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Since commercial transactions began, businesses have been using psychics to help them see into the future and to choose the most profitable paths to follow. Although no contemporary businesses like to admit employing paranormal services, the use of psychics is routine and widespread.

Most businesses attempt to operate exclusively in the domain of the known, where next quarter’s numbers are analytically forecast by the spreadsheets on the laptops of their business analysts.  However, in an increasingly uncertain world, the most valuable business opportunities are often found in the realm of the unknown, where markets can be created and their great potential realised.

It is challenging to explore unknown potential using objective analytical tools, and so leaders tend to rely on gut instinct, or retain the services of business psychics like Laura Day. Like other psychics, business psychics range in effectiveness from having some genuine gift to complete charlatanism.

The genuinely gifted business psychics are probably not using psychic powers at all. Instead, they are unconsciously recognising tiny and subliminal cues and clues from their clients. These identified fragments of meaning are what a body language expert describes as a tell. By connecting these tells, the business psychic reflects back what their client intuitively finds valuable, and so tells their potential fortune.

In Dreamwork, we use tools like the Dreamwork Identifiers, Connectors, Reflectors and Illuminators to enable clients to identify and connect these intuitive cues and clues, and to reflect and illuminate their value. It may seem like magic, but any one can use it to access their intuitive wisdom, and coherently and consistently tell their business fortunes. And yes, it does cost more than a pound…

For many leaders, a leadership retreat gives them the opportunity to wear Indiana Jones style hats and to endlessly quote David Whyte at each other. The experience is often viewed as more of a treat than a retreat, and the question of who or what they are retreating from is rarely considered.

Some may be distancing themselves from the unpredictable behaviour of their followers, some may be temporarily avoiding the bulldozing boulders of their own leaders, and virtually all of them will be retreating from playing the character that they act out in business life.

However, if the retreat is being hosted with skill and empathy, the gathered leaders may begin to glimpse a space beyond chanting, aikido and Moleskine notebooks. In this discovered space, they may encounter their own authentic selves that are so often in retreat in their day to day corporate existences.

The leadership challenge they then face is to maintain a continuing dialogue with their authentic self as the experience of the retreat retreats from their memory. Although they may be full of great intentions and powerful affirmations, this is usually not enough to sustain their avowed authenticity and it begins to waste away like a rare animal in the corporate zoo.

It is easy enough for them to blame their business environment for the impending extinction, but by having the courage to speak up in their true voices, they can begin to recreate the space in which their authenticity thrives. In Dreamwork, we use Selves and Voices as a way to help leaders to open up new space by listening to their own voices speak their truth.

In the 1950s, German magician Ralf Bialla added a classic bullet catching routine to his performance repertoire. However, unlike other magicians who used a variety of subterfuge and misdirection to apparently catch a bullet, Ralf actually did catch the bullet in his teeth.

To offer himself some degree of protection, he wore bullet-proof glasses, reinforced gloves on his hands which he used to cover  parts of his face, and his front teeth been replaced by plates made from steel. His assistant would fire a .22 bullet at him from a rifle and it would smash through three glass panes before Bialla caught it with his teeth.

As a result of his accepted occupational hazards, Ralf was seriously wounded nine times, but survived and continued to perform the routine, as portrayed in the 1972 documentary film ‘Wer schießt auf Ralf Bialla?‘.  In 1975, he died by falling off a cliff, supposedly because of constant dizziness caused by the injuries.

Recently, a client asked us if we could just provide him with a magic bullet to motivate his staff.  As I explored this request with him, I asked if he would like it in the form of an email that he could just fire off from his holstered Blackberry. We then continued by reflecting on his use of language, and how the message might be received rather than how it might just be banged out.

Often messages are just fired off, rather than being used as a way of engaging in dialogue. Instead of creating new space through questioning and enquiry, a firefight fought over old territory often ensues. The recipients of magic bullet messages begin to look like Ralf Bialla, viewing the world through the distortions of self protecting bullet proof glasses, as they catch some bullets and dodge others.

Eventually, dizzy from the cacophony of target based one way missives and directives, they realise that they have become targets themselves, and they go AWOL, taking their passion and creativity with them. So next time you feel like firing off a magic bullet email, just think who is going to catch that bullet for you. You might just end up shooting yourself in the foot.

A question I am often asked is ‘How can I make my people do what I really want them to do?’ My usual answer is ‘You can’t.‘, often followed by the question ‘How can your people make you do what you really want to do?‘.

Thousands of books and millions of articles have been published on methods for getting your staff and colleagues to do what you want them to do.  The first of these publications were about dealing with simple situations that were known and familiar and declared that a command and control regime would yield the most efficient results.  This was the domain of the Commander, and although this method can be efficient in very specific contexts, it usually ineffective when dealing with the unfamiliar.

The vast army of writers then went on to describe how to deal with complicated situations that were unfamiliar to the people involved, although the nature of the particular situations was known to others.  This is the territory of the Manager, whose main task is to make specific and unambiguous decisions based on collected information and accumulated management theory.

However, although Commanders and Managers are usually competent at dealing with known situations, they often struggle when having to work with the unknown, the uncertain and the unexpected.  In the unknown, there are often no clear cut answers, and ambiguities and paradoxes may often need to be embraced.  Rather than decisions being made about whether to do this or that, they become about how to achieve this and that.

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Although liminoid sounds like something a Cockney may have in their vodka (I apologise in advance to those wearing pearly jackets and encouraging each other to have bananas), a liminoid state is often experienced when we become completely and utterly absorbed in an activity.

The word liminoid has its roots in the Latin word limin, meaning a threshold.  In a liminoid state, we experience the threshold between conscious and unconscious awareness, with our senses being heightened and our perceptiveness widened. One of the key aspects of liminoid experiences is that the individual usually finds them to be intensely meaningful. 

The anthropologist, Victor Turner, described two different types of threshold experience.  These are the liminoid which is a uniquely individual and often spontaneous experience, and the liminal which is a collective and ritualised experience.  The key difference between the two experiences is that an individual chooses to be immersed in a liminoid experience, whereas they are usually obliged to take part in a collective liminal experience.

In many organisations, staff are usually under obligation to be involved in liminal rituals such as a meetings, change initiatives and executive worship. Although these events may have once been real threshold experiences that generated genuine transformations, most liminal rituals now seem meaningless, usually because the context of the original experience has been lost.

When individuals in an organisation no longer find any meaning in ritual liminoid activity, their need to find meaning in what they do often becomes more subliminal. They may appear to be taking part in liminal activity, but in reality, they are just going through the motions until they find the space and time to immerse themselves in a splash of liminoid experience.