When you start to see that your organisational dramas (see this recent post) repeat themselves in organisation after organisation you can also start to see that your difficulties are often not so much personal as they are systemic.Another way to say this is that what you might think is the problem with Dave or Jill or Aggrey or Sue (or with yourself) is often being brought about by the wider system in which everyone is participating and not simply by the person themselves.We are not used to looking in this way.We blame Jill, who is in a senior position, for being aloof, distant, and unresponsive to our needs. But all the while Jill is experiencing her own position as overwhelming - caught between her personal accountability for the organisation and all the problems others keep on bringing her.We blame Aggrey, who is in a middle position, for being unable to respond to our reasonable requests for information or support or action. But in order to respond to you he needs the cooperation and response of others. All the while his experience is that of being pulled in opposite directions by the demands of his bosses and the demands of the people on his team.We blame Dave, who is a team member, for complaining that he is under-resourced, while missing that Dave is experiencing the vulnerability and uncertainty that comes from others deciding what work he will do, or even if he will have any work at all.Jill, Aggrey and Dave are experiencing the archetypal difficulties that come with being in a hierarchically 'top', 'middle' or 'bottom' position. And we judge them, mistakenly, with archetypal and personal judgements, which misunderstand their situation.We come to believe that for anything to happen they must change and that until they do we must wait and put up with it. While we wait for them to change, or demand that they change, we reserve the right to complain. We don't see the particular difficulty their positions bring, and we don't see that our very complaints are part of the problem.Our complaints assume the difficulties we experience at their hands are personal, and that the solutions to them are personal too (which is to say that Jill, Aggrey and Dave simply need to get their act together, buckle up, and do what we need of them). But much of what we're experiencing - and much of what Jill, Aggrey and Dave are experiencing -is systemic, which is to say it's being brought about by all of us. Until we see that, we're trapped in a cycle of judgement and blame which asks the impossible of our colleagues.The first step required to get out of this drama is compassion - which includes finding out what the world is really like for those whom we find troublesome.The second step is seeing that we keep these systemic difficulties going through the stories we tell about others, and that there are many alternatives to the stories that are most familiar to us.When we find and act upon stories that account for people's actions more accurately than our usual blame and judgement stories, many possibilities for connection, responsiveness and partnership open to us.For a wonderful, articulate and very practical exploration of all this, I can't recommend Barry Oshry's book Seeing Systems highly enough.
Changing the path
We human beings are both path-makers and path-followers. Both are important, but it's our innate capacity to follow paths that makes possible so much of what we are able to do, and gives it its character.Notice this in your own home. How the door handle draws you to open the door, how the kitchen table is an invitation to sit, how the half-full fridge calls you to open its doors and find something to eat. Notice how a library is a place you find yourself hushed and reverential, how you push and shove to take up your place on a crowded train even though you would do this nowhere else, how you rise in unison to shout at a football game, how the words on the page guide you through the speech you are giving even when you're not concentrating closely on them, how you quicken your step in a darkened alley, how you find yourself having driven for hours on a busy motorway without remembering what actions and choice any of the minutes entailed.Our capacity to follow the paths laid out for us is no deficiency. That the paths support us in the background, and that we do not have to think about them, is what frees us for so much of what is creative and inventive in human life - including our capacity to design entirely new paths for ourselves and others.To be human, then, is always in a large part to find ourselves shaped by what we find ourselves in the midst of.It is all of this that exposes the limits of our individualistic understanding of people and their actions - an understanding we use to make sense of much of what happens in organisational life. For when we are sure that it is the individual who is the source of all actions and behaviour, we are blind to the paths that they find themselves in the midst of.And as long as we concentrate only on getting individual people to change, or firing or changing our leaders until we get the 'perfect' right one, we miss the opportunity to work together to change or lay out the new paths which could help everyone.Indeed, working to change the paths that lend themselves to whatever difficulty we wish to address may be the most important work we can do. And this always includes our developing - together - the skills and qualities that support us in being purposeful path-makers in the first place.
Stimulus and Response
I love Dan Pink's RSA talk on our mistaken assumptions about what makes good work possible.The subtitle of his talk could be 'Don't think you can manipulate people into making their most genuine contribution'.Paying bonuses for performance, argues Pink, works out only in very particular situations. Promise to reward people more for performing a mindless mechanical task, and often, yes, they'll find the wherewithal to do it better, or faster.But make bonuses the reason to do work that requires care, thoughtfulness, or imagination - especially if that's your primary method of engaging them - and you're most likely to see poorer results.I don't think this should surprise us. We know pretty quickly when we're being manipulated and it often makes us cynical and resentful.The very idea that bonuses would increase performance arises from the still-influential work of the behaviourist psychologists of the last century. They argued that the inner experience of human beings is irrelevant, and that we can decide what to do by looking just at outer stimulus and response patterns.In many organisations we're still caught up in the simplistic understanding of people that the behaviourists inspired. The consequence? The design of management practice based on the reward and punishment responses of animals such as rats.But we're human beings, with rich inner worlds that cannot be ignored just because they're hard to measure. We are brought to life by meaning, belonging, contribution and creativity. We're not machines, nor do we contribute any of our higher human faculties in response to a straightforwardly manipulative stimulus such as a bonus.When we're treated - or treat ourselves - as if we're something less than the complex, meaning-seeking beings that we are, it should be no surprise that we - and our work - are diminished.Pay people enough to have the issue of money be off the table, argues Pink. And then you need to ask deeper questions.Here's the animation from his talk, with thanks to Geraldine for introducing it to me.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc]
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Love
Love - genuine love for anything - is so often left out of the discourse of organisational life.Apparently it's not serious enough for business.Sometimes we'll allow ourselves passion - a word which is allowed, I think, because it sells us to others with its promise of energy and heat, commitment and making things happen. (We're so tied up with endlessly making things happen that we've forgotten everything else that conspires to make it possible).And we'll allow ourselves cynicism and skepticism, moods which distance us from one another and give us a feeling of superiority (a kind of pseudo-sophistication in which we believe we have greater insight than everyone else around us, who simply can't see what we can see).Frustration and resignation are also welcomed in many organisations, because serious work is apparently meant to be difficult all the time and both of these moods, reminding us of our difficulty, tell us that we must be doing it right.But love - genuine love? Deep, heartfelt love for something or someone that brings out our integrity, moves us, has us speak truth even when it's inconvenient, draws us out of ourselves, can touch people with something beyond manipulation or self-interest? How often do we allow that in ourselves or in others?We treat love with disdain.And we're much the poorer for it.
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Supplier or partner?
A choice to make whenever you work with others: will you relate to them as supplier or partner?Suppliers are there to give you what you ask for. 'We want 300 widgets by Friday' - there'll be a supplier for that. The supplier does not need to know much about what you care about, or are committed to, beyond the needs of the current supply. Once they have fulfilled your request to the standards you lay out, their job is done. And in relating to them as supplier you become consumer - the one with the right to determine the spec, the one upon whose sole discretion the supply gets accepted or rejected, and the one who expects not to be challenged, or disturbed, or questioned.The consumer-supplier relationship, even if it lasts over a long time period, is essentially a relationship of safety and utility (an I-It relationship). If someone else comes along who can give you what you ask for more quickly, or more cheaply, or with less fuss, have them supply you instead.And while supply gives you what you asked for, it gives you only what you asked for. You may get what you want, but you may well not get what you need.Partners are there to be in your commitments with you. To be a partner is to step in, to care about the same things that another cares about, and to build a relationship which can hold creativity, surprise, trust and difference. To be a partner is to be prepared to question the spec, the strategy and the premise, and be questioned in turn for the sake of the larger commitment you share. It's to enter into something big together, to be influenced by one another, and to be in it for the long term.When you step into a relationship this way, you invite the other party to join with you in your endeavours. As such partnership is an essentially I-You relationship, a shared commitment aimed at a far bigger set of possibilities than a supplier-consumer relationship can ever hope to address.The partner-supplier choice applies to just about any relationship. Colleagues, employees, consultants you bring in, people who make things and services you use - any can be partner or supplier. In each case you choose. Will you invite the other to be supply for your requests or partner in bringing about what matters most?Each kind of relationship has its place, and each has its consequences. But what gets most of us into trouble, sooner or later, is how often we try to make ourselves suppliers when a bolder, riskier and more significant contribution is called for. And how often we look for the safety and reassurance of a supplier, when it's a partner that we really need if we're going to have the impact on the world we're hoping for.
Misunderstanding feedback
'Giving feedback' has become so much a part of what is considered good management that we rarely ask ourselves whether it's effective or question the premise upon which it's based. I think it’s time we did.
The very idea of 'feedback' as a central management practice is drawn from cybernetics. The simplest kind of single-loop cybernetic system is a home thermostat. The thermostat responds to feedback from the room (by measuring the ambient temperature) and turns on heating when required so to warm the air to a comfortable level. When the target is reached, the thermostat turns the heating off. It's a 'single-loop' system because the thermostat can only respond to temperature.
In a double-loop feedback system it's possible to adjust what's measured in order to better address the situation. If you're bringing about the conditions in your room to make it suitable for a dinner party you may need to pay attention to temperature, lighting, the arrangement of furniture, the colour of the table cloth, the number of place settings, the mood and culinary taste of your guests, and the quality of conversation. Single-loop systems such as thermostats can’t do this. But double-loop cybernetic systems allow us in principle to ask 'what is it that's important to measure?'. And, of course, human beings are far more suited to this kind of flexibility than thermostats are.
It’s from this way of looking that we get the contemporary idea that feedback - solicited or not - is what’s most helpful or appropriate for someone to learn to do the right thing. But it is based on something of a questionable premise. Thermostats, even very clever ones, and other cybernetic systems don’t have emotions, or cares, or worries. They do not love, or feel fulfilled or frustrated. They do not have available to them multiple ways to interpret what is said. They do not hurt, and they do not feel shame. They do not misunderstand or see things in a different way. They don’t have an internalised inner critic, nor do they have bodies that are conditioned over years by practice to respond and react in particular ways. They are not in relationship. They do not have to trust in order to be able to do what they do. And they do not have a world of commitments, intentions, relationships, hopes and goals into which the latest temperature data lands.
People have all of these.
When we simply assume that spoken or written feedback, even if carefully given, will correct someone’s actions or help them to learn, we assume they are more like a cybernetic system than they are like a person. Sometimes it can certainly be helpful - when the feedback is in a domain that both giver and receiver care about, given in language that makes sense, and when it meets the hopes and aspirations of the receiver with sensitivity and generosity. But many times we find that the very act of giving feedback wounds or confuses or deflates or misunderstands or treats the other person as if they don’t know what they’re doing. We find that the world of the giver is nothing like the world of the receiver. We find that our best effort to construct feedback according to the ‘rules’ mystifyingly doesn’t bring about what we’re intending. And then we get frustrated or disappointed, and try to give the feedback another way, imagining that if we can come up with a clever technique or way of saying it then our feedback will work.
Perhaps a place to start would be to stop thinking about people as if they were glorified thermostats. In order to do this we'd have to soften our ideas of truth in feedback - specifically the idea that the one who knows the truth gives feedback to the one who must be corrected. Secondly, we could start to think how many ways there are to learn how to do something well than being told how someone else sees it. And third, we could wonder how we can share the riches we do see in a way that gives dignity and maintains connection between both parties - starting by knowing when it’s time to request, demonstrate, reflect, inquire together, make new distinctions in language, show someone how to make good observations for themselves, or simply stay out of the way.
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We don't do introspection
"We don't do introspection", they said to me. "None of this fluffy, self-indulgent, navel-gazing here", they continued. "We do action."
Of course. If you're going to lead as they were, in a global organisation, then right action is critical. But what they meant by "we don't do introspection" was "we aren't prepared to look at ourselves".
If they had an inkling, and most of us do not, of how much their actions were being shaped, out of their view, by
their personal preferences,by their fears,by years of habit,by their avoidance of reminders of childhood experiences (mostly shame),by the expectations their parents handed them,by their inner critic,by their longing to be appreciated, liked, respected, feared, in control
then they would perhaps have taken introspection or some rigorous self-observation more seriously. They would have been brave enough not just to look at their actions, but to look upstream at what was giving rise to them.
But they didn't.
They had asked for help because they'd been amazingly effective in taking action - action that had landed them and their organisation in deep trouble.
And now they were trying to get out, with the same excuses, and by doing more of what had got them into difficulty in the first place.
Crazy, and sadly all too common.
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Cell walls
Human beings are not infinitely extensible.We cannot keep on taking on more, saying yes to more, stretching our efforts into the late hours, getting up early, piling it on, squeezing it in, pushing ourselves harder and harder, without soon hitting limits.First, perhaps, we reach the outer limits of what our relationships can take. But we say to ourselves that it's not too bad, that it's just the way life is, and we push on.Later we encounter the limits that our bodies and minds can take, and we return home first ragged and exhausted, then increasingly unwell. We're adaptable though. It doesn't take us long to get used to be stretched as thin as we can go. And before long we carry with us lasting damage from the stress hormones coursing through our bodies.And even though this kind of yes-to-everything is endemic in our culture and in many organisations, it's largely there because we have not yet learned how powerful 'no' can be.'No' is a boundary-making move. It's a declaration that separates this-from-that. It's through 'no' that we distinguish the important from the unimportant, what matters from what does not, and what we care about from what's trivial.We can learn much about this from living systems. In cells, for example, it's the boundary-making properties of the membrane, that which distinguishes inner from outer, that makes the self-producing and life-generating processes of the cell possible.A cell without a cell wall is just a splurge of protoplasm and organelles.And just as there is no outside without inside, there is no proper, genuine, sincere 'yes' upon which we can act without the necessary, powerful boundary-making of 'no'.
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Always incomplete
Friday night. The start of shabbat, the Jewish sabbath.A time to put down everything - work, concerns about work, busyness - for a day of renewal, relationship, paying attention to the world through new eyes.And yet here, sitting in the synagogue with my family, my body and mind are filled with the long list of tasks left open, opportunities not taken, calls not returned, emails not answered. There's tension in my chest and stomach at all that is unfinished, all that is mine to do. My mind, barely attentive to what's going on around me, reaches out in a wide, scattered, urgent arc - as if thinking it through over and again will resolve my difficulty. As if this is a way to complete what is uncompleted.And then I remember that the day will come, and none of us knows how soon, when I will no longer be able to complete anything. And on that day too, the day that life is done, there will still be a long list of incomplete projects. Messages waiting. Conversations unfinished. Responsibilities unfulfilled.I come to see that project I've taken up with my racing mind and thumping heart, the project of having it all neatly done, can never and will never be concluded. I am reminded that to be human is to live, in one way or another, as yet unwritten.That it is time to let go.Yes, there's a time for urgently finishing whatever is at hand. And a time, a time we need, to set all that aside and to see the incompleteness of the world, and everyone, not as something that always needs fixing but as part of its strange, necessary and wonderful beauty.
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Ghosts
We search for patterns, often without knowing that we are doing so, filling in what we can't be sure of with what we can already grasp. And so we often relate to other people from our memories of them, or we project onto them aspects of ourselves to fill in the unknown we encounter in them.But that's not the end of it. We also easily and unconsciously relate to other people as if they were key figures from other systems and constellations of which we have been a part, in a phenomenon known as transference.So you join a new organisation, and find that there's some way in your new boss reminds you of your father. And even before you know it, you're filling in the blanks as if that's just who he is. When he doesn't reply to your email, it feels like all the times you were ignored in your own family. When he's short tempered or curt with you it reminds you of the times you were judged, and you imagine his reasons for judging you are the same as those you remember from home. You find yourself seeking his praise, repeating the ways you learned to get noticed as a child. And you feel warm and supported perhaps exactly when you get the kind of recognition you longed for when growing up, but feel unseen when he's recognising you in other ways. And all the while, you have no idea this is going on.And he, simultaneously, is responding to all the subtle cues that come from the transference you are experiencing. Perhaps you now remind him of his own child, and he finds himself treating you in this way. He looks to praise you the way he praised her. He is frustrated with you for what frustrated him about her. He is reassured when you respond in ways that feel familiar, and confused and exasperated when you don't fit the pattern that years of habit have taught him.Before you know it, you have planted the ghosts of brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, teachers and enemies and lovers among your colleagues. And each one of them, in turn, has recruited you into a role you may know nothing about.And all of you are in a dance that everyone is dancing, even though nobody can see the steps the others are following. On and on, through and through, transferred memories of families and systems that are not of this place, the weave from which your conversations and relationships, your delights and your many troubles, are spun.
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