We Start With Our Internal Systems

From Arbinger Institute

The following is from the Arbinger Institute;

The following is from the Arbinger Institute; "The Way-of-Being Diagram is formed through a combination of two distinctions. The first distinction is between our behavior and our way of being—that is, between what we are doing on the one hand and how we see others while we are doing what we are doing on the other. The diagram then draws a second distinction within our way of being: we can see others either as people, who matter like we ourselves matter, or as objects that don’t matter like we matter. When we see others as counting like we ourselves count, our hearts are at peace. When we see others as not counting like we count, our hearts are at war.

One of the important points illustrated by this diagram is that getting behavior right is only half of the story. There is almost nothing so common, for example, as people engaging in other- wise good or helpful behavior while mad at those they are doing it for. People who have done this before, and who have been upset at others’ responses to them, know that good behavior is undercut by a poor way of being—every time. Another important issue is that way-of-being-level problems cannot be solved merely by behavioral solutions. The problem of sexual assault is an example of this. The military, for instance, has made a big push to eradicate this terrible crime. Until now, however, most of the well-meaning efforts to address the problem have been behavioral in nature. This doesn’t make these efforts wrong, per se, but it does make them incomplete. What we do how we see WAY OF BEING Heart at Peace others are People: hopes, needs, cares, and fears as real to me as my own.

In business, a company’s survival depends on its being behaviorally competitive. That is, if what it sells and what it does to produce its products and bring them to market are not sufficiently competitive, the company will go out of business. At the level of what they are doing, the market forces competitors to catch up with each other’s innovations in order to survive. So over time, at the level of the what, competitors end up resembling each other. (Consider how the products and services in most competitive industries—medicine, consumer electronics, automobiles, and so on—more or less resemble each other.)

This implies that lasting competitive advantage is not a function of the what but a function of the how. A company that operationalizes seeing others as people sees differently in a way that allows it to achieve a competitive advantage. The gulf between its own performance and its nearest competitors’ can- not be bridged merely by mimicking the company’s behavior. Competitors have to be willing to give up all the objectifications of others that have, until that moment, characterized their enterprises. From strategy to internal processes and systems to customer service, competitors have to be willing to see others as people, with all that implies, to cross the chasm. This is why lasting competitive advantage is a function of the how."

The Arbinger Institute. The Anatomy of Peace. Fourth ed., Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2022