The leaders go, great, I'd like to delegate more, but I can't

because they're not capable.

I say, well, they're not capable because you haven't developed

them to be more capable.

And I'm not talking about their skill set, I'm talking about their maturity.

How well are they systems thinker?

Can they see the big picture?

Can they make decisions for the whole?

You've kept all the knowledge to yourself all these years.

Um, uh,

What if the key to extraordinary business success is hidden in plain sight?

What if companies are more than just machines, but living organisms with unique

energy fields that fuel their performance?

Today on seek, go create, discover the magic of the living organization

with Norman Wolf, our guest through his journey from a struggling team

leader to a sought after consultant.

Norman uncovered a revolutionary model that reframes how we

can think about business.

Join us as we learn how to define your company's soul for purpose and uncover

the secrets to sustainable success.

Norman, welcome to seek, go create.

Thanks, Tim.

That was a wonderful introduction.

I

I'm looking forward to our conversation.

am looking forward to it too, man.

You've got such a rich, anyway, this whole concept of the living organization.

We're going to dive into it shortly is just so fascinating to me as

I've been studying it I actually saw it even this last weekend.

Some work that I was doing.

we'll talk about that later on, but let's kind of do my, I don't even know

if I could call this an icebreaker anymore, because it's sort of a weird

question, but you have a choice.

The first question that I ask, Would you rather answer what you do?

Kind of the networking question that we all get when we're out and about,

or Who you are, which one do you choose and just go right into answering it.

well, what pops up in my head is, who I am.

And I'd answer it by saying, I guess I'm a seeker, is appropriate for your podcast.

How's that?

I've always, been described as a map maker.

I'd love to unravel the secrets of life I have since my early 20s, and

try to figure out how do we as people.

creating the results we create and how can we get more of what we

want less of what we don't want.

and I've delved into all sorts of fields of interest disciplines from physics

to spirituality and, Trying to figure out how do I make life work being a

seeker, the curiosity and passion for understanding with, this notion of being

able to frame ideas, complex ideas into simple, hopefully understandable ideas,

I guess is how I would define who I am.

Thank you for tying into the, to the title of our podcast.

I appreciate that.

and I do feel like.

intentionally.

I do feel as if it was heartfelt and not just some kind of, you

know, trying to blow smoke.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Can you recall when you first realized that you were someone who was a seeker,

someone who asked questions, someone who wasn't satisfied with the status quo.

And on both of you, for those that are listening to this, we're mature.

we're not a college age or even, in the first half of our lives,

we're towards the tail end.

when do you recall being aware of that, being a seeker?

I know exactly when that happened.

It was 1968, the summer of 1968.

the trigger mechanism for me was the, Chicago Convention.

you probably are old enough to remember it.

I certainly lived through it.

I was raised in a fairly modest, middle class Jewish family.

my grandparents were immigrants from Russia.

they were evicted during the pogroms.

growing up, I had this, cultural orientation to the relationship of the

United States versus Russia, which was the big totalitarian state that was the evil

empire, and we were the good guys, right?

And I'm watching the Chicago Convention.

I remember the thought was

this is impossible.

This is Russia, not the U.

S.

Something doesn't jive.

And the thought in my mind was, if this belief system that I had isn't

true on my current experience, my living experience, what else was I

raised with that might not be true?

And that opened the door to, you know, I couldn't live

with the uncertainty forever.

I remember actually creating, I was at the time, going to NYU,

studying mathematics and engineering.

And I remember having a need to develop some path forward.

And I created a hypothesis.

I said, if I'm going to try to figure out the truth to life, the real

answers, let me start at the beginning.

and I said, I'm going to start exploring the nature of life.

Now, everybody around me was saying, you know, everything comes from

God, and God is this, and, you know.

But the experience was, there's a lot of different messages.

You know, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, you know.

What's the truth?

You know, where can I find the truth?

And I created this hypothesis that said, going to believe in the God.

There's one God, because most people say that.

I don't know if it's true or not, but it seemed to me if there was one God,

there was going to be a single message.

Now, pretty astute at public speaking, even at that age, I realized that when

you present something to somebody, you want to present it in the context

from which they understand, right?

couldn't make up a story that said, well, there's one God, and he's just presenting

his message through different contexts, which gives birth to different messages.

religions with different stories.

But that was just a hypothesis.

I didn't know if it was true or not and I held the possibility that it wasn't

true, that in fact there were multiple gods there was one god that was being

sadistic and giving us different messages.

So the theory behind that hypothesis was if there is one god and there is

one message, I should see patterns in all of the different scriptures,

if you will, or theories, or presentations, that were common.

Maybe said differently, but they had similar principles.

Probably spent the next 20, 30 years of my life Just open to that possibility.

So the that was the trigger mechanism that put me on this journey that even today

doesn't stop looking for common patterns that could reveal a truth that anyone.

Perspective doesn't have, in total,

That's good.

So 1968, how old were you?

20 that summer was 20, turning 21.

Okay.

And for some people, we might need to give some context to that convention.

Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed.

Was it at that convention or right before that?

Is that correct?

Okay.

after that I think, or right after that, like the following.

So that whole period of time, um, uh, John Kennedy's assassination,

the Chicago Convention, Vietnam War, Robert Kennedy's assassination,

Martin Luther King's assassination, a whole disruptive set of events over,

less than 10 year period of time.

I was born in sixty three, three days before JFK was shot.

So I don't know that that timeframe was as significant because I'm a question

asker too, but I also look for how it fits into some of the bigger systems.

I think it's so powerful that you just shared what you did about the timeframe.

So Here's my second big question.

That was sort of my first big question.

you're a mature guy.

You've done a lot of things, seen a lot.

In 1968, you said you were seeking truth.

Are you any closer today to finding that truth?

Or, like me, does it still seem somewhat elusive and you're still searching?

Asking a lot of questions

Well, that's a really good question.

I, a map maker, as I say, collecting all of these comparisons and ideas from

multiple disciplines, seeking the nature of life, if you will, and how it works.

I do have some frameworks that I have developed that feel.

Like it's the truth, but I've also been on this journey long enough to know that

the minute I find a truth that reveals a whole lot of other questions that

are yet to be discerned and discovered.

So, I don't know if there is a single truth, could be wrapped up

in a nice package, I do feel the framework I developed and live

by, it's actually embedded in the living organization framework.

Has a lot of validity and is supported by a lot of different

perspectives, if you look at it contextually, not so much literally.

and the reason I love you tied it into the living organization because as I was

looking at your stuff and I, I know that you and even I and what I do, we apply

that living organization to companies, businesses, maybe organizations.

I worked with some ministries and things like that.

But truthfully, Norman, as I was looking at it, and I love the way this has started

off, I actually looked at it as cultural.

I actually looked at it as nations.

I looked at living organizations in a lot of other contexts with the way you were

framing it and there, you know, you've got context, you've got the energy, you've

got other things that are part of that.

Is that valid?

Is that something that crosses your mind and all that?

That, you know, when you talk living organization, it applies to me, my

family, my business, my company, my country, my region, this 55 and

older community that I'm in, correct?

You're absolutely correct, and I give you a lot of credit to be so

astute to discern its true nature.

Remember, I sought out to answer the question, how do we create what we want?

How do we get more of what we want, or I should say, how do we create what we get,

and how can we get more of what we want and less of what we don't want, basically.

When you think of a, of a marriage, so again, personal experience.

I was married and divorced three times and I was going through my third divorce

and, had a child from that marriage.

And my wife, my former wife and I, were really committed to making decisions

based on what's good for the child.

And so I found, I observed both myself and her making decisions where

the, I'll call it the desire for being right, or the ego mind, you

might say, wanted certain decisions.

But the other part of me knowing that making that decision might give me a win.

would end up hurting my daughter and I watched her make similar for the good

of our daughter and that that gave me a really interesting perception

because okay Like I said, I was married and divorced three times and as I was

entering my fourth marriage I began to reflect on there's you And there's, well,

there's me and there's my wife, Jane,

but there's also that thing we call a marriage, and we start to use the term

us ness, It's like a, it's like a living thing that, that, that, encapsulates us.

And what if I applied that same principle of, doing what's good for

the third entity, in my divorce it was my daughter, but what if I focused on

the third entity as my, as the thing I wanted to make my decisions for.

That takes it out of her versus me.

brings it into us.

And so any decision I make is good for me and good for her.

And that became, and so you mentioned it's good for you, it's good for your family.

Keep going, right?

And, and so anytime you have a collective of people who come

together for a common purpose, it gives birth to a living entity.

So now look at an organization, right?

You've got a collective of people that come together to form the organization.

As the organization grows, it's like a, it's like another, like mitosis, right?

It splits and creates other living entities.

It's called functional teams, sales, marketing, operations.

those are collective of people for a common purpose, provide sales for

the, for the good of the organization.

And that collective, so now the organization is made up of people

and it itself is a living person and you just keep scaling it.

It doesn't matter.

Now we stop at the business and organization level because that's

the domain I'm interested in, but it absolutely does apply to

keep going.

It's it's companies make towns.

Towns make cities.

Cities make states.

States make countries.

Countries make people.

You know, the world.

it absolutely is.

You're very astute at being able to discern that.

And it's not possible for them to operate in a vacuum, and that

also creates challenges, correct?

Absolutely.

I mean, the nature of life is, we call it ecosystems.

really just a collection of people in interdependent relationships.

That's what, you know, a simple way of thinking of an ecosystem.

And we are, we're ecosystems within ecosystems.

It's all about the nature of our relationships.

And our relationships have a huge impact on us energetically and, it can either

attenuate our energy or amplify our energy.

Yeah, and the thing, I mean, we're recording this in January of 2025,

it's probably going to release towards the tail end of January, February,

where in the United States, for those listening here, we will, Be sort

of having a changing of the guard.

I am not going to have a political conversation here, but there will

be some changes with that larger ecosystem that companies operate in.

I've got a client right now that 100 percent of their

inventory comes from China.

We had a strategy session a few days ago, and we've been discussing this

because we kind of saw this coming.

There's some very interesting things going on, but that leads to kind

of 1 other big picture item before we kind of start really going into

maybe a little bit more granular.

And that is.

One of the things we discuss here, Norman, is kind of defining

success and redefining success.

And one of the things I think that some people have a goal

or perception of is perfection.

I think they're attempting to obtain perfection within individuals,

organizations, and things like that.

And because something is living, it's my opinion.

That number one, perfection is unattainable.

It's impossible.

Stop it.

But my question for you is, how do we measure success within a

living organization that includes all of those sub organizations

and those bigger and smaller?

How do we start going about just thinking about success?

Maybe not exact measurements, but give us a mindset for how we

should think about succeeding.

you mentioned earlier, I think in the introduction,

the notion of soulful purpose.

I believe all living beings, whether it's an individual, Really

come into the world for a purpose.

we spend most of our lives trying to figure that out.

I probably found mine

15, 20 years ago when I started on this journey with the living organization.

it's not something you can, I mean, it is a journey just to discover

it, but we all have a purpose.

I think businesses are a little bit easier because they are

created with an intention.

From the beginning, right?

And in that intention, the owner, founder, entrepreneur starts something and he's

trying to I mean, there's a few that started just to make money and that's

the really rare case in my experience most of them see a problem in Society

in their world and their industry they think they have a way to solve it.

better than anybody else's That's really the essence Of innovation and

entrepreneurship, and so every company is started with the seed of an intention,

which you can call it soulful purpose.

Why was it created in the 1st place?

And what problem is it trying to solve?

If you fall back to that and say, okay, if this is my soulful purpose, how do I see?

Being successful looks like and we call that a vision of the impact of the future.

You're going to have a vision of the future of impact.

You're going to make it.

It's not really a vision statement like most people talk about.

It's really a narrative.

think about 20 years from now or 50 years from now or 10 years from now.

and you've fulfilled your purpose, or at least made progress towards fulfilling it.

What changes happened?

what impact have you made?

what does it look like?

Think of it like a journalist is telling your story.

What does that look like?

And you combine the soulful purpose with the impact statement the impact

story, I should say, that you're making.

And you can always use that to say, are we getting closer?

Are we making it?

that defines true success, right?

Now, there's a lot of other factors it is not only what you're

doing, but how you're doing it.

a sense of accomplishment, a sense of growth and development, a sense

of maturing, a sense of, belonging, those are some other, I consider three

of the key innate needs of humans.

we want to grow and develop.

We want to make a contribution we want to belong to.

those are other characteristics we can use to define how we are doing it.

Are we doing it in ways that enable us to feel more human or are we doing it in

ways that detract from that humanness?

But as a mathematician, I'm an industrial and systems engineer.

What we really want to do is measure things better.

And some of those things you just mentioned, Norman, I'm sorry.

I'm thinking through, you can't measure those.

So how do you really know?

How do we really know if we're succeeding in this living organization?

How do we like, I mean, even if you're leading it or if

you're in it, how do you know,

the very essence of that question stems from what I would call the

mechanistic paradigm or the machine paradigm, You kind of knew you

were leading me into that, didn't

I know that that's where I'm going, man, I'm pushing you.

I'm pushing you.

Yeah.

first rodeo, man.

know where we're going here.

It really, just the way the question is framed, comes from the fact

that we believe everything can be rationally, logically defined.

That works in the machine paradigm.

That's exactly what you would do with machines.

when it comes to a human being.

That's necessary, but not sufficient.

There's two parts to us.

There's the subjective part and the objective part.

They're both valid.

It's not one or the other.

That's a mistake we make in the business world.

It's the hard side or the soft side.

That's a silly bifurcation.

It should never have happened.

part of the living organization framework is actually designed to integrate the

two back together like they belong.

How do you know you're in love with your wife?

It's not something you can take technically measure, but you know it.

It's very clear.

You know it, Businesses are the same way.

And, what it requires is to re honor.

We bring back the value of the subjective elements.

There are ways to evaluate subjective elements of it.

at the end of the day, it's sort of like the old statement.

I can't tell you what it is, but I'll know it when I see it.

And it's okay to trust that.

part of what we do is teach leaders how to trust their

gut, how to trust the feelings.

We actually teach the skill, we call it heart centering.

Teaching the skill to tune into the subjective elements of life,

because they're very valuable.

and especially if you want to do things like create psychological safety.

You can't do it from the head.

I don't care how many processes for it and how many structures you put in place.

The only way I feel psychologically safe is if I feel you get me and

you honor me as a human being.

I can only do that for you if I am truly in the place of connection,

which is really the heart center.

There's a nuance and a lot of application challenges with it.

But that's the general path we want to follow.

You know, one of the things, and I know you've got a background in what we'll

call large corporate with Hewlett Packard.

My first job coming out of Georgia tech in the late eighties was with Bell South

corporation, probably, you know, similar mindset, similar process, et cetera.

And one of the things that became such a pet peeve of mine, is there were

comments and I think it was trying to get at what you've developed here, Norman.

So let me say this and then I'm going to let you respond, was

within these small pockets of the organization within Bell South, they

would use terms like we're a family.

and I would look around and I'm going, you know what, we just fired so and so

we just, you know, we've got this union issue that we deal with that's combative.

We just got rid of the leader and we're looking for a new, and I said,

I don't, and I was young at the time, but I was asking a lot of questions

like you did and all, and I was going.

I don't think this is a family to me from talking to you.

I think that was a cheap attempt at describing a living organization.

And I think it's caused some problems because I don't

think business is a family.

So now that I've gone on my mini rant, what would you like to say about that?

cause you probably lived through that too, right?

Oh, yeah, my, I, you know, some people ask me.

What started your path besides, what I said.

So I come out of that period of time, to add to the genre of that time.

Not only do we have all those major events, but we also had

the hippie movement, right?

The free love movement and all of that.

So I was also influenced by that.

And I come out of that kind of university environment and, go to

Boydcott Pratt and Whitney Aircraft.

And I'm literally told.

Two statements stuck in my mind from the, from back then.

The first was, I was probably there six months and my, supervising

engineer came to me and said, know, Norman, when you come to work, you

leave your personal life at the door.

Okay.

How do I do that?

I'm not sure what part of me I take off and hang up on the, on the hook.

I mean, I couldn't figure that out.

Literally.

It was just, cognitive dissonance, if you want to call it that.

And the second one, probably two, three years later, I'm kind of in the groove

or part of a team and we're loving what we're doing was having lunch one day

and talking about how much we love it.

Same supervising engineer comes in and says, gentlemen,

work is not meant to be fun.

Work is work.

If it was fun, you'd be paying us to go like you go to Disneyland.

pay you to work.

We all looked at each other like, was he nuts?

That's the cultural norm that I grew up in, right?

And

unfortunately, that paradigm, that, remember, paradigm is a way of thinking.

It's a framework of set of belief systems about how life

works and how we're successful.

And that paradigm has influenced generations upon generations to think of

what is business, what is organizations, what is, you know, And how do we respond?

It's also very strongly separated.

employees from the leadership, is another fundamental bifurcation.

so I say all that is kind of a contextual framework to say what you're dealing with.

You're pointing out to is this desire amongst leaders, especially to represent

the organization as humanistic.

As a family, a caring organization

and their behaviors, not because they don't believe what they say, but because

they think of implementing what they say in a certain framework causes that same.

Cognitive dissonance, that same experience of that's not true that

I had when they told me to leave my personal life at the door, you know,

and so that's why I'm committed.

And all the work I'm doing now is, it's not just coming up with another

framework, another model, but I'm really committed to changing the paradigm.

It's sort of like trying to convince physicists to quantum physics is a

better way of understanding the world.

And they're going, Huh?

That doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't fit the way I understand things.

And that's the challenge I'm facing with my community of consultants, is helping

leaders go through that gut wrenching reframing of the way we see the world.

and it's really challenging.

So, I see it all the time, what you say.

I, I experience it.

And I experience on both sides.

I experience.

so used to being cogs in the wheel and going into battle with management Not

only do leaders have to change, but the employees have to change as well.

They all have to move into a new way of understanding what their role and

relationship is to the collective.

Imagine employees who came to work because they wanted to contribute

to the purpose of the organization.

just think of that possibility for a second.

Leaders wouldn't have to manage them.

They'd have to help them grow and develop in their capability and

maturity to fulfill that goal.

That desire on their part to contribute.

It's just like me going back to, I wanted to make my marriage successful.

I was committed to the us ness.

It wasn't me versus her or her needs versus mine.

And yeah, all that comes up, but it gets resolved if we all focus on the us ness.

organizations would actually not need to exist because there'd

be nobody to battle with.

management wouldn't see employees as their most valuable asset or

the most valuable stakeholder.

I actually wrote a blog arguing that.

Employees are not the most valuable stakeholder because the

Hmm.

by definition is something, somebody or some group that's

outside of the collective, right?

My investor isn't part of my organization.

outside.

My suppliers are outside.

My partners are outside.

Even the regulators are outside.

So all the stakeholders I deal with.

Are outside of the organization.

That's sort of the definition of a stakeholder.

Well, to say an employee is a stakeholder is to say they're

outside of the organization.

Now, just think about that.

That's kind of bizarre.

So my article was take away investors, take away, suppliers,

take away clients, take away all of the stakeholders we deal with.

And you still have an organization because you have a group of

people committed to some purpose.

Take away the people.

it still exists.

haven't got an organization at all.

You don't have an organization.

You have somebody's, one individual's probably vision.

that's what you're left with.

And if that's leadership, they're all alone.

there's nothing for them to do.

It's not possible.

So the collective is really the important thing.

and we want to shift the paradigm so that leaders and employees really understand

what the true nature of what it's about.

It ain't easy because we got so many years of.

thinking, but where we're going.

just to add on to it, you see a lot of movements.

I don't know if you saw Bayer Corporation just completely went

to, or self managing autonomous teams that completely restructuring.

A higher corporation created this model called RenderNoid, which

is micro, micro enterprises.

Everybody's an entrepreneur working together in collectives.

there's a clear desire for some movement and our framework helps facilitate that.

but here's the interesting thing about those two examples you just brought up.

someone younger might go, Oh, this is so new and creative and innovative.

That's been tried before.

Correct.

It really has, many times.

That's not new.

No, no.

And it's actually, it's probably more appropriate to saying

we're going back in time.

we're going back in time when the subjective and the objective were,

were together, they weren't separated.

scientific revolution basically separated that.

Right.

And we've

So,

we've got to bring it back together.

So when someone like you is attempting to change a paradigm,

you could probably tell where this question is going.

I, and, and we want to be able to at times know how well we're doing.

Are we really moving the needle?

Are we making progress and things like that?

And I, and I want to kind of frame this and say that there are times that Tim

can be extremely optimistic and Pollyanna ish and things, um, Things are great.

And then there are times where I could be extremely pessimistic

and go, Oh my goodness.

my goodness, I'm a, I'm a living organism.

Um, how are you doing?

how do you grade this paradigm shift to this movement?

Now, I know you're probably interacting with people that are embracing it, but

if you step back and look at culture and look at the bigger organization,

how do you assess the progress?

well, like anything societal global level, you have to look at long term patterns.

and I've been around long enough to be able to track many decades of patents.

And so some of the indicators I use first of all, I don't

think I'm alone in this journey.

think I'm but one voice of a, of a chorus of people trying to sing

in a new way of being in business.

You've got movements like the Teal Movement and Conscious Capitalism, and

you've got people like Brendan Hire, Hire Corporation, and you've got, Bayer

Corporation and Zappos, Birchstalk.

I mean, there's a lot of, People who are evolving.

I remember when I left HP in 1988 and started consulting.

I think it was in the early 90s.

I came across a consultant out of the East Coast that had an award

called Love in the Workplace.

Because back then you couldn't even use the word love in the business environment.

So you actually create a like love in the workplace.

Now that's not such a big deal because it's okay to use those words.

we saw the creation of B Corps, movement to try to stimulate

a shift in the paradigm.

If you will, business is not just about love.

Maximizing shareholder value businesses about, purpose and you see a whole cottage

industry of consultants coming around on just all they do is focus on helping

organizations to define the purpose.

Now that's sort of maybe five, 10 years old.

it's sort of declining, but there was a big rise in the purpose cottage industry.

I wrote the book, it was published in 2011, and, you know, talking

to people about that then, you know, I was like, talking about

love in the workplace in 1988.

And now I'm having conversations with people like you who get it, who

see it, who feel it, who sense it.

And so I look at the trend over many, many decades and say, we're making progress.

I feel in many ways that this movement is beyond all of us.

It's something life wants to manifest itself.

a shift in the way we've lived for a long time.

That's time for the next step.

Next iteration of it.

I think it has a lot to do with you.

You'll hear me say it has a lot to do with balance.

So bringing back the objective in the subject of the head and the

heart, balancing opposites, I think that's a big part of what this

next evolution is, is bringing.

I'm just one voice of a chorus of people making the impact I can in my own way.

I now have a community of, well, by the end of, the first

quarter will be 12 of us.

I'm bringing on four more people.

A year ago, I was, were two of us, struggling a lot.

and now people are saying, wow, I like it.

I resonate with it.

I want to be part of that.

I want to help this transformation.

So those are the indicators I use to keep my life feeling

like I'm making a difference and all this effort is paying back.

Those are the subjective indicators that I would use to say we're being successful.

Well, I think the descriptions, the soulful purpose, while I don't use that

language in what I do because of my spiritual background and things like

that, I actually believe that the thought process, and I was exposed to your

stuff a few weeks ago or when you came onto our radar as far as being a guest.

So I believe that there probably is a movement.

And I guess one question I have is, do you think that all that occurred with a

worldwide Accelerated, accelerated that.

And I'm also going to layer in another question.

Do you also think there's some generational, trends that are

occurring because I'm tail end of baby boomer, you're probably baby

boomer, you know, and we've got this hard charging, authoritative, I don't

know leadership kind of baked into us.

I do wonder if some things that are occurring are accelerating,

what are your thoughts?

yes to both.

I do think that the so called major crises we've had have been stimulants

to disrupt the existing pattern of thinking, causing many of us to

think there's got to be a new way.

I'll go back to 9 11, the Great Recession, COVID, the pandemic.

These are major, major disrupting forces.

prior to the pandemic, there was a few of us that used to do Zoom.

now I don't have to travel anywhere.

I talk to people all over the world, right?

It's commonplace, right?

whether we stay with remote work or hybrid work or go back to the

office, there was a shift happened.

Something new was into the collective, Zeitgeist, right?

The collective culture, the DNA.

So, yes, I think those major events do shift things.

That's, I think, the major purpose of it is to shift things.

the second part of your question was,

Generational.

Just some generational things, a younger group, you know, there's

always generational sort of conflict built in with leadership.

And you know, we're having these.

Generations.

We're dealing with this with one of our, organizations right now, that

there's just a different thought about work ethic, different thought about

the office, different thoughts about just the way work gets done, maybe not

right or wrong, it's just different.

Yes, I, I, About, I guess it was maybe a little over a decade ago, I saw a

pattern that I think is still at play.

You're right, I'm at the beginning of the baby boomers, so I'm

at that transition between traditionalist and the baby boomers.

You're at the tail end of it.

It's a pretty long generational cycle.

And one of the things I noticed about myself and then watched a lot

of the baby boomers move into is a desire to seek purpose in life.

You're right, we're hot charging, we were authoritative, we, we

wanted to take control and all that.

But as we move into the 40s, 50s, 60s of our lives, for me, 70s,

meaning and purpose started to become more important than things.

Millennials seem to come into the workplace with a desire

for meaning and purpose.

And certainly Gen Z is known for meaning and purpose is, is

a dominant criteria for them.

So what you have is two very fairly large geographic, excuse me,

demographic populations, seeking to, to view life differently.

No longer is it acceptable to leave your personal life at

the door, so to speak, right?

Meaning and purpose and doing something that contributes to the,

the, the positive of the world.

is important to us Not everybody, obviously, we're

still all individual humans.

I think that has a huge impact on the direction we're moving to.

struggle with it.

we, we struggle with finding balance again.

I mean, think about, not to get political, but even in the just geopolitical climate

we're in, where there's a shift from neoliberalism to more of a, sort of,

more of a conservative, I won't even go so far as to write, balance, right?

We swing too far one way and we got to come back somehow.

I think that the nature of life is always back and forth,

back and forth, the polarities

without getting into the physics of it all.

But the challenge is to find the balance where you're going back and forth in

slighter durations instead of big swings.

yeah, I think, I think we're faced with a number of different forces

happening that's stimulating this change.

That's part of why I said this is beyond individuals.

This is life unfolding.

This is something bigger than us as individuals.

And the more we can get in line with that, more we'll be successful, because

you can't fight nature, so to speak.

Humans think they'll conquer Mother Nature.

I, I'll, I'll double down on my bets on Mother Nature any day.

Well, being a systems guy, myself, I sometimes ask the question, are

we attempting to force something into a structure that's not.

Structured correctly.

you mentioned you had a Jewish family background.

I've studied some of the Middle Eastern culture with Old Testament

and Christian and all that, and it seems to me that there's more of an

integration of all of the factors of life within that culture, whereas we are

a product of the Greco-Roman segment.

Everything in your life, work goes here, your hobbies here, your marriage

here, your children, and I do wonder if that is one of the big hurdles

and I'll ask you if you think it is, or what are some other of the big

barriers that we're facing to continue moving this message farther along?

Wow, big barriers.

So, first part of the answer to your question, yes, and it goes back to what

I said, it's the notion of integration of opposites, right, or the balance

of it, and it's not just in Judaism.

You look at, Daoism and the Tai Chi symbol, the yin yang symbol.

It represents balance, and, we talk about how people would love

to live in a world of harmony.

Well, harmony, by definition, is balance, One of the biggest challenges

we have, and it's not just the Roman Greco era that probably started it, but

I think it really got kicked into with the scientific and revolution, right?

This notion that we want to objectify, we want the Newtonian theory that we can

take nature and put it into its, simple.

clockwork gears and we can understand it and we can control it, ever

since then we've been living by the scientific, methodology.

If you can't explain it, repeat it, objectify it, it's got no value.

But we know that's only partially true.

I'll never throw out the objective structures, systems, numbers.

that's half of the, that's the head of the tail.

We got to bring the tail or the head of the coin.

We got to bring the tail of the coin back into union, because the coin

is made up of both sides, right?

Objective, subjective, head and heart.

now I'm just going to focus on business because that's the domain I play in.

some of the biggest hurdles I think, and why the paradigm shift happens, is we

keep thinking of people and in business as component parts of the machine.

And as component parts of the machine, as a leader, designer of the machine,

I define the spec sheets of it.

What I need for the machine to operate.

I go to my big box, supply store.

We call it employment agencies.

I give them my spec sheet.

We call them job descriptions.

you see how we just tied into this whole machine paradigm.

and I buy these component parts and I plug them into the machine.

And I say, what you're designed to do.

Well, that's okay to some degree.

And it works really good in what I would call operations that

need very structured design.

Very defined, very repetitive tasks.

And that's why it was designed in the 1900s because that's mostly what we had.

But humans aren't really designed to be that way.

I mean, we got more than just our, our doing machine, so to speak, right?

We got relationships, as we talked about, and we got the stories that

make up our context, our belief system.

And so

I look at the concept of maturity, and that's something that's never

thought about in the machine paradigm.

If you look at one of the things that makes us capable as people

to create outcomes, level of skill is one half of it, a level of

maturity is the second half of it.

Maturity gives us the ability to deal in more complex environments with

more diverse points of view, with more uncertainty, and navigate through.

I mean, as I've gotten older, I believe I've gotten more mature.

These are some of the things I've observed that happens to me, and how I've changed.

I no longer fight, for my rightness, so to speak.

I no longer have to be the expert.

As a matter of fact, the less expert I am, the more I am, right?

But that's a maturing process.

If we take a look at business, what we fundamentally have done is lock

people in at a childlike state because they're the child and the leader is

the parent and the leader is supposed to take care of the children and tell

them what to do and how to do it.

One of the challenges, one of the blockages I face in shifting the

paradigm is the leaders go, great, I'd like to delegate more, but I

can't because they're not capable.

I say, well, they're not capable because you haven't developed

them to be more capable.

And I'm not talking about their skill set, I'm talking about their maturity.

How well are they systems thinker?

Can they see the big picture?

Can they make decisions for the whole?

You've kept all the knowledge to yourself all these years.

so much.

It's time to them.

Now, I also want to say that, there are environments where that is appropriate.

And there are, there's some very environments where a very more

structured environment is appropriate.

And you're going to have less mature people.

That's the starting point.

Even within an organization, there are positions that are starting points.

Those people will need more direction.

I don't wanna keep 'em there.

My job as a leader is to not just move them up through the organization 'cause

they may grow past the organization.

My job as a leader, just like as a parent, I want my kids never, don't want my kids

living in my home when they're 35, right?

I want 'em to be mature and capable of taking care of themselves.

Why don't we do that for our people in the organization?

Why don't we view our role as leaders as developing them?

So one of the biggest blocks is in the shifting of the

paradigm, especially in business.

helping redefine the role for both employee and leader.

I believe it starts with leader because they obviously set the tone just like

maturing for most families is a function of the parents responsibility to help

their kids mature, not let the kids mature on their own guidance from somebody who's

kind of lived somewhere along the line.

So that I think is probably the biggest block and why it's important

to recognize this paradigm shift because that doesn't make any sense.

What I just said makes no sense if I'm.

If I view my role as a leader, it's optimizing the machine of production.

Yeah, I love the term maturity.

I seem to use the word health.

Quite a bit.

I asked, you know, what's the health of the organization maturity, oddly enough.

And I don't know if I was reading through your book at the time and I got this, or

if it was just what came to mind, I've got a leadership team I'm working with.

There's, a few that are on the leadership team and their discussion.

It's a very young company is no one below our level is taking responsibility.

They're not being accountable.

And the analogy I use is like we, and I'm not.

Stating this in a negative way, they're like they're in middle school

and we've got to move them up a grade or two so that they can learn how

to drive and maybe go to the grocery store for us and, and do some things.

So I love that.

I love that maturity.

And I've got a few, I think what I call big questions here as we're

sort of coming in for a landing.

The first one, and I would love for you to give maybe a How to proceed.

Let's just say someone has been listening in and they love the thought of this.

It's, it might be something that resonates with them, you know, deep

down in their, their soul or their gut.

They go, yeah, you know what?

I've been doing some of that without defining it or, but I want to.

I want to do more and I know that especially people that are coaches

like you and me our first thing would say well Give me a call.

We'll help you.

You know, we can make that work.

But let's maybe don't go that self promoting here what

would be a good first step?

what's some things that the leader that's listening in?

Should do next, Norman, get the book might be one.

We'll talk about that in just a moment, but what are some first

things to do if they're aware of this,

Well, I laugh because that was the first thing.

I mean, this is a complex journey, right?

And you need a guide.

So first thing is find a guide.

I'm available.

No, just joking.

but you do need a guide because it's not easy.

And, one of the things I teach all of our consultants is what I call

empathy and compassion for leaders.

Without that, forget it.

The second thing is whoever that guide is should have a deep

understanding, not just be empathic and compassionate for leadership.

But understand that the number one role of a leader is to create the

results that enable the organization to sustainably grow now and into the future.

And so we can't just talk about the soft side.

We have to acknowledge that their role is to ensure the organization is performing.

So this is a journey.

I often use the term where we're retooling the production line.

While the production line is running, we don't have the option to shut

it down and train everybody and, and now we'll turn it back on.

And we're, you know, that's, this is an organic process.

I would strongly suggest that leaders learn how to what we call it heart

centering, how to start bringing in the subjective element of life

and to get comfortable with that that to me is a foundational skill

to shift not only in being a good leader, but being a good human.

But let's just focus on running a business.

and, you know, there's a lot.

We teach a methodology.

We call it heart centering.

But, it's really a form of, you know, you can use meditation, you can use

relaxation, mindfulness, whatever you want to use with heart centering.

we use a lot of the same principles and practices, but we recognize

that we're really dealing with the body as an energy field.

And we're learning how to consciously shift the energy patterns and

opening to, insight and wisdom.

it's sort of like, think about those aha moments you have at three

o'clock in the morning or when you're taking your morning shower.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have a tool or the ability or the

skill to, Allow you to tap into that wisdom in the midst of a crisis, not

just the next morning in the shower.

And so this is a skill, and I want to highlight it as a very practical skill.

It's not just meditating off and going into la la land for

peace and calm and relaxation.

It's actually a very valuable tool.

So that's one of the places I would suggest people start as a leader is to

start learning that skill and then the rest of it is applying that skill But

always keep the eye on the ball that you're here to have the collective the

organization produce the results necessary So you need the business side of things

you need these called the soft side of things and you got to bring them together

into an integrated way of leading.

right?

Norm and I, I just realized here with a tail end of our conversation and

we kind of dove into the deep end of the pool right at the beginning,

kind of as my almost final question, did we define the living organization

well during the course of this?

is there anything else you would like to say?

I know there's a lot to it and we're about to let people know where they can

get the book and connect with you and all that, but anything that we missed, do

we need to do a definition here as we're wrapping up that maybe we missed earlier?

Well, I think I've touched that.

I didn't present it in the way that I normally do.

we, we, we've, you know, as I've said, I wrote the book in 2011

and it's evolved into a framework.

that got three component parts.

It's, it's the.

It's a new way of seeing.

It's the core principles, the paradigm shift.

And what are the principles of those paradigm shifts?

It's like, what are the laws of quantum physics versus, Newtonian physics?

the second is a new way of leading, which is, six skill sets, and

it starts with heart centering.

heart centered communication.

context, the ability to create that collective context that shifts

from the old strategy to the new so people behave accordingly.

So context is a big part, probably didn't get into that as much as I normally do.

the fourth is improv mindset.

is, balancing opposites.

and the sixth is how do, how do we call it leader as coach salt.

you're still a leader that's sort of directive and all of that, but you're also

a coach and how do you combine the two?

and then, and then the, the third element is a new way of creating

results, which is a set of tools that we've developed to facilitate, to bring

the two together, to bring the, the objective and subjective into work.

With, with some tools that support that effort for you as a leader,

living organization framework, I think, is a, I'll state my bias, I

think it's a pretty darn good way of proceeding as the next step.

But there's a lot to it.

We're going to be coming out with a new website, thelivingorganization.

com, pretty soon, probably within the next month or two,

which will explain all of this.

They can actually go to thelivingorganization.

com now, but it takes it to my website, quantumleaders.

com, which starts the discussion, so you can find a lot of information there.

They can actually get the first three chapters of my book.

for free, download it from quantumleaders, dot com forward slash podcast.

and they can reach me at nwolff at quantumleaders.

com.

I'm going to encourage.

People to reach out.

It's a great fit.

Listen, anyone who's listening in here, what you're discussing, it's a great fit.

There's a reason that we had you on as a guest.

And I think you could tell just the way my mind and my heart works

that, you know, I, I would have no problem arguing with people.

I'm sure you wouldn't either.

But there's no reason for us to argue over anything because there's so much in sync.

And I love that, Norman, we're seek, go create.

You already said you're a seeker at the beginning, but I'm going to give you an

opportunity as my final question to pick one of those words or allow you to, or

force you to, or whatever, how you want to word it, seek, go or create, which

one just means more to you resonates more with you even, even right now,

don't overthink it, seek, go or create.

And why that's my final question.

I would jump on create, why I think, humans are inherently creative beings.

We manifest realities.

learning how to do that, it ties back to the very thing I talked about, create

exactly what you want in life, get more of what you want, less of what you don't

want, And I think that the inherent nature of people is to constantly seek

to improve the environment we live in.

So create a beautiful world for all of us to live in.

Norman Wolfe.

Thank you.

Thank you for integrating terms like the living organization and

soulful purpose into what we're doing here at Seek Go Create.

They fit so well, they're so powerful.

this has been a great conversation.

I encourage you to connect with Norman.

He gave you his coordinates.

They're going to be down in the notes.

If you're watching this on YouTube or listening in on your podcast platform,

listen in we are seek, go create here.

We've got new episodes.

Every Monday on YouTube and also all your podcast platforms.

I appreciate all the comments you've been making.

I would love it if you're watching this on YouTube for you to jump down

and give your thoughts on what you think about the living organization and

some of the things we discussed here.

I'd love to hear positive, negative, anything.

I think it's, helpful to have that dialogue.

So, thanks again for listening in.

Until next time, continue being all that you were created to be.