Intellect & Will: The Source of Action

Intellect & Will: The Source of Action
Torah Lessons in Leadership Series

The purpose of this article:

This document will serve as an introduction, first of me and my background for understanding human and organizational performance and then of some ideas introduced hundreds and even thousands of years ago, that may actually be relevant for leaders interested in successful organizational initiatives.

My personal background for this:

For over 20 years I have been working to develop leaders who are effective at producing results through the work of their teams. In that time I have worked directly with thousands of team leaders who work with teams of hundreds of thousands on five continents. I have reached for knowledge wherever I could find it. I began studying human behavior back in the early 1980’s in the neuropsychology department at Rockefeller University, lead at that time by Dr. Neal E. Miller who is one of the first people ever to demonstrate biofeedback and the possibility of impacting the autonomic nervous system with training. I was an intern washing glassware, preparing samples, tending animals, etc. I had the privilege of sitting in on meetings with research scientists including Dr. Jay Weiss, Dr. Johnathan Charry and others. What they were working on fascinated me. Whatever the specific field of research at the moment, these men and the teams that surrounded them were working on understanding the connection between neurophysiology and psychology. Later, I explored behavioral, developmental, and organizational psychology more deeply; followed by individual, athletic, and organizational performance. I have learned as much from tradespeople as from PHD’s, wise old men and women, soldiers, medicine men, religious leaders and world class athletes. I have met with cult leaders and physicists, polititians and CEOs. I have worked with some of the highest performing endurance athletes in history and have sought common threads in the understanding of human thought, performance and most importantly, teamwork. In the last decade I began to learn seriously in the area of Chassidic thought. One of the things that prompted this shift was my discovery of numerous examples of rabbis from two hundred to a thousand years ago describing phenomena that I was only just beginning to see in the domains of neuropsychology and leadership science.

Among my operating premises is that all knowledge has only one source and if we examine anything deeply enough we discover, at the very least, that a sense of that source is visible off in the distance. The open-minded person can hardly resist coming to the conclusion that there is one great, unifying force to all. For me, there is an inevitability to faith, though I recognize that this may not be true for everyone. I suggest that no matter the domain of research, we all end up in the same place. I welcome challenges to the operating premise. I am clear that I cannot prove it. What I can do is stand on it and build from there.

So now, on to performance. For a leader, the ability to cause performance is imperative. A leader involved in producing quantum results must become adept at inspiring his or her team. They must be able to cause innovation and they must equally be able to cause action. These factors combine to give access to the ability to cause performance.

The question at the heart of my work has been, above all others, “How can we predictably alter the performance of an individual, team or organization?” My initial approach was to educate. I assumed that if I taught people a better approach, they would use that approach and results would shift. They did, usually for a period of weeks, then behavior reverted to old patterns and so did results. But people knew more. I assumed that knowledge would produce choices that lead to action and that action would produce the intended results. My assumption was wrong. Knowledge, at least the kind I was delivering, did not reliably produce shifts in behavior (action), therefore shifts in performance were not predictable.

For at least 100 years in the secular world, people have trained people according to the model above; the one that I used with mixed success. We believed that knowledge would produce choices that lead to action, and action would produce the intended results. We debated the best knowledge and the right methods. We delivered countless different training programs, but real performance seems to have moved forward slowly if at all.  According to Werner Earhart, most of this type of training produces ZERO long term results. Teaching people the right thing to do or the right way to do it rarely makes a difference.

I did a little test of this theory a few years ago. In at least a dozen different groups on three different continents. I asked the question: “How many of you would benefit from losing or gaining at least one pound?” Over 90% in each group raised a hand, (please note that the loss of weight is just an example, we could ask about almost anything that people want to accomplish). I then asked: “How many of you know what actions are needed in order to lose or gain weight?” Again the vast majority responded that they did. I then asked, “How many of you are actively doing all of the things necessary to achieve your ideal weight?” A few hands went up, but only a very few. The rooms were filled with nervous laughter. Knowing what to do, rarely makes the difference. So in order to alter the way in which we perform, we are going to have to look past the process of intellectual knowing and get to what actually drives us. The “knowing” in and of itself, makes no difference.

Underlying assertions:

• Performance, by definition, is measured by results.
• Results come from actions
• If we can get to the source of action, we can produce unprecedented results
• Getting to the source of action is not often accomplished in the world of training and development
• The source of all action exists in the domain of will

Chassidic Fundamentals and the source of action:

In the Likutei Amarim Tanya, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi writes of a particular type of action; in this case speech. According to him, it is not necessary for a person to think about what they want to say and then to direct their body to say it. The movement of air and the formation of the right shape of the mouth does not need to be specifically directed. The intention to speak already includes the creation of words. The source of words is beyond the process by which they are formed. All of the physical processes come from a place before thought. Now in no way does this make it insignificant to discuss the process by which the formation of words occurs in the physical body. As an academic process, understanding the physiology of action may well prove valuable. And it may be helpful in training athletes, speakers, etc. to understand and correct physiological processes. However, if we are looking to get to the source of action, (in this case the action is speech) we have to look past the physical, and even the simple intellectual (inspirationand understanding) and get to the real source.

Recently neuroscientists have come to similar conclusions; that the choice to act and the action itself arise simultaneously. Though I do not have the citation, I have been told of research that maps neural pathways using and EEG during a moment of stress.  According to the information I have, when a ball is thrown at an individual the response, (i.e. to duck or block) and the interpretation (i.e., a ball is coming, I need to duck), arise simultaneously. This is not a sequence of events. Knowledge and choice are not necessarily a precursor to action.

The conclusion of this is that to cause a shift in action, (the source of results), Knowledge is insufficient. We need to get to the source of action or will. We can also use “intention”.  In order to do that, the predictable route is through intellect.  Not the simple knowledge, but the entirety of intellect needs to be accessed. Chassidic thought gives us a path.  If we want to predictably shift human behavior, we must unify the intellect and will/intention. What comes after that may be an opportunity for further exploration in future articles or discussion.

Chassidus gives us a description of the intellect in three different levels:

Chochma – the highest level of intellect.  This is the place where the first spark of wisdom is received. The recipient of higher wisdom (it is possible to say that this is coming from the will of H’. (co-ach a maskil). The experience in the moment is that an idea is coming to us, as if we are receiving communication from outside ourselves. When we get a glimmer of an idea AND IT HAS NO FORM, this is Chochma. Often, brilliant ideas show up here. To bring them to fruition, however, will require real effort. The spark of an idea, (like the seed of a tree, which is not the tree), is not the fully realized expression of the idea. This moment of inspiration must be brought down, first to…

Bina – Understanding, the intermediary point in the intellect where we begin to translate inspiration to realization. At Bina, we have a deep understanding of subject matter and implication. This is not a glimmer of light and it is not earthly action. At Bina, we have power and real choice. As in the example above, this is where we know exactly how to lose weight and we may or may not actually do anything with that knowledge. We must choose to take it further and again, this requires effort

Das – the place of realized knowledge. Knowledge at the level of Das shapes the way we see the world. What we have at Das, gives us our view of the world. The person who has “health and well-being” fully assimilated as knowledge at the level of Das has access to something far beyond intellect. Though Das is considered the lowest level of intellect, it is the place where the intellectual and the earthly meet. It is where action is formed and more importantly; Das is the place from which intellectual understanding can contribute to a much higher domain – will.

When our intellect is fully aligned our intellect becomes an expression of our will and we are capable of extraordinary performance. Will (intention) may be defined as the source of action. However, will itself may not be directly accessible. It may be accessible through our intellect, however. It is through the balancing of these three levels of intellect, Chochma, Bina and Das, that we get there. When will is aligned with intellect, all of our resources are available. People have the experience of being clear and fully engaged. They have the experience of knowing why they are doing what they are doing. There is still free choice for the path that is chosen and there is an inevitability to action. This is where humans commit to act and reliably produce results. When intellect and will are aligned, we are capable of turning the big, scary, almost unimaginable objectives in lives into real action and extraordinary results.

According to Chassidus, “There are five phases of  human behavior (from top to bottom): Ratzon, Hirhur, Machshavah, Dibur, and Ma’aseh, which translate as: Will, Thought, Mind, Speech, and Action. Everything we do begins with a will(Ratzon) – which we may not even be conscious of – to accomplish something, which causes us to consider (Hirhur) ways to carry out that will.. this will move more into our conscious mind as we start to come up with plans (Machshavah) to actualize our will. As we do, we will start (Dibur) talking about possible ways to do what we plan, which will eventually result in action (Ma’aseh)”.  [excerpted from Torah.ORG, article Mind Over Matter]

Leading from Will:

There are two aspects of will. In Hebrew, there is Ratzon, commonly translated as will, which is the internal aspect, the thing inside, the purpose we may not even know we have. Then there is the external aspect, Tianug, commonly translated as desire. This is the external expression of will. It is also the access point.

Accepting these premises, logical lines of inquiry include: How do we cause an alignment of these factors? How do we get people working at the level of will, towards objectives that matter to our organization? It is not easy. It requires deeply knowing the people on your team. One must know what already matters to them.

One must know what matters most to them. There are domains in which this is easier than others. Wall Street has never had trouble getting people who are driven to make money above all else. It promises that opportunity and then tests people to see if they want it.

Years ago, I had a friend, Alex, who had been an Electrolux vacuum cleaner salesman. He went door to door and convinced homeowners to buy the most expensive vacuum on the market. One night he went to make a delivery to a long-term customer, and the man of the house answered the door. He invited Alex into his home, sat him down and offered him some fine scotch whiskey. “My wife hasn’t used a vacuum cleaner in 30 years. We have people who clean for us and they bring their own equipment, but you have sold her three machines in the past year.  How do you do it?” The homeowner was a wall street executive who went on to offer my friend a job. When he showed up on the first day he was given a phone book and a phone and a chair and told to find clients. He made over $900,000 in his first year and more after that. This is an example of alignment of wills and opportunity.  The executive wanted to bring in more money and my friend wanted to make money. The job was the opportunity. Opportunity can be the bridge between will and intellect. It was pretty simple, and it is rarely this simple.

Most organizations today have a more complex vision than, “make money”. By way of example, imagine you run an architecture firm. Your people have opted into a field that is fundamentally creative but is also a field that is known for NOT being the most lucrative. How does one lead those people? One must know their people make sure that their will aligns with organizational objectives and people give them an opportunity to be involved in the fulfillment of those objectives. To do this, one can involve their people in the vision and purpose of the project. One must choose the right people. All of these can be addressed in future articles. This is just the beginning.