Finally, some fear that personal mastery will threaten the estab-lished order of a well-managed company. This is a valid fear. Toempower people in an unaligned organization can be counterproduc-tive. If people do not share a common vision, and do not share com-mon mental models about the business reality within which theyoperate, empowering people will only increase organizational stressand the burden of management to maintain coherence and direc-tion. This is why the discipline of personal mastery must always beseen as one among the set of disciplines of a learning organization.An organizational commitment to personal mastery would be naiveand foolish if leaders in the organization lacked the capabilities ofbuilding shared vision and shared ment1:tJ.-models to guide localdecision makers.

THE DISCIPLINEOF PERSONAL MASTERY

The way to begin developing a sense of personal mastery is toapproach it as a discipline, as a series of practices and principlesthat must be applied to be useful. Just as one becomes a masterartist by continual practice, so the following principles and prac-tices lay the groundwork for continually expanding the discipline ofpersonal mastery.

Personal vision comes from within. Several years ago I was talkingwith a young woman about her vision for the planet. She said manylovely things about peace and harmony, about living in balance withnature. As beautiful as these ideas were, she spoke about themunemotionally, as if these were things that she should want. I askedher if there was anything else. After a pause, she said, "I want to liveon a green planet," and started to cry. As far as I know, she hadnever said this before. The words just leaped from her, almost witha will of their own. Yet, the image they conveyed clearly had deepmeaning to her-perhaps even levels of meaning that she didn'tunderstand.

Most adults have little sense of real vision. We have goals andobjectives, but these are not visions. When asked what they want,

many adults will say what they want to get rid of. They'd like a bet-ter job-that is, they'd like to get rid of the boring job they have.They'd like to live in a better neighborhood, or not have to worryabout crime, or about putting their kids through school. They'd likeit if their mother-in-law returned to her own house, or if their backstopped hurting. Such litanies of "negative visions" are sadly com-monplace, even among very successful people. They are the byprod-uct of a lifetime of fitting in, of coping, of problem solving. As ateenager in one of our programs once said, "We shouldn't call them'grown ups' we should call them 'given ups.'"

A subtler form of diminished vision is "focusing on the meansnot the result." Many senior executives, for example, choose "highmarket share" as part of their vision. But why? "Because I want ourcompany to be profitable." Now, you might think that high profitsis an intrinsic result in and of itself, and indeed it is for some. Butfor surprisingly many other leaders, profits too are a means towarda still more important result. Why choose high annual profits?"Because I want us to remain an independent company, to keepfrom being taken over." Why do you want that? "Because I want tokeep our integrity and our capacity to be true to our purpose instarting the organization." While all the goals mentioned are legiti-mate, the last-being true to our purpose-has the greatest intrin-sic significance to these executives. All the rest are means to the end,means which might change in particular circumstances. The abilityto focus on ultimate intrinsic desires, not only on secondary goals, is acornerstone of personal mastery.

Real vision cannot be understood in isolation from the idea ofpurpose. By purpose, I mean an individual's sense of why he or sheis alive. No one could prove or disprove the statement that humanbeings have purpose. It would be fruitless even to engage in thedebate. But as a working premise, the idea has great power. Oneimplication is that happiness may be most directly a result of livingconsistently with your purpose. George Bernard Shaw expressed theidea pointedly when he said:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognizedby yourself as a mighty one . . . the being a force of natureinstead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievancescomplaining that the world will not devote itself to making youhappy.8

This same principle has been expressed in some organizations as"genuine caring." In places where people felt uncomfortable talkingabout personal purpose, they felt perfectly at ease talking aboutgenuine caring. When people genuinely care, they are naturallycommitted. They are doing what they truly want to do. They are fullof energy and enthusiasm. They persevere, even in the face of frus-tration and setbacks, because what they are doing is what they mustdo. It is their work.

Everyone has had experiences when work flows fluidly; when onefeels in tune with a task and works with a true economy of means.Someone whose vision calls him to a foreign country, for example,may find himself learning a new language far more rapidly than heever could before. You can often recognize your personal visionbecause it creates such morm:nts; it is the goal pulling you forwardthat makes all the work worthwhile.

But vision is different from purpose. Purpose is similar to a direc-tion, a general heading. Vision is a specific destination, a picture ofa desired future. Purpose is abstract. Vision is concrete. Purpose is"advancing man's capability to explore the heavens." Vision is "aman on the moon by the end of the 1960s." Purpose is "being thebest I can be," "excellence." Vision is breaking the four minute mile.

It can truly be said that nothing happens until there is vision. Butit is equally true that a vision with no underlying sense of purpose,no calling, is just a good idea-all "sound and fury, signifyingnothing."

Conversely, purpose without vision has no sense of appropriatescale. "You and I may be tennis fans and enjoy talking aboutground strokes, our backhands, the thrill of chasing down a cornershot, of hitting a winner. We may have a great conversation, butthen we find out that I am gearing up to play at my local countryclub and you are preparing for Wimbledon. We share the sameenthusiasm and love of the game, but at totally different scales ofproficiency. Until we establish the scales we have in mind, we mightthink we are communicating when we're not."

Ultimately, vision is intrinsic not relative. It's something youdesire for its intrinsic value, not because of where it stands you rel-ative to another. Relative visions may be appropriate in the interim,but they will rarely lead to greatness. Nor is there anything wrongwith competition. Competition, which literally means "strivingtogether" (from the Latin competrere) is one of the best structuresyet invented by humankind to allow each of us to bring out the best

in each other. But after the competition is over, after the vision has(or has not) been achieved, it is your sense of purpose that drawsyou further, that compels you to set a new vision. This, again, is whypersonal mastery must be a discipline. It is a process of continuallyfocusing and refocusing on what one truly wants, on one's visions.

Vision is multifaceted. There are material facets of our visions,such as where we want to live and how much money we want to havein the bank. There are personal facets, such as health, freedom, andbeing true to ourselves. There are service facets, such as helping oth-ers or contributing to the state of knowledge in a field. All are partof what we truly want. Modern society tends to direct our attentionto the material aspects, and simultaneously foster guilt for ourmaterial desires. Society places some emphasis on our personaldesires-for example, it is almost a fetish in some circles to looktrim and fit-and relatively little on our desires to serve. In fact, itis easy to feel naive or foolish by expressing a desire to make a con-tribution. Be that as it may, it is clear from working with thousandsof people that personal visions span all these dimensions and more.It is also clear that it takes courage to hold visions that are not inthe social mainstream.

But it is exactly that courage to take a stand for one's vision thatdistinguishes people with high levels of personal mastery. Or, as theJapanese say of the master's stand, "When there is no break, noteven the thickness of a hair comes between a man's vision and hisaction."9

In some ways, clarifying vision is one of the easier aspects of per-sonal mastery. A more difficult challenge, for many, conies in facingcurren t reality.

People often have great difficulty talking about their visions, evenwhen the visions are clear. Why? Because we are acutely aware ofthe gaps between our vision and reality. "I would like to start myown company," but "I don't have the capital." Or, "I would like topursue the profession that I really love," but "I've got to make a liv-ing." These gaps can make a vision seem unrealistic or fanciful.They can discourage us or make us feel hopeless. But the gapbetween vision and current reality is also a source of energy. Ifthere was no gap, there would be no need for any action to move

toward the vision. Indeed, the gap is the source of creative energy.We call this gap creative tension. 10

Imagine a rubber band, stretched between your vision and cur-rent reality. When stretched, the rubber band creates tension, repre-senting the tension between vision and current reality. What doestension seek? Resolution or release. There are only two possibleways for the tension to resolve itself: pull reality toward the visionor pull the vision toward reality. Which occurs will depend onwhether we hold steady to the vision.

VISION

The principle of creative tension is the central principle of per-sonal mastery, integrating all elements of the discipline. Yet, it iseasily misunderstood. For example, the very term "tension" sug-gests anxiety or stress. But creative tension doesn't feel any particu-lar way. It is the force that comes into play at the moment when weacknowledge a vision that is at odds with current reality.

Still, creative tension often leads to feelings or emotions associ-ated with anxiety, such as sadness, discouragement, hopelessness, orworry. This happens so often that people easily confuse these emo-tions with creative tension. People come to think that the creativeprocess is all about being in a state of anxiety. But it is important torealize that these "negative" emotions that may arise when there iscreative tension are not creative tension itself. These emotions arewhat we call emotional tension.

If we fail to distinguish emotional tension from creative tension,we predispose ourselves to lowering our vision. If we feel deeplydiscouraged about a vision that is not happening, we may have astrong urge to lighten the load of that discouragement. There is oneimmediate remedy: lower the vision! "Well, it wasn't really that

important to shoot seventy-five. I'm having a great time shooting inthe eighties."

Or, "I don't really care about being able to play in recital. I'll haveto make money as a music teacher in any case; I'll just concentratethere." The dynamics of relieving emotional tension are insidiousbecause they can operate unnoticed. Emotional tension can alwaysbe relieved by adjusting the one pole of the creative tension that iscompletely under our control at all times-the vision. The feelingsthat we dislike go away because the creative tension that was theirsource is reduced. Our goals are now much closer to our currentreality. Escaping emotional tension is easy-the only price we pay isabandoning what we truly want, our vision.

The dynamics of emotional tension deeply resemble the dynam-ics of eroding goals that so troubled WonderTech in Chapter 7. Theinteraction of creative tension and emotional tension is a shiftingthe burden dynamic, similar to that of eroding goals, that can berepresented as follows:

When we hold a vision that differs from current reality, a gapexists (the creative tension) which can be resolved in two ways. Thelower balancing process represents the "fundamental solution":taking actions to bring reality into line with the vision. But chang-ing reality takes time. This is what leads to the frustration and emo-tional tension in the upper balancing process, the "symptomaticsolution" of lowering the vision to bring it into line with currentreality.

But a onetime reduction in the vision usually isn't the end of the

story. Sooner or later new pressures pulling reality away from the(new, lowered) vision arise, leading to still more pressures to lowerthe vision. The classic "shifting the burden" dynamic ensues, a sub-tle reinforcing spiral of failure to meet goals, frustration, loweredvision, temporary relief, and pressure anew to lower the vision stillfurther. Gradually, the "burden" is shifting increasingly to loweringthe vision.

At WonderTech, relieving emotional tension took the form ofdecline in key operating standards for delivery performance thatseemed impossible to meet. The decline was especially difficult tosee because it was gradual. During each crisis at Wonder Tech deliv-ery standards eroded just a bit relative to where they had settledafter the last crisis. So, too, do eroding personal goals go unrecog-nized, as we gradually surrender our dreams for the relationships wewant to have, the work we want to do, and the type of world wewant to live in.In organizations, goals erode because of low tolerance for emo-

tional tension. Nobody wants to be the messenger with bad news.The easiest path is to just pretend there is no bad news, or betteryet, declare victory-to redefine the bad news as not so bad by low-ering the standard against which it is judged.

The dynamics of emotional tension exist at all levels of humanactivity. They are the dynamics of compromise, the path of medioc-rity. As Somerset Maugham said, "Only mediocre people are alwaysat their best."

We allow our goals to erode when we are unwilling to live withemotional tension. On the other hand, when we understand creativetension and allow it to operate by not lowering our vision, visionbecomes an active force. Robert Fritz says, "It's not what the visionis, it's what the vision does." Truly creative people use the gapbetween vision and current reality to generate energy for change.

For example, Alan Kay, who directed the research at Xerox PaloAlto Research Center (PARC) which in many ways gave birth to thepersonal computer, actually had a vision for a different machine,which he called the "dynabook." This would be a book that wasinteractive. A child could test out his or her understanding, playgames, and creatively rearrange the static presentation of ideasoffered by the traditional book. Kay failed, in a sense, because the"dynabook" never became a reality. But the vision reshaped thecomputer industry. The prototype machines developed at PARCachieved the functionality-windows, pull-down menus, mouse con-

trol, iconic displays (images rather than words )~that was intro-duced commercially almost ten years later in the Macintosh.

Bill Russell, the legendary center for the Boston Celtics basket-ball team during its historic run of eleven professional champi-onships in thirteen years, used to keep his own personal scorecard.He graded himself after every game on scale from one to one hun-dred. In his career he never achieved more than sixty-five. Now,given the way most of us are taught to think about goals, we wouldregard Russell as an abject failure. The poor soul played in overtwelve hundred basketball games and never achieved his standard!Yet, it was the striving for that standard that made him arguably thebest basketball player ever. II

It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does.Mastery of creative tension transforms the way one views "fail-

ure." Failure is, simply, a shortfall, evidence of the gap betweenvision and current reality. Failure is an opportunity for learning~about inaccurate pictures of current reality, about strategies thatdidn't work as expected, about the clarity of the vision. Failures arenot about our unworthiness or powerlessness. Ed Land, founderand president of Polaroid for decades and inventor of instant pho-tography, had one plaque on his wall. It read:

A mistake is an event, the full benefit of which has not yet beenturned to your advantage.

Mastery of creative tension brings out a capacity for persever-ance and patience. A Japanese executive in one of our seminarsonce told me how, in his view, Japanese and Americans have quitedifferent attitudes toward time. He said that, "U.S. businessmen inJapan to negotiate business deals often find the Japanese evasiveand reticent to 'get down to business.' The American arrives inJapan on a tight, carefully planned five-day schedule and immedi-ately wants to get to work. Instead, the Japanese greet them with apolite, formal tea ceremony instead, never getting down to nuts andbolts. As the days go by, the Japanese keep their slow pace, while theAmericans become antsier and antsier. For the American," the exec-utive said, "time is the enemy. For the Japanese, time is an ally."

More broadly, current reality itself is, for many of us, the enemy.We fight against what is. We are not so much drawn to what we wantto create as we are repelled by what we have, from our current real-ity. By this logic, the deeper the fear, the more we abhor what is, the

more "motivated" we are to change. "Things must get bad enough,or people will not change in any fundamental way."

This leads to the mistaken belief that fundamental changerequires a threat to survival, a "burning platform" in the words ofsome. This crisis theory of change is remarkably widespread. Yet, itis also a dangerous oversimplification. Often in workshops or pre-sentations, I will ask, "How many of you believe people and organ-izations only change, fundamentally, when there is a crisis?"Reliably, 75 to 90 percent of the hands go up. Then I ask people toconsider a life where everything is exactly the way they would like-there are absolutely no problems of any sort in work, personally,professionally, in their relationships, or their community. Then Iask, "What is the first thing you would seek if you had a life ofabsolutely no problems?" The answer, overwhelmingly, is "change-to create something new." So human beings are more complexthan we often assume. We both fear and seek change. Or, as one sea-soned organization change consultant once put it, "People don'tresist change. They resist being changed."

Mastery of creative tension leads to a fundamental shift in ourwhole posture toward reality. Current reality becomes the ally notthe enemy. An accurate, insightful view of current reality is as impor-tant as a clear vision. Unfortunately, most of us are in the habit ofimposing biases on our perceptions of current reality. "We learn torely on our concepts of reality more than on our observations,"writes Robert Fritz. "It is more convenient to assume that reality issimilar to our preconceived ideas than to freshly observe what wehave before our eyes." 12 If the first choice in pursuing personal mas-tery is to be true to your own vision, the second fundamental choicein support of personal mastery is commitment to the truth.

The two are equally vital to generating creative tension. Or, asFritz puts it, "The truly creative person knows that all creating isachieved through working with constraints. Without constraintsthere is no creating."

"STRUCTURAL CONFLICT":THE POWER OF YOUR POWERLESSNESS

Many people, even highly successful people, harbor deep beliefscontrary to their personal mastery. Very often, these beliefs arebelow the level of conscious awareness. To see what I mean, try the

following experiment. Say out loud the following sentence: "I cancreate my life exactly the way I want it, in all dimensions-work,family, relationships, community, and larger world." Notice yourinternal reaction to this assertion, the "little voice" in the back ofyour head. "Who's he kidding?" "He doesn't really believe that.""Personally and in work, sure-but, not 'community' and 'thelarger world.'" "What do I care about the 'larger world' anyhow?"All of these reactions are evidence of deep-seated beliefs.

Fritz, who has worked with literally tens of thousands of peopleto develop their creative capacities, has concluded that practicallyall of us have a "dominant belief that we are not able to fulfill ourdesires." Where does this belief come from? Fritz argues that it is analmost inevitable by-product of growing up:

As children we learn what our limitations are. Children are right-fully taught limitations essential to their survival. But too oftenthis learning is generalized. We are constantly told we can't haveor can't do certain things, and we may come to assume that wehave an inability to have what we want."13

Most of us hold one of two contradictory beliefs that limit ourability to create what we really want. The more common is belief inour powerlessness-our inability to bring into being all the thingswe really care about. The other belief centers on unworthiness-that we do not deserve to have what we truly desire. Fritz claims thathe has met only a handful of individuals who do not seem to haveone or the other of these underlying beliefs. Such an assertion is dif-ficult to prove rigorously because it is difficult to measure deepbeliefs. But if we accept it as a working premise, it illuminates sys-temic forces that can work powerfully against creating what wereally want.

Fritz uses a metaphor to describe how contradictory underlyingbeliefs work as a system, counter to achieving our goals. Imagine, asyou move toward your goal, there is a rubber band, symbolizing cre-ative tension, pulling you in the desired direction. But imagine alsoa second rubber band, anchored to the belief of powerlessness orunworthiness. Just as the first rubber band tries to pull you towardyour goal, the second pulls you back toward the underlying beliefthat you can't (or don't deserve to) have your goal. Fritz calls thesystem involving both the tension pulling us toward our goal andthe tension anchoring us to our underlying belief "structural con-

flict," because it is a structure of conflicting forces: pulling us simul-taneously toward and away from what we want.

Thus, the closer we come to achieving our vision, the more thesecond rubber band pulls us away from our vision. This force canmanifest itself in many ways. We might lose our energy. We mightquestion whether we really wanted the vision. "Finishing the job"might become increasingly difficult. Unexpected obstacles developin our path. People let us down. All this happens even though weare unaware of the structural conflict system, because it originatesin deep beliefs of which we are largely unaware-in fact, ourunaware-ness contributes to the power of structural conflict.

Given beliefs in our powerlessness or unworthiness, structuralconflict implies that systemic forces come into play to keep us from

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succeeding whenever we seek a vision. Yet, we do succeed sometimes,and in fact many of us have become adept at identifying and achiev-ing goals, at least in some areas of our lives. How do we overcomethe forces of structural conflict.

Fritz has identified three generic strategies for coping with theforces of structural conflict, each of which has its limitations.'14Letting our vision erode is one such coping strategy. The second is"conflict manipulation," in which we try to manipulate ourselvesinto greater effort toward what we want by creating artificial con-flict, such as through focusing on avoiding what we don't want.Conflict manipulation is the favored strategy of people who inces-santly worry about failure, of managers who excel at motivationalchats that point out the highly unpleasant consequences if the com-pany's goals are not achieved, and of social movements that attemptto mobilize people through fear. In fact, sadly, most social move-ments operate through conflict manipulation or "negative vision,"focusing on getting away from what we don't want, rather than oncreating what we do want: antidrugs, antinuclear arms, antinuclearpower, antismoking, anti-abortion, or antigovernment corruption.

But many ask, "What's wrong with a little worry or fear if ithelps us achieve our goals?" The response of those who seek per-sonal mastery is the simple question: "Do you really want to liveyour life in a state of fear of failure?" The tragedy is that many peo-ple who get hooked on conflict manipulation come to believe thatonly through being in a state of continual anxiety and fear can theybe successful. These are the people who, rather than shunning emo-tional tension, actually come to glorify it. For them, there is littlejoy in life. Even when they achieve their goals, they immediatelybegin worrying about losing what they have gained.

Fritz's third generic strategy is the strategy of willpower where wesimply psych ourselves up to overpower all forms of resistance toachieving our goals. Lying behind willpower strategies, he suggests,is the simple assumption that we motivate ourselves through height-ened volition. Willpower is so common among highly successfulpeople that many see its characteristics as synonymous with success:a maniacal focus on goals, willingness to pay the price, ability todefeat any opposition and surmount any obstacle.

The problems with willpower are many, but they may hardly benoticed by the person focused narrowly on success. First, there is lit-tle economy of means; in systems thinking terms, we act withoutleverage. We attain our goals, but the effort is enormous and we mayfind ourselves exhausted and wondering if it was worth it when wehave succeeded. Ironically, people hooked on willpower may actu-ally look for obstacles to overcome, dragons to slay, and enemies tovanquish-to remind themselves and others of their own prowess.Second, there are often consi,derable unintended consequences.Despite great success at work, the master of willpower will oftenfind that he or she has gone through two marriages and has terriblerelationships with his or her children. Somehow, the same doggeddetermination and goal orientation that works at work doesn't quiteturn the trick at home.

Worse still, just as with all of the coping strategies, willpowerleaves the underlying system of structural conflict unaltered. In par-ticular, the underlying belief in powerlessness has not reallychanged. Despite significant accomplishments, many highly suc-cessful people still feel a deep, usually unspoken, sense of power-lessness in critical areas of their lives-such as in their personal andfamily relationships, or in their ability to achieve a sense of peaceand spiritual fulfillment.

These coping strategies are, to a certain extent, unavoidable.

They are deeply habitual and cannot be changed overnight. We all-tend to have a favorite strategy-mine has long been willpower," asthose close to me can attest.

Where then is the leverage in dealing with structural conflict? Ifstructural conflict arises from deep underlying beliefs, then it can bechanged only by changing the beliefs. But psychologists are virtu-ally unanimous that fundamental beliefs such as powerlessness orunworthiness cannot be changed readily. They are developed earlyin life (remember all those "can'ts" and "don'ts" that started whenyou were 2?). For most of us, beliefs change gradually as we accu-mulate new experiences-as we develop our personal mastery. But ifmastery will not develop so long as we hold unempowering beliefs,and the beliefs will change only as we experience our mastery, howmay we begin to alter the deeper structures of our lives?

We may begin with a disarmingly simple yet profound strategy fordealing with structural conflict: telling the truth.

Commitment to the truth often seems to people an inadequatestrategy. "What do I need to do to change my behavior?" "How doI change my underlying belief?" People often want a formula, atechnique, something tangible that they can apply to solve the prob-lem of structural conflict. But, in fact, being committed to the truthis far more powerful than any technique.

Commitment to the truth does not mean seeking the Truth, theabsolute final word or ultimate cause. Rather, it means a relentlesswillingness to root out the ways we limit or deceive ourselves fromseeing what is, and to continually challenge our theories of whythings are the way they are. It means continually broadening ourawareness, just as the great athlete with extraordinary peripheralvision keeps trying to see more of the playing field. It also meanscontinually deepening our understanding of the structures underly-ing current events. Specifically, people with high levels of personalmastery see more of the structural conflicts underlying their ownbehavior.

Thus, the first critical task in dealing with structural conflicts isto recognize them, and the resulting behavior, when they are operat-ing. It can be very difficult to recognize these coping strategies whilewe are playing them out, especially because of tensions and pres-

sures that often accompany them. It helps to develop internal warn-ing signals, such as when we find ourselves blaming something orsomebody for our problems: "The reason I'm giving up is nobodyappreciates me," or "The reason I'm so worried is that they'll fireme if I don't get the job done."

In my life, for example, for many years my experience was thatpeople let me down at critical junctures in major projects. When thishappened, I would bulldoze through, overcoming the obstacle oftheir disloyalty or incompetence. It took many years before I recog-nized this as a recurring pattern, my own special form of thewillpower strategy, rooted in a deep feeling of being powerless tochange the way others let me down. Invariably, I ended up feeling"I've got to do it all myself."

Once I recognized this pattern, I began to act differently whenthis happened. I became angry less often. Rather, there was a twingeof recognition-"Oh, there goes my pattern." I looked more deeplyat how my own actions were part of the outcome, either by creatingtasks that were impossible to accomplish, or by undermining or notsupporting the other person. Further, I worked to develop skills todiscuss such situations with the people involved without producingdefensiveness. Chapter 9, "Mental Models," illustrates these skills.

I would never have developed those skills or known how to putthem into practice without a shift of mind. So long as I saw theproblem in terms of events, I was convinced that my problems wereexternally caused-"they let me down." Once I saw the problem asstructurally caused, I began to look at what I could do, rather thanat what "they had done."

Structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner. Once wecan see them and name them, they no longer have the same hold onus. This is as much true for individuals as it is for organizations. Infact, an entire field is evolving, structural family therapy, based onthe assumption that individual psychological difficulties can beunderstood and changed only by understanding the structures ofinterdependencies within families and close personal relationships.Once these structures are recognized, in the words of David Kantor,a pioneer in the field, "It becomes possible to begin to alter struc-tures to free people from previously mysterious forces that dictatedtheir behavior. "15

Discovering structures at play is the stock-in-trade of peoplewith high levels of personal mastery. Sometimes these structurescan be readily changed. Sometimes, as with structural conflict, they

change only gradually. Then the need is to work more creativelywithin them while acknowledging their origin, rather than fightingthe structures. Either way, once an operating structure is recog-nized, the structure itself becomes part of "current reality."The greater my commitment to the truth, the more creative tensioncomes into play because current reality is seen more for whatit really is. In the context of creative tension, commitment tothe truth becomes a generative force, just as vision becomes agenerative force.

One of the classic illustrations of this process is CharlesDickens's A Christmas Carol. Through the visitations of the threeghosts on Christmas Eve, Scrooge sees more and more of the real-ity from which he has turned away. He sees the reality of his past,how the choices he made steadily whittled away his compassion andincreased his self-centeredness. He sees the reality of his present,especially those aspects of reality that he has avoided, such as TinyTim's illness. And he sees the reality of his likely future, the futurethat will occur if he continues in his present ways. But then hewakes up. He realizes that he is not the captive of these realities. Herealizes that he has a choice. He chooses to change.

Significantly, Scrooge can't make the choice to change before hebecomes more aware of his current reality. In effect, Dickens saysthat life always avails the option of seeing the truth, no matter howblind and prejudiced we may be. And if we have the courage torespond to that option, we have the power to change ourselves pro-foundly. Or, to put it in more classic religious terms, only throughthe truth do we come to grace.

The power of the truth, seeing reality more and more as it is,cleansing the lens of perception, awakening from self-imposed dis-tortions of reality-are different expressions of a common principlein almost all the world's great philosophic and religious systems.Buddhists strive to achieve the state of "pure observation," of see-ing reality directly. Hindus speak of "witnessing," observing them-selves and their lives with an attitude of spiritual detachment. Thepower of the truth was no less central to early Christian thinking,although it has lost its place in Christian practice over the last twothousand years. In fact, the Hebrew symbols used to form the wordYeheshua, "Jesus," include the symbols for Jehovah, with the addi-tional letter shin inserted in the middle. The symbols for Jehovahcarry the meaning, "That which was, is, and will be." The inserted

shin modifies the meaning to "that which was, is, and will be,delivers." This is the probable origin of the statement "The truthshall set you free."

USING THE SUBCONSCIOUS, OR, YOU DON'TREALLY NEED TO FIGURE IT ALL OUT

One of the most fascinating aspects of people with high levels ofpersonal mastery is their ability to accomplish extraordinarily com-plex tasks with grace and ease. We have all marveled at the breath-takingly beautiful artistry of the championship ice skater or theprima ballerina. We know that their skills have been developedthrough years of diligent training, yet the ability to execute theirartistry with such ease and seeming effortlessness is still wondrous.

Implicit in the practice of personal mastery is another dimensionof the mind, the subconscious., through which all of us deal withcomplexity. What distinguishes people with high levels of personalmastery is they have developed a higher level of rapport betweentheir normal awareness and this other dimension we have come tocall the subconscious.16 What most of us take for granted andexploit haphazardly, they approach as a discipline.

Is the subconscious relevant in management and organizations?Inamori of Kyocera says:

When I am concentrating ... I enter the subconscious mind. It issaid that human beings possess both a conscious and subcon-scious mind, and that our subconscious mind has a capacity thatis larger by a factor of ten ... "

When I talk about our "mind," I risk being called crazy.Nonetheless, I think therein may lie the hint to the secret thatmay determine our future.

O'Brien of Hanover likewise sees tapping mental capabilities for-merly ignored as central to building the new organization:

The greatest unexplored territory in the world is the spacebetween our ears. Seriously, I am certain that learning organiza-tions will find ways to nurture and focus the capabilities within usall that today we call "extraordinary."