The new leadership paradigm
In the midst of all the evidence that the world is radically changing, some leaders cling to what has worked in the past. They still think of organisations in mechanistic terms, as collections of replaceable parts capable of being reengineered. They act as if people were machines, redesigning their jobs and expecting them to perform to specifications with machinelike acquiescence. Over the years, our ideas of leadership have supported this myth. Organisations sought prediction and control, and also charged their leaders with providing everything that was absent from the machine: vision, inspiration, intelligence, and courage. These leaders alone had to provide the energy and direction to move their rickety organisational vehicles into the future.
But the dawn of the 21st Century brought in its wake too many organisational failures for us in the developing world to stay with this thinking; there is a need for a paradigm shift in what we think we know about leadership. There are indications of loss of hope and increased uncertainty for institutional reforms and both managers and employees are reporting deep cynicism at endless programmes that ultimately lead to workplace stress and burnout.
Fortunately, management theorists have known that self-managed teams are far more productive than any other form of organising. There is a clear correlation between employee involvement and productivity; in fact, according to a recent study, productivity gains in truly self-managed work environments are at minimum 35 per cent higher than in traditionally managed organisations. Moreover, in all forms of institutions, the world over, employees are asking for more local autonomy, insisting that they, at their own level, can do it better than the huge bureaucratic albatross. There is both the desire to participate more and strong evidence that such participation leads to effectiveness and productivity.
With so much evidence supporting participative decision-making, why are we not employing the concept of self-managed teams in most organisations? This question bothers contemporary management thinkers, because it points to the fact that over the years, leaders consistently have chosen control rather than productivity. Rather than rethinking our fundamental assumptions about organisational effectiveness, we have stayed preoccupied with structures and procedures, hoping that they will yield the results we crave for. But when they have failed woefully, we still have not stopped to question whether such modus operandi is the real route to productive work.
According to Margaret Wheatley, organisations of all kinds are cluttered with control mechanisms that paralyse employees and leaders alike. But where do all these rules, policies, procedures, protocols, decrees, and regulations come from? And why do we keep on creating more, even as we suffocate from the undesirable immobilisation of hyper control? Industrial psychologists believe that these mechanisms seem to derive from our fear of one another, or a harsh competitive world, and the natural processes of growth and change that confront organisations today. Years of such fear, it is believed, have resulted in the convoluted systems. You can never effectively control people with these systems, but you certainly stop a lot of good work from getting done.
In the midst of so much fear, Margaret Wheatley reminds us of something we all know: People organise together to accomplish more, not less. Behind every organising effort is a realisation that by joining with others we can accomplish something important that we could not accomplish alone. And this impulse to organise so as to accomplish more is not only true of humans, but also found in all living systems. Every living thing seeks to create a world in which it can thrive. It does this by creating systems of relationships where all members of the system benefit from their connections. This movement toward organisation, called self-organisation in the sciences, is everywhere. Patterns of relationships form into effective systems of organisation. Organisation is a naturally occurring phenomenon. The world seeks organisation, seeks its own effectiveness, and so do the people in organisations.
Wheatley goes further to postulate that as a living system self-organises, it develops shared understanding of what is important, what is acceptable behaviour, what actions are required, and how these actions will get done. It develops channels of communication, networks of workers, and complex physical structures. As the system develops, new capacities emerge from living and working together. Looking at what a self-organising system creates, leads to the realisation that the system can do for itself most of what leaders have felt was necessary to do to the system they control.
When leaders look at their organisations as machines and deny the great self-organising capacity espoused, they attempt to change these systems from the outside in. Such efforts as reengineering and restructuring are doomed to failure, and nothing will make them work. What is required is a shift in how we think about organising. Organisation occurs from the inside out, as people see what needs to happen, apply their experience and perceptions to the issue, find those who can help them, and use their own creativity to invent solutions. Whether you like it or not, this process is going on right now, all over your organisation, in spite of your efforts at control. People are exercising initiative from a deeper desire to contribute, displaying the creativity that is common to all living things.
Belief in the system
To lead a self-organising system, you have to ask yourself, “How much trust do I really have in the people who work here? Have they demonstrated any of these self-organising behaviours already? This question of trust leads to a moment of deep reflection for any leader. Those leaders who have embraced a more participative, self-organising approach are often overwhelmed by the capacity, energy, creativity, commitment, and even love that they receive from the people in their organisations.
Most people report to work wondering how they can make a meaningful contribution for the organisation despite the office politics, the bureaucratic nightmares, the mindless procedures heaped up in their way etc. Those leaders who have embraced participation and self-organisation have seen the inherent desire that most people have to make a difference in their organisations. Such commitment and energy resident in the organisation takes leaders by surprise. But in honoring and trusting the people who work with them, they unleash startlingly high levels of productivity and creativity.
Strategies for change
If we think of organisations as living systems capable of self-organising, then how do we think about changing these systems? The strategy for change becomes simpler and more localised. We need to encourage creativity that lives throughout the organisation, but keep local solutions localised. Most change efforts fail when leaders take an innovation that has worked well in one area of the organisation and attempt to copy it to the entire organisation. This desire to replicate success actually destroys local initiative. It denies the creativity of everyone except a small group. All living things change all the time, in new and surprising ways, discovering greater effectiveness, and better solutions. They are not operating from a master plan. They are changing slowly in their local environment, based on their immediate experience with conditions there and this change shows up as effective innovation. But only for them. Information about what has worked elsewhere can be very helpful. However, these solutions cannot be imposed; they have to remain local.
If contemporary leaders are to develop organisations of greater enduring capacity, we have to turn to the people in our organisations. We have to learn how to encourage the creativity and the commitment that they wanted to express when they first joined the organisation. We have to learn how to get past the stress and cynicism that has been created in the past several years, and use our best talents to figure out how to reengage people in the important work of organising.
BY CAPT SAM ADDAIH (RTD)