Why Mindful Transformations?

Leaders, executives, managers. If they’re old school, they often ask it with an incredulous look.

What does Mindfulness have to do with an Enterprise? The no hierarchy thing is disruptive. Yes, the idea of focusing on value and cross-functional teams is new. But it makes a kind of sense.

Meditation? Meditation is for hippies, for yoga teachers, for people other than us.

I’ve responded to this kind of questioning by throwing the book at those who asked me. There are books I mention. I mention studies. The research backs it up. Websites like https://www.themindfulnessinitiative.org/building-the-case-for-mindfulness-in-the-workplace helps land the statistics on concrete cases. But lately, I do nothing like this.

Lately, I just summarize it into four main points.

So, here’s my new answer to why do you need Mindful Transformations which you can count in one hand while saving the thumb:

1. Creativity: Innovation is the name of the game. Innovation drives business, creates legendary products, makes a difference. But there’s another layer to Innovation: Innovation geared towards your work process. And let’s be frank: innovation feels great. When we innovate, we can see the effect that the change has on long-suffered problems. If we pause and recognize the moment, we want more. But that’s a great “if”. Mindfulness gives your people the tools to empower themselves to recognize the feeling and amplify it.
2. Joy: Often, work is very dull. Even if you feel challenged by it, the continuous burn down and stress can sap your energy. And in a Transformation, this translates into resistance and disengagement. Once R&D’s are in place, every single action becomes an uphill battle. Mindfulness helps counteract the effects of R&D in your Transformation by introducing moments of connection and joy in the middle of the workday.
3. Future Vision: If the day-to-day business is a slog, there’s zero interest in knowing the future of the company. If the routine brings only stress, our capacity to focus on long-term goals becomes compromised. By introducing stress-management techniques, we regain the enthusiasm for the future of our work and we can engage in a more creative fashion again.
4. Fly: One thing that Mindfulness techniques specialize on is not removing or crashing against obstacles in our path, but making those obstacles the path. Not reaching enough ratio? Instead of trying to brute-force our way, agility can help by testing hypothesis via MVPs. Are our metrics too innocent? The inherent fuzziness of User Story Points can help us adjust. But one thing that all these actions require is Mindset. If we try to implement an Agile framework without working on the Mindset of the people implementing it… we’re going to crash and burn upon that land called That was not my mistake. Mindset is the key to Agile and Mindfulness is a tool to work it. Not the only tool, perhaps not the best, but one that’s reliable, proven and has a great number of practitioners.

So, what do you think? Is throwing the book at people a better approach? Does Mindfulness make sense in a Digital Transformation? Do we need to create Mindful Transformations?

#mindfulness #digitaltransformation #agile