The Authentic Organization

In The To Do Addiction, I described our focus on the unfinished as a kind of brutal lack of gratitude. What would it mean to turn that around? Does gratitude play a role in creating an authentic environment?

To the extent that we distort our thinking by obsessing about the unfinished, by noticing only what is yet to be done, a habit of gratitude can certainly help return a little balance. Gratitude for what we have accomplished and for what others have accomplished can be grounding. At the same time it can keep us on track by focusing our mind on the purpose behind our accomplishments.

Gratitude can be seen as a specialized kind of Observing and Reflecting. As you will recall, those are the two neglected parts of the Action Learning cycle. By consciously dedicating time to see what we’ve done right, every day, we bring our attention back to the real world, and away from the imaginary future.