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"Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny."
- Frank Outlaw

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space.
In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and freedom."
-- Victor Frankl, M.D., Ph.D. (1905-1997)

"You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. … The future must enter into you long before it happens." -- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

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In the series on the new balance sheet, I have discussed the following four topics thus far:

1. Hope as the foundation of our future worth going to.
2. Leadership as presence, where personal integrity is influence.
3. Emotionally intelligent workplaces with relationships as the new currency.
4. The fine art of business: integrity, passion and purpose.

In this final article in the series, I want to provide a synthesis of this new balance sheet that we need of our human journey. This synthesis is presented in terms of three considerations we must address to build a future worth going to for the new workplace.

Consideration #1: The New Worthplace
In the new workplace, the core competency will be an inner core competency, that is, the ability of everyone – especially the senior people – to develop an inner perspective of who they are and how this integrity of identity is the heart-and-soul of everything they do. The late Trappist monk and scholar, Thomas Merton (+1968), writes,

There must be a time of day when the man who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all. There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls very silent. And his mind forms no more propositions, and he asks himself: Did they have meaning? There must be a time when the man of prayers goes to pray as if it were the first time in his life he had ever prayed; when the man of resolutions puts his resolutions aside as if they had all been broken, and he learns a different wisdom: distinguishing the sun from the moon, the stars from the darkness, the sea from the dry land, and the night sky from the shoulder of a hill.^[1]

This consideration of perspective addresses the issue of how our thoughts eventually form our destiny, as Frank Outlaw points out in the quote above, and where the space between stimulus and response, as Dr. Victor Frankl points out in the quote above, provides us with choice to be the best we can be. No longer must we continue to build workplaces; we must develop worthplaces.

Consideration #2: Soulful Living, Soulful Workplaces
In the Book of Ezekiel, the author describes how the dry bones can take on life again, if people get back on to the right path. In a similar way, the dry bones of many organizations can be revitalized, but only when soul, that is, vision and purpose become integral to organizational futures.

The soul is the principle by which we look deeply into things and discover that things have a value only insofar as they fulfill a deep underlying purpose. That purpose has something to do with lifting up others and ourselves. The soul is the force that tells us that to touch hearts and make the world a better place is the only price that is worth paying for the things we put into our lives.^[2]

Somehow organizations have to get off the solitary journey of the ‘bottom line' and begin to honour the ‘top line,' that is, vision and insight. It has been said that love makes the world go ‘round. In the new organizational reality, ideas make the world go ‘round. The top line makes the bottom line possible. The new balance sheet first has vision.

Consideration #3: A Leadership Value Pathâ„¢
If the first two considerations are fully honoured – worthplace and soulful living – then an organization has set the foundation for a leadership value pathâ„¢ (or LVP). A LVP is constructed by developing 7 key leadership pillars:

I.	PILLAR I:	VISIONING – Possibility thinking
II.	PILLAR II:	MAPPING – Issues to address
III.	PILLAR III:	JOURNEYING – Steps to take
IV.	PILLAR IV:	LEARNING – Commitment to change
V.	PILLAR V:	MENTORING – Available resources
VI.	PILLAR VI:	LEADING – Power of curiosity
VII.	PILLAR VII:	VALUING – Compelling commitment

As you review the 7 Pillars above, notice that these steps on the leadership value pathâ„¢ have to do with the substance of the organizational learning, what we could call the psychological infrastructure of the organization. If these are built on sand, then the best-laid plans will come to nought. But, we do know this: when organizations – or individuals – craft out a leadership value pathâ„¢ for themselves, they provide clarity of vision (Visioning) and purpose (Mapping), the tools to be engaged (Journeying), the processes to adapt (Learning), the resources to do the work (Mentoring), the scope of be innovative (Leading), and the willingness to build that future worth going to (Valuing). Middle Ages theologian, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), sums up all of these notions very well, “To live well is to work well, or display a good activity.”^[3]

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Footnotes

[1] Thomas Merton. No Man Is An Island. New York: Image Books, 1967, p. 194.

[2] Paul Keenan. Stages of the Soul: The Path of the Soulful Life. New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 10.

[3] Sum. theol. I-II, q. 57, a. 5.

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Other Articles in this Series
#1: The Ethics of Hope
#2: Leadership as Presence
#3: Emotionally Intelligent Workplaces
#4: The Fine Art of Business
#5: The New Balance Sheet