A Constellation process in business

HTM Constellations can be used as a extraordinary tool to reveal functional dynamics within leadership, management and within the different strata of a business. It is an ontological process in essence.
Ontology is the study of being, but at a micro level, it infers the study to reveal what may be missing or contingent within an organisation to make it whole. With the use of this Human Template Model© we can help elicit the state of a company’s various components and help identify present assets that have not been considered yet and may be of great value for the organisation’s future development and also rectify and reorganise any dysfunctional state. This is illustrated by the organisation’s innate constitutional, physiological, behavioural and psychological organisational state that is reflected within each of us–the shareholders (internal members of the organisation and also the environment of the organisation like clients, competitors, etc.), and how this relates to the overall function of the back, middle and front office dynamics, management and interdepartmental processes that may or may not facilitate a dynamic state of affairs within the organisation; in its values, purpose and efficiency. We look at the internal structure of a person(s) as a microcosm of the functional state within a department or company itself. In parallel, the same human structural organisation applies to and will be reflected by the business organisation.
My wife, Alicia and I had the good fortune to spend seven years in Moscow, Russia, to develop and shape a human-oriented business model within a large corporation of around 32,000 people. Our brief was to help put a human face onto this large corporation, which had 16 or so components, which included the 5th largest bank within Russia. Where applicable, we also helped change the corporate culture of nepotism, thievery, obfuscation, grandeur, bribery and corruption, and the general laissez-faire approach many took. This was, by no means, only confined to this particular conglomerate but endemic within the whole society. We initially worked with a ‘top-down approach’ using our Human Template Model and constellation process with feedback and homework sessions almost daily. Initially small, the constellations morphed into far larger groups. Our participants were initially the top, middle and lower management of around 1800 people throughout the corporation. They then included the whole corporation, from top managers down to drivers, guards and the back office components, with which one typically has little contact.
A brief explanation of our constellation process can be annotated as such:
We start with management, a department or division or even an individual and place (constellate) the participants in their respective roles, and, if a department or management, delineate them into their different realms or stations. This is a formulaic initial process.
- We use the ‘Knowing Field’ – a sacred or quiet space within which the participants and /or representatives receive or sense changes in their somatic, sensory, or ambulatory bodies to act out a dynamic within themselves. (We tend to be cautious when the particapnts start to articulate their own observations, bias oe similar.) These urges are spontaneous, unexpected, and often incredulous. They occur while the group is in a moment of silence, which we use as a tool to gather new information..
- The facilitator manages the assembly; listening to each person to understand what has occurred, and consequently, if required, re-organising the initial array to accommodate this new information that has arisen.
- The new array or altered scenario tells us information hidden in the whole.
- This information is articulated by the facilitator.
- The process of quiet, stillness, and surrender is repeatedly used to reveal and understand the underlying narrative or dynamic pervading the person (if it is a single person we are constellating), the department, the division, or the whole company.
- We provide guidance if necessary or merely observe the self-correcting proces that occurs within the unfolding of the process. What is being constellated reorganises sponatanoeusly, allowing us to note that the body, person or group have the potential to self-correct inherently within them, if we allow it to occur.
- Post constellation, we get one of the representatives to draw up (on a board so that we see the graphic nature of the situation within the assembly) and articulate what the process has revealed (from their understanding). We will further elaborate, if necessary. We then get the participants to create a group or forum to brainstorm a new outcome, new resources or if absences are revealed, how to rectify them.
In Moscow were able to change the face of the corporation’s business practices, elevating the doing of business within the corporation (cross-selling) or outside to the stakeholders, to a more cordial, pleasant, egalitarian, and competitive process that helped the bank and other elments of the conglomerate to stay relatively stable post-2008.
We also were able to provide tools for business decisions based on the sustainable future development of the corporation by using a comprehensive approach – taking into account all the influencing factors as:
- Material or constitution of the organisation; its DNA: Available material resources like assets, finances and historical experience (knowledge). Sustainable growth considerations based on available resources supporting the right activities. We call this the material foundation of the business.
- Vegetal or physiological processes in the middle office: Undertaking activities to put things into practice in a good way, serving the management decisions. This is the realm of middle office; accounting, processes, services that support the front office.
- Instinctual, drive, ambition and face of the business: Managing in making decisions by seeing and taking all the available realities (internal and external) into account. The front office is the driving force of the organisation; ambition, power, social and tribal or group dynamics.
- Human realm: Learning to surrender the outcome so that the workforce is not motivated by simple profit but by future outcomes, including philanthropy and social welfare. This is the management dynamic that is primarily human and facilitates a business that runs at optimum levels without bullying, coercion or punishment. Management by example.
Last but not least, we also managed to change (albeit not wholly) underlying corruption, theft and backstabbing and enabled the elevation of a more human business process within a more cordial, less menacing work environment.
All businesses or organisations differ in substance, management skills, and purpose. At its heart, this methodology aims to help people model human qualities or virtues and develop new people skills, empathy, compassion and honesty. This changes the environment at work, which initiates changes at an epigenetic level within each of us and the company’s DNA.
A person who develops further ethical, moral, and inherent noble values by understanding the complexity of their internal states will not only benefit personally, but the business will also accrue a new sense of self. This can only affect the bottom line positively, as well as the whole internal environment of a business possessing exceptional qualities. Each participant, whether management or subordinate – to use old-fashioned terms – as they rectify and understand how to be an organised, functional, behavioural, and psychologically fit human, will then find new resources of management, people skills, and qualities of cognition and interaction with others that will benefit not only themselves but, of course, those that they interact with.