Nonprofits 2.0

By Curtis Ogden

The management guru Gary Hamel has written (The Future of Management) that the big challenge for modern day corporations is to reinvent management systems so that they inspire human beings to bring all of their capabilities to work every day. He makes this statement after citing the results of a survey of over 80,000 employees of large and medium-sized companies in 16 countries that show that the vast majority of workers are less than fully engaged in their work. Eighty-five percent of those surveyed are giving less of themselves than they could. We are not simply talking time here. It is not a question of whether people are logging 40, 60 or 80 hours a week. It comes down to more important questions of passion, creativity, and initiative, and whether these are present in the workplace.

The problem, says Hamel, is that leaders continue to put too much of an emphasis on obedience and diligence, which are largely relics of the industrial economy. In the fast-paced and increasingly decentralized world in which we live we are called to shift our emphasis to creating organizations that are highly adaptable and fully human. Yet in companies there is just too much management and too little freedom, too much hierarchy and too little community, too much command and too little purpose. To shift this picture, Hamel encourages leaders and managers to consider a more life giving metaphor and embrace the following:

 Relentless experimentation
 Greater diversity of data, viewpoints, and opinions
 Focus on strategic efficiency, not simply operational efficiency (not just doing things right, but doing the right things right)
 More voices in shaping policy and strategy
 Dissenting voices
 Distributed leadership
 Focus on higher purpose
 Room for the expression of personal/individual goals
 Space for the collision of new ideas
 Rewards for eccentricity

Hello, management 2.0!

So one question is how this applies to our (the nonprofit) sector. Certainly it seems that the focus on higher purpose and the expression of personal goals have had a long standing place in mission-driven organizations and initiatives. But what about the rest? To what extent do we focus on and emphasize creativity, diversity of ideas and input, dissent, and shared leadership? Do we think that these have a place in or further our work? It is hard to imagine that they do not. Back in 1924, Mary Parker Follett was writing (Creative Experience) about the importance of servant leadership, diversity, and self-organization in light of her work with community centers in Roxbury. Have we gotten away from our roots? Are we, like many companies, guilty of becoming too focused on control and organization? Have we mistaken the raft for the shore?

Coming Down to Earth

By Curtis Ogden

I am intrigued by the conversations taking place at the national level about our current economic crisis, and in particular speculation that what we have to do is dismantle some of these mammoth and infected financial institutions and make them more manageable. In other words, there is a sense that our institutions have become too big and complex for their and our good, that they have gotten away from us, and are not immediately relevant to our lives. With the loss of that connection come a loss of accountability, of responsiveness, and of effectiveness.

I find an interesting parallel in some of the conversations about how best to address global problems such as climate change and biodiversity conservation. There are those who see global approaches to such issues as missing the essential point. For example, the effort to focus on those biodiversity hot spots around the globe where one might get the most bang for one’s buck, while making sense, also risk overlooking some of the more local solutions. Something about the notion of global strategies takes the issues out of our hands, leaving some with a sense of disconnection from what we are talking about. And what we are talking about is as common as dirt and fundamental as the air we breathe and water we drink.

Essentially, all politics, economics, and conservation is local. The ecologist Chris Uhl has written that, “As mundane as it may sound, for many of us the land at our doorstep provides the starting point for developing an affection for the earth, which is a necessary foundation for living respectfully within the confines of our planet.” Which is to say that connection is crucial. Lack of connection is what allows one human being to sell a risky mortgage to a vulnerable and unsuspecting other. It is what allows us to salt away our life support systems and sources of well-being. So as the conversations continue at the national and global level, I keep my ears tuned for those that bring us back to our senses about the confines in which we live, what we can realistically manage and the local relevance of our actions.

Back to the Knitting

By Curtis Ogden

While offering a training to a group of health care reformers in Maine last month, I was struck by how powerful some of the fundamental tools of Facilitative Leadership were to many of the participants, including the fundamentals of listening as an ally (as opposed to listening as an adversary) and the basic architecture of building agreements. As I listened to an accomplished lawyer speak to the simple elegance of open-narrow-close framework, I felt renewed appreciation for the power of what we teach at IISC and IA.

In recent months there has been a real push within our organization to innovate, to tap more creative ideas and ways of doing things (applying network theory, creating more emergent spaces, using Web 2.0 tools). At times I have thought of this as being about moving away from what we have traditionally practiced and taught at IISC. Admittedly, there have been times when I have wanted something more.

Certainly there is more. There are other techniques, other tools for helping people to work together effectively. And it is also true that no matter the tool, there are certain core practices and principles that serve anyone and everyone well when working towards a shared goal - bringing a clear collaborative intent to one’s work, being transparent, checking for understanding, surfacing and honoring dissent, striving for a diversity of input, seeking to understand before being understood.

As we move forward I am gaining a better understanding of the need to remain grounded in these core (and perhaps timeless) practices, and also to be more precise about the intent of any given collaborative endeavor so as to choose the best tools for the job.

A Taste of King's Truth

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.

In a world of hyper-marketing and overabundant information we can tend to become immune to the power of words – this is probably a good defense mechanism, something to protect ourselves against the myriad corporate claims on our psyche. But sometimes words speak such truths, and challenge us in such ways, that we can actually evolve by honestly contemplating them.

I relate to Reverend King as a prophet, a truth teller of our age, and this recognition invites me to welcome his words as I do scriptures, or the words of my master. The yogic tradition speaks of something called “caitanya,” the idea that the words of an awakened being actually carry his or her intention, and that the intention of such a soul is so loaded with love and with truth that it can transcend time and space, it is this intention that pierces our own hearts and in turn helps us wake up.

When the Interaction Institute for Social Change selected this quote and underlined it with a bold, multicolored “HOPE,” I felt we were making a similar claim. There is something mightily subversive in King’s refusal to accept the chains of injustice as if they were a matter of course, as if they were a historic and inevitable fact of human nature. Reverend King’s words stir our soul not because they are a sweet dream fantasy, but it is because they resonate with our deepest truths.

Our humanity has witnessed moments of brotherhood and peace, and we shall see them again – but these moments demand our belief if we are to call them into being. The truth that Reverend King can speak of, is a truth that he has seen, it is a truth that holds a light so factual and a resonance so vibrant that it can stand bare and unarmed, self luminous and self sustained.

His call is uncompromising, it is a call for unconditional love and nothing less than unconditional love. In a world where the profit motive has so wildly expanded as to dig a hole in our own souls, as markets try to define who and how we are, as they attempt to shape our likes and dislikes, as they tag our garments, taint our food, and claim our children and our friends, as they show up in every corner of our living space, in the psychic violence of such a world, it is only unconditional love that can take us all the way, because it’s the only type of love can not be bought or sold.

Keeping Our Eyes on the (Right) Ball

By Curtis Ogden

In an article in the most recent issue of The Nonprofit Quarterly, Margaret Wheatley speaks to the need for greater trust in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors in order to move through the current challenging financial times as well as to address the complex social and environmental problems we collectively face (see “An Era of Powerful Possibility”). She writes that accountability measures prescribed by funders have often tended to place undue onus on nonprofit leadership and demand excessive reporting and unrealistic measurement systems from staff. In essence, she says that we have had our eyes on the wrong ball.

Instead, what the times indicate if anything is that we need to shift our attention to our own flawed thinking. What we suffer from most profoundly at this point in time is an acute case of uncertainty. What got us into this mess? What does the future hold? What should we be doing now? Our resulting and understandable anxiety can tend to push us into a mad search for answers, and even push us backwards to what we perceive having worked in the past, or worked in a particular situation. The unfortunate part of this reaction is that we can end up concocting or transferring simple or simplistic responses to complicated or complex situations, which inclines us towards mechanistic, overly controlled, expert-driven and ultimately irrelevant and damaging approaches.

A good example of this is the documented case of genetically engineered food in developing countries, intended to alleviate malnutrition. While perhaps well intentioned (and with respect to some parties there are questions about underlying virtue), this approach has not had an impact because it has applied a simple solution to a complex situation. As conservation biologist David Ehrenfeld has written (Becoming Good Ancestors), many people are hungry not because their rice lacks beta carotene, but because they lack a diverse diet. They are suffering from a lack of biodiversity, loss of traditional sustainable know-how and practice, and economic systems with perverse incentives. The blind drive towards genetically engineered mono-cropping not only misses the point, but can make matters worse for both people and planet.

So what are we to do? First of all, recognize that many if not most of the problems we face are systemic and complex in nature. They are both bigger than us and include us. This just might inspire a deeper sense of not only realism, but also humility and responsibility. From here we might recognize the deep call to reach out, to bridge boundaries, to get curious, to listen, to bring our experience and knowledge to the table with an abiding desire to be of service . . . and trust. We must trust one another, whether community member or funder or politician or “expert.” This would seem to be a core lesson from Obama’s strategy and ultimate victory. Trust is the basis of building effective networks. It is also a key lever in overcoming fear and triggering the kind of creativity we so desperately need. Perhaps our most important challenge is to apply this ethic of trust to the natural world, from which many of us are so alienated to the point of fear. If we do not successfully reacquaint ourselves with our very life support system, trust its wisdom, and listen to the warnings and important lessons it has to impart, well . . . then pass me that bowl of rice.

On Dave Brooks, Faith and Trust and Social Change

Wow! The secret is out! And it’s in the New York Times! David Brooks is breaking it down; Newtonian physics is not the end of the story. The industrial paradigm has broken down, we live in An Economy of Faith and Trust (this is the title of the piece!). Brooks boldly calls out the fantasy of control that we keep hoping will solve our problems, the ideas of “input to output” that dominate how we think about the world are being called into question. We have to shift from the complicated to the complex. (See David Snowden of Cognitive Edge, there are problems that are complicated where input to output is measured, and there are problems that are complex where you just can’t account for all the inputs – so what does that say about output?)

David Brooks applies similar logic to our economy and goes even further by saying “we must account for faith and trust.” There are lessons to be learned here for those of us who work for social change. “There is no outside” say Hardt & Negri and the Buddha, and so we are all in this mix, we are all influenced by the idea of homo-economicus and the paradigm that makes it possible. The social sector was born out of the same Newtonian paradigm that hopes to measure all inputs and outputs – and we are still seduced by it.

In the last 40 years alone, what was once a living and breathing organic movement became so institutionalized that we started to believe that it would be a business mindset of supposedly rigorous measures that would finally set us free. Today as the entire financial system breaks down the best we can do is look backwards and say that the forefathers of movement were right, capitalism will undo its own self – but what do we have to offer that is new? And what have we forgotten along the way?

The truth is that we lack as much faith and trust as the rest of them, fighting for grants, hoarding ideas and constraining ourselves. “People seek relationships more than money,” this is David Brooks in the New York Times, neither revolutionary nor new age, and if they get it why can’t we? This is what we have to be radical about, we have to drop the stuff and meetings that are overloading us, let them die with the dying while we seriously intensify our relationships to each other – connect in non-meeting space, get personal, get deep, get authentic, realize that we all want the same thing!

If you want to make people act like machines and steal most of their labor from them you build an oppressive organization, and this is what we’ve inherited oppressive organizations – system wide, the whole thing! Foundations, advocacy groups, service organizations, intermediaries, most coalitions and faith-based groups – all in the same paradigm. But when people are self-motivated, when they want to do something together, and the technology is there to do it, then we just have to cut the whole thing loose, not hold it back with our hopes for control.

By God we are the ones with heart, we have the competitive advantage on this one, we are the ones that want to go radical and this crisis is our chance. I think of my Rockwood year-long cohort and the economy of love that has now evolved among us – what else can we do with that? I think of the Boston non-meetings, of the effort to keep it real here at the Interaction Institute for Social Change, of the Gathering for Justice and it’s leaders telling me that they had built relationships together, that they have love and they have trust and they want to work with those. This, my friends is the raw material for movement, a paradigm shifts only as we step into the new – movement is not an election, it is social transformation. Let’s go!

Our Kids Killing Each Other

I don’t have a TV, and so I’ve been catching up on “The Wire” through Netflix. The stuff is in my head, it’s an overload of brilliant television, too much violence and a whole lot of reality. This is the place from which I open the papers today and learn what I already now – our kids are killing each other , Boston made the top 10, we are number 6 on the list. The shit is painful, and what’s even more frustrating is that there is nothing new to recommend. Papers are talking about the same old thing – “restoring police officers in the streets and creating social programs for poor youths.” Is that really what’s going to do it for us?

Look, maybe at some level these are things that will help, but the very best youth programs that I know can only serve a precious few, and by all means, let’s help these programs where we can. And cops, well, that’s a whole other story, I do watch the Wire after all, and before that, I knew about Foucault, power, and the dead end of “discipline and punish.” The “pragmatic” in me likes things like the “Shot Spotter” system, an acoustic technology that lets police rapidly intersect a shooter as soon as the weapon is fired. It works after the fact, but it gets to a perpetrator, but seriously now, is this the best we have? Feels like the opposite of a root cause.

We can talk about breakdowns in the family, racism, structural oppression, and a nation state that bails out bankers but lets its poor people die. We can talk about all of these things and we would be absolutely right, but our kids are still killing each other. There is something that is terribly counter-evolutionary about a society where kids kill one another, something feels terribly backward when locking up our kids becomes the state’s option – ask the folk at “The Gathering for Justice,” they can tell you what we are doing to our kids – I am blessed to work with them.

Truth is that I’m stumped by this one, grappling with it, feeling the pain of the whole thing, trying to open up and see what’s here, be bold in this search for something new. I’m seduced by Meg Wheatley’s proposition that “whatever the problem, community is the answer.” I’m moved by the idea that it has to be organic, and that there is little an outsider can do, be it state policy or charity. But in that little that we can do, we have to be incredibly precise, clear in our intention and unbelievably open to the fact that we don’t know.

I do know we have to stand with whoever is inside the thing, and trying to do something about it, trying to shift their own self first, not playing the name game first, the police game, the 501(c)3 game or the who is the best dressed pastor game. This has to happen somehow else. I’m going to keep messing with this one, stay with it as long as it takes, there is an answer somewhere and it has to do with heart, with authenticity and opportunity, appreciation, innovation, connection, it has to do with a willingness to truly take the time, it has to do with the fact that this thing we are looking at is not outside of our selves, this shit is real, and that’s how it hurts.