Evergreen

Evergreen lays out the step-by-step processes that continuous comeback winners use to invent worlds for themselves where their former problems tend not to reappear.

In today's high-speed-change world, surprise is a permanent growth industry. The authors of Evergreen call it "thrownness"—as in "being tossed in the middle of, without warning or preparation."

With all the thrownness, probably everyone realizes they need to act, think and feel differently because the world is different. But different how? How do you keep focused and on track? Keep growing, changing—becoming? How do you develop all-important "staying power," personally and organizationally? The authors of this book are the training and consulting world's Indiana Joneses of this new era, this new domain. This is their scouting report on how to handle the ever-growing thrownness of the new century and new millennium.

Their desire for their reader is to become "more probable" in the face of change. More probable than opposing forces, opposing odds, opposing processes of confusion and resistance. They believe cutting-edge business players are more effective as "enzymes" (promoting change by fully and strategically participating in it) than "catalysts" (promoting change without bothering to change much themselves). The strategies they describe for improving both "the odds of thrownness" and enzymatic leadership abilities stress a Responsible Adventurer's approach: be smart, be bold, be fair.

The Evergreen forest is their "new science" metaphor for "the edge of chaos," where Responsible Adventurers are most effective. Where disequilibrium and stability do their paradoxically innovative dance. Where powerful tomorrows are made. The 15 "staying power" principles (below) of Evergreen are designed to help the reader safeguard original gains and yet constantly change and revitalize, just like the namesake forest itself. In the Evergreen:

• If you know your personal purpose ("what you are alive to do"), you make it possible for the future to influence your present.

• You quickly learn that the Universe favors abundance-based ideas and actions over scarcity-based ones.

• You lead best if you always "make yourself the project"—whatever the assignment.

• You "grow" yourself most reliably by making potent requests—the most powerful single act available to business people.

• You understand that nothing is independent of you and thus everything can be influenced by how you observe it.

Here are the 15 Evergreen principles (and chapters) for dealing with today's unrelenting conditions of thrownness

1. If your passion (for being in business) hasn't ignited, explore new ways to be (in life).

2. Determine your life purpose, so you can receive assistance directly from the future.

3. Make a habit of exploring "small niches."

4. Benefit from nature's own energy patterns by doing more, not less; more with less. Think abundance, not scarcity.

5. To lead, make yourself the project—whatever the assignment.

6. Protect your ability to trust.

7. The Language of Business (1): To build personal power, declare your uncertainty in no uncertain terms, then act on it.

8. The Language of Business (2): To make your requests more effective, put more "body" into your "language."

9. The Language of Business (3): Explain your actions with significant stories.

10. The Language of Business (4) View your client as a partner—and a friend.

11. The Language of Business (5): Expect "some things against your nature."

12. Showcase your strengths, not your weaknesses.

13. Boost morale and productivity by modifying people's moods.

14. Use continuous learning to move out when life breaks free.

15. Invent worlds where your troubles don't reappear.

From Evergreen: Playing a Continuous Comeback Business Game

"En route from where the status quo is energized and functioning well to where there is a danger of being tossed unceremoniously on the junk heaps of history, a strange thing happens to humans and their organizations. En route to oblivion, whether they notice or not, all of life's organisms pass through the Evergreen, where life has its workshop. This is the paradox: hope and potential loom strongest precisely in that narrow band, in that forest-y domain where the old guideposts are dissolving and chaos is reaching provocatively for the saddle horn. The trick is in recognizing when you have slipped past the barbed wire fences of stability and in being ready to perform and benefit from living and working in the badlands of 'bounded chaos.'"

"Lynch is a genius . . . . My brain loves to be challenged and stretched, and he has done just that with this book. I highly recommend it."—Dr. David W. Cox, Department Chair, Educational Administration and Secondary Education, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, AR

Hardback. 208 pages. ISBN 0 - 945822 - 05 - 7

Go to:
 Other books to challenge and change your thinking
 You-can-do-it-yourself assessment tools
 We-do-it-for-you assessment tools
 DolphinThink assessment and self-instructing tools
 Become a Brain Technologies Associate
 About the BTC Models