By Curtis Ogden
Today's sermon at church was about leadership. Not so surprising given the election is 10 days away. And yet the message was one that continues this theme that I am hearing in many different circles. The leadership we need in these times is rooted in humility, curiosity, and in a genuine desire to join with others. This is really so counter-cultural in mainstream America. It isn't that we haven't been hearing for years the importance of being a good team player. It's just that the practice has not really been rewarded. And so now we sit alone in a corner with the rest of the world glaring at us, or increasingly ignoring us, and yet still we hear from certain politicians and presidential wanna-bes that we can restore our standing in the world as THE leader. We, or some of us, just do not get it!
At a meeting of Ford Foundation grantees last week, one German-born gentleman said that it is time for the US to understand and embrace its role as a PARTNER on the global stage, and that if we come of of this election cycle swinging like the leaders we so often strive to be, the rest of the world is going to "collectively puke." We have seemingly so long been stuck in adolescence, you can understand the collective groan from Old Europe, and even older cultures around the globe.
The preacher said that the great challenge of our time is to "see the whole of it." To this end we must do whatever it takes. Stop pretending that we are special, inquire, be ready to work in any setting, cross boundaries, let go, challenge others respectfully, and commit to something that nurtures our inner strength and sense of balance. And for God's sake, get over ourselves and our long standing leadership fetish.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Living Organizations in Turbulent Times
By Curtis Ogden
While reading the book The Living Company on the train to Philadelphia, a number of things came up for me as I think about IISC’s (and other nonprofit organizations') internal and external world and work and future . . . . Arie de Geus has long written from the premise that organizations are living beings residing in, interacting with, and being shaped by ecosystems, and not isolated machines that can simply be engineered to do what we want them to do. mIf we share his view, this has implications for the way that organizations might think about themselves and act.
de Geus writes that the most successful/resilient organizations (living systems) are open to and aware of their environments; tolerant of “experimentation, outliers and eccentricity”; and cohesive (there is an awareness that all members are a part of something that is shared and there is a shared commitment to that something). Furthermore, resilience (surviving and thriving - which is the basic imperative of all life) is built upon the commitment and ability of organizations to embody a diversity and spectrum of perspectives and skills that can create more options in terms of potential responses to external circumstance. Think "border habitats" where life is often at its most resilient, as species adapt to function in more than one ecosystem.
de Geus goes on to suggest that “planning” is really not an effective approach for determining future direction for organizations as living systems, because it is overly mechanistic, does not map onto the complex realities in which we live, looks too much to the past with a problem-solving lens, and often puts all eggs in one basket in terms of a strategic course of action. A much better approach is to engage in a “playful” organic creation of different scenarios for the future and a loose plan of action for each so that the organization can be appropriately proactive and responsive.
Innovations (and therefore adaptability) come from living systems that have the space for said innovations to occur (time to think, reflect, restore), communication channels for sharing these innovations , and a tendency to "flock" (breaking out of isolation and using the channels).
As we enter into ever more turbulent times, this raises some questions for me about life at IISC and the organizations we serve:
While reading the book The Living Company on the train to Philadelphia, a number of things came up for me as I think about IISC’s (and other nonprofit organizations') internal and external world and work and future . . . . Arie de Geus has long written from the premise that organizations are living beings residing in, interacting with, and being shaped by ecosystems, and not isolated machines that can simply be engineered to do what we want them to do. mIf we share his view, this has implications for the way that organizations might think about themselves and act.
de Geus writes that the most successful/resilient organizations (living systems) are open to and aware of their environments; tolerant of “experimentation, outliers and eccentricity”; and cohesive (there is an awareness that all members are a part of something that is shared and there is a shared commitment to that something). Furthermore, resilience (surviving and thriving - which is the basic imperative of all life) is built upon the commitment and ability of organizations to embody a diversity and spectrum of perspectives and skills that can create more options in terms of potential responses to external circumstance. Think "border habitats" where life is often at its most resilient, as species adapt to function in more than one ecosystem.
de Geus goes on to suggest that “planning” is really not an effective approach for determining future direction for organizations as living systems, because it is overly mechanistic, does not map onto the complex realities in which we live, looks too much to the past with a problem-solving lens, and often puts all eggs in one basket in terms of a strategic course of action. A much better approach is to engage in a “playful” organic creation of different scenarios for the future and a loose plan of action for each so that the organization can be appropriately proactive and responsive.
Innovations (and therefore adaptability) come from living systems that have the space for said innovations to occur (time to think, reflect, restore), communication channels for sharing these innovations , and a tendency to "flock" (breaking out of isolation and using the channels).
As we enter into ever more turbulent times, this raises some questions for me about life at IISC and the organizations we serve:
- Should strategic planning shift to more scenario planning exercises?
- How much cohesion do we and our clients really have internally, and how might this be built through networks?
- To what degree are we all ensuring that we embody adaptive diversity (internally and through our networks) in terms of perspectives and skills?
- How can we make sure that we respond to turbulence with a commitment to continued experimentation as opposed to going back to something known (and potentially stale/irrelevant)?
- Do we have the right structures for “flocking” to ensure that innovations spread and are truly shared?
Beyond the Organization
We have a funny relationship with our organizations. We tend to forget that we built them. We tend to forget that without us they are abstractions, little more than a piece of paper in a government office. We tend to forget that we are alive and that they are not, they are tools, ways to structure how we work together so that we can do what we want to do, but better. I often talk of this situation of being a lot like “The Matrix,” the humans built the computers to serve them but instead they ended up mostly dead, in a fake world, giving up their energy to keep the computers alive.
Ok – so organizations themselves are not bad, in fact, they can be very useful, but we have to make them serve us. We not only have to change how our organizations work, we have to change how we relate to them. We must change them as WE grow, the point is not for the organization to grow, grow, grow – the point is for us to grow. Today we are stuck with terribly outdated organizational paradigms, it’s the information age, and yet we still organize ourselves in antiquated industrial structures that constrain our passion and limit our potential.
It is time that we transcend our organizational constraints – especially in the social sector, where our purpose is not profit but creating a new world. We can no longer afford to come around meeting tables and play organizational poker with one another. We can no longer afford to allow our organizational affiliations to get in the way of our doing work together. The social sector is full of good people, passionately committed people, brilliant-strategic-idealists, but we too often fail to catalyze the magic in our hearts – our core resource – because we can only relate to another through some sort of organizational identity.
There is a lot more to be said about this, a lot more to explore and discover together, and I hope that this space can become a part of our collective effort. But for now, here is the invitation – find out who is sitting across the table, not who they work for. Find out how they got into the work, what is their story – not just their ideology, find out what they are looking for, what they love and what they have always wanted to do but have not yet been able to do, because maybe, just maybe, they might want the same thing as you.
Ok – so organizations themselves are not bad, in fact, they can be very useful, but we have to make them serve us. We not only have to change how our organizations work, we have to change how we relate to them. We must change them as WE grow, the point is not for the organization to grow, grow, grow – the point is for us to grow. Today we are stuck with terribly outdated organizational paradigms, it’s the information age, and yet we still organize ourselves in antiquated industrial structures that constrain our passion and limit our potential.
It is time that we transcend our organizational constraints – especially in the social sector, where our purpose is not profit but creating a new world. We can no longer afford to come around meeting tables and play organizational poker with one another. We can no longer afford to allow our organizational affiliations to get in the way of our doing work together. The social sector is full of good people, passionately committed people, brilliant-strategic-idealists, but we too often fail to catalyze the magic in our hearts – our core resource – because we can only relate to another through some sort of organizational identity.
There is a lot more to be said about this, a lot more to explore and discover together, and I hope that this space can become a part of our collective effort. But for now, here is the invitation – find out who is sitting across the table, not who they work for. Find out how they got into the work, what is their story – not just their ideology, find out what they are looking for, what they love and what they have always wanted to do but have not yet been able to do, because maybe, just maybe, they might want the same thing as you.
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