Alignment and the Universal Energy Flow Formula
Purpose: This chapter is intended to document for future use the importance of aligning the Universal Energy Flow Formula (UEFF), maximizing energy flow, producing a force that drives work.
Content Focus: The UEFF reflects a general understanding of the components and conditions necessary for increasing energy flow (a phase change, energy changing from one state to another), thus creating the force that drives all physical and mental work.
By Nature: Without energy flow, no force is created, and no work is accomplished. The more these components are aligned in a specific environment proportionally increases the amount of work that can be accomplished.
Thinking of the Age
To improve performance through the ages, leaders have searched for better and better tools to tap into the universal energy source to meet the perceived needs of the time period.
Mechanical Age Thinking
The Mechanical Age focused on the need for external means (tools) to acquire more extensive and larger amounts of useable energy. This was what the Mechanical Age was all about – accessing energy to perform more work by multiplying muscle power. Why pull a stagecoach with six horses when a steam engine can pull twenty- five cars all day without changing tired horses? It was an amazing time.
Quantum Age Thinking
The Quantum Age focuses on leveraging mental capacity accelerated by computing power (another cognitive tool).
I can best describe this change of age by using Russell Ackoff’s Content of the Human Mind as a framework. The intent is not to define each component here but to provide an example of how each contributes to better leverage mental powers. I supplemented Ackoff’s list with the cognitive tool I describe as awareness.
Data: Big data mining Information: Information retrieval Knowledge: Limitless access to knowable know-how Understanding: Easy access to why things work as they do
Wisdom: Avoiding consequences by readily accessing archived experiences Awareness: Discovery of solutions outside your current thinking
The above components are propelled by the acceleration of computing power and, in turn, artificial intelligence, neural networks, etc. No doubt the impact will be more significant than the advent of the Mechanical Age. See Chapter 14 of this book titled Content of the Human Mind for descriptions of each component.
By Nature: The natural laws and natural forces are the same everywhere in the Universe.
By Nature: To know the process underlying energy flow invites the participant to be part of the universal creation process.
By Nature: The human mind can turn possibilities into existence. We can direct our environment’s energy flow and transform it into useful products (material and non- material) by our participation in the process.
We consist of the same energy that makes up stars, trees, and fish. Our bodies (receptacles for our spirits) are products of this same energy flow directed by universal intelligence.
Energy is everywhere. Everything is energy. Our senses reveal only a small portion of the energy in our environment. We cannot see atoms, much less inside atoms, hear the full range of sound waves, or see the full light spectrum without tools. To perceive more, we need tools that enhance our capabilities.
When an organization’s intention, thinking process, and attention are aligned and in harmony, energy flow is optimized.
Since all kinds of work require energy flow, leaders need to become aware of energy flow processes. It is everywhere. Increase your awareness, and you, too, will see it all around.
By Nature: Without energy flow, no work occurs, and without work, no life exists. Leaders must become conscious of the need to facilitate energy flow as a primary leadership role. This shift in roles for most managers will mean a shift from managing the system’s parts to leading and facilitating the whole system. To do this, leaders need to consciously assess and ensure each of the three primary processes of the UEFF is aligned and in harmony. This understanding is most important when the leader intends, by designing a higher-performing organization, to replace the existing low performing or optimized system.
Manager and Leadership Roles
The person facilitating the use of the UEFF may serve one of two roles. Which applies to your intent? Do you see your role as managing the existing system or designing and creating a higher-performing system?
The role of a manager:
- Manage the system.
- Optimize the parts of the system (workers, tools, and resources).
- Optimize the system (consistent with its design limits).
The role of the leader:
- Design and redesign the system (an architect of performance).
- Increase energy flow (UEFF being one tool).
- Enable workers to perform to their full potential.
Okay, it is more complex than noted above. Many books are written on the topic. In my experience, most leaders can easily review the abbreviated list above and share their behaviors related to the roles noted. What is your role?
By Nature: Management may stand alone as a function. The focus is on efficiency. Leadership, on the other hand, requires a prerequisite of management.
Management strives for efficiency. Effective leadership depends on a foundation of efficient management, and effective leadership requires efficient management.
Two Critical Factors
When the leader uses the UEFF to increase performance, there are two factors to consider.
- Are all three components of the UEFF (Intent, Thinking Process, and Attention) in place, aligned, and in harmony? It is vital to make sure all three components are compatible with the organization’s operations and its containing environment.
- Are the three components of the UEFF aligned at the worker level, team level, and corporate level consistent with customer needs and expectations?
The Universal Energy Flow Formula
The UEFF is a system composed of three primary processes. These include Intention, Thinking Process, and Attention, and all work interdependently. Each of these three parts are always available when energy flows throughout the Universe.
Let us define each of the three components.
Intention refers to desired outcomes.
Intention encompasses vision, mission, purpose, values, goals, objectives, job tasks, desires, expectations, positioning, standards, and results.
Intent, as defined in this book, has to be: Bold, challenging what is possible. Intent must be:
- Appealing to the better side of human nature.
- Aligned at the individual, team, and corporate levels.
- Responsive to customer needs.
- Compatible within the culture and environment customers operate.
- Supportive of moral, legal, and ethical standards.
- Part of a design with the intent of making the world a better place to live.
- Related to beliefs, rights, contracts, needs, prime directive, and values.
All of the above may be linked at some level to desired outcomes as intent.
Thinking Process refers to the foundational thinking informing what workers do, how they do it, and why they do it the way they do it.
As defined in this book, the Thinking Process depends on applying the most effective thinking to achieve the desired intent. To be effective, the Thinking Process has to be:
- Supported by viable research, identifying the best thinking available.
- Compatible with the best tools available (physical and mental).
- Based on effectiveness, efficiency being a prerequisite.
- Consistent with the highest moral values.
- Continually updated based on research, benchmarking, and after-action reviews as examples.
- Aligned with established high ethical standards.
- Compatible with the natural rights of sentient beings Supportive of a noble outcome.
The Thinking Process depends on storage and retrieval.
Typically, when humans learn how to do something, there is a learning curve. With time and practice, new learning is mastered both mentally and physically. In the process, the mind abbreviates acquired information for efficient storage and quick retrieval.
Humans are born with the hardware necessary to capture human learning experiences and store them in software that can be used as internalized mental shortcuts for quick access. This process creates efficiency as humans do not have to keep relearning the same thing over and over. (See the chapter on mental models in Section 2.)
Simply, humans cannot store all learning in its unabbreviated form. At this time, our biology limits our ability to save complete copies of everything we experience, much less each new iteration of previous learning. For efficient storage and retrieval, the mind/brain/body relies on mental models (one term among many to describe the process).
As an example, a good friend of mine had a sister with a brain disease. She appeared to be normal in many ways. However, due to her illness, she was not able to retrieve prior learning. This condition had enormous consequences, some large and some small. One consequence was her inability to tie her shoelaces. Most of us have assisted a child on how to tie shoelaces. At first, it is a struggle. Then we get it. (We learn how to do the task, store the learning, and retrieve it with almost no thinking or relearning.) In this case, my friend’s adult sister woke each day, unable to retrieve the simple learned task of shoestring tying.
The Thinking Process has been characterized but not limited to terms such as mental models, paradigms, frame of reference, point of view, skill set, knowledge, understanding, wisdom, problem-solving and action triggers.
Attention: Refers to taking appropriate, measured action based on the amount of time
and the action’s timing. Attention may be physical and/or mental in nature.
By Nature: What humans focus on grows; what we ignore diminishes.
Terms like “get it done,” “do it,” “fish or cut bait,” “pedal to the metal,” and “full steam
ahead,” are all examples of sayings embedded in our culture for taking action.
“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” Rear Admiral David Farragut, Battle of Mobile Bay, 1864.
As defined in this book, attention is not limited to just characteristics of the physical or mental act. To be effective, attention has to be:
Based on an understanding of potential consequences Measured and appropriate
Applied based on time (length) and timing (point in time) Aligned with Intent and Thinking Process
Initiated avoiding colloidal damage
Here are more examples: Terms like “Let me think it over,” “Let’s not overdo it,” “What the research says”, “What were the results of the last experiment”, and as Elon Musk said, “Show me the physics.”
Attention implies taking mental and physical action based on the appropriateness and degree of action required to achieve the desired intent.
Scrambled Eggs and the Universe
Question: Do I need to be aware of the UEFF to cook an egg vs. eating it raw? Answer: No.
Question: Is the UEFF operating when you cook an egg? Is this true even if I am unaware of the UEFF and its processes?
Answer: Yes.
Cooking an egg requires energy flow. Aware or not, all work in the Universe depends on energy flow. Everything in the Universe follows the same process. Intent? If you intend to cook an egg for breakfast, do you want a scrambled, fried, or poached egg? Other choices? Please make a choice.
Thinking Process?
Do you need to open the egg? How do you open an egg? Do you break the egg open with a hammer, crack it on the edge of the bowl, or use a different method? Do some methods result in an egg littered with tiny pieces of eggshell? Are there more useful ways of extracting the egg from its shell? What about the cooking method?
Are temperature and pressure variables to the outcome of cooking eggs? Attention?
You are hungry and intend to cook your egg, and you know how to cook an egg to your satisfaction. But you are too lazy to take the appropriate action. The result, you go hungry. Your needs are not met.
Joel Barker has this wonderful saying I enjoy each time I read it.
“Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time.
Vision with action can change the world.”
He left out the Thinking Process but still makes a strong point.
Alignment of the UEFF
There are three primary components of the UEFF. Each component may stand alone. Non-alignment is like riding a stationary bike. Energy is flowing, but you are not going anywhere.
Organizations may function and operate with a vague or unclean intent. Even then, some semblance of the UEFF is in place. You can be sure if any work is getting done, the UEFF is operating.
The focus of this section is to define each of the components more fully.
Examples of Factors Limiting Alignment of the UEFF
The following abbreviated but represented lists are shared in this book as a
means to increase the leader’s awareness of the components of the UEFF.
Intent: Facilitating a clear purpose. I smile as I think, “What could possibly go wrong?”
- Workers may have vague or confusing personal intent.
- Individual workers in a team may not share an aligned intent.
- Teams within the organization may not share an aligned intent.
- The leader’s intent may not align with the organization’s purpose.
- The organization may have a vague or unclear intent.
- The organization’s intent may not align with customer needs.
Is the organization’s intent aligned with the organizations Thinking Process and Attention?
Thinking Process: Using the best tools.
- Workers may be using ineffective and/or outdated mental/physical/process tools.
- Workers may not be aware of the most effective mental/physical/process tools available. Even if aware, not having access has the same result.
- Workers may be using the best mental/physical/process tools, but the way work is organized limits performance.
- Workers may be unaware of the mental/physical/process tools workers use in the highest performing organizations.
- The organization may not discover unknown tools that may be more effective than mental/physical/process tools available today.
- Worker development may be based on large generic training sessions and is not individualized, based on worker strengths (not weaknesses) to better complement the worker’s team.
Is the organization’s Thinking Process aligned with the organization’s Intent and Attention?
Attention: Working smart, not hard.
- The organization may not be aware; typically, only twenty percent of a worker’s time produces eighty percent of the worker’s performance output.
- Workers may not be asked to collectively share what they perceive as time wasters, resulting in more wasted time.
- The organization may not understand quality is cheap. Re-do’s are expensive.
- Workers may not be asked regularly to provide their supervisors with a list of things the supervisor “can do,” enabling the workers to do their jobs to the best of their ability. Leaders may focus most of their energy on solving people’s problems when, according to W. Edwards Deming, ninety-six percent of performance problems are related to system problems. Working on the wrong work is a waste.
- Workers may receive work that can be accomplished by a person with less education/skill, earning considerably less for performing the same work satisfactorily.
Is the organization’s attention aligned with the organization’s Intent and Thinking Process?
An example of What Not to do (Non-Alignment of Intent)
I was asked to review the effectiveness of an organization’s vision (one strategy to achieve intent among many). I learned the boss formed a representative committee of five workers. This committee met several times and created a vision statement. The boss shared the statement with all teams and asked if anyone had any suggestions related to the vision wording. A few suggestions were offered and accepted. Interacting with workers, I learned the following:
No one could identify the organization’s vision (under the umbrella of intent). None of the workers questioned were invited to create a personal career vision, the same for teams. Thus, there was nothing to align.
Some workers noted the vision statement was on display in the main office. However, most were clueless. The vision, again, the intent, was not being used as an everyday performance tool. It was not useful for decision making, resource allocation, and strategic planning.
There was no process for renewing the organization’s vision (Intent) to better cope with
the ever-changing environment.
There was no indication of alignment with the other two components (Thinking Process and Attention).
Do all organizations need to be aware of the UEFF? For argument’s sake, let’s say you are among a minimal number of managers who sincerely believe their organization operates in a stable environment, and the organization is performing optimally. If true, I have no doubt there would be little or no incentive to become aware of the UEFF or increase energy flow and improve performance.
A caveat for the leader who thinks they are managing a stable system. Beware: You do not know what you do not know. Are you and the organization as a whole prepared to deal with unforeseen, abrupt changes impacting the vitality of your organization? From my point of view, you and your organization are vulnerable. In doubt – align.
UEFF Flow Stages
The following graph illustrates the processes that may occur by stage when aligning the three major stages or components of the UEFF.
Why? Why is this important? Whether the leader is aware of the impact of energy flow on individual, team, or corporate performance, energy flow is the basis of all work. Many managers go to work each day simply managing the existing system.
Without awareness, energy still flows based on the system’s operating design and the tools, decisions, and processes employed. The opportunity is within awareness. If a leader becomes aware of the energy flow process, outcomes can be altered.
This opens the door to improved performance.
Consequences: When a leader is unaware and ignorant of how energy flows, energy is easily misdirected or, in most cases, disproportionally lost (entropy). Easily misdirected or, in most cases, disproportionally lost (entropy). This is an everyday event when managers unknowing make choices and take actions contrary to energy flow.
Here is the main thing I want to say! Although the UEFF is an abstract mental tool with weaknesses common to all mental models, it is a very effective performance tool. The Universe, in many ways, operates on a few simple laws. From simplicity comes complexity both in nature and our everyday lives.
The part that is simple? You need to know where you are going, what means you will use to get there, and take action. That is the UEFF. It is yours for the taking, a gift from universal intelligence.
Media I recommend for your library:
Article: Ackoff, R, DKIW Pyramid, From data to wisdom, Journal of Applied Systems
Analysis 16 (1989) 3–9,
Book: The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra
Book: Flow: Living at the Peak of Your Abilities by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Book: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Video: Mechanistic to Social Systems Thinking by Russell Ackoff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGN5DBpW93g
Video: IF Russ Ackoff had given a TED Talk
Video: A Theory of Systems for Educators, The Deming Library Video: The Power of Vision by Joel Barker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVONMxCK4CQ
