There was an interesting article in the New York Times recently titled “How Mindfulness Can Make for Better Doctors.”  The piece describes how time pressures and multi-tasking is causing burnout.

Burnout is problematical because it not only leads to dissatisfaction but also causes doctors to “depersonalize patients and treat them as objects rather than as individuals suffering from disease.”  Each task becomes an obstacle and one more step to endure in an endless stream of obstacles. 

Sadly, this mindset can cause doctors, or anyone for that matter, to exhibit less professionalism, less empathy, and a propensity to make mistakes because they just want to get the task over and be done with it, with little thought given to how the pieces all fit together.   Perhaps you know someone at your office who is suffering such symptoms. 

Anyhow, some doctors are discovering that being mindful can help turn the tide, improving both performance and job satisfaction.  They are even offering training on the subject.  Mindfulness allows us to focus on the forest instead of the little task-based trees. 

 ”Mindfulness allows us to be in a whole host of situations with a sense of equanimity,” according to one of the doctors interviewed for the Times article.  It allows you to work in your “zone,” working with purpose, in the present, and without judgment. Ironically, it is these purpose-based actions that make the task-based actions easier to execute.  You can take them more in stride.  

The article on mindfulness reminded me of Karl E. Weick’s work Managing the Unexpected a book I had found while researching my book, The Business Guide to Legal Literacy.  

Weick and co-author Kathleen M. Sutcliffe defined mindfulness as a combination of aptitude and attitude, a state of alertness that continuously assimilates information, recognizes the significance of small changes early, and mitigates potentially negative consequence. 

What does this have to do with legal literacy?

Well, some businesses are content to shrug their corporate shoulders and believe legal risk is an inevitable side effect of uncertainty that it simply can’t be controlled.  Yet some organizations, like hospitals and nuclear power plants realize that operational excellence is not optional.  It’s a continuous process.  They can’t afford to make mistakes, yet they operate in the same uncertain world that we do.  How do they cope? 

That’s exactly what Weick and Sutcliffe wanted to find out.   Among their research findings, they discovered that mindful organizations took pride in looking for interdependencies and noticing new things.  They were open to change and new information and generally speaking, they were all: 

• More preoccupied with failures than with successes.  They realized that achieving strategic goals was as much about knowing what not to do as it was about knowing what to do.  They took responsibility for their actions and did not play the blame game. 
• Reluctant to oversimplify.  They preferred to reconcile interdisciplinary perspectives without sacrificing important nuances.  They listened to all of the stakeholders. 
• Sensitive to operations and relationships within the value chain.  Management did not isolate itself. 
• Committed to resilience.  They bounced back from past errors by learning from past mistakes and developing knowledge. 
• Deferential to expertise.   

The research on mindfulness puts a dent into the “no risk, no gain” mentality that encourages the aggressive risk taking, such as the behaviors we’ve seen on Wall Street.  It also puts a dent into highly autocratic and political bureaucratic business cultures such as the bailed out U.S. car industry (see further my AllBusiness.com blog posting on how to create a change resistant business culture).  

Quite the contrary, the research on mindfulness shows that the only sustainable and reliable gain is based on sound decision making processes and a commitment to preserving the integrity of those processes.  Incorporating mindfulness in your governance, risk management, and compliance decisions is therefore a sure fire way to keep your business legal liabilities in check.

Copyright © 2009 Corporate M.O., LLC