Csikszentmihalyi’s publications about creativity and intrinsic motivation appear frequently on supplemental reading lists for leadership, innovation, and spirituality courses at the University of Minnesota. He currently is the C.S. and D.J. Davidson Professor of Psychology at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University (CGU) and Director of the Quality of Life Research Center (UCLA Anderson school of management). In 2007, CGU announced a new doctoral program on positive psychology under Csikszentmihalyi’s leadership (Smith). Csikszentmihalyi is also an emeritus professor of human development at the University of Chicago, where he chaired the Department of Psychology when this book was published. The author predicted that, “We are likely to derive a measure of happiness, or at least of serenity, from knowing that our actions are helping a better future take shape,� (p. 9). In other words, the penultimate optimal experience would combine a privately satisfying flow moment with knowledge that a greater good was also served.
This may be the best explanation for the enduring resilience of the American experiment for over 200 years. Csikszentmihalyi’s theory holds nicely when one considers that the conscious mind, and conscientiousness, of America’s citizenry evolved incrementally in the forums, arenas, and courts of society alongside the incremental complexity of the cyclical policy change cycle as it, too, evolved (Crosby & Bryson, 2005). What if the most fundamental connection between the founders and all the public leaders since was a self-perpetuating consciousness, like an insatiable appetite, for complexity and intrinsically rewarding flow moments tied to public service (Greenleaf, 2002)? Would that legitimize the importance of these theories sufficiently to take the conversation to the level of social institutional change?
Somehow, leaders are still drawn to serve increasingly complex and persistent problems. The world conditions that originally prompted this book are still present today, amplified by time and the complex challenges confronting leaders in today’s nobody’s-in-charge, shared-power world (Crosby, 2005). All seven zones of Terry’s leadership model, or any of the change models under study in PA/IS 5103, can be packed with evidence about the impact of modern issues on individuals, families, communities, organizations, and governments (Terry, 2001). Csikszentmihalyi is less concerned about policy change and more concerned about human reaction to it. He invites us to consider that there are two basic pathways that stem from consciousness. Entropy, the inability to work and achieve goals, draws the “have-nots,� while the negentropy pathway draws the “haves� toward “harmony, predictability, purposeful activity that leads to satisfying one’s goals,� (p. 18).
Can practical leadership decisions be sorted into these two pathways, one wiser than the other, too? The federal No Child Left Behind Act comes to mind as a policy solution with entropic consequences to public institutions and to the well-being of individual adults and students. Years of frustration with languishing student achievement and partisan deadlocks over reform movements like “character education� (Kilpatrick, 1992) culminated in the imposition of top-down sanctions from the federal arena into the forums of every schoolhouse, every classroom, and every parent-teacher conference in America. For all the money spent, the gaps in achievement remain virtually untouched (UNITED STATES: Doubts grow about Bush education reforms - International Herald Tribune, 2007), the lists of schools failing to make “adequate yearly progress� grows, and an epidemic number of students are dropped out nationally and in Minnesota (Dropout initiative - Minnesota department of education, 2006; National summit on America's silent epidemic - Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, 2007). Within education, people seem to suffer from chronic anti-flow, a made-up term to describe what I observe when organizations force people to invest psychic energy in complexities perceived to be purposeless (2005 NCLB adequate yearly progress (AYP) system Requirements/Business rules, 2005; The elementary and secondary education act (the no child left behind act of 2001), 2005, provided for those who may wish to see the complexities of administering NCLB at the local and state levels).
If we agree with Csikszmentmihalyi’s thesis about the imperative to awaken the conscious mind of every child through innovated social systems, shouldn’t we abandon that failed experiment and open a brand new conversation that “no task is more essential in the long run than finding a way to develop selves that will support evolution,� (p. 24)?
What about the environmental concerns that factor heavily in this opening chapter?
Others may remember the heated salvos between polarized leaders, like then-Sen. Al Gore and Gov. Dixy Lee Ray of Washington, about how to frame environmental issues in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, (Ray & Guzzo, 1990, Ray accused Gore of "environmental insanity"). Lee died in 1994. Gore persisted and eventually won the Nobel Prize for his inconvenient truths (Gore & Melcher Media, 2006). But what next? Indeed, Csikszentmihalyi’s 13-year-old idea to convene the world’s people in support of continuation of life on earth over “faith, nation, family, or person,� (p. 19) is lovely, and maybe even technologically possible today, but how could it really work?
Human beings seem to need a dramatic excuse (Edelman, 1988; Gladwell, 2000) to tackle change, like developing “more efficient, more improbable systems� (p. 21) of evolution. Neither glorious prose nor neuroscientific descriptions of consciousness equip me with necessary tools to replace traditional agendas and project management tied to deliverable outcomes with consciousness-raising activities.
I need the rest of the book to do justice to a full reflection on this work, and better ability to translate the theories through my own practice in communications and public affairs. The first chapter does provide important insight into the theory of self evolution. The questions at the end are interesting, even if it is not entirely clear why or how we would use the information. Unlike Flow, which presented a fairly ironclad theory, this book was designed to encourage doodling and note-taking, and the questions at the end of each chapter all seemed as relevant today as in 1993. I respect the effort to engage our own wisdom and experience and am hungry for concrete knowledge that could “retool the mind for accommodating the challenges of the near future� (p. 8) and improve my everyday actions for the common good (p. 4).
In broadest terms, this means that my evolved self might come to “enjoy life in all its forms, and gradually become aware of its kinship with the rest of humanity, with life as a whole, and with the pulsing forces that animate the world beyond our comprehension,� instead of just yielding to “biological drives� or “cultural habits,� (p. 5).
Years before Friedman describe specific “flatteners�(Friedman, 2006), Csikszentmihalyi observed that, “there is no place left on earth where one can plan one’s destiny without taking into account what happens in the rest of the world,� (p. 7). “Whether we like it or not, we are now the pilots of Spaceship Earth. For this role we need a new set of instructions, new values and goals by which to steer a course among the many unprecedented dangers. In this adventure of the mind, the first stage takes us to reflect on what—or who—each of us individually is,� (pp. 19-20, plus exercises pp. 24-27).
I made many notes and imagined what I might do in the future. I tried to imagine what those new values and goals might be. The difference between “will� and “might� lies with me and the degree to which I understand my place in that “gigantic field of force we call nature,� (p. 24).

References

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