Finding the Meaning In It All

What a great, great article in the Wall Street Journal—Tuesday, July 14, 2009—“A New View, After Diagnosis” about how “cancer patients find meaning in the face of mortality…how can you live knowing that you’re going to die?”

To me, the article was inspiring, hopeful, and courageous.

A new therapy called meaning-centered psychotherapy addresses the question that cancer patients have: “How do I live in the space between my diagnosis and my eventual death.” And it answers the call with the philosophy of the Austrian psychiatrist and holocaust survivor, Victor Frankl, who taught, “people can endure any suffering if they know their life has meaning.”

Meaning-centered psychotherapy works with cancer patients to make “the months or years of life that remain times of extraordinary growth” of “reconnecting with the many sources of meaning in life—love, work, history, family relationships,” and of resolving issues of our past.

Through spiritual well being, we can reduce our anxiety and fear of death and find meaning in life and the legacy we can leave behind.

No, this article wasn’t about work or technology or leadership per se and yet it was about all of them so much more.

How often do we go through our daily lives and question the meaning of it all? (What’s life really all about? What’s it all for? Why do we work so hard? Who really cares? What affect does it have in the end, anyway?)

In fact, all our lives we are searching for and desperately seeking spiritual meaning in what we do.

We are multi-faceted people. We have professional lives, families, friends, community, hobbies, and so forth. And we try to imbue spirituality in what we do every day—to elevate the mundane into the holy—to make the meetings, reports, bills, dirty diapers, dishes, and laundry, meaningful.

Recently, one of my friends who is looking for a new job (in this tough economy) said to me, “I want to find a meaningful job.” And I asked him “what is meaningful to you?” He answered “I’m not sure, but I’ll know it when I see it.”

It seems that we all cognizant of the short time we have here on earth and we want to make the most of it. Yet, despite all the people, activity, and things (“technology toys” or otherwise), we still are not sure what exactly “meaningful” means.

Is the answer really simple and straightforward--is it our good deeds, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and serving our maker? Well yes, of course, but we also have an inherent need to see that there is some positive end-result to our life’s work—a legacy that transcends us. Whether it is through our children and grandchildren that carry onward after us, charitable gifts or trusts that helps feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, or treat the ill, or having a positive influence on the people and society around us—inspiring, motivating, leading, and creating a better world.

Certainly, with a cancer patient, at the crossroads of the life and death, meaning must be found now or lost for all time. Others, not facing imminent death, have more time to explore, experiment, and search for the meaning in their lives. In the end, all of us desire to leave this world with a clear conscience knowing that we did our best, and left the world and the people in it that we touched, better off than had we not lived at all.

Finding the Meaning In It All

Compassionate Change and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture, as John Zachman said, is about managing change and complexity.

Naomi Karten has an interesting op-ed in ComputerWorld, 19 May 2008, on change management.

Naomi writes: “managers don’t want to have to deal with the resistance and objections and pushback and grousing and grumbling that so often accompany change efforts.”

Change causes angst (hey, we’re all human!):

“The reality, however, is that turbulence is a fundamental part of the change experience. Replace what’s familiar and predictable with that which is unfamiliar, confusing, ambiguous or potentially risky, and people react…Almost any change (and sometimes even just the rumor of a change) upsets the relative equilibrium.”

Reaction to change is deep and occurs on many levels:

“People’s reactions are often more emotional and visceral than logical and rational. Some people display shock, anxiety, fear or anger. Some become preoccupied, absent-minded, forgetful, distracted or fatigued—even if they view the change as positive.”

Change management is important to successfully implementing change, modernization, and transformation:

“You can’t eliminate the turbulence. But you can minimize the duration and intensity of the turbulence, and therefore implement the change more smoothly and with less gnashing of teeth.”

So how do we help people see their way through change?

“What people need most in order to cope is communication in the form of information, empathy, reassurance and feedback.”

Aren’t adults really just big children, with fear and anxiety over the unknown? (Remember the “bogeyman” under the bed?) How many of you with children hear them express some nervousness right before the first day of a new school year or going to a new school or summer camp. It’s human nature. We are creatures of habit; change the structure we are used to and we’re like fish out of water, working just to catch our breath.

The truth is, all human beings are mortal and can be hurt by change. Cut them and they bleed. Pull the rug out from under them and they can fall on their face, especially if they don’t know first that the rug will be moving! That’s what change is—it’s moving the pieces around and expecting a person to know where things are.

As enterprise architects, leaders, change agents, it is crucial that we treat people with respect, dignity, equality and compassion. Yes, “business is business,” but we can elevate ourselves above the everyday tough business decisions, and recognize that our authority, initiatives, and change efforts have a human impact that we need be sensitive to. Part of enterprise architecture therefore needs to be building communication and sound human capital management into our IT planning and governance processes. For example, our transition plan to move from the baseline to the target state needs to not only address business process improvement and technology modernization, but also human capital management.

People need to worked with. They need to understand the changes taking place and how they fit in. They need to have time to adjust. They need support and encouragement. They need to be treated with humanity. Let’s not lose this in our effort to reach for the future state of the organization.

Compassionate Change and Enterprise Architecture