I explained to my
audience very simply that if we understood the Tao Te Ching we might understand
something about the universe. First, we needed to move away from fruitless
speculation on the nature of God: as the first line says, The Tao that can be
spoken of is not the eternal Tao. What wisdom is there!
Second, having
established not talking about the Tao – the Way – the One because to do so was
itself self-defeating, we come on to the real profoundity: from One comes Two,
from Two comes Three, and from Three comes Ten Thousand things. What does this
mean: the immortal, invisible, ineffable One produces Two – Yin and Yang – and
Yin and Yang produce Three – Heaven, Earth and Humans – and these Three create
all things that are. Oh my!
You can see, as you
say this, people thinking – is he off his trolley? What has this to do with
business? Everything. Let’s just take one point: if we understood the Two – Yin
and Yang – and their ceaseless opposition, we would have known the economic
downturn had to happen. The Yang of success had reached such overblown
proportions that a Yin correction was inevitable – a correction, incidentally,
of the same magnitude as the bubble which spawned it. So this means, if we
understand the nature of the universe, the recession is far from over: we have
a lot further down to go. But knowing this is reassuring, because we are no
longer acting in uncertainty, but preparing for the storm.
The lessons from
this are simple and come in the form of three pressing questions: first, how do
we make people truly central in our organisations? How do we develop leadership
at the highest levels? And how do we educate people so that they ‘see’ more?
No one said, of
course, learning was easy!
The Mapping Motivation Series 