While the story in this book is a fable, much of what is told here is not fiction. As an employee, as a manager, and as a consultant, I have personally experienced the kind of transformation Lucas experienced.
The fable’s setting also comes from my own background. At one point I spent over a decade associated with a large financial services company, where I worked in an office environment divided into cubicles.
One of the most difficult and drama-filled periods of my professional life featured a boss much like the fellow Lucas works for. I am grateful that it was also a time of poignant learning during which I discovered how I wanted to show up—and how I didn’t—in the formal manager-leader role I landed in just a few years later. I made the shift from seeing my situation as a “problem” that triggered a habitual reaction, to seeing each situation as an opportunity to clarify what I wanted to create in my professional path.
Today’s organizational environments—from businesses to universities to governments—are chock-full of dramas. These range from the daily dramas of disagreement and disgruntlement, to severe bullying and power plays, to the life-threatening events we all see in the news.
While these 3 Vital Questions may not prevent all of this drama, they can definitely transform organizations that use them consistently to deal with daily challenges. I have even seen managers fundamentally shift the way they manage as they come to see the cost of the dramas they have been unwittingly producing or perpetuating.
Our organizations, and indeed, our world, can only benefit from cultivating the transformative capacity of these 3 Vital Questions.
In the work that my wife and partner, Donna, and I do together, we hold this aspiration: that we be Co-Creators collaborating in service to all whom we work with—our customers and clients, our vendors and co-workers, and our communities.
We encourage you to apply these 3 Vital Questions in your workplace, along with the Seven Commitments for Collaboration you’ll find at the back of this book. We challenge you, as well, to consider what other areas of your life might be transformed by these simple questions. Only by upgrading our ways of thinking and relating to one another—little by little, day by day—only by taking generative action, can we transform as well as protect what is nearest and dearest to us.
May our actions have a positive impact on the world.