Program Description
If your team is growing rapidly, you’re hitting (or already past) a key inflection point: expanding your focus from building a product/service to building an organization. If you are not continually shaping your habits to optimize how you allocate your time and attention and how you lead conversations, then you are relying on outdated habits that developed in a smaller context where you were primarily responsible for making the product itself. You are working only IN the organization instead of ON it as well. Simply put, you are re-acting based on an outdated script. You are missing out on opportunities to Author and Architect what’s possible. And your results will suffer.
How do you shift from Acting out your old role or re-acting to what others throw your way to Authoring your new one—and re-Authoring it continually?
How do you create a system that focuses your attention on What Matters Most —while maintaining calm centeredness AND improving performance?
There is a way, one we’ve worked with hundreds of leaders to implement across a vast range of high- and hyper-growth organizations. We call it Applied Mindfulness.
Compare the experiences of Mark—a re-actor to the core—and Maria—applying mindfulness to author her experience.
| (re-) Actor | (co-) Author |
|---|---|
| Mark lives in a constant state of emergency, one where he is perennially focused on urgent tasks and maintains a hyper vigilance afraid of anything falling through the cracks, any missed opportunity. Mark values replying quickly, so he gets back to every Slack message within 1-2 hours, expecting the same level of professionalism from his team members. As a result, they multitask and feel a strong sense of urgency themselves, pausing several times an hour and between meetings to check for anything urgent coming in. | Maria has zero tolerance for wasting time, wasting life. To make this value real, Maria lives in a state of relaxed alertness, one where she is perennially asking what the most impactful area is to focus her attention on, “What matters most right now?” This leads her to a peaceful productivity; she trusts her tight systems (habits and tools) to catch what’s most important for her and to delegate or dismiss what’s not. Maria values creating results and increasing her team’s ability to do the same, so she blocks out time both for herself and for her organization to do Deep Work. |
| As business picks up and the team grows, Mark’s team always feels like there is more to do and less time to do it. Team members cope with these challenges principally by working longer hours and relying on adrenaline to head off seemingly constant threats and emergencies. Days end—and increasingly begin—with exhaustion, interpreted as a sign that they care. | As business picks up and the team grows, Maria’s team pauses routinely to iterate their systems as the organization grows and changes; it’s not that they live without stress; rather, they use stressors that arise as an indicator of some area where they could iterate and improve the system or themselves. Team members are expected to–and do–make time to expand their personal and team capacities. They choose and create habits and tools that facilitate focused attention, routinely eliminating any obstacles that distract from it or from their strategy. They balance focused work intervals with resting adequately, which restores their capacity for optimal focus, decision-making, and creativity. |
| Mark lives reactively. | Maria lives creatively and proactively. |
| Mark’s actions are dictated by what’s coming into his world, reacting to incoming messages and the internal voice that tells him how to get great work done. | Maria’s actions are authored internally, engaging with what’s coming into her world in light of how it might contribute to the outcomes she and her team most value. She cultivates awareness of the internal and external pulls for her attention, the inner and outer critics, and keeps choosing next steps that lead toward the direction she wants to go. Mark doesn’t have time for that shit–he’s got work to do. |
| Mark sees his exhaustion as a virtue but doesn’t see his role in it or the ripple effects. He blames others for their shortcomings and proves his worth as a leader by his hard work. Maria doesn’t have time for that shit–she’s got results to create. | Maria sees the choices she is making and the impacts they have on others. She creates tight feedback loops to reveal her blind spots (and others’) and improve continually. |
| At Mark’s company, people can’t wait to vest and leave (if they last that long). | At Maria’s company, people can’t wait to meet with each other. |
The Applied Mindfulness Program (AMP) is a systematic and personalized curriculum to help a cohort of founders and senior executives make this Actor to Author shift–and to embed it across their teams as well. AMP consists of two modules that each strengthen the other:
- Leading Yourself
- Leading Relationships, Leading Others
You can choose to participate in one or both (our bias–shocker!–is both).
1. Leading Yourself
AMP starts on an individual level, helping you build an airtight Operating System, a set of habits and tools that enable you to consistently define direction, prioritize what matters most, and focus your time and attention there systematically. Systematically means proactively instead of the ad-hoc, reactive reflexes you might be used to. Beyond habits and tools lie the Creative Mindset, a set of radically response-able ways of thinking that help you see your choice points and direct (or course-correct) your way toward what you value most. To support this in Module 1, we heavily emphasize (aka teach and practice) mindfulness.
You’ll get these frameworks, templates and habits:
| Outer Game | Inner Game |
|---|---|
| Operating System for Managing Time and Attention to Maximize Impact (template + habits for managing tasks, calendar, and inbox) | Mindfulness Meditation: Concrete Practices Everyone Can Do Successfully |
| Prioritization and Delegation Framework (including what to give away) | Identify and master your Delegation Devils (e.g. guilt, control, perfectionism, etc) |
| Delegation Template (how to get alignment and motivation when giving it away) | Actor vs Author (reacting or creating?) Framework |
| Managing Health and Well-Being as a Founder: SEEDs Framework | Drama Triangle Framework (recognize your reactive patterns) |
| Momentum Habits Checklist | Structured facilitation to articulate your purpose as a leader |
| Framework for Habit Formation that Endures (individually and at scale) | Discover the place in you that brilliantly creative ideas come from, the ones that creates step-function changes in your life and work |
2. Leading Relationships, Leading Others
AMP continues on the interpersonal level, where we introduce, practice, and apply a shift from reacting to what others have said and done–and what that triggers inside you–to leading the dance, using conflict and confusion as opportunities to create clarity and connection, and starting to do this proactively and preemptively too. We draw in core concepts from Module 1 while practicing giving and receiving actionable feedback in ways that support growth, including the GAIN framework. We also delve into the details of how to shift from heroically fixing everyone’s problems to coaching others for development.
| Outer Game | Inner Game |
|---|---|
| Catch Phrases for Constructive Conflict | Catching: Applying Mindfulness to Conversations to Build Connection and Clarity |
| Clean Kickoffs Template (for alignment in project and team kickoffs) | Translating Judgments to Observations |
| Actionable Feedback: GAIN Framework | Shifting from Blame to Response-ability |
| Coaching: GROW Framework | Support, Don’t Solve: How to Empower Others to Solve Their Own Problems |