Based on research by Erik Dane

• Epiphanies, or flashes of insight about a puzzle or problem, are vivid experiences that can change the course of your life.
• ​While every epiphany is unique, the way we interpret them can be categorized and studied.
• Fostering a work environment of “readiness for change” may do more to spark personally transformative work/career epiphanies than more conventional approaches such as coaching or motivational lectures.

It might be just the right word from your boss. It might be a phone call with a trusted friend. Or it might be waking up one morning and just knowing. There’s no way to predict what will spark an epiphany that changes the way you see the world. But their power can be so far-reaching, they often leave us wondering where on earth that brilliant idea came from – and how we can find more.

Studying the mental processes behind epiphanies is especially hard because these flashes of insight are usually linked with nonconscious mental processing and incubation, often during time periods when one may not seem to be thinking about a problem at all. In this way, epiphanies seem to arrive effortlessly.

So how do people make sense of the epiphanies when they experience them? In a set of unprecedented studies, former Rice Business Professor Erik Dane set out to find answers, first examining people who’d experienced general epiphanies, then analyzing a set of accounts of work- and career-related epiphanies themselves.

In his first study, Dane surveyed more than 500 randomly selected people to ask them about their experiences with epiphanies, which he defined as a sudden and abrupt insight and/or change in perspective that transforms the individual. Subjects who said they’d experienced epiphanies reported what they’d been doing beforehand, the feelings and insight associated with the epiphany and how they thought they’d changed afterward. Interestingly, though this survey wasn’t limited to career- or work-related epiphanies, 20 percent of the responses related directly to these topics.

In the second study, Dane interviewed 22 professionals, asking them about distinct work- or career-related epiphanies, most of which resolved a nagging problem. After analyzing the transcripts of these interviews, Dane developed a set of theoretical categories describing the varieties of reactions an epiphany might spark. 

People generally perceive and analyze their epiphanies in similar ways, Dane found. He categorized these into four dimensions: a person’s emotional reaction to the experience of the epiphany, the question of how the epiphany arose, the circumstances that preceded the insight and a person’s observations about how ready they were to experience change through an epiphany.

The typical first reaction to an epiphany, Dane says, is a sudden and emotionally charged release from a problem or tension. We’ve all been there: a stressful work situation that seems to offer no way out, followed by a dazzling solution that appears from the clouds. It’s that suddenness that leads to the second typical reaction: a sense of astonishment due to the nonconscious nature of the insight’s arrival. Feeling dumbfounded for a prolonged time isn’t useful, though, so we usually start examining the factors surrounding the epiphany, including our own readiness to change.

What does this imply for workplace? After all, not every problem can or even ought to be solved by epiphany. At the same time, Dane notes, epiphanies can provide critical impetus to move forward.

Interestingly, his findings hint that one can increase the chances of having an epiphany. Though further research is required, Dane concludes that epiphanies most commonly arrive when people are open to the prospect of experiencing a major change. When something is mentally constraining us, on the other hand, eureka moments keep their distance.

As a worker, Dane suggests, you can open space for epiphanies by being actively aware of your surroundings. Look closely at your workplace, your constellation of coworkers and your place within the system. Perceived mindfully, these details may set the stage for problem-solving in a less focused moment.

If you’re a mentor or a supervisor hoping to spark epiphanies in your work team, try applying this principle at work: Rather than laying out specific targets and attacking them head-on, aim for an environment that allows for mindful engagement, one that includes the problems that feature in your long-term goals and resonate with your workers’ concerns and interests. Cultivating this environment and granting workers time and space to wander through it may lead, like a divining rod, to fresh sources of wisdom.

Erik Dane is a former professor of management (organizational behavior) at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

To learn more, please see: Dane, E. (2019). Suddenly everything became clear: How people make sense of epiphanies surrounding their work and careers. Academy of Management Discoveries. 6(1).

Based on research by Jennifer M. George

• Can corporations function under a policy of “do no harm?”
• Going a step further, can corporations be compassionate?
• What would encourage corporations to take compassion seriously?

Since the early 2000s, the business of doing business has changed its looks markedly. As corporations gain power and reach, many in the public are subjecting them to increasingly insistent questions about their impact on the lives of workers, the environment and society at large. At the same time, academics have focused more attention on compassion in management and business organizations. Today, considerable research parses the way corporate conduct affects employees, laid-off workers and the well-being of society as a whole. A considerable segment of this academic literature advocates for what once seemed like an oxymoron: compassion in corporate management.

Most of the recent research on compassion focuses on individuals and the group. Most management research, meanwhile, centers on economic performance and efficiency. In an editorial for Journal of Management, though, Rice Business Mary Gibbs Jones Professor Emeritus of Management Jennifer George argues that compassion research can actually be a jumping-off point for focus on social problems, well-being and identifying the conditions under which organizations do the least harm.

But what is compassion in business, exactly? According to George, it’s the practice of setting up organizations so that they respond to the vulnerable groups in their orbit. To do this, George says, companies should reconsider the concept of “American Corporate Capitalism (ACC),” which operates when corporations, workers and consumers pursue self-interest. ACC follows the laws of supply and demand, and is founded on the bedrock principles of respect for private property, an emphasis on economic growth and using profits as the measuring stick for making business decision.

Make no mistake, George adds: “ACC is an ideology.” A host of institutions provide the underpinnings that allow ACC to flourish, among them the legal system, governmental agencies, stock markets, media and advertising and trade organizations.

But, notes George, the rewards from American Corporate Capitalism are narrowing sharply. ACC, she contends, now concentrates benefits upon fewer and fewer people. One article she cites suggests that outsized CEO salaries and compensation, coupled with large income inequality within a company, may result in organizations that do harm to their workers.

In fact, “the tenets of ACC seem to downplay the importance of compassionate organizing,” says George. Harm done by corporations, such as laying off employees, may occur unintentionally, but those decisions still cause suffering. ACC, she says, “has the potential to create conditions under which compassion is much less likely to occur.”

As a result, it’s crucial to closely examine the tensions and contradictions between ACC and compassion. A focus on compassion would “identify the conditions under which organizations inflict the least harm and alleviate the most suffering,” George writes.

She proposes a wide-ranging agenda to achieve this. First, researchers should look at organizational decision-making to track the influence of ACC values and whether criteria such as dominance or hierarchy override harmony and egalitarianism. Identifying the factors that spur organizations to favor only shareholders and customers over employees and neighboring communities could offer insights for management. Other research, George suggests, ought to examine a range of companies operating in the same sector, tracing which cause more damage and which are more successful at reducing suffering.

Finally, George says, academics should develop case studies of organizations that successfully pursue policies such as employing the disabled – policies designed to promote the well-being of vulnerable groups inside and outside the company.

Because corporations wield such vast influence, the harm they do can reach wide swaths of the population. It’s time, George writes, for researchers to examine the disconnects between prevailing corporate culture and compassion. Effectively done, she says, such research could vault over the ivory battlements into the heart of everyday life.

Jennifer M. George is the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor Emeritus of Management in Organizational Behavior at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. 

George, J. M. (2014). Compassion and capitalism: Implications for organizational studies. Journal of Management, 40(1), 5-15.