Archive for Lisa Christie

Love and leadership

July 25, 2009 / / One comment

“Of all the things that sustain a leader over time, love is the most lasting. It’s hard to imagine leaders getting up day after day, putting in the long hours and hard work it takes to get extraordinary things done, without having their hearts in it. The best kept secret of successful leaders is staying in love with leading, with the people who do the work, with what their organizations produce and with those who honor the organization by using its products and services.”  — Barry Z. Posner and Jim Kouzes

Posner and Kouzes speak of love and leadership, love and business.  How often do we hear those words used together? Most of us have been introduced to a concept of business in which business is a domain unto itself, in which the primary driver is economic profit: the business of business is to make money for the shareholders.  When I earned my MBA, two of my professors presented the relationship between ethics and business as a pragmatic one: if you are in the public eye and you violate the public’s ethical preferences, you can experience negative consequences; for this reason it is necessary to manage this dimension of your business.  The premise is that your competitor will be doing everything possible to maximize profits, so if you give more consideration to other stakeholders  than is required by government regulation and the market (for labor, capital, etc.) then, you increase risk and reduce shareholder returns.  As  a relatively recent example, Costco has come under fire for giving employees better benefits than Sam’s Club does.

For many years, the world of business was a man’s world, shaped according to the stereotypically masculine values of rationality unencumbered by human feeling and by competition — both external and internal.  The “gamesman” contributes competently to the team, but retains a savvy emotional disconnection from the organization, customers, etc. 

To be taken seriously — to be successful — women needed to learn the language and the terrain.  Using terms like “love,” “desire,”  “care,” etc., according to one professor, whom I like personally but tend to disagree with on a variety of subjects was, “writing like a girl.” 

Therefore, it is particularly striking that Posner and Kouzes, luminaries in the subject area of leadership, speak of loving:

  • leading
  • the people who do the work
  • the company’s products and services
  • the customers served

Gamesmanship is not about love, but leadership is.  True, the ethic of many organizations does not, in fact, reward love or personal commitment. Yet, the transformative leadership that is needed now, to create highly adaptable and creative organizations, expresses a very different paradigm — of vision, commitment, caring. This paradigm presently often co-exists with the classical paradigm in which human values are generally extraneous — “softer,” “feminine,” inappropriate to the business environment. ( The exception, in the classical paradigm, is that human values are employed instrumentally to manipulate stakeholders towards “rational” economic ends — that is, ends that benefit shareholders  as purely economic beings).

Having spent the first part of my career in corporations — substantial intact systems — I now have the opportunity as a small business owner, to choose my market, the clients and customers we serve, and our products and services. And I am finding that the business “clicks” — is the most successful — in that intersection between core capabilities, market needs, and passion.  I am finding that when we love the clients we serve, our internal and external business partners, and our products and services, we find the greatest success.  Mission, human connection, and ethics are at the forefront of the business.  In the old paradigm, we might contrast selfishness with selflessness, with the former being a winning  position, and the latter a losing position — the first stereotypically equated with masculinity and the second sterotypically equated with a subordinate femininity. In the new paradigm, leadership is about “both-and,” with the “and” serving as a creative dimension in which new possibilities for mutual sustainability arise, and the rewards are diverse and many.

Category: All Posts, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Partnership, Rewards /

Forms of organization

July 6, 2009 / / No comments

Interesting article on forms of organization — hierarchal, market, and collaborative ..

http://www.heckscher.us/The%20evolving%20nature%20of%20professional%20work.doc

Category: All Posts, Organization /

The Unconscious in Organizational Transformation

June 17, 2009 / / One comment

Readers and writers who visit this blog are engaging with facinating and powerful questions and ideas.

One recent search term that brought someone to this blog was, “the role of the unconscious in organizational transformation.” It raises the topic of the unconscious in both personal, organizational and cultural dynamics and transformation.

What do we mean by unconscious? We’ve learned that unconscious patients perceive and process information — they hear what is said and what they hear can positively or negatively affect their recovery. So the unconscious is part of our experience, but it is unexamined experience. The unconscious also contains the connections between experiences. If you touch a hot surface and are burned, that information is there; and such connections are the raw components of belief. We also develop attitudes and orientations towards our experience: life is an adventure; life is an ordeal; people will help you or hurt you, etc. The connections we make are influenced by the events themselves, our orientation/attitudes — or interpretative lenses, pre-existing clusters of associations, and our received cultural beliefs — both explicit and implied. We look for evidence to support our existing beliefs; and receive biological rewards when we find them.

However, like the proverbial iceburg, most of our beliefs, including our interpretative lenses, are below our conscious awareness. And many of the foundations for these beliefs were set at in our earliest experiences, a time when we lacked our present insight and experience. Yet it’s these beliefs, orientations, lenses that are the locomotives of our lives. Hence, Carl G. Jung’s assertion that until we make the unconscious conscious, it will rule our lives and we will call it fate. This also resonates with Socrates’ “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Although I think Socrates overstates his case a bit, as a coach, I can testify that the examined life can become a great adventure, because when we examine many of our limiting beiefs, we find that they are actually not true.

The same principles apply with respect to organizations. It’s interesting to think in terms of a personal unconscious and a collective unconscious, the interaction amongst our unconscious beliefs, shaped by our personal and organizational histories. This is potentially a very fruitful area for organizational transformation. Thank you to our visitor for raising the topic.

Category: All Posts, Change, Coaching, Culture, Organization, Teams /

Silence and speaking in organizations

June 13, 2009 / / No comments

Hi Carman,
I apologize that it has been taking me so long to respond to your thoughtful and insightful posts. I appreciate your ongoing contributions to this endeavor!

Thank you (first) for your discussion of cultures of silence. The quote you chose from Charles Davis was a very apt illustration of how we internalize the power structures in which we participate:

“Exterior un-freedom causes interior un-freedom. A child first learns to talk or think aloud, then afterwards to think without voicing its thought.”

Deconstructive postmodernists (with whom I share both agreement and disagreement) have observed that assertions of truth are acts of power. This is very evident in a court of law, where attorneys put forth a view of reality which serves them and their clients. This is also true in dominator organizations, where authority and power are often perceived to arise (in part) from being “right” and where, in a circular way, might makes right. Certain views and positions become “legitimate” and others, which question or challenge these perspectives may be viewed as heritical or a power play. (1)

In the same way that in a dominator family, a child is shusshed for “talking back” or challenging parental authority, in dominator organizations, members may be admonished for raising perspectives and positions that challenge organizational orthodoxy. (This seems to come back to your post on orgaizations as theocracies…). And what is true of families and organizations is also true with respect to our larger institutions and culture.

So, in dominator organizations, organizational members learn to silence themselves, effectively internalizing the outer controls, so as to avoid “punishment.” This self-silencing can become so automatic, that we are barely consciously aware of it.

Further, it is also taboo to discuss the silencing itself. Because it pulls back the covers on power relationships, challenges the legitimacy and absoluteness of existing truth claims, and because there is the sensibility that “that war” was already fought and won,” raising the existance of the taboo tends to both threaten and irritate people. A very successful control structure maintains both the silence and suppression of awareness or discussion of the silence itself.

Conversely, speaking in our own voice is a form of self-assertion, of “power-from-within.” And, when we share our truths an perspectives as part of a mutually-respectful dialogue or larger conversation, this sharing can become the co-creative “power-with” in which the flow of energy and ideas in the group gives rise to broader insights and more powerful ideas than would be the case of a person acting singly. Master coach Karen Capello calls this the power of authenticity: http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2009/01/03/power-of-authenticity/

It is the empowering, creative energy that organizations want and need. The challenge, as I see it, is that to be truly creative, many organizations need to rethink their assumptions about power and knowledge, and the role of leadership.

(1) This is not always true, of course. Alternative ideas may be considered within certain bounds, depending on both the idea and the speaker. (This speaks to the concept of rhetorical communities).

Constraints on upwards communication in traditional organizations

Category: All Posts, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Culture, Diversity, Innovation, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Philosophy, Teams /

Unlearning that which doesn’t serve us

May 4, 2009 / / One comment

Hi Carman,
Yes, I think your discussion of children’s openness to learning is an excellent reminder that some of personal and organizational capacities that we wish to develop are natural endowments that have either been substantially suppressed or remained undeveloped due to the particularities of our culture.

Personally, I find this reassuring that this capacities are natural in that it points us not to new and alien place, but an original place from which we are able to see with fresh and creative eyes.

It’s not that children have all of the insights and abilities to which we aspire, but they don’t have as much to unlearn 🙂

I very much appreciated your quote from W. Edwards Deming: “People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with the toddlers—a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars—and on up through the university.”

It’s interesting how Deming refers to external rewards as undermining a natural, intrinsic love of learning for the pleasure it gives.  It seems that there is a shift from a substantial internal orientation to our own experience to a primarily external orientation toward outside standards and the approval or disapproval of others.

A Partnership perspective agrees that we are substantially (but not exclusively) shaped by our social situation. Riane Eisler also observes how the structure of social relationships in the immediate family/community very powerfully communicate our most fundamental assumptions about the world, relationships, and the nature of power.

Is the world safe? Can we trust that our physical, emotional and spiritual needs will be met? Do we have power, if so, what is its nature — how does it “work”? Is there a “right” way and a “wrong” way to be, to think? And if so, Who is “right”? Are we OK or not OK?

In a Dominator culture, these questions tend to be answered in a particular way (so that they form a pattern or paradigm) that shape psychologies and social structures etc. that are dysfunctional in that they limit potential and cause unncessary suffering.

Towards a solution, I think Dominator culture can be unlearned, and that the language and concepts of recovery are useful in this regard…

Hope you are having a great week.

Bye for now, 

Lisa

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Towards a Learning Organization (A presentation by Carman De Voer Mais)

April 13, 2009 / / 2 comments

Carman De Voer Mais has developed a fresh and insightful PowerPoint presentation on learning organizations. He makes the important point that becoming a learning organization isn’t something that “patched on” to the existing organizational paradigm, but rather a transformation of both the paradigm and the players.  I’m going to try to share that presentation with you here.  This is my first attempt to provide a file link in WordPress, so it may take a few tries …

Carman, I hope your cold has lifted!

Lisa

Thinking Creatively, Building Effectively by Carman De Voer Mais

Category: All Posts, Change, Creativity, Culture, Design, Ethics, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Rewards, Spirituality, Values /

We never know the impact we have on the lives of others

April 3, 2009 / / 3 comments

Partnership includes the values of care and compassion. It supports financial abundance but also recognizes that there are ends that are far more important and intrinsically valuable than economic ends alone.  Sometimes when we follow our hearts, we make a profound difference in the lives of others. 

One such extraordinary woman is Gina Gippner-Woods of Just Mom, Inc., a non-profit organization that provides comfort toys to seriously and terminally ill children at Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles.  Gina taught me that we never know the impact we have on the lives of others.

This is the story of how and why Gina founded, Just Mom, Inc.

“Once upon a time a woman named Gina Gippner-Woods was admitted into the hospital. There was no room for her in the adult ward, so she was placed in a room with a child. A little girl.

This young girl was recovering from surgery which removed a tumor from her brain. She had no family and her nurse developed a friendship with her and would bring her in gifts daily.  One morning the nurse brought this young girl a stuffed, plush puppy. The little girl took one look at the plush pup and threw it across the room. Gina, not understanding why she would throw it, got out of her bed and recovered the toy.

Taking it back to the little girl she asked, “Honey, what’s wrong? Why did you throw your puppy?”

“It’s not mine. It’s broken!” The young girl replied.

At that moment Gina looked at the plush puppy and realized that its ear was ripped. She looked at the young girl and then looked at the loose gauze which was lying on the table next to her bed. Immediately she grabbed the gauze and began bandaging the head of the broken puppy to match the little girl’s bandage. When she was done bandaging the plush puppy she looked at the young girl and said, “It’s not broken. It’s got an “owie” like you. It’s your ‘OwieBowWowie.'”  The little girl then took the dog in her arms and comforted it, and it became her friend, accompanying her through all of her challenges…

I was surprised and saddened to hear that there are many seriously and terminally ill children who don’t have any family or visitors.  So, Gina founded Just Mom, Inc., to provide comfort toys for these children so they don’t need to go through their ordeals alone.

Gina’s effort to get the word out is heroic.  For example, she is donating her time for projects, with the funds going towards the purchase of a comfort toy for a hospitalized child.  And this is a micro-charity, so it’s easy for any of us to make a difference.  You can see a heartfelt mission in action on her site: http://www.owiebowwowie.net/_mgxroot/page_10723.html

Category: All Posts, Partnership, Rewards, Spirituality, Values /

Holism, Power, and the Intersubjective Nature of Joy

March 28, 2009 / / No comments

Hi Carman, I am glad to hear that you are feeling restored to health! It’s a pleasure to read your posts again.

Yes, I agree — Alfred North Whitehead once said that whatever constitutes a world view can be understood to constitute a religion. And, process theologian, David Ray Griffin, who interpreted and extended Whitehead’s work, observed that two key world views dominate the modern West: fundamentalist Christian theology (in which God created the world but is separate from it) and materialism — the latter deriving from the former. Ecofeminist philosopher, Charlene Spretnak, observes that these two worldviews share in common the assumption that notion that we are all separate. 

However, this notion of separation is not fundamental to either science or spirituality. My hypothesis is that the perspective that we are all separate is born of pain and fear, and engenders the same.  And when we are separate and afraid, we seek power *over* our situation and others. Because money is a form of power that gives us some measure of control, it’s unsurprising that we would turn wealth itself into a god.

New science, on the other hand, points to a more holistic, intelligent Cosmos. In my personal understanding, it points to a world in which we are all deeply interconnected and in which there are multiple levels of intelligence — from cells, to organisms, to ecosystems — including the intelligence of the larger whole, in which we all participate. 

However, because our worldviews are self-reinforcing, our culture reinforces ways of perceiving and interpreting the world that emphasize separation, which one prominent physicist called a kind of optical illusion of consciousness. However, different aspects of human experience can and do, point to a more holistic and interconnected world, and that leads us into the life world that you describe so well.

Your question on how the two employers defended the life world sounds well worth exploring. I notice that Fezziwig takes joy in the happiness of others. We are social animals, and it seems that meaning and happiness ulitmately has this relational context. Conversely, I also notice that Scrooge is not a happy person. He may take pleasure in comforts, but in serving the god of wealth, he oppresses himself as well as others. 

To this point, I recently read a quote by Booker T. Washington, which read, “You can’t hold a man [or woman] down without staying down with him [her].”  This is true at many levels, from the psychological, to the sociological, to a more holistic understanding of what some call “the inter-subjective space.” (Robert Kenny has done some fascinating, ground-breaking work on how this space applies to creative teams (http://www.ciis.edu/faculty/kenny.html).  Transformational leadership thus has the potential to liberate and free the creative potentials of both the leader and the organization.

The role of the Spirits could be metaphorical or it could relate to the larger spirit or intelligence of the whole, for which people have used a variety of terms, depending on their spiritual or secular orientation.  (I think you previously raised the question of the relationship between spiritual transformation and tranformative leadership…)    

Speaking of valuing the subjective dimension of life, several colleagues and clients that I am working with in my coaching and training practice, hold the intention that their work should also be fulfilling and fun.  It’s an enriching practice to work with, as I’m sure you know! 

Have a great weekend!

Lisa

Category: All Posts, Creativity, Culture, Ethics, Leadership, Partnership, Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Spirituality, Teams, Trust /

Motivations for change (on dairy cows, creativity, adaptability & effectiveness)

March 22, 2009 / / One comment

Carman, My apologies for the recent quiet on this blog. I’ve been carried away with my coaching and training practices, and doing my best to find some balance and rest on the weekends. (I do sometimes take my own medicine 😉 )

Having the perspective of a little bit of distance, I notice how many arguments to motivate the kind of shift in worldview and relationship that we are discussing — including my own — often incorprate instrumental logic.  I include this logic and language intentionally, to create a bridge of ideas from the paradigm of instrumental, dominator thinking to the paradigm of Partnership thinking.  

For example, amongst other benefits, a Partnership approach to leadership and organizations has the potential to substantially increase creativity, innovation, teamwork, adptability, and effectiveness.  And, it is consistent with the prevalent culture of business to consider the objective value of these changes — how they can positively impact both the bottom line and leadership careers.  

And, I think the subjective dimension of these positives is appreciated.  When we experience the joy of real trusting collaborative teamwork, learning in open dialogue, solving problems, creating something new,  putting our energies towards a meaningful end — we know that there is a value of experience which extends far beyond the economic outcomes produced. Yet, our cultural mindset devalues the “merely” subjective and subordinates it to “hard” economic outcomes. Our institutions both reflect and reinforce this mindset.

Reflecting on your most recent post,  http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2009/02/27/the-lifeworld-healthy-organizational-systems-from-carman-de-voer/  an instrumental, Dominator perspective considers the cow as an organic machine whose only purpose is to produce milk for those who control the cow. Whether the farm workers enjoy their work, or if the cow is treated humanely are side issues, except as the affect the firm’s ability to operate (employee retention, legal or consumer issues). 

On the other hand, a Partnership perspective respects both the farm worker and the cow as subjects themselves, and seeks a mutually beneficial relationship. 

And I’m reflecting today — perhaps because it is quiet and rainy — that it is important to affirm and point out the deep — and, for myself, I would say spiritual — dimensions of the quality of subjective experience,  because it is precisely what keeps Partnership from being yet one more instrumental technique to increase creativity, milk production, etc.  We can begin there, if needed, but if it ends there, I think we will “trip” on our own self-contradiction. Organizations do this all of the time, and it is why, in my opinion, so many attempts to change fails.

Rather, these kinds of shifts and practices are an opportunity to experience another way of being in the world, to be transformed. And in that transformation, we find that these shifts “work” from an instrumental perspective, but in our transformed understanding, it’s no longer the primary end…

Hope you’re having a great weekend!

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More on humanizing systems (and the brain)

February 22, 2009 / / 2 comments

Hi Carman, As always, your posts are both intellectually enriching and poetic.

Years ago, Alfonso Montuori and I wrote an essay on how our philosophical paradigm and guiding metaphors have shaped organizations and leadership, and created the blind spots that now limit organizations. A very perceptive reviewer suggested the article would be all the more impactful if it was written from the voice that naturally emerges from the perspective we descibe. You write in that voice.

You make an excellent point about humanizing systems, and I appreciate your references to Weber and Havel. It raises the question: Are we meant to serve our systems, or are they meant to serve us?  There is so much more to be said here about human and social psychology in a “mechanistic system” or a “theocracy.”  But, for the moment, I, too, am drawn to explore more creative and fulfilling possibilities. ..

Towards that end, I would like to offer an additional perspective. In our essay, Alfonso Montuori observes that we tend to emphasize and value either the individual or the group — one in opposition to the other. For example, capitalism vs. communism; the lone hero fighting the oppressive organization.

However, Montuori also observes that sense of opposition itself reflects a worldview of separation (which I would loosely associate with our ideas of left brain cognition).  Rather, from a systems point of view, he suggests, it’s a matter of “both/and. ” The organization and individual are part of a single continuum. In a sense, each is in and shapes the other.  In a healthy organic system, groups exist to serve their members, and members serve the group so that it continues to sustain them. We could also add that a healthy organic system also recognizes that its own sustainability requires a healthy environment…    

A key distinction between a healthy organic system and bureaucratic systems is that, as rational systems, bureaucratic systems tend to make objects of their members. Using the machine analogy, the “subject” is the operator of the machine, and the experience of organizational members is not considered as important as the economic and other outcomes of the organizational machine. Often it could be said of these organizations that the experience of organizational members only makes a difference in so much as as it affects the bottom line.

This machine also exists inside many of its members — who learn not to value our own subjective experience.  For example, there have been times in my organizational career, where I had so much to do (produce) that I literally felt machine-like and disconnected from my feelings.

My perspective is that in a hierarchal, bureacratic system (which emphasizes external power relations), we are enculturated to feel primarily those emotions associated with our dynamic place in the pecking order: anxiety, anger, depression and for the lack of a better word, “glory.” But, in as much as we are encouraged to subordinate the quality of our experience to economic and other outcomes, there is an inclination to shut down other feelings, including empathy, which is considered to be “soft” and “feminine” and therefore, less appropriate to an organizational environment.

Being a biological organism myself 🙂 I believe that when one of my bodily subsystems is in distress (or very healthy), I feel it — either unconsciously or consciously.  Conversely, when I am happy or in distress, every system in my body is impacted by that.  In other words, I think that the quality of holism arises, at least in part, from mutual feeling (of parts and the whole).  [I’m very influenced in this train of thought by Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy.]

So, I think the restoration of feeling and the revalorization of the quality of our subjective and inter-subjective experience is key to a more cognitively balanced (Partnership) approach to organizations…  To come full circle, this is a quality I hear in your writing.

thank you so much for this inspiring conversation!

Category: All Posts, Communication, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Philosophy, Psychology, Rewards, Teams, Values /
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