3. Application – Ki energy Absolute neutrality, being one with what you do, no judgement, total flow, total and effortless awareness, doing but not doing, integration of body mind and soul, being in the moment, joyfully resolving difficult situations.
5. Self-regulation ‘The willingness to exert one’s effort toward one’s most important goals, while taking setbacks and failures as opportunities to learn, identify weaknesses and address them, and develop new strategies toward achieving those goals.’ Crocker et al 2006, 1749
6. Self-regulation - flavours Up regulation; promoting more appropriate responses Down regulation; suppressing inappropriate responses
7. Wu Wei – automaticity in action Wu may be translated as not haveor without; Wei may be translated as do, act, serve as, govern or effort. The literal meaning of Wu Wei is "without action" and is often included in the paradox weiwuwei: "action without action" or "effortless doing".
8. Elements of strategy An objective without a deadline is a wish. A deadline without an objective is a waste.
9. Finally: our top five Aim for Wu wei; effortless effectiveness Use dissociation for an external perspective Manage your awareness to challenge your assumptions in a structured way Employ self-regulation for fresh thinking and new insights Practice automaticity to stay nimble, flexible, adaptable
10. Sources/Further reading The Confucius connection: from cultural roots to economic growth – Geert Hofstede & Michael Harris Bond, Organizational Dynamics 1988 Mindfulness – Ellen J. Langer The unbearable automaticity of being – Bargh & Chartrand, American Psychologist 1999 New frontiers for Self-Regulation research in I/O psychology – Wood, Applied Psychology 2005 If we are so rich, why aren’t we happy? MihayliCsikszentmihalyi, American Psychologist, October 1999
Editor's Notes
I’m grateful to RobBriner for letting me know that EMW will be the theme of the Academy of Management’s next annual conference later this year.So what?Well, who are the Academy of Management … ?!
Ki energy exercise – armsSteven Seagal – Ki + locksExample of a lock – effortless effectiveness in actionWe’ll now take a quick look at two approximations of this from recent psychology research
These are the areas we will cover very briefly.The principle is that an understanding of how to do one leads to an ability to explore the next.The first one we’ll look at is awareness.
Basically this is how we “adapt and survive”. It’s Darwin, acting at the level of the individual, and in the moment.Broadly there are two flavours of self regulation.
There is another less commonly referenced sense of wuwei; "action that does not involve struggle or excessive effort".The concept of "effortless action" is a part of TaoistInternal martial arts such as T'ai chi.It also implies “natural” action. Sun Tzu’s Art of War states that the primary military strategy is to win the war without fighting a battle.Chapter 3 “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence.”It’s the complete opposite of the Western approach of throwing more and more energy at a situation until it works out.So let’s look at an example of what awareness, dissociation, self-regulation and automaticity can achieve.
Our take on what strategy is fundamentally all about (more detail on Thursday) is based on an old Japanese proverb.We didn’t know that when we came up with it.My own experience in putting this together;Years banging on about itGraham saying 2 months ago when are you going to do itSetting a dateThe rest you know …Now to recap
Picking up on the slide at the beginning which is what we are all about, this is our top five suggestions for you to take away from today.
