The Origins of the Emergent Organization
(This essay is unfinished and presented here to represent a style of communication for business and organizational development.)
In the past, organizational theory has been hampered by the world view that sees everything and everyone as a cog in a large machine that is our world, that the realities of human activity can be reduced to the same set of rules that power an automobile. The reality is that there are several key aspects of human activity that are missing in that model and it turns out that they are seminal to optimally effective organizations.
There are many parts to assembling an organization: structure, empowerment (training, tools, and technologies), culture, reward. All of these things contribute and will continue to contribute to the optimal organization. But there is one part of the picture that, while it gets attention, it does not get the attention it requires. And this factor is the seed that enables an organization to rise to excellence.
It’s about engagement. To make an organization hum at peak efficiency, the members of the organization must be engaged in a powerful way. Here we will examine what we mean by engaged, how you create engagement, and what can emerge from full engagement. And we will explore what we lose in our organizations where full engagement is not a factor, how these organizations miss out on optimal performance in the development of their products and their organizations.
What we will see is that full, free-agency engagement will cause the emergence of a new structure and behavioral model which can only come through the participation of fully engaged team members. The effectiveness of engagement is only as deep and far-reaching as this understanding can be embodied in an organization. It finds vivid expression in small, intense project teams, in tight, long-standing organizations, in the start-up environment, in artistic projects. In these small, intense teams it is easier to generate and maintain the focus, though the principle can be extended to the extent that one can cause this kind of intention to arise in an organization. And power will always come from more intense focus, and we will get benefit from whatever extent we can improved and extend the level of engagement in our organizations. We will experience extraordinary potency in concise teams that can fully embody engagement as a way of life.
Command and Control vs Emergent Organization
Most of our organizations use some form of a command and control structure throughout the organization. Most of us cannot even think of what it would mean to run a business organization without such a structure. The vice presidents work for the president, and the directors work for the vice presidents, and so on down the line. Everyone, except the top folks, whoever they may be, has someone to tell them what to do, someone who is ultimately the responsible party for what they do. Of course, in more creative organizations the leader of a team will induce or entice the members of the team to figure out what they are to do and lead them into getting it accomplished. But most people sense that the responsibility and control rest at the top of the group, and that those of us at the bottom of the structure have few if any decisions to make and bear little responsibility for the overall result. We just have our little piece of the puzzle, no real control, and little if any real decision making.
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<Following materials are notes for the evolution of this piece.>
What is an emergent organization? It is an organization where:
* power arises naturally
* organization arises and evolves
* people gravitate toward their strengths and put them in the service of the whole
* from interest, natural leadership steps up to their ability
* true leadership arises, not command-and-control issues
* true following happens
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Of course, organizations vary greatly in the degree in which responsibility, free agency, and control are shared throughout an organization, and we are coloring the picture darkly for effect. The larger the organization the more likely it is to suffer from a command-and-control lethargy. The smaller the organization, including isolated groups in large organizations, the more likely the team is to bond into full engagement with the process and each other. And in these settings, we will see natural emerging organization structures and patterns. Things will flow. What is “engagement”? How do you create it? And why can it have a profound effect on our organizations?
Engagement is a particular stance of an individual towards the world with which they are interacting. A stance is a set of attitudes, beliefs, and intents that arise into an individual’s level of involvement with any activity. The degree and quality of engagement determines the extent of their ability to give fully of their attention, intelligence, and effort---multiplied by every member of the team. So for an optimal expression of a group to emerge, you must optimize the engagement of the individuals, that is, enable them to acquire or develop optimal commitment and action with the project/s at hand. Let’s break down the components of engagement.
What Constitutes Engagement?
Power in an organization comes from the bottom up, from the traction that its members can generate with their efforts. To be fully engaged in a project, the individual needs the following attitudes to be part and parcel of their approach:
1. The use of their natural creative impulse
2. An illuminated goal which becomes their personal goal and to which they can commit their beliefs, intents, and actions
3. More interest in the realization of the goal than on their personal “position” in the organizational structure
4. Congruency in their actions at all levels
5. Alignment with the realization of the goal
6. Realistic understanding of capabilities and strengths throughout the team
7. The ability to act and know that their actions generate potential for the goal to emerge
8. A sense of shared responsibility and ownership with the whole team
9. The trust that if they step up they will be protected from any results of failure; they can be fearless
10. A sense of creative adventure
Of course, this is not a simple set of conditions to assemble in an individual, much less a team. We have become use to a level of half-heartedness in our working groups, and proceed with much less engagement than we can imagine. But any movement toward full engagement will improve the effectiveness of our efforts, and will be very worthwhile.
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Lack of Engagement: Causes and Results
Lack of engagement that pervades our organizations looks something like this:
1. Inability to commit
2. It’s not your work or responsibility
3. A narrow focus on the most limited engagement possible
4. Need to be told what to do (imagine an artist that needed to be told what to do)
5. Lack of interest
6. Focus on personal resu
7. Inability to inquire into what's next or envision what to do
8. Inability to step up to fill in the gaps
9. Waiting around to be told what to do
10. Half heartedness
11. Lack of responsibility
12. Lack of cohesiveness
13. Lack of motivation to manage alignment
14. Self protection from overwork, responsibility, failure
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What Emerges from Total Team Engagement?
1. An organization where everyone steps up, always.
2. A totally shared sense of responsibility
3. Flexibility with respect to tasks, ownership, and action
4. Seamless flow of action
5. Natural organizational structures
After Engagement, Empowerment
<More to come>