Dream your way to success
It’s not all about business plans
and spreadsheets and getting to the next goal. The picture of real success is
at least partly in your mind.
Business schools give you the tools:
financial literacy, management and economic theory, marketing… it’s how you put
it all together in the working world that determines success or failure. And
that ability to combine is not necessarily a logical function, but one that
involves a certain amount of creative thinking - the kinds of right brain
activity we think of as having minimal importance in the office or on decision
making.
However, Marc le Menestrel believes that psychology and emotions have everything
to do with the business world. He describes the complex web of forces
that drive decision making as “dreams”.
“Dreams,” the decision scientist
says, “are connected to the source of your motivation, what is really important
for you. What do you dream about? What can you accomplish at your full
potential? What is really motivating you to live this life fully?”
Le Menestrel who teaches business at
the Universität Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) and is a Visiting Professor of
Ethics at INSEAD, studies how desires and impulses influence people when they
make important decisions both in business and in life. He spoke to INSEAD
Knowledge on the sidelines of the INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Conference in
Jakarta recently.
What
do you really want?
In his work, le Menestrel encourages
business people to integrate different parts of their identity into their
professional outlook. He says the framework of dreaming can be a useful tool
that allows people to activate the non-cognitive parts of themselves into their
business lives. “Dreaming and visioning are techniques that connect the
rational framework with the non-cognitive dimensions such as the spiritual,
cultural and personal dimensions,” he elaborates.
Through his work, le Menestrel found
that the majority of people dream of being deeply loved, of being part of a
community that reflects their values, and of contributing to the lives of other
people in some way. Yet, to date, management practice has tended to separate
the personal from the professional. Le Menestrel shows executives how to
incorporate these dreams into their professional lives.
To this end, he conducts “dreaming
sessions” at business schools and at companies that allow executives to think
carefully about who they are and what they want from life. He then helps them
to develop plans that allow them to achieve these objectives and, more
crucially, find satisfaction in life. “Dreaming sessions are practical
sessions,” says le Menestrel. “We dream about your life and we structure how to
live your dreams. It is very impactful, and often a tipping point for people.”
Using
dreams to make better decisions
So how does this work in practice?
Take the example of an entrepreneur who wants to develop his own business. It
is vital for the entrepreneur to integrate aspects of his own personality into
the entrepreneurship project, says le Menestrel. “It does not have to be a
trade-off between his personal life and his professional project. To make sure
the two are aligned and nurture each other, we connect the entrepreneurship
plan with other aspects of his life, such as his family or passions. This
ensures that he is able to keep an eagle eye on his entrepreneurship project,
while remaining emotionally nourished.”
According to Le Menestrel, the
process of clarifying the vision we have for our lives empowers us to make
decisions that more fully reflect our values and aspirations.
Long-term
effects of dreaming
The other major benefit of using the
dreaming framework is that it forces us to take a long view of our lives,
beyond our immediate project or job, says Le Menestrel. He argues that success
in life is not just achieving the next immediate goal, but rather, as finding
satisfaction in the many dimensions of your life.
“By having a clear sense of your
dreams and your personality, you can be prepared for unexpected situations, and
reassess your goals when things don’t go according to plan,” says Le Menestrel.
“You want to be the master of your goal, not the prisoner of your goal. You can
live your life using the unexpected as an opportunity for self-accomplishment
and not as a failure to reach your goals.”
Developing
adaptive capabilities
Le Menestrel believes that taking
this perspective allows you to remain nimble in the face of changing
circumstances and also to see your life in broad strokes, allowing you to
rebalance the components in your life as your life evolves. By being in touch
with your dreams, you become conscious of the process of transforming yourself.
“The ability to transform is
particularly vital in the business world,” says le Menestrel. “Companies and
individuals who understand and manage their transformation process are more
likely to succeed and stay ahead of the competition. Many failures arise from
being prisoners to our goals when the situation requires us to liberate
ourselves from our goals and modify them to adapt to the changing context.”
“Having a clear and articulated
dream beyond goals offers new adaptive capabilities that create resilience in
changing environments.”
By Grace
Segran
http://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-management/organisational-behaviour/dream-your-way-to-success-483
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