be taught. But it can be encouraged. The
Strategic Enneagram as a mandala is a way of evoking creativity in individuals and groups. It
incorporates, strategy, mindfulness and creativity.
The phrase strategic process is a series of states of a system over time. So we begin by
considering the process which we think of as being to some extent deliberate and second the
state itself, represented by the inner triangle in figure 1. In figure 1 both the process and system
state are embedded in grammar. Process is traced out by the hexagram 1, 4, 2, 8, 5, …… It has
a cognitive aspect (1,4,2), an implementation aspect (8,5,7) and since the situation is dynamic,
and adaptive or learning process (7,1) relating what is implemented to what is intended and
what values were intended and what was achieved (2,8). The enneagram is symmetric around
risk which arises when the purely cognitive is implemented. Purely cognitively, anything is
possible. In space and time only some things are.
Figure 1
The triangle illustrating the current state of an organization is embedded in the figure 1 and
further illustrated in figure 2.
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Figure 2
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The state of an organization (where it is now), illustrated in figure 2, is dynamic; changing,
evolving and adapting. It includes; outer dynamics (competitive issues, macro issues such as
demography, economics, technology) inner dynamics (assets and capabilities), payoffs (desired
goals of organizations or departments and organizational grammar. We will focus on the model
described in Figure 2.
Figure 3
We tend to think of creativity as creative individuals, Einstein, Picasso, Beethoven, but it also
emerges out of groups, teams and co-operation, perhaps primarily so, since one person’s
creativity is indebted to the past work of others and the variety of talent in group work;
summarized by the saying, it takes all sorts to make a world.
Strategy is decision making in uncertain situations, designed to achieve organizational goals or
payoffs. A network is a good metaphor describing an organization; firm, government,
‘subsidiary, army, partner, institution, charity, university, theatre play or a subset (part) of any
elements of this list. If we use the description decision making it is clear that strategic decision
making is distributed in an organization and that management is about co-ordinating decision
makers who have different goals and aspirations and certainly different talents.
Payoffs, a term borrowed from game theory, is a good description of an organizations
outcomes; financial, marketing competitive, and what we will focus on, payoffs related to talent
management, which I suppose includes recruitment, retention, motivation, and balancing
creativity, innovation, initiative with organizational stability in the context of the organizations
grammar.
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Briefly then management can be thought of as a co-ordination game in the context of an
organization’s grammar. Adding a further complexity, among individuals from eusocial
species, (including chimpanzees, ants and humans), prisoner dilemma strategies are common.
Eusocial individuals live in groups and if the grammar sets up prisoner dilemma situations, will
act opportunistically.
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Figure 4
Oganizational grammar describes the rules governing behaviour in organizations and between
organizations. Grammar has many dimensions, formal/informal, tacit/explicit, personal
social. Grammar includes corporate norms and culture. The 7 s framework approximates to
what I mean by grammar. But grammar is also expressed in artefacts, the things that surround
us and the way we do things. It also includes habitual thought and behaviour patterns. The
behavioural aspect links grammar to mindfulness.
But before mindfulness let’s consider creativity and talent, which I will treat, over-simply, as
equivalent. Creativity is the ability to look at things, events and situations from the
perspective of a different grammar than we are habitually accustomed to. If we describe
grammar not as rules but as a box, creativity is described as thinking outside the box. More
than that it’s writing, acting, designing, doing something that goes beyond habitual ways of
doing things. It may be a matter of seeing relationships between things or ideas that formerly
seemed to be unrelated.
It is said that creativity cannot be taught. Probably true. But it can be encouraged. Techniques
taught in Zen, Buddhism, Sufism or Christian mysticism are, among other things, techniques
for thinking creatively, thinking outside conventional grammars. Mindfulness uses these
techniques; partly for managing stress, depression, obsessive disorders, destructive, moods
that destroy happiness, absenteeism, lack motivation. Mindfulness includes familiar
techniques such as CBT, NLP, emotional intelligence, self-awareness, reflection, meta
cognition. Essentially they involve looking one grammar or personal, social or conventional
behaviour from the perspective of another, alternative grammar. For example some
mindfulness techniques seem very simple; observing ones breathing, or posture, or reflecting
back on the day in a way that is non-judgemental, but simply observing.
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To be aware and accepting of the present moment is to be aware of the grammar that rules the
present moment. A creative thought or act involves seeing grammar form another perspective.
If you like, seeing one grammar, from the perspective of another, which means that mindfulness
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These techniques are copybooks of techniques taught by mystics, including Gurdjeff and
Ouspensky. Here we are interested in the link between mindfulness and creativity. Both are
concerned with breaking familiar habit patterns; behaving, thinking, doing things that are
outside of the conventional grammar.
borders on mysticism and the techniques of mysticism, which we broadly describe as
meditation.
A concept central to the relationship, mindfulness, creativity and the Strategic Enneagram, is
organizational grammar. Grammar is a general way of describing rules for organizing, making
sense of things and introducing stability into a complex world. Grammar is both indispensable
to life and a restraint upon life; a limiting factor. If life were like a game of chess, grammar
would correspond to the rules of the game. There are many grammars in life. They operate like
algorithms. Creativity extends thought and action beyond the constraints of a particular
grammar. One way of describing mindfulness is that it is an attempt to see outside of aspects
of habitual personal grammar that in many cases are sources of discomfort, stress and
unproductive distressing thoughts and behaviour.
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APPENDIX
A task you might care to try
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1. Strategy: What is the principal issue for managing talent/creativity in organizations
today? Bear in mind outer dynamics (competitive issues, macro issues such as
demography, economics) inner dynamics (assets and capabilities), payoffs (desired
goals of organizations or departments and organizational grammar.
2. Intellect/analysis and creativity: A variety of issues will emerge from discussion. Is
it possible to generalize?
3. Mindfulness/creativity: Reflect on how the group decided on, resolved or tackled the
issue. What are the implications of the processes in your group work for talent
management?
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