Consider Beginnings, Middles, and Ends
“A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But not necessarily in that order.
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Two additional concepts from Gestalt – the Unit of Work and the Cycle of Experience – help develop your leadership presence and support efforts to bring about desired change. While deceptively simple, both tools can be especially useful in any change effort.
A Unit of Work is any clearly bounded, coherent, and understandable experience, project, event, or initiative. Every Unit of Work, just like every story we’ve ever heard, every book we’ve read, or every movie we’ve seen, has a beginning, middle, and end. Each change process can also be thought of as a Unit of Work, with a beginning, middle, and end. It’s a neat and simple model that helps you think about projects and tasks, but it’s so fundamental that it can be easily overlooked.
While the Unit of Work delineates “what happens,” a second model, The Cycle of Experience, describes “what people do” as we progress through a Unit of Work. In our impatience as fallible humans, we are prone to rush through some parts of whatever we’re doing…while we inevitably tend to get stuck in others. Some of us love beginnings, but then we lose interest before our work is done. Others shy away from starting new projects, but then we get energized once we’re engaged. And others can’t seem to bring anything to conclusion. Most of us do these things so habitually that we don’t even notice our pattern.
The beginning of the process – sensation and awareness -- is for establishing context, and assessing “what is” by focusing on the here and now. This is the point in the cycle for you to take in data about yourself, the environment, and the people, and to notice elements that catch your attention.
The middle of the process is for mobilizing energy in yourself and others, taking action, and creating change. At the end of the process you wind down the intervention, take stock of what’s happened, integrate that new knowledge, withdraw your attention, and move on to the next Unit of Work.
In the course of a busy day you may juggle dozens of Units of Work or more. You may start a number of projects, do what needs to be done, and then bring them to a close. When you complete a Unit of Work, it can feel extremely satisfying to cross that item off your To Do list.
For me, there are some days when despite working long and hard, it can feel like I have accomplished nothing. I now see that in those cases, I was left dissatisfied because I was unable to bring enough (or any!) Units of Work to completion. Leaving too many Units of Work uncompleted depletes your energy.
I observe this all the time among my clients as well. People in one company with whom I work have seen their senior leaders implement a series of comprehensive “corporate change strategies” in quick succession. Before one big strategy was fully implemented, the CEO became seduced by another big idea and tried to move everyone on to something new. Unsurprisingly, employees now have no energy for these latest strategies because they’ve seen the previous efforts left incomplete and inconclusive.
I also see unproductive patterns in myself. Over time, I’ve learned that I love the newness and freshness of beginnings, and I like action, but I get bored and distracted at the end of projects. The result is that I start a lot of things with great promise, and then tend to leave them unfinished. I’m much more energized at the beginning of a Unit of Work than I am at the end.
Holding in mind my own personal Cycle of Experience helps me even out my peaks and valleys. Now that I recognize my pattern I can temper my excitement at the beginning, slow my impulse to jump into too many tasks at once (patience has never been my strong suit), and take steps to bolster my flagging interest at the end.
You can also observe these kinds of patterns in individuals around you, and in organizations with which you interact. Take notice of the points in the process where people seem energized, and where they tend to get distracted. Notice the parts of the cycle people tend to skip, and the parts in which they tend to dwell.
You can support your change effort by helping others move with intention through the Cycle of Experience. This can mean:
Acknowledging when Units of Work start, are in progress, and conclude '
Making note of Units of Work that are still left open (for example, “bracketing” an incomplete task at the end of a meeting)
Encouraging others to complete Units of Work before moving on to too many new projects
Celebrating the closure of a Unit of Work, as a way to withdraw attention and move on to the next thing
Like other elements of this book, the Unit of Work and Cycle of Experience are conceptual models that call attention and give definition to patterns that have been present all along. Being able to see these patterns and name them can give you new awareness, and can broaden your opportunities to bring about change.
