PRINCIPLES & METHODS for Transformative Performance

Principles

We don't lead or implement programs or projects that right wrongs, fix problems, or serve the under-served. There are many organizations already doing that.

We don't lead, provide coaching, or implement client engagements, programs or projects to empower individuals, groups, or disenfranchised classes of society. There are many organizations already doing that. (GREAT FUTURE NOW Coaching and Landmark Worldwide are two such resources which we endorse for that.)

We don't lead or implement projects or client engagements that transform corporate organizations and the communities they serve. There are already others doing that. (One such group with that mission is Vanto Group.)

We don't lead or implement initiatives or programs to transform leadership and the education of leaders of tomorrow in academia and leading universities. There are already others doing that. (One such group leading the field with that mission is The Barbados Group.)

VFT is the adventure of transformation for our world in the realm of community, society, and culture. Taking-on issues head-on at the trajectory of the broken paradigms within which we live our day-to-day lives among one another and yet disconnected and detached from each other.

VFT, the organization impacts our cultural demeanor and collective self-expression by hosting and facilitation of engagements and conversations and executing action for changing the way we've been going about changing our world.

The transformative ventures of VFT effect change in our world using a transformative way forward that disrupts broken paradigms and generates new paradigms with integrity and a legacy for our future.

Methods

To commit to collaborate with VFT, we commit to employ and deploy always, at least, and first and foremost these methodologies and formats for transformative performance, action, and intentional results:

• ‎"Rewriting the Future" in accordance with The Three Laws of Performance (abbreviated by VFT as "3LOP")

• VFT Transformative Leadership © (inspired by 3LOP)

• ‎VFT Transformative Collaboration © (inspired by 3LOP)

• ‎Appreciative Inquiry

• ‎Emotional Intelligence

• Iterative Progress and Agility

• ‎Non-partisanship

• ‎Secular humanism*

• ‎businessThink

*Caveat: Belief of divinity, spirituality, or Intelligent Design does not prohibit participation and collaboration with VFT; yet assertions or assumptions from the contexts are mutually exclusive from the endeavors of VFT.

Formats

• ‎"Transformative Collaboration ©" Mastermind Groups (inspired by 3LOP)

• ‎Additional formats are currently under development and also being considered as whether related to alignment with VFT Principles (above) and Methods (above).

"Transformative" is:

Hacking, short-circuiting, and overcoming human nature tendencies, biases, and programming that disempower human beings.

Always practicing being affirmatively:

Open
Vulnerable
Authentic
Called to Integrity
In Relationship with Group as Self
Emotionally Intelligent
Communicating by Authentic Languaging
Appreciatively Inquiring About The Future
Called to Personally Live Authentic, Holistic, and Balanced
Self-led
Empowered as Performance
Empowered as Leadership
Sometimes Fearless, Mostly Courageous

Tenets of Inquiry Underlying VFT's Principles and Methods

From Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, book by James P. Carse:

“No one can play a game alone. One cannot be human by oneself. There is no selfhood where there is no community. We do not relate to others as the persons we are; we are who we are in relating to others. Simultaneously the others with whom we are in relation are themselves in relation. We cannot relate to anyone who is not also relating to us. Our social existence has, therefore, an inescapably fluid character... this ceaseless change does not mean discontinuity; rather change is itself the very basis of our continuity as persons.”
“It is a highly valued function of society to prevent changes in the rules of the many games it embraces... Deviancy, however, is the very essence of culture. Whoever merely follows the script, merely repeating the past, is culturally impoverished. There are variations in the quality of deviation; not all divergence from the past is culturally significant. Any attempt to vary from the past in such a way as to cut the past off, causing it to be forgotten, has little cultural importance. Greater significance attaches to those variations that bring the tradition into view in a new way, allowing the familiar to be seen as unfamiliar, as requiring a new appraisal of all that we have been- and therefore all that we are. Cultural deviation does not return us to the past, but continues what was begun but not finished in the past... Properly speaking, a culture does not have a tradition; it is a tradition.”
“Because infinite players prepare themselves to be surprised by the future, they play in complete openness. It is not an openness as in candor, but an openness as in vulnerability. It is not a matter of exposing one's unchanging identity, the true self that has always been, but a way of exposing one's ceaseless growth, the dynamic self that has yet to be.”
“Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them.”
“To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.”
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”

From The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life, book by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan:

"[The Three Laws of Performance] isn’t about change management—more, better, or different. It’s about rewriting the future. The result is the transformation of a situation, leading to a dramatic elevation in performance."
"The key to performance isn’t pushing new conversations about strategy or reorganization into an already crammed space; rather, it’s clearing out [and altering] the clutter [of what was unsaid and yet communicated without awareness]."
"There are two different ways to use language. The first is descriptive—using language to depict or represent things as they are or have been. The test of good descriptive language is whether it accurately articulates the world as it is, whether people see the world rightly... Descriptive language has its limits—you can’t create something new by merely describing what was and is. Using descriptive language to talk about the future is limited to prediction based on past cycles and current realities. ...Future-based language, also called generative language, has the power to create new futures, to craft vision, and to eliminate the blinders that are preventing people from seeing possibilities. It doesn’t describe how a situation occurs; it transforms how it occurs. It does this by rewriting the future."
“Leaders constantly generate integrity by fostering conversations that make it alive and important for people. Integrity, as we define it, is not simply keeping one's word—it is honoring one's word. What's the difference? When a person knows he won't be able to keep his word, he honors his word by making that situation known to all the people who will be affected. He deals with the consequences of not keeping his word, cleans up whatever messes have been created, and makes new promises that restore workability to the situation at hand.”
"When the [Three Laws of Performance] are applied, performance transforms to a level far beyond what most people think is possible. It doesn’t happen bit by bit, but all at once, as individuals and organizations rewrite their future."