Welcome to Sum Space

Dear Sum friends,

It was on Independence Day, the 4th of July 2011 when Carolina and I founded sum.

1'500 workshops in 40 countries on all 6 continents, 50 leadership conferences later, and probably 25000+ leaders that we had the honor to ’touch’ and work with, it was time to reflect on the experiences and the current state of the world.

• What does the world need? How can business be a force for good?
• How should sum, this teenager, this precious thing, evolve going forward to be useful to the world and help businesses on their journey?
• What is the legacy, that I want to leave as a founder?  And what is asked of me to help sum grow into adulthood, led by a next generation of sum partners?

As I learned during my executive years, a good approach in times of uncertainty and transition is to talk to your clients. We reached out to leaders we have worked with over the last 13 years and explored how they have experienced the journey with sum, what challenges they are currently facing, and what they would expect from sum going forward. These interviews were not only extraordinarily rich in content and feedback but also created beautiful encounters with human beings sharing their personal journey and remembering tender moments at some inspiring workshop venue, with insights, deep connections and at times magic.

Here is some of the feedback we received

• The It-We-I is a simple yet powerful framework to guide a team’s and a leader’s journey
• Shaping a great leadership team is potentially the single biggest lever to lead a company to success and performance
• Spelling out a compelling purpose, the raison d’être, is a critical task (for both executive team and Board of Directors) to provide focus and direction, the true North.
• The sum workshops are a space for the relevant conversations, to jointly address challenges, co-create vision and strategy and build the foundation for a high performing team.
• Check in, pulse check, feedback, elephant discussions in fishbowl have become powerful rituals of high performing teams.
• Walk & talk in inspiring nature contexts, dinner exercises to share personal stories and experiences, early morning yoga or Tai Chi are all contributing to create a space away from the usual busy-ness
• One CEO shared that in all previous executive teams he felt that he needed to spend 40% of his energy to be prepared for the next attack coming from somewhere; with the high performance team journey his executive team’s waste of energy went down to 0 as they jointly look at the challenges, openly discuss and then distribute critical tasks according to strengths and availabilities in the team.  There is no more space for politics and silo thinking.
• Change happens on the I-dimension, hence transformation without addressing the I-dimension will most probably not succeed
• Many of our clients talked about the impact the journey had on them, as a leader, but also as spouse and a parent.

As we inquired about the challenges that the CEOs are facing, we heard

• Uncertainty of geopolitical threats and disruptions
• Both threats and opportunities through technology, namely but not only AI
• Slow and often not fully convincing approaches to shape a sustainable company and ecosystem
• A company culture still operating in silos not fully leveraging the collective intelligence in the company
• Difficulty to effectively engage with partners in the ecosystem
• Sense of scarcity of critical talent in general and future leadership talent in particular
• Pressure from various stakeholders requesting that companies and leaders take position in social and geopolitical themes

Overall, it feels that running a company has become more complicated, often more complex (note the difference between the two: complicated requires many different steps and ingredients versus complex which comes with many variables, some of them unknown, uncertain or with unknown impact).  To effectively face these challenges a leadership team needs to perform at its best with everyone playing to their strengths.  The teams do not have the luxury anymore to waste energy on internal shortcomings, e.g. silo thinking, knower mind set, blaming culture or avoidance.

As we were chewing on this feedback we tried to distil what it is that sum can bring to the world, what are we uniquely positioned to offer to our clients and help shape businesses as a force for good.

And here it comes: sum helps businesses make space to create breakthroughs.

We understand the dilemmas and challenges that leaders face today.  These topics are a huge weight to carry.  We create the space for new answers to emerge.

There is no music without the silence between the notes. No poetry without the pauses between the words.  No art without the negative space between the strokes. The sum workshops are a space ‘in between’; in Japanese there is a word (Ma 間) for the spaces, gaps, pauses, that shape the whole.

sum space opens the possibility for the individual to fully be 
(sum in Latin = I am).

sum space provides the foundation to unlock the power of a great team or collective
(sum in English = aggregate)

sum space connects to the inexhaustible energy source of meaning
(sum in Cantonese = heart)

In this space the leadership team can address what really matters, and as a collective shape the future for better business and a better world.

We do not pretend that we have the subject matter expertise to solve a company’s business challenges; what we can do is help spell out the relevant questions and then orchestrate the space to address it.  Several elements need to come together for the sum space work:

• What exactly is the challenge and the specific question that we are trying to solve?
• The setting and format for these conversations matter; there is a lot of truth outside a ppt laden Board room.
• Participants need to get into the right state of mind; the multitasking ‘monkey mind’ is not helpful in difficult conversations
• The team needs to operate with mutual trust for members to speak up and speak their truth
• Vulnerability and authenticity of each one so they can be at their best. 

It is a subtle task to create the sum space. And often it looks so easy, when the elements play out and a team achieves a breakthrough.  And sometimes it feels like magic, as if we had tapped into a higher source.

My sum partners and myself are deeply grateful for your trust and partnership over the last years.  And we are excited about the journey ahead.  We are honored by your openness in allowing us to create the space for your teams.  Let us create more spaces together, where we can reflect, explore, and charter the paths for businesses as a force for good.  

You might want to check out our new website at www.sum-space.com; and we would welcome your candid feedback.

You might have noticed that we have also further developed our logo; the animation on our homepage gives a glimpse of how the integration of the three dimensions (It, We, I) has been combined with the concept of space, sum space. 

Ekki in the name of all sum partners