Designing a state of flow at work

A perfectly oiled machine, purring along, professionals who know their jobs well buzzing by as every event falls into place. You feel strong, relaxed and productive.

Well, that would be nice, you don’t need the perfect team, the perfect desk or the perfect technology to make this flow happen. You simply need the right design.

The American pattern is all about fixing problems as they arise. Being in the flow as the problems arise to better fix them, that is not the flow I am referring too.

Basing our solutions on the system means trusting the system to see the problems.

Designing the system to feel. This creates peace of mind and solutions before there are problems.

Designing a flow at work by creating diversity of thought while building Moral Capital (Sison,2003) around yourself. Creating healthy habits, empowering the system from within and separating the tasks so that they can independently interact as need be.

An example, as partners dance the woman maintains a strong frame so that as the man leads they can feel each other. If the pair were counting while they danced and did the moves as they were memorized, if one of them tripped or forgot a move they would lose their place in the flow of the music.

At work, building a sense of mutual respect and trust towards the team, allows for the designing of a flow. A flow that moves, glides and when all goes wrong feels what is happening, hears the music and catches it with grace.

This flow is found in Adaptive leadership, building Moral capital, trust, and allowing for vulnerabilities. This removes the fear factor.

Designing your work place with flow as an employee means having pride in your work, standing strong to what you are doing with integrity, and holding the framework for the leader to lead you. When the leader miss steps, see it and move with it gracefully. Design your flow and share your flow with your co workers. Recognize their framework and if they don’t have one help them build one so that you can both dance with grace. Either way you will be working the same amount of hours so you might as well dance with each other and flow with the leader.

Leader, adapt, recognize the diversity of your team recognize their framework and flow with it, let them build trust with you and trust them. Design your team in such a way that without you they flow and with you they exceed. You become their resource, you become their turbo booster to new unknown realms instead of the doctor who fixes it.

Go to your team and design. Swim in the flow and move them with grace they will love the attention especially if they have been working on their framework. They will finally have an opportunity to be lead, felt, and to dance with their workplace.

A well designed team will feel what needs doing and will do it to stay in the flow.