Creating Peak Experiences

Some of the cases in previous chapters illustrate how managers, under certain circumstances, seemed to be transformed by their own thinking and doing. Far from how they described their former routine-like strategic planning process, the ChemCo managers of Chapter 3 seemed to have experienced a sense of transcendence about their ‘second opinion’ on their strategies. The PrintCo leaders in Chapter 4 displayed intensive concentration when they addressed taboos. Some of the TelCo strategists of Chapter 5 witnessed a sense of wholeness never previously felt in their understanding of the company as a flotilla. The examples throughout this book illustrate how Thinking from Within can result in a loss of sense of time and engrossment in the task as well as increased creativity. Given the ground covered in earlier chapters, play and creative arts processes, imagination, construction, object-mediated communication and three-dimensionality, it is perhaps not surprising that Thinking from Within can captivate a person’s mind and heart. We are not talking about a purely intellectual reasoning, like the ones indicated in the RedCo tale in Chapter 1 or in the BrassCo and TechCo tales in Chapter 6, but an immersed, embodied experience, that sends new and often unusual signals to our mind. The purpose of this chapter is to reflect on the theoretical explanations of such phenomena, seen as emergent benefits of Thinking from Within.