This blog is about my creative leadership journey at THNK. Within a half year, there are four THNK Modules. Each participant gets a mentor and a coach to guide them through their personal Quest and Endeavour.
For me, I started with an Endeavor to find an intuitive solution for the current and even more inevitable information overload. Because my field adds to that, I wanted to explore another side. I also believe that communication and information could be more intuitive, in one way or another, and more fluid in the future. People should be able to own the information flow coming to them or even more, have total control over what they experience in each day. After exploring for two modules and discussing with people from different perspectives I came to understand that:
- People are in desperate need for a solution to handle the information overload
- They want and need someone to help them managing the information overload
- They want people to stop sending information
- Everyone knows they are also part of the problem, by reposting, retweeting, re-doing everything in the content sharing world
- Every sector, industry, corporate, and even the nonprofits, are all in need for solutions to deal with information overload or a way to manage information more intuitively.
It’s a universal problem. No matter who, what or where you are.
But, there isn’t one solution. The big sharks are working on it. Like Facebook with Facebook Workplace. And Google with all the Google tools and products; also start-ups with all of their newest and innovative solutions. But still. There isn’t one way. And actually, I think there will never be one solution.
Because it became such an universal, big and bold topic I decided half way my THNK journey to leave it just the way it was. I still find the subject attractive and very interesting, but I leave it to the big corporates out there to find the right solutions for it. I also came to the conclusion that it’s not quite my thing to envision a future from a technology or innovative solution perspective. No, I’m definitely more interested in the human perspective behind this problem; How do we humans handle information overload and work with it?
So, this topic is now part of my 3rd Horizon (this model provides a structure for companies to assess potential opportunities for growth without neglecting performance in the present) and my own personal development.
Moments happen for a reason
The way me, myself and I deal with this universal problem and challenge is an answer that I’ve got two years ago via Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. He is the head of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage and the global network of Shambhala Meditation Centers. In a retreat at Dechen Choling he said that his father taught him:
We know that’s it’s here and we can’t stop it or try to ignore it. So, the question that you should ask yourself is: does it controls you, or do you control it yourself? And, how well is your mind trained and are you able to work with it from this perspective?”
I love to challenge myself and the people in my environment with this perspective and to once in awhile reflect on this. Or to make it a contemplation exercise during a meditation. It’s worth it to know your own mind or at least to try to understand what happens in yourself when dealing with this problem. Maybe it’s a subconscious matter, maybe not. Now, by reading this, I’ve brought it into your awareness so you can start questioning yourself if you like.
A change of Endeavour: an open door!
I’m a person with a lot of ideas. Some ideas will never happen, and some will come to life soon, for the sake of experimenting. The first and easiest door to walk through is my own business. It’s close to my heart and my first professional goal: to scale my company. However I felt sometimes misplaced at THNK, because there are a lot of social entrepreneurs trying to save the world somehow or someway, I didn’t exactly see the direct social impact I would create by scaling my business. But a talk later with the Managing Partner and my mentor brought to my awareness that everyone has is own goals and that it’s really not a good idea to stop doing what I do and to begin something totally different.
THNK isn’t only for social entrepreneurs. The combination that THNK aims for is the first necessity to be able to generate impact in the world. They thought it out very well from the beginning.
In fact, it’s the unique combination of social entrepreneurs, corporate minds and commercial entrepreneurs that makes THNK so special. These minds together have the biggest potential to envision great solutions that can create large and sustainable social impact. And through working together it will go faster because you gain insights from different perspectives.
For now, my main focus is to scale my business, create as much impact in the least amount of time for as many great companies that I can handle. Together with a great team of professionals and freelancers ( we are building a heartcore community) we can choose beautiful assignments that have a large organisational impact. It’s all about the human capital. That’s why we believe that communication is key and that if companies really are able to communicate (internally is our focus) from their core beliefs, that is what we believe: where real change happens.
And we have the examples that work. Just read our category ‘our work’ to get insights about the work that we do to get an idea. Know that our door is always open to have a coffee or a good conversation about how to change the world from within.
Together we are our human potential.
