Vision In Action - Leadership Institute

Vision-In-Leadership Corporate and Entrepreneurial Seminars and Programs

Yasuhiko Genku Kimura and his associates at Vision-In-Action Leadership Institute conduct innovative corporate consulting seminars and executive coaching programs on the issues of leadership, creativity, visionary and strategic thinking, communication, and organizational and strategic transformation and development.

All of the seminars and programs are custom-made tailored to the needs of each client organization or individual. The following are samples of corporate lectures and seminars.

For further information please call 212-888-1908 or e-mail think@via-visioninaction.org.

Sample Corporate Lecture
Sample Corporate Seminar
Sample Academic Presentation: Asian Perspectives on Leadership

Sample Corporate Lecture/Workshop

PASSION, VISION, AND CREATIVITY

THE ESSENCE OF AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP

Founder and President, Vision-In-Action Leadership Institute

INTRODUCTION

In this Information Age no individual or business in the global market place has an advantage over others in terms of information. Today more than ever, it is one’s ability to think creatively and innovatively that separates the great from the average.

The ability for authentic, creative, innovative thinking is not an exclusive gift of a genius. In fact, what makes someone a genius is that one is authentic with respect to one’s passion and vision and that one pursues one’s creative vision with passion. A genius is in integrity with oneself. A genius is being true to one’s own self and creative vision.

The great American genius artist-scientist-philosopher Walter Russell said, “Genius is self-bestowed, while mediocrity is self-inflicted.” To discover and to live in integrity with your passion and vision is the key to self-bestowing genius and hence the key to true creativity and originality.

AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP

Authentic Leadership begins with you self-generatively and self-responsibly leading your life as the creator-leader of your own life. Then you become able to extend your leadership to your family, business, community, and world.

(The term “authentic” shares its etymological root with “author” and “authority.” Thus, being authentic implies that you be the author and authority of your self and your life.)

A. Authentic Thinking

§ Authentic Thinking is the meditative-creative mode of thinking that unfolds when you become attuned to your inner intelligence and wisdom.

(“Authentic Thinking” is the English translation of the ancient Japanese word Kamikaeru which means “to think.” Kami signifies the “invisible interior source of the divine light of intelligence” and kaeru signifies “to return.” Authentic Thinking therefore means to return to the source of your intelligence and creativity within and to be inspired by your own inner wisdom.)

B. Passion and Vision

§ Passion is the creative thrust arising from within that propels you to creative action to fulfill your singular cosmic destiny.

You become naturally creative when you are engaged in doing what you are passionate about.

Those who are “driven” are motivated by a sense of lack, while those who are passionate are motivated by a sense of abundance and overflow.

§ Vision is the evolutionary call coming from within that beckons you to creative action to fulfill your singular cosmic destiny.

True passion or vision is not something you have but who you are and what you are.

§ What is my passion? What is my vision?

To know your passion and vision is to know your self at the soul level. To realize your passion and vision requires a method of internal inquiry that breaks down your deeply-held worldview as well as assumptions about yourself.

The following are three sample questions. Answering questions such as these creates an opening for identifying your passion and vision:

Ø What about your work or your field of work that excites you?

Ø If you had an unlimited amount of time and wealth while no one needed you, what would you do for the rest of your eternal life?

Ø If you were given the responsibility of creating a new civilization, what kind of civilization would you create?

Through the process of answering the above questions (and many more), you start to realize who you are as passion and what you are as vision.

Since assumptions determine locations where answers can be found, asking powerfully thought-provoking questions based on entirely different or unrealistic assumptions often leads to radical and unpredicted answers and breakthroughs in business as in science.

C. Four IN’s of Leadership

Eastern Philosophic Perspectives on Leadership universally consider self-development to be the essence of leadership.

1. Intelligence (Shintoism – Japanese)

A truly intelligent leader is one who is connected to one’s own inner wisdom and thinks authentically (kamikaeru).

2. Integrity (Taoism – Chinese/Pan-Asian)

A leader with true integrity is one who manifests Tao, cosmic integrity and wholeness, as Teh, human integrity and wholeness, in life.

3. Intention (Buddhism – Indian/Pan-Asian):

A leader with visionary intention is one who is committed to ongoing self-awakening, self-refinement, and self-development and is in action to actualize one’s intention—one whose primary responsibility is for the whole while whose fundamental commitment is to one’s self-evolution (bodhisattva).

4. Individuality (Hinduism – Indian)

A leader with true individuality is one who lives and leads from his authentic self ( not from his egoic self), who is indivisibly whole (not fragmented in one’s consciousness), and who knows and fulfills one’s singular cosmic destiny (atman).

D. Alignment beyond Agreement

§ Alignment is congruence of intention, while agreement is congruence of opinion or belief.

§ Aligned intention and quest for the achievement of bold strategic objectives unites people.

§ In the context of alignment beyond agreement, different points of view become a creative and evolutionary intellectual asset, instead of devolving into disagreement and conflict.

§ The culture of alignment engenders maximum synergy and optimum creativity. (See “Alignment Beyond Agreement” by Yasuhiko Genku Kimura: http://www.via-visioninaction.org/via-li/articles.php.)

E. Synergy

§ Synergy is behaviors of whole systems unpredicted by behaviors of their subsystems observed apart from the whole. (This definition is based on R. Buckminster Fuller’s Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking.)

§ Creation of positive synergetic dynamics within your organization is the key in generating unpredicted breakthrough results and solutions.

§ A culture of dynamic synergy, combined with a culture of alignment beyond agreement, charges your organization with a creative culture.

F. Creative Challenge

§ In leading an organization in an evolutionary path, it is critical that you ongoingly and effectively pose creative challenges to your employees in the form of challenging strategic goals and objectives.

§ A creative objective is an objective the achievement of which requires thinking-in-action beyond what one already knows how to accomplish.

G. The Secret Mantra: Let’s Play!

§ Start your day and your work by saying to yourself, “Let’s play!” and mean it.

§ Emanate the Spirit of Play and infuse the energy field of your organization with the Spirit of Play.

The supreme leader is one whose existence is barely known.

Next best is one who is loved and praised.

Next is one who is feared.

The last is one who is despised.

No trust will ever be accorded to a leader who lacks integrity.

Therefore, with deep commitment,

Honor your words and trust the words of others.

Then, when the work is done and success achieved,

The people will say, “We did it ourselves.”

‑‑From The Book Of Balance (2003)

Yasuhiko Genku Kimura’s rendition of Lao Tzu’s Tao Teh Ching

The absence of happiness is an indication that we are not in tune with the evolutionary thrust of life; it is a symptom of a devolutionary stagnation, lacking in the effulgence of passion and joy—the resplendent evidence of a life fully lived in sympathetic resonance with the creative thrust for self-optimization. To be ethical means to live in tune with this creative thrust, and thereby to live a creative life, which creativity extends to the building of a community that is ethical and just.

‑‑From Think Kosmically Act Globally (2000)

By Yasuhiko Genku Kimura

ALIGNMENT BEYOND AGREEMENT™

A Corporate Program for the Development of

A Culture of Alignment

Overview: Principle of Alignment Beyond Agreement

Alignment is congruence of intention, whereas agreement is congruence of opinion.

Opinion is a supposition held to be right but usually not substantiated by clear, rational or evidential proof.Because disagreement is difference of opinion, disagreement often escalates into a dispute as to whose opinion is right, creating an environment of divisiveness.

Alignment does not require agreement as a necessary condition.Alignment as congruence of intention is congruence of resolution for the achievement of a particular goal.Since a goal is in and of the future, unknown or unpredictable variables inevitably enter the process of achieving it.Therefore, inherent in the practice of alignment is the spirit of quest—the openness for the unknown and the commitment to meeting it with resolve.

The spirit of quest generates open and evolving dialogue-in-action.Participants of a quest bring in diverse points of view and are open to hearing diverse point of view, while remaining united in the same quest.When they jointly choose a course of action, they know that the choice is a tentative, mutual agreement, to be modified, altered, or even discarded along the way.The question is not “who is right” but “what is best” for the fulfillment of the intention.

Alignment engenders synergy.When individuals are aligned in quest, their collective intelligence often produces results that are beyond the intelligence of any single individual.Though the locus of thinking always remains within the individual, the synergetic impact of the thinking of others takes the individual beyond the normal mode and boundary of his or her thinking.

Intelligence follows intention.Aligned intention creates a synergetic field of coherence that works as a conduit for greatly enhanced intelligence and empowered action beyond the usual limitation of the individual.This explains the extraordinary performance excellence of aligned organizations.

In an alignment-based organization, disagreement among participants does not diminish but rather enhances the power of the alignment and its synergetic impact.Plurality and diversity of ideas and views, united in a shared intention, mutually enrich one another toward the achievement of an objective.Alignment is not a static state; it is a dynamic process of constant aligning and realigning in the continual movement of time through the timeless commitment to an intention.

Example: Application of Alignment beyond Agreement

There are two distinct approaches to problem solving: the atomistic approach and the systemic approach.Our normal approach to problem solving is to formulate a solution particular to the problem at issue.This is the atomistic approach in which problems are identified locally in isolation from the whole system and particular solutions are formulated to solve them.

A solution thus formulated requires for its existence the very existence of the problem to which it is a solution.The atomistic existence of the solution depends on the atomistic persistence of the problem.No paradigm shift has taken place; the problem and the solution co-inhabit the same world in which the problem has arisen in the first place.

A systemic-alignment approach involves a higher level of thinking than the level of thinking at which the problem in question was created.This approach requires (1) that we envision a whole new system and culture in which the problem does not exist to begin with, and (2) that we take necessary action to systematically create that new system and culture.

When faced with problems, we habitually seek within the known for solutions.However, the kind of knowledge we have, the kind of being we are, and the kind of thinking we use constitute the kind of culture we inhabit, which produces the problems we have and the solutions we formulate.

In the systemic approach, we envision a new culture, a new system, free of the problems at hand.The vision of that new culture and new system beckons people to come forth in alignment.The intention to create that new system and new culture engenders alignment.In envisioning a new culture and new system in which the current problems do not exist, we have resolved the problems inside our ideation, that is, within our personal understanding of the world.This resolution of problems through envisioning evolves into an aligned resolution for the creation of that culture and system in actuality through aligned action.

The principles of human action and the design of human alignment for the realization of a new culture need to be those of that new culture, not of the current culture, in order for that culture to become a reality.We are required to be and to act in accordance with the principles and designs of the envisioned culture, not of the current one.Gandhi said this eloquently: “Be the change that you want to make.”We must be before we can become.Aligned, we remain in, but not of, the present culture, because we are of the new culture of our envisioning, and in the creation of this new culture we naturally become engaged together in transformative action.

Program Outline

PURPOSE

The purpose and function of the Alignment Beyond Agreement Program™ is to create an organizational culture in which alignment among all segments of the organization is the norm and to develop an organizational paradigm in which collective intelligence is maximally and optimally harnessed.(Paradigm is defined as an “Injunctive Practice” that engenders a system and a culture.)

PROGRAM PHASES

Phase One: Assessment

Through a series of confidential interviews with key individuals in different segments of the organization, we identify and assess a set of problems and impediments that are affecting the development of the organization and the growth of business.

Based on this assessment, we develop a practical and customized application of the Alignment Beyond Agreement Program^tm to most effectively serve the goals of the organization.

Phase Two: Seminars

The first step is to deliver customized Alignment Beyond Agreement Seminars™ to the various segments of the organizations that were identified as a result of the assessment.

The second step is to deliver a general Alignment Beyond Agreement Seminar^tm to the whole organization, including all of the participants from the segment-based seminars.

At this point, we will meet with the executive manager of each organizational segment to solicit input for a customized Alignment Beyond Agreement Measurement Matrix^tm defining recognizable and attitudinal milestones along the road to a new culture and system.This Matrix will be used as a survey and measurement tool in the third phase of the program.

Phase Three: Follow-up Interventions

The initial series of customized seminars will be followed by six monthly intervention sessions to continue assessing the progress and to clarify the principles and application of a culture and system of Alignment Beyond Agreement within each of the identified segments.

After the monthly sessions, we will conduct three bimonthly reinforcement sessions to assess development and encourage continued progress.

This will be followed by two quarterly seminars that underscore the direction of change within the organization, demonstrate how change has created individual wealth or benefit and offer advanced principles to maintain the culture and systems of Alignment Beyond Agreement now developing within the organization.

SEMINAR OUTLINE

Since all seminars are custom-designed, the following is a general guideline and standard.

Seminars are highly interactive and participatory.Seminars are designed to provoke thinking so that the participants will think together with the seminar leader and with one another to achieve full understanding of the concepts and principles of Alignment Beyond Agreement.

In this manner, the participants will come to understand the principles imparted during the seminar, not merely intellectually but also practically.

Program Elements include:

Defining and delineating the concept of Alignment Beyond Agreement.
Case studies of alignment versus agreement based on the participants’ own experience.
Identification of impediments to the achievement of Alignment Beyond Agreement.
The nature of intention.
The art and science of synergy and collective intelligence.
Identifying shared intentions.
Developing the organizational practice of Alignment Beyond Agreement.
The art and science of continual personal and organizational development.
The systems approach to evolutionary problem solving.

Sample Academic Presentation: Asian Perspectives on Leadership

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Alignment Beyond Agreement, Alignment Beyond Agreement Program, Alignment Beyond Agreement Seminars, and Alignment Beyond Agreement Measurement Matrix are the trademarks of Yasuhiko Genku Kimura and the Vision-In-Action Leadership Institute.