To be in flow

To be in flow is considered one of the fundamental states of happiness, next to pleasure and meaningfulness. Go with the flow, is one of the oldest recommendations, especially by those who prefer to be outside the mainstream of analyzing, goal-setting, planning, and doing. You hear it rarely in war, in business or in chess play. It also can be utter nonsense.
I remember for the first time canoeing on a river with a noticeable current. A few miles took me hours, going several times over the top, being most of the time across on the stream, hindering other canoes no end. It was the most tiring experience I ever had of making a fool of myself.
An other piece of wisdom I came across recently, a Zen saying or something: The fruit falls when it is ripe. A load of crap, as everybody knows who has fruit trees in his garden. Unripe fruit rains for over a month on your lawn. Ripe fruit stays on the tree, eaten by wasps, rotting on the branches. Such pieces of wisdom are for people who don’t do anything practical and don’t want to do anything practical. They make us feel wise and profound during reveries on languid Sunday afternoons. Or in ashrams where it is always Sunday afternoon.

To go with the flow requires often subtle and experienced navigation. Rare are the situations in which we can passively and dreamily drift on. And if there are more currents than one, with which flow do we go? And if the flow leads to sharp rocks? And what means ‘go with the flow’ if you are nearing a roaring waterfall?

The advice should rather be: don’t fight the flow. Use it if you can, and at least reckon with it. The principle of least resistance can’t be followed when you ignore the flow. If you want to cross the river, don’t try to do that at right angles. And if you really want to arrive straight ahead, walk upstream before plunging in.

To be in flow is truly great. It is enormously efficient. It is rewarding. It is beautiful. It is the hallmark of true professionals: it is a pleasure to watch them while they work. One of my favorite quotes is from Tom Peters’ A Passion for Excellence’: Real success comes from the soul and the marketplace simultaneously. That is what to be in flow means: a perfect alignment of talents and efforts with circumstances and customers or audience. We forget the time. We forget our petty selves. We are not sidetracked; we are not blinded. We don’t wonder if we are meant to do this or if this is useful for our career, our future or our soul’s salvation. We get into a rhythm without knowing it. Higher and lower brain functions stomp along happily. We got swing. We are cool.

And what when there is no flow at all? When everything oozes stagnation, when nothing happens or is about to happen? Go with the no-flow? Well, maybe you have no choice. Dress well, eat well and sleep well and wait till spring comes. If it comes. But remember the times you were in flow. What did you do? Where? When? With whom? Under what circumstances?
We truly are ourselves in situations where we don’t reflect on ourselves. Because we don’t need to. Maybe we can only find ourselves in flash-backs.

Anyway, you can’t go with the flow if you keep staring at a computer screen. Or can we?

Finding the core issue

Imagine you get lucky: you will be granted three wishes. What will you wish? From fairytales we know how easy it is to wish foolishly or to wish for something that appears foolish afterward. The old Greeks said already that when the gods want to punish people, they grant their wishes. So we need wisdom. Maybe the best first wish is for wisdom with the second wish. And what would the third wish be? The surprising answer is that we cannot know. When our best wish is granted, our situation will change, we will change and only after a while, we may find what would be the best wish then.

I developed core issue identification from my experiences with strategic issue management. After proper analysis, we would usually find between 5 and 15 strategic issues for an organization like a company or an institution. Working on an issue list for the Netherlands, we found six real strategic issues out of a first list of about 35 possible national issues. My issue list for the planet came ulimately to ten issues. With police forces, the first lists would be about 15-20 issues, after analysis reduced to 5-7 strategic issues for the next 5 years.
Interestingly, almost always, by further analysis, one issue would dwarf the others in importance. That discovery would lead to an initial shock and then galvanize the team involved into action. Several times that number one issue, that core issue, would be utterly and totally solved within a few months. Because the organization really set its teeth in it.

In a number of cases, there would be two issues vying for first place, but of a completely different nature: one would be an issue within the present mission and capability of the organization, and one would require a new capability and some redefinition of the mission. Guess which of the two was always taken up first.
Later, I began to apply the same core issue identification for more individual situations, in the framework of coaching and personal consultancy. Usually, it was less easy. Although an individual is a much smaller system than a company or a government agency, both mission and capability are much more indefinite. Few people can bring themselves to the rigorous self-reflection that is necessary. Many seem afraid to look into the mirror and confront the momentary key challenge in their lives.

From a completely different angle, I found an other approach: my work on organizational constellations. I started to do what I call core issue constellations. And I found these can be applied very well to individuals also. Though still I would find that it required both personal courage and wisdom of the client to face and understand the issue. Anyway, finding your core issue is galvanizing.

So now I approach core issue identification sometimes from the analytical and sometimes from the intuitive side, sometimes by strategic issue analysis and sometimes by constellation work. I like this work, though it produced one drawback: I have become impatient with clients who don't want to go to the core of things.
I can't tell you the core issues my clients found and I won't tell you my own core issue, but I can tell you the core issue we found for the Netherlands as a country, six years ago: Immigrants and Immigration. Still sounds right to me.