Process Jolt #17 - Decide by conscience, not just numbers

Welcome to our Conscious Innovator® process!

Are you ready for a new, insight-provoking “Jolt” … something designed to “rearrange your molecules” as it elicits your unique, innovative potential in life and work?

Jolts wake us up. They spur new self-awareness, new capabilities and values, and new actions. Paradoxically, we don’t learn from each Jolt – rather, each Jolt “learns us”! That is, a Jolt sits in the background of our consciousness and then prompts new insights and energy over time. 

Jolt #17: Decide by conscience, not just numbers

Innovation with a conscience. In every decision, large or small. That’s where the rubber meets the road.

Normally, when we’re working to develop and decide on an innovative solution, we consider the pros and cons of various alternatives, do our risk/benefit analysis, weigh the benefits to end-users/ customers, align with our overall strategy, and run the numbers. We might even develop and test a prototype, or do in-depth market and technical feasibility studies.

But as Ricardo Levy, co-founder and CEO of Catalytica in the USA, once told us:

“We don’t have the full data to make 90% of the decisions we have to make about things that really matter. We simply have too many multiple inputs and impressions; and since we cannot put this on a spreadsheet or balance sheet, we have to make the decisions somehow within a rather vast unknown.”

That’s where our conscience comes in. It’s common to consider conscience as our code of ethics of what is right or wrong, often thought of as a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. But its roots tell a much broader story. It comes from the Latin con + science which has a range of meanings: “knowledge within oneself,” “a joint knowledge of something with others,” “a sense of what is fair and prudent,” and “a knowing of what could benefit the greater whole.”

Conscience can take us beyond a consideration of right and wrong, and even beyond the intuitive sense of a “best decision.” Conscience is a prompting rooted in our inherent wholeness, inter-connectedness, and inter-dependence.

Sometimes it’s challenging to know if the voice we hear in our head is the voice of our ego-mind or our conscience. A colleague of ours once gave us some clear signals to know the difference. She described her ego-mind as “leaping all over the place, fickle, agitated, and all about me-me-me.” But listening to her conscience was “quiet, simple, direct, and doesn’t waver.”

Certainly, feed your decision-making process with all the normal pros and cons and risk/benefit analyses. Include stakeholder input along with a sincere consideration of core values and the soul-purpose of your intention. Run the numbers. Design the prototypes. Yet throughout the process, keep settling into a deep silence that allows conscience to reveal and reflect the collective good, with benefits that endure and accrue over time.

Conscience naturally leads us to share power and commit to a decision with both feet in. It’s the compelling force in decision making that spurs an immense freedom to act with a full-bodied, peaceful, settled sense of “right-ness” no matter how the final results turn out.

-=-=-=- Now it's your turn -=-=-=-

Being a Conscious Innovator® has a 3 phase cyclical process: become aware, capable, and versatile. Try on this Jolt in your life and work, then take self-reflective time to engage in the process:

-=-=-=- An invitation to join our process and share your insights -=-=-=-

If you haven’t already, we’d love for you to join our process and share your own experiences, while learning from the experiences of others! We appreciate what one person said about the Jolt process itself:

Innovation is a world by itself. It can change lives and help people become more positive. Doing a Jolt is already something! A new habit that promotes innovation and reflection.

It’s totally FREE to participate. To sign up and join us, go to this link and follow the easy directions: https://innovate.vci.global/p/the-conscious-innovator. 

Even if you haven’t participated up to this point, it’s never too late to start the process! It’s like a concise gym workout that provides an insightful “pause that refreshes” and evokes your unique, innovative potential in life and work.