A Turning Point in the Market?

So you’ve done all that work on yourself – what’s next?  If taking your hard-earned learning out into the world and putting it to good use appeals to you, then read on…

This week’s blog is about discovering the power that lies in a (slightly) higher stage of awareness – where you can look at something in the world that doesn’t seem right – and suddenly make sense of all those contradictory views and arguments that seem to produce a lot more heat than light.

I’d like to start by asking how you ever got into personal development.

People usually look for personal development programs because of a sense that something is lacking in one or more of four perspectives on life.  The first perspective is about Engagement in life – internal processes that determine our experiences of stress, love, passion, meaning, creativity, etc – the stuff of the Turning Point.  The second perspective is about Effectiveness in life – our experiences of quality and equality of relationships, optimism, fun, family, network of friends, etc – the stuff of Mastery & Service.  The third perspective is more about Efficiency in life – making a difference, getting a good income, achieving measurable results, progress towards goals etc – the stuff of Breakthrough.  And the fourth perspective is about Sustainability, about purpose in life – our experience of seeking a secure future, a meaningful bigger picture, making a contribution in society, a sense of continuation etc – the stuff of Life, Death & Purpose. 

Where were your strongest growing experiences – check the course and the life perspective that it primarily addressed.

The interesting thing is that those four perspectives include every possible human experience.  The courses are all history now, but the four perspectives are eternal and universally applicable – to individuals, relationships, organisations, society, business and government.  If you can grasp the essential and distinctive energy of each perspective, then you have the power to see the deeper causes and effects that elude most people.  The key to growth in any entity is in balancing those four perspectives – not in doing more of the same and hoping for a different result.

Balancing these perspectives works like magic, because any under-developed perspective undermines the other three and soon becomes a limitation that won’t go away.  They are like the four legs of a table.  The magic is, that bringing balance doesn’t require much effort – it mostly requires awareness of what is and what isn’t lacking.  Which table leg is short?

Here is one big, broad example drawn from the market economy we live in.  Markets work well when they include 100 or more competing businesses.  A market quickly determines the best value for money and thus rewards Efficiency; it considers the longer-term likelihood of continuing profits and thus rewards Sustainability within that ecosystem; it considers the current sentiment of participants and thus rewards collective optimism (Effectiveness); and finally it considers those who create innovation and those who invest in it, thus rewarding Engagement.  These four elements (the four perspectives) create a natural and healthy balance for evolutionary development and when all four are in balance, optimal growth occurs.  We create various indices to track overall market growth and it's so important that we announce it every night on the news!

Markets are about commercial endeavours, but society as a whole also benefits from a healthy market – innovation (Engagement) creates opportunity and jobs; Efficiency keeps a focus on productivity and measurable progress; Sustainability ensures future employment within that ecosystem; and genuine collective optimism (Effectiveness) means less stress and a better quality of life experience.

I’ll use the banking sector as an example of the effects of perspectives out of balance, and how to discover what’s really going on…

A “four-perspectives diagnostic” would track the symptoms to locate the imbalance. Most obvious is the diminished collective customer sentiment and quality of life with regard to banks – the Effectiveness of customer relationships is generally poor.  Why has that diminished?  Because the banks can’t lose – at the very worst case performance, we bail them out – so Sustainability is very unhealthy!  How did that become so unhealthy?  Because they don’t have to compete to survive – cost of money + overheads + profits + bonuses = fees and interest passed on the customers – so Efficiency is diminished.  How did it become like that?  That would be from lack of innovation – for some reason banks haven’t had to Engage customers.  Why not?  Because as our society became more sophisticated – in today’s world every member of society has to use a bank – the market became “inescapable”. 

So Engagement is the weak quadrant – the perspective that is undermining the other three.  When one of the essential elements is lost, in this case innovation-focussed Engagement, then the natural evolutionary process stalls and the consequent over-focus on investor profit becomes unintegrated – “How can we extract more profit without adding more value for customers?”  The recent history of financial institutions in general attests to this – announcing record profits and raising interest rates in increasingly difficult and uncertain times – and the no-choice public gets a gut feeling that they are being screwed.  How much do you trust the financial institutions that you are forced to deal with, to act in your best interests?  That’s the measure of Effectiveness.

To restore health to that banking ecosystem example is simple in principle – if a market is “inescapable” it must either be regulated or made “escapable”.  For example, set up a government-regulated, not-for-profit, basic banking service with the single objective of maintaining the lowest possible customer fees for essential services.  It might only offer personal savings and home loans tied to RBA rates, and it would leave the hundreds of other non-essential banking products and services to market forces.  A hypothetical example perhaps, but imagine if the general public never had to use the big four commercial banking services for normal daily life. 

Innovation would suddenly spring from the need to Engage customers and a healthy banking ecosystem would be restored very rapidly.

Now, one example may not provide all the tools to equip you to fix the whole world.  But the same principle, combined with a VitallyMe report, can equip you to fix your own world – by discovering your own imbalance on those four perspectives and recommending restorative practices. 

Then you can fix the world ;-)