It’s Not a Machine, Darling!
picture source: stock | canva
There’s a lot going on in this world. All my clients tell me exactly the same thing: too much work, not enough time, too many reports, forecasts, and analyzes to write to satisfy shareholders, too little C-level orientation, too much pressure on people in organizations, who lose the “good guys” and find it difficult to find new ones. It seems like organizations are on the verge of collapse due to burnout.
This development does not surprise me. As a person trained in systems thinking, it has always been clear to me that organizations are not machines. Unfortunately, business reality shows the opposite. Organizations and the people in them (no matter what hierarchical level) are treated (or treat themselves) like machines. A woodcut-like explanation: The organization is structured in departments with more or less clear boundaries, tasks, and goals. The whole thing is filleted into pieces. People are hired to take care of these chunks and management is there to oversee the employees in practice. Products and services are developed to serve the organization’s (actually its shareholders’) strategy to generate more profit. Employees have only two options for obtaining confirmation from the organization to recover: either vacation or sick leave. And by employees I mean everyone, including C-level. When these organizations talk about themselves they usually use machine or war metaphors such as central command, headquarters, marching orders, speed, the troops, the enemy, competitors, restructuring, gap to be filled, profit, a solid plan, me and me, counter -Suggestions, “yes but…”, stand out from the crowd, etc. – I know it sounds brutally harsh. Well, because in reality, it is.
Efficiency comes at the expense of resilience
Organizations are structured to function as efficiently as possible. A linear procedure (if A, then B follows) allows repetitive activities to be standardized. The organization’s energy expenditure (aka costs) required to produce a service or product can be kept as low as possible. All of this works well as long as the environment (markets, the respective region, etc.) remains stable and free from any disruption (e.g. due to technological change, supply bottlenecks, pandemic situation, etc.). As soon as these conditions change, such an organization stumbles because it has simply practiced and internalized too little the necessary action repertoire to adapt to these new conditions as quickly as possible. At this point at the latest, it becomes clear why, for example, diversity and inclusion are not a fantasy of socialists, but is vital for an organization to survive.
Diversity and inclusion, e.g. freedom for open-ended cooperation in organizations, are signs of living systems. Organizations that see themselves as a living system maintain intensive communication that can consist of a variety of verbal communication such as stories, videos, podcasts, bar camps, huddles, mystery lunches, design thinking camps, co-create workathons, and hackathons. Verbal communication means not only sending, but essentially also receiving, i.e. listening to the end. These organizations have also understood that non-verbal communication takes place on a symbolic level and therefore, for example, design workspaces according to the social needs of the people in them. The language of these organizations reflects cooperative togetherness. The whole thing is more than the sum of its parts: feedback, feelings, growth, future, change, the whole, us and we, co-create, ideas, thoughts, „yes and…“, building on ideas of others.
Creating Conditions for Living Systems
All right, understood? But how do we get there? How do we get from organization = linear working machine to organization = living system? By starting to create conditions for living systems – and that means both for the organizations and for ourselves who are responsible for these organizations.
The basis of any living system is communication between its parts. Translated, this means the quality of the relationships between the people in the organizations. Each system, for its own development, requires information about the environment in which it resides and about its own connection to that environment. For example, for an organization, that would be the purpose of why that organization is in business in the first place. It is also about the environment (supply chain, contractors, employees’ families, health and education systems) and how the organization deals with it. And it’s about how and what kind of communication takes place within the organization. What stories have been told for years? How much space do employees have to connect with each other just because they are people and not because some KPI says so? Cooperation that makes new paths possible can only arise from strong and resilient relationships. I repeat my beloved mantra here: First contact, than cooperation.
But as written, there is also this individual level, without which we cannot develop living systems. Organizations exist because we as humans created them. Consequently, they can only be as resilient, innovative, flexible, exciting, interesting, etc. as we are ourselves. Without working on our inner core, we will not be able to sustain our organizations in their ever faster-changing environments. If we want to establish a different communication in our organizations, we must first look at our own. What stories am I telling over and over again? Am I speaking my truth and showing myself as I am? How do I create relationships? Do I avoid them or do I participate in them? It’s not a question of introverts or extroverts. This is a question of human encounters.
And now I can already hear the thoughts of some readers: “But I have found that I could never be myself in the organizations and the organization has to change first, then I can feel good.” Well, in this case, everything will be like that stay as it is A change, no matter if it is our own or that of organizations towards vitality, always starts with ourselves and our will and the decision to change.