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Can you hear me? Super hi! I just want to take a moment.
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To say how nice it is to be back at RubyConf. We had a couple of pretty trippy years in the middle, and this is proof that we are back to normal.
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It's really, really nice to be here. Thank you, RubyConf TH, for inviting me.
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My talk is called 'The Ecstatic Organization,' and it's a discourse on organization design.
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You'll know soon why I call it a discourse and not a talk.
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But before that, let me share a little bit about myself. Sorry, I need to get my setup correct.
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So, a little bit about me: I'm Siddharth. You can call me Sid or SVS. I started off as a Rubyist back in 2008, but I soon got kicked upstairs to management.
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I've been an engineering manager of some shade or stripe for the last five to seven years.
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Currently, I'm on sabbatical, which is nice. Feel free to ask me anything about sabbaticals later.
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Before this, I was CTO at InVideo, CTO at Shadi.com, and I was the founder of a company.
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I've had the opportunity to study engineering management quite closely.
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I also write a newsletter at engineeringorg.com, so please subscribe! I'm on Twitter as SVS.
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Did I mention I write a newsletter? It's brand new and completely uncensored. Once it gets big, I'll start censoring myself, so you can subscribe now for all the juicy and hot takes on engineering management.
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As an engineering manager, CTO, or engineering leader, I've often asked the question: what should work feel like? So I'd like to ask the audience: what should work feel like?
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It should feel amazing, right? Does anyone have a dissenting opinion on this? It should feel like play.
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Yet very often, it doesn't. Am I right?
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I can't hear you! Oh, I know, we are Rubyists, and we like to trip out at work the whole time.
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But even the Rubyists have days when work feels like work.
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Over time, I've developed a preference that work should actually feel ecstatic.
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There is a method to arrive at organizations where work feels ecstatic. But before we go any further, we need a working definition of ecstasy.
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Has anyone here ever had an ecstatic experience? Could we have some mics at the back for raised hands?
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Let's get some audience participation!
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So, after I joined my former team, we had to do some code digging, and it was really exciting because no one on the team knew what we were doing.
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That thing was earning money for the company for half a year, but it was unmaintained, and no one really took care of it.
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A whole new team was thrown at the problem, and it was really fun working together with other disciplines—product people, mathematicians, data scientists—to look into the code and understand how it really worked.
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It took us the better part of three months, and for the first couple of weeks, we were really early at work and worked long nights.
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It was fun, and you could really feel at that point that the team was energetic and ecstatic about the topic we were working on.
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Thanks! Anyone else have an ecstatic experience to share?
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I'll give you two this time—not a coding one, please. Just one all right!
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For me, it's when I see people I work with achieving a new level—stepping up in a way they've never done before and reaching their potential.
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How cool is that?
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For me, knowing I have four kids, it's actually seeing my eldest, who's now 16, take their music and the others their dance.
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Just to a level that I could never imagine for myself! So enabling them to be better humans is ecstasy.
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So, just one more ecstatic experience? Something from your personal life?
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Not professional, because we'll get to that in my talk.
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Oh, I'm part of another ecstatic community—static dance! This is what we're always going for. For me, about 45 minutes of deep house is just amazing!
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So we don't have a definition yet, but we have an idea of what ecstasy feels like.
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Generally, ecstatic dancers and parents will know that when you dance or hold your kid in your arms, or climb a high mountain, or achieve something professionally, a few things happen.
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Time and space seem to disappear; hunger and thirst become non-issues, and you forget that you are even there.
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Usually, there are a lot of emotions involved, and the experience takes over your entire consciousness.
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Does that sound about right as a description of ecstasy?
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If you look at the dictionary definition, it says many things, like an overwhelming feeling of great happiness or joyful excitement.
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There might even be a hint of emotional or religious frenzy or trance-like states.
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Originally, experiences of mystic self-transcendence are often described.
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And then, of course, there's the recreational drug aspect.
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Late Middle English via Latin from Greek extasis means 'standing outside oneself'.
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This seems to be a defining characteristic of ecstasy: your idea of who you are fades away.
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This allows for total joy, which takes over your entire consciousness.
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I want to thank those who shared their ecstatic experiences.
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I know for a fact that almost everyone in this room has had an ecstatic experience.
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It's the reason we trekked all the way to Bangkok, paid for this conference, or prepared a talk.
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It's because we want to relive the joy we felt while programming in general, and Ruby, in particular.
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You remember those hours spent lost in the beauty of this language, solving problems?
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Losing all track of time? You worked so much your family started to worry you'd collapse.
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Yet somehow, the energy never seemed to stop, and you walked around with glazed eyes and a gentle smile.
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Does that sound familiar? Anyone else feel this way, or is it just me?
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Now, for those of you lucky enough not to have this experience—congratulations.
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But over my time, I have seen that this is not what work looks like anymore.
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Where did that joyful expression of creativity go?
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How did it become standing around with the same four to ten people asking: 'What are you working on? Are you blocked on anything?'?
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Not really paying attention when someone else is speaking.
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We all do Scrum, but once one sprint starts, another one begins.
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It's like a Sisyphean ordeal of programming where you never seem to reach the end of this stream.
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Programming used to be simple, but suddenly we have all of these terms: Scrum Master, Sprint Review, Burn Down Charts, Retrospectives, etc.
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This experience, I'm sure you will all agree, is far from ecstatic.
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Perhaps this is just 'adulting.' You might say, 'Come on, Sid! When we were programming computers by ourselves, it was different.'
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But when you have stakeholders and investors, it becomes serious business that cannot be fun.
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So I ask—does this relate to the parable of Adam and Eve? One day, you are banished from this bucolic paradise.
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You ate from the fruit of knowledge, and now you've been banished from the garden.
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You can never get back to that state of innocence and grace.
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Maybe this is just adulting.
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I don't accept this. I don't accept that suffering should be part of professional life.
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A similar question was asked two and a half million years ago by someone who shares my name.
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This person asked, 'Why does suffering exist? Is suffering necessary? Is there a way out of it?'
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My talk is essentially about taking lessons from him, his journey, and the journey of others like him.
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These are people who studied this problem with a very clear eye, extremely scientific in their approach.
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The Buddha, sitting under the Bodhi tree, found the answer to his question, attaining Nirvana.
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He described that his suffering ceased; he didn't want to overstate the case.
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Other schools of Indian thought describe it slightly differently, using the word 'bliss'.
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But neither cessation of suffering nor joy nor bliss sums up what kind of organization I want to build.
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Both schools teach you that your senses and mind lie to you.
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To pierce through the veil of illusion and ignorance, one needs to withdraw from the senses.
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However, there's one school of Eastern thought that argues otherwise.
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These senses are given to you to experience the moment. God exists in this moment.
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And it's through your senses that you will achieve knowledge of ultimate reality.
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This school of thought is called Tantra, and their language resonates more with me.
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You can choose any of these approaches depending on what suits you best, but they argue that Tantra smashes the taboo against unreasonable happiness.
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Wow, that sounds like a life worth living—where you're unreasonably happy.
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This path is swift, joyful, and fierce, requiring profound commitment and courage.
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But there’s also a sense of wild, foolhardy, fearless abandon, with total faith in the universe.
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I'm going to take a small pause now and share a beautiful poem that embodies this.
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[Reading a poem], a beautiful translation by Stephen Mitchell:
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Plump apple, smooth banana, melon, peach, gooseberry.
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How all this affluence speaks life and death into the mouth.
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I sense it. Observe it from a child's transparent features.
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While he tastes what miracle is happening in your mouth.
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Instead of words, discoveries flow from the right fruit, astonished to be free.
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Dare to say what apple truly is.
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This sweetness at first: thick, dark, dense.
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Then exquisitely lifted in your taste grows clarified and awake.
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Oh, double meaning! Double meaning! Sunny, earthy, real knowledge.
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Pleasure—exhaustible.
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This essence of Tantra contrasts the Vedantic path, which ignores objective experiencing.
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It asks, 'Who am I?' or 'What is it that knows or is aware of my experience?'
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This takes us away from the objective content of experiences directly.
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But in Tantra, we go the opposite direction, diving deeply into sensations.
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Dare to say what apple truly is, and learn to look for the significance of consciousness in every experience.
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Instead of seeking knowledge, we seek the pleasure of experience—an inexhaustible journey.
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We have infinite knowledge, and in the Tantric tradition, the pleasure of the senses is the gateway.
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Eating an apple contains the essence of this trip.
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These people have something to teach us, for sure. So, let's talk about spirituality.
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It is often conflated with God, but spirituality is about truth—ultimate truth.
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And it's about ending suffering and finding the path to ecstasy.
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At this point, you might ask, 'This sounds like a lot of trouble!' Why do we need to do this?
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Many don’t realize they’re suffering or see a way out.
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Some suffer, seeking solace in material comfort, and very few stop to ask if lasting release exists.
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I propose that ecstasy is as necessary as suffering is unnecessary. Pain in life is inevitable, but suffering is not.
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Many do not set the goal of making their professional life ecstatic, but if you do, there are paths toward it.
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Suffering is dangerous. Capitalism, being the dominant political economy, is embodied in organizations.
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When organizations suffer dysfunction, they cause others to suffer in turn.
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If we want to fix various challenges our planet faces, we must build more evolved consciousness within organizations.
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But don't worry so much about the planet; focus on what you want from your professional journey.
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We know now that suffering is optional and that various paths exist.
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Let’s get to the trippy bit! How many of you are familiar with Eastern metaphysics?
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Any Indians here? Okay, shame on you!
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Eastern metaphysics is pretty trippy. We're going to discuss embodied consciousness and organizational consciousness.
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You are not a body with a brain and eyes and consciousness.
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You are a collection of energy fields. The ecstatic dancers among us might recognize these as chakras.
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This collection of energy fields comes from the universal source of energy, hallucinating a body and a world.
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The ego objects itself in space, suffering, and generating karma.
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This process is unconscious and perpetuates the cycle of suffering.
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To break out of this, there are several paths: the Buddhist path, the Vedantic path, the Tantric path, and more.
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Self-awareness leads to a dissolution of the ego and resultant ecstasy.
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Why does this happen? You, as your ego, are four layers removed from universal consciousness.
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In Eastern metaphysics, thoughts think you; you don’t think thoughts.
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One day, someone asked the Buddha where thoughts come from, and he said: 'If an arrow were pierced in your heart, would you ask where it came from, or would you be trying to get it out?'
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Clearly, thinking, regarded highly in the Western rationalist worldview, has a different standing in Eastern metaphysics.
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Every thought that has been thought appeared in the universe, attaching to something in you.
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There are layers: universal consciousness, your embodied consciousness (chitta), intelligence (buddhi), ego (ahankar), and mind (manas).
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Thoughts can rise to become conscious thoughts in your mind, but processing layers can drain your energy.
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To reach the source, turn off these processes and access unfiltered reality.
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What they call ultimate reality or supreme truths are the key in Eastern metaphysics.
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In essence, you are already ecstatic; you just forgot.
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And the way to return to ecstasy is not to do more, but to do less.
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Both the Buddhist and Vedantic traditions have an eight-fold path.
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We’ve learned how consciousness creates our sense of self, and now we can talk about organizational design.
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Like a human embodies consciousness, an organization also embodies its own consciousness.
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An organization can be thought of as a collection of energy fields, gifted by its members.
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It lives within other energy fields: legal systems, financial systems, cultural systems, etc.
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Organizations hallucinate their culture and DNA.
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We need to find analogues for the eight-fold path to run an organization so it becomes self-aware and ecstatic.
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The first ingredient to achieving this is a higher purpose, a sense of great cosmic mystery we are slowly uncovering.
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Those who delve into infinite sciences or mathematics find there is a great mystery at play.
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Words like 'sacred' and 'divine' come up frequently, and many quotes from scientists and musicians reflect this.
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As computer programmers, our craft can be likened to a branch of mathematics. Mathematics is the language that God writes the world in.
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We should stop regarding our work merely as exchanging lines of code for money, but rather as steps in the greater mystery.
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Computing is organizational structure that brings order against the chaos.
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I have often tried to introduce this perspective to my work.
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In a professional context, you might choose how much to use words like 'sacred' and 'divine,' but I enjoy seeing programming as a key to the mind of God.
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Meditation forms a big part of this eight-fold path, allowing one to recognize the ego's functioning.
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This awareness allows the ego to dissolve.
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However, when we say an organization needs to meditate, it doesn’t involve guided meditations or rooms.
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We're talking about the organization consciously assessing its thoughts.
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A few things we can do: firstly, enable flow states. Very few get a full, uninterrupted day to work.
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In the past, I worked to clean up people's calendars, granting them focus time.
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Additionally, architect the organization for autonomy. If teams continually bother each other, people will be interrupted.
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No organization structure is perfect, but occasionally, you'll achieve an ideal state where teams can be fully autonomous.
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They can develop one mind without disturbing others.
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Another target should be reducing parallelism. Working on too many tasks at once makes it hard to focus.
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We earn pay for the quality of our decisions, which improves with focus.
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Also be mindful of Conway's Law, which states the system creating software mirrors the organization's structure.
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To change the structure, you need to modify the software architecture enabling that change.
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Systems architecture affects autonomy, focus, and flow. Organizations should be sensitive to how their structures influence design.
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Fast feedback loops also encourage flow.
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Those who do Test-Driven Development (TDD) know that long tests break programming flow.
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A state of flow often leads to a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day—ecstasy, to use that word again.
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It's also vital to ensure everyone understands the business impact of their work through dashboards.
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Feedback loops shouldn't have to go through the data or product organization.
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The individuals responsible for specific business value should get feedback immediately.
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As an organization, the focus is essential. Meditation aims to sharpen focus.
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At every place I've worked, I advocated for doing fewer things, but doing them better.
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Often in professional environments, there's a lot of fake work.
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A CEO may think something is significant; someone in a competitive role may initiate tasks that may not resonate.
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Organizations should only capture that which is genuinely important.
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Just as meditation requires courage, having clarity requires effort in a busy environment.
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Lastly, meditation allows stepping back from the flow of thoughts and tasks.
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Meditation invites moments in which the body is checked in, not just intellect.
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Many engineering leaders only check in with direct reports, missing broader engagement.
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It's critical to check in with the whole organization, even at larger scales.
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You need to observe the entire work, not just part of it.
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The best way to do this?
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Through a variety of methods: one-on-ones, town halls, cadence meetings.
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Meditation allows for bottom-up thinking and organizational intuition.
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Your gut’s responses are crucial to an organization's health.
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You need systems that bring this embodied knowledge to the leadership's conscious mind.
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In short, stay connected with the entire organization.
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Pranayama is another aspect of the yogic path, signifying breath control.
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For organizations, the equivalent of breath is information.
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Organizations inhale data, transforming it into information and exhaling value.
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Miscommunication could lead to misinformation.
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Just as people can breathe wrong, organizations can fail to process information correctly.
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Information pollution includes poor communication architecture.
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For instance, being on Slack all day implies faulty communication architectures.
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We need to set up better communication systems.
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We must also be mindful of our dashboards. Companies often have chaotic metrics.
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No two people can come to a consensus about particular metrics.
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So we need to improve how we consume information.
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And we need to process data consciously to energize the organization.
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Right action is not a reaction to triggers.
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You're responding consciously to events, and recognize how unconscious reactions cause trauma.
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Organizations often create processes born from trauma.
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Rather than relying on these reactive processes, empower conscious responses.
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In mindfulness, you are aware and embody insight.
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Ritual, however, is not about performing actions mindlessly.
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It should guide your attention and enhance focus.
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A daily stand-up isn't merely about reporting blockages; it's about paying attention to what's on priority.
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The stand-up should only be effective with genuine engagement.
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Agile scripture is merely a finger pointing at the moon; we shouldn't focus solely on the finger.
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Instead, be aware of where that finger points.
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Agility encourages consciousness and leads you to the next important step.
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Revisit your processes and discard those that don’t serve you.
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It's not difficult; it’s remarkably simple.
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Just be conscious and bring your heart to work.
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There is no ecstasy, joy, or fulfillment without your whole self being present.
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If you deeply care for your team members and the outcomes you deliver, everything I shared will naturally resonate.
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With that, I'll say the next word with great consciousness.
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This word is said billions of times daily in India, signifying a salute to the Divinity within.
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Even a simple word, when said consciously, transforms into a prayer. Thank you, and namaste.