How To Understand Ultimate Reality
And Use It For Increased Business Success

Beneath the surface of the chaos we experience in the 21st Century is ultimate reality, which is "as simple as possible, but no simpler." Understanding ultimate reality will enable you to see things more clearly, make better decisions, and achieve greater success as a result.

If you've experienced information overload with all the books and articles about excellence and market leadership and learning and change, to say nothing of the breathless pace of Fast Company and the Internet, perhaps you've wondered, "Is there nothing that lasts? Is there nothing I can hold onto that won't be obsolete tomorrow?" If so, this one's for you.

I arrived at this understanding of ultimate reality after 30 years of searching, in a life mixing a great interest in psychology, philosophy and religion with a career in marketing, consulting and communications. This new view of reality allows me to combine all those interests into a consistent worldview which is not only very satisfying but which reveals to me new insights almost every day. I use these insights, often translated into more common language, to help my business and nonprofit clients achieve greater success in the competitive marketplace. It other words, what works at the metaphysics level works at the marketplace level.

To get right to the point: Everything that exists is composed of two and only two things: order and energy. But understanding what that means and how you apply it in the business world requires special conceptions of those two terms.

The reality of energy will surprise no one reading this article. We were all taught in school that matter (mass) and energy are interchangeable through Einstein's famous formula, E=mc². Of course this can also be written m=E/c². Matter/mass is equal to energy "slowed down" by the speed of light squared. Having a great deal of energy is extremely valuable in the fast-paced business world. For people and organizations who do not feel they have a great deal of energy, there are ways to get more, as I will explain below. Throughout this article, I will use the term energy to mean matter and energy, because they are interchangeable.

The reality of order was a realization that came to me after much more difficulty. One of the oldest questions in philosophy is, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" Similarly we might ask, "Why are things different and not the same?"

For example, why is hydrogen so highly explosive, both through flame and in the nuclear furnaces of the sun and hydrogen bombs, while helium is so passive and inert? Is helium not composed of two atoms of hydrogen plus a couple of additional neutrons? In my mind's eye I kept combining two atoms of hydrogen (actually heavy hydrogen, deuterium) to make helium and asking, what is the difference?

After some time, and considering many other such "differences," I decided that the difference is in the order of the atomic arrangement. Not only that — the difference in everything is in its order, or more specifically, its order-energy structure. Order is not just a characteristic we perceive, as in, "This room is in good order, that room is not." Order is the power in the universe which constrains and shapes energy into the zillion forms of matter and energy we encounter every day. E=mc² is an expression of such order, as are all so-called natural laws, music, time, space, and billions of other phenomena. Order is as real as energy. If it were not, the universe as we know it, including you, would not exist.

I deeply believe that order is personal, the "handprint" of God. But whether you accept or reject the Judeo-Christian belief tradition, you can understand order as the shaper of all things.

At the moment of creation, the Big Bang, all the energy in the universe was unleashed in its rawest form. But simultaneously order began working to constrain energy, first into atomic particles, then into atoms, molecules, various elements, and before long, stars and galaxies began to form, then planets, and on through the whole evolution of the universe and life as it exists today. Many ancient worldviews pick up on this duality, like the Chinese concept of yin and yang. But order and energy is the right conception for the 21st Century.

Your challenge as a leader is to manage the balance of order and energy in your organization and its interactions with the outside world. Get it right and you will be incredibly successful. Get it wrong and you stagnate or go bankrupt. This is critical stuff we're talking about here.

To best use the fundamentals of order and energy requires an understanding of three very interesting and powerful examples:

1. Patterns—Patterns are very significant because they are how we perceive all examples of order and energy in the world, indeed our entire human experience from birth to death. A pattern is a perceptible form of ordered energy which may not be the same from one instance to another but has an underlying constant. The human face is an example of a pattern with almost infinite variations, yet we all know a human face when we see one. We do not actually see faces, we see patterns of light, shape and color (i.e., energy) which our minds interpret as faces. We perceive all patterns in terms of previously perceived patterns; we are capable of perceiving more complex patterns as we learn and mature.

All human perception is pattern recognition. The key to managing human relationships is through managing the communication and perception of patterns, including that especially valuable pattern, information. Business success also depends to a large degree on managing pattern perception—not just words but action, not just overt actions but subtle nuances. The mind can perceive things it cannot always verbalize. It is no accident that today substantial research and development in computer software concerns building effective pattern recognition into programs and systems. Artificial intelligence and voice response systems are good examples.

2. Systems—A system is a group (order) of two or more components of energy which relate to one another interdependently. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline) and other contemporary authors have written extensively on the importance of system thinking and system management. Years earlier Ludwig von Bertalanffy wrote General System Theory which shows the common aspects (patterns) of all systems. All living systems, including human beings and organizations, depend for their survival on exchanging matter/energy with their external environment. Some of that is in the form of food, water, electricity, raw materials, money, and other physical substances, and some of it is in the form of patterns such as information.

Successful systems (organizations) take in some form of input, process it in some way (throughput), and output it in a form (order) which is of greater value to someone else (the customer) than was the input. In most cases the output has a higher degree of order than the input, and energy is consumed in the upgrade. But since organizations are composed of people who themselves are systems, successful organizations must also function in a way to create greater value for the people who work in them. All organizations are composed of subsystems (people, operations etc.) and are in turn part of larger systems, all the way down to atoms, all the way up to the universe. Michael Porter and others have written about the value chain which recognizes the critical linkages between organization-systems in the chain of value from raw materials through manufacturing to distribution, retail and the ultimate consumer.

3. Value—Value means generally what something is worth, in terms of how it is perceived (as a pattern), how much it is needed, and what it can be exchanged for (other matter/energy). Many excellent books have been written on this topic in recent years, such as Bradley Gale's Managing Customer Value and Adrian Slowotsky's Value Migration. The more value an organization can create for its customers and members (employees), the more successful and valuable that organization will be. All market-leading companies, most of which also have a high market (total stock) value, are highly effective at creating value for customers and members through highly organized (ordered) systems. They are not only good at creating value, they are good at managing the perception of value (patterns).

In a living system such as a person or organization, value often represents a gap or tension between what is—the present situation—and what is desired. All living systems have an innate drive to achieve balance or homeostasis, which basically requires taking care of their subsystems (organs for humans, personnel for organizations). Value is everything the customer wants in a product or service, and acquiring or earning it helps her achieve homeostasis in her system. For the customer to want it, she must not now have it, at least not sufficiently. Some wants or needs are biological states of tension, such as hunger or thirst. Some are highly conceptual such as prestige or fashion—perceived patterns. All represent a deficiency state in a system and a corresponding drive for homeostasis which smart leaders can take advantage of, benevolently of course, as I will explain.

The secret to all success in business lies in wisely managing order and energy in every system. Over the years I have collected and consolidated the guiding principles of systems of management and leadership representing many careful studies of leading organizations (most achieving top-10 business book status), combined these principles with my own hands-on experience, and applied them to help a wide range of clients. I could then observe the results and separate what works from what doesn't work.

In all cases, the system of order-energy which I call Ordergy explains the core truths, gives added insight and serves to make everything hang together. Ordergy also leads to sharpened tools for better problem-solving in many situations. Reading this for the first time may not buzz you, because it requires a shift in your worldview, your understanding of reality. But perhaps in time it will sink in and resonate, or perhaps it is just the right information for you right now to have an "aha" experience. Here are 10 important Principles of Ordergy; there are many others, but this is a good beginning:

1. Seek to understand the order, energy and patterns as the underlying dynamics in every system you encounter—each organization, each client, each person. Look below the surface and consider how that system is ordering its energy, whether it is focused or not, whether it manages patterns or not. Consider the system components — there are always parts which you cannot see, but they affect what you can see. What you see is only a part of what you get when you encounter a system. Learn more about system thinking.

2. Order the energies of your own system with a unifying purpose or vision. This purpose, a very important form of order, functions in a system such as a business as:

• A nucleus around which the organization forms
• A pattern which can be widely understood and upheld by members of the organization
• A source of tension between the present and the desired future, driving the system toward homeostasis by striving to achieve the intended future state.

Properly developed, vision, mission and goals energize an organization by creating both a tension and a credible resolution path for the organization as it moves toward a higher level of order and value-creation.

3. Seek to understand what your customers want and value, how the matter/energy your organization provides meets the needs of their systems. These wants and values will change as the customers' systems interact with a constantly changing environment. Seek to understand also each person's own individual system needs in addition to the organization she represents.

4. Order the energy of your people by aligning them with the wants and values of customers. The challenge for the manager/leader is to make sure his people understand what customer needs their organization system can satisfy, and to reward his people for ordering their energy in that direction. It is also an excellent investment to encourage personnel to maintain or improve good physical health through diet, exercise and ample rest. Higher individual energy means more productivity at work when it is properly stimulated and channeled.

5. Clarify the roles required for effective operation of your system, and place people in each role who are naturally inclined to apply their energies in the needed manner. For high achievement, the good of the system must supersede the temptation to coddle individuals who do not fit. The system is better off and the people are better off when there is a natural fit of people to roles. The recent book First, Break All the Rules confirms this. Measurement tools such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Kolbe Conative Index can be helpful to quantify each person's natural energy focus and put them in the right slot. You cannot easily change adult behavior. It is better to focus on ordering the system and making sure you have the right people in the right positions, with energy naturally aligned to what is required for the system to hum.

6. Provide each person in the system a way to meet as many of his or her needs as possible through exchanging increasingly greater value with the system. In simple terms, those who give more get more, and of those to whom much has been given, much will be expected. When the need-satisfactions for customer systems are in balance with the need-satisfactions of personnel, a higher level of order is achieved; the two systems unite into a larger system which generates a very valuable result: long-term loyalty, and for public corporations, resulting market value.

7. The order-energy balance which is right for an organization (system) depends on its function. A high degree of order is essential for courts of law. Less order and more free energy are essential for an advertising agency. Unfortunately order is often seen as a negative force, a restraint. But in reality the right kind of order is like fine-tuning an engine so it hums when it idles and revs up when more energy is needed. The wrong kind of order is like broken links in a chain — there is no integration; the system does not have unity. In other words the question is not one of how much order but of applying the right kind of order tuned to the organization's function.

8. For a system to function as a united whole, it must have continuous, multidirectional communication system-wide. Think of the instantaneous flow of information in the human nervous system. Leaders and managers must continuously listen to and inform other personnel. Personnel must freely give information to leaders and attend to what they are told. All performance should be monitored with continuous feedback so if one part of the system gets out of balance, it can quickly right itself without excessively disturbing the system as a whole. If possible the flow of information is enhanced by computer systems so that needed information is online at all times. The highly ordered system communicates clearly how each role contributes to the system as a whole. Desired result-patterns are communicated. The creation of value through input, throughput and output of the system is articulated, all ordered to provide superior value for customers. Human energies are aligned with each other so the system operates like a well-practiced symphony orchestra, making beautiful music together.

9. Highly effective human systems function as learning organizations. Continuous training is necessary to enable people to perform their roles with high effectiveness, both in technical terms and in being part of the unified system. Learning, which really involves establishing a higher level of order in the learners' central nervous system, enables the organization system to function at a higher level of order. This means it can sustain a higher throughput of energy and create greater value with the same number of people!

A true learning organization functions as a unified system, an organism, with new information shared rapidly so the organism can better adapt to the changing environment. New members of the system are intensively trained so they can enhance, not disrupt, the system's smooth functioning. Assuming that people learned how to use their energies effectively in another organization, that they can be just dropped into a job slot like a spare tire, is a terrible management mistake.

10. Highly effective human systems carefully manage the exchanges of ordered energy and value with their customers and their environment. A tightly integrated system monitors its income and expenses at all times. Open-book management is a superb example of system-based financial management, although using it requires a higher degree of learning for a higher degree of system order.

To increase income, it is necessary to provide more value to more people. This can be accomplished with existing customers by endeavoring to understand and satisfy their value-energy-systems, and with new customers by communicating with them that you can provide more value to them than your competitors can. Communicating the right patterns is very important in winning new customers, who tend to keep the comfort of their present system-satisfiers rather than to trust a new, lesser known one.

You can take any widely acclaimed business book and analyze it in terms of order and energy, patterns and systems. You can rest assured that any new information which comes blasting at you in print or electronically can be captured and analyzed in these terms. For this is ultimate reality, and they can't take it away from you. It is eternal truth.