Archive for Partnership

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 /

Making objects of people and the ethos of domination

May 30, 2009 / / One comment

Hi Lisa,

Thank you for the opportunity to engage in creative communion–and to make the “unconscious conscious.” I believe it was systems scholar Bela Banathy who said, “the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.”

I have begun to question the traditional labor market [employer-employee] nomenclature as an example of such mislabeling. When we strip away the legal lacquer and peel back the political politeness a master-slave paradigm appears to be the underlying animus.

Freire calls “domination” a “fundamental” phenomenon:

“I consider the fundamental theme of our epoch to be that of domination—which implies its opposite, the theme of liberation, as the objective to be achieved. In order to achieve humanization, which presupposes the elimination of de-humanizing oppression, it is absolutely necessary to surmount the limit-situations in which people are reduced to things.” Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p.84.

I contest the confining of domination to “our epoch.” The myth of Erysichthon and Ceres suggests that slavery is more ubiquitous and persistent than many may want to concede:

Erysichthon [Earth-tearer] was a rich and impious man who cut down a tree from the sacred grove of Ceres [mother earth] for his banqueting hall. By cutting down the tree, he had killed a dryad nymph [oak tree productive force]. The other dryads called upon Ceres [mother earth] to avenge their sister.

Ceres inflicted Erysichthon with insatiable hunger. No matter what Erysichthon ate, he could quell his hunger for more food. Erysichthon sold everything he had, for food, until he had nothing left but his daughter, Mestra [teacher]. He sold her too!

While on the seashore awaiting possession by her owner, Mestra prayed to Poseidon [the sea] to save her from slavery. She was then given the ability to shift-change—first a fisherman, then a mare, an ox, a bird, and so on.

Mestra escaped from her master and returned to her father who saw endless opportunity to make money by her. Driven by hunger, Erysichthon sold his daughter off, like livestock, into slavery, for a great deal of money to buy more food. But all the money she earned was not enough. Finally, driven to despair, he consumed himself.

Some observations and questions:

1. Is “domination” the exception or the rule? I suspect scholars have been tip-toeing around this issue.

2. The Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1996) defines slave thus: 1) captive 2) person owned by and has to serve another, 3) machine or part of one, directly controlled by another—Morgan’s Machine Metaphor immediately comes to mind.

3) Erysichthon sold his daughter off, like livestock. Our word chattel [movable “property”] originally meant livestock.

4) Moderns recoil at the suggestion of slavery as an organizational norm. “You are always free to leave,” they say. But if the assumptions underlying the master-slave, owner-owned, subject-object relationship greet the “runaway,” then how is that liberating?

Your thoughts Lisa?

Reference

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2007.

Category: All Posts, Change, Ethics, Organization, Partnership, Psychology /

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 /

Life World vs. “Systems World” – A Tale of Two Employers

March 28, 2009 / / No comments

Hi Lisa,

My apologies for my slothful response: a cold came upon me like a highwayman, stole my strength, and left me a shivering mass of human impotence. I believe it was the symbiosis of sleep and flowers (Echinacea) that restored my soul.

I love your comment, “it is important to affirm and point out the deep – and, for myself, I would say spiritual – dimensions of the quality of subjective experience.” I think spirituality and self-identity are inextricably interlinked.

How tragic that the market system has achieved a global god-like status, a new theology-economics, and a new way of being in the world-largely defined as “consumerism.” The paradise it promises and the sacrifices it demands are taking their toll-as you and I are witnessing. I believe Dickens speaks to the erosion of the lifeworld in his magnum opus “A Christmas Carol.” It’s interesting to compare and contrast the two employers and to speculate on their success or failure in resisting the systems world. It would be fascinating to consider your comments on how the two ultimately defended the lifeworld Lisa.

Fezziwig and Scrooge-Lifeworld Versus Systems World-A Tale of Two Employers

Lifeworld: The unquestioned world of everyday social activity. The world of shared common understandings.

Lifeworld Characteristics: Spirituality, individuality, creativity, play, fun, morality, talking about differences, coming to a common understanding, who we are and what we value, ethical obligations to family, friends, and society.

Systems World: Money and power. People in command positions in systems use a form of reason that represses human norms or values.

Systems World Characteristics: efficiency, calculability, predictability and control.

Fezziwig’s Lifeworld

*Fezziwig is human: “laughs all over himself, from his shows to his organ of benevolence; and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice”

*addresses employees by their names: “Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!”

*contributes to the happiness of employees by throwing a ball in his warehouse: “the happiness” Mr. Fezziwig gives “is quite as great as if it cost a fortune”.

Scrooge observes: “[Fezziwig] has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

Scrooge’s Systems World

*Working conditions are deplorable. Employees are intensely scrutinized: “The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.”

*Scrooge resents pay for public holidays: “And yet,” said Scrooge, “you don’t think me ill-used, when I pay a day’s wages for no work.”

*Scrooge has uncoupled the Lifeworld from the Systems World: “It matters little,” she said, softly. “To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.” “What Idol has displaced you?” he rejoined. “A golden one.”

*Scrooge addresses his employee as “Cratchit.” He avoids his first name and sees him as a tool, a functionary.

Scrooge Ends The War Between Private and Public Life

*Scrooge received counseling and guidance from the Spirits

*Scrooge developed Personal Mastery by seeing his connectedness to his world, clarifying what was important to him, and learning to see current reality more clearly.

The Spirits, it seems, help Scrooge recover the Lifeworld. The impact on his employee and his family is holistic and impressive: “A merry Christmas, Bob,” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year. I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob. Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!”

Bye for now!

Carman

References

A Christmas Carol http://www.stormfax.com/5dickens.ht m

Peter M. Senge: “The Fifth Discipline”, ISBN 0-385-26095-4, Doubleday

From Motivations for change (on dairy cows, creativity, adaptability & effectiveness), 2009/03/28 at 7:07 AM

Category: All Posts, Ethics, Leadership, Partnership, Psychology, Rewards, Spirituality, Values /

The Lifeworld & Healthy Organizational Systems

February 27, 2009 / / One comment

Carman, As always it is a real pleasure to read and share your posts.  I look forward to having a chance to respond in the near future.  Best wishes to you! Lisa

Habermas and Happy Cows

http://www.takegreatpictures.com/content/images/home_cover_cows.jpg

Hi Lisa,

Thank you for the intellectual oasis you’ve created here! Like a jeweler examining a precious stone, I’ve spent the week reading and re-reading your comments. Every facet enriched my “lifeworld” (the source of human activity, connectedness and meaningfulness according to Habermas). I was especially enamored by your comment, “in a healthy organic system, groups exist to serve their members, and members serve the group so that it continues to sustain them.”

Adult educator Michael Welton agrees with you: “the bedrock of the lifeworld is the provision of safety, security and sustenance for all of us.” Welton also says that harmful, anxiety-producing and unstable conditions distort the socialization process, giving rise to various pathologies…” With your forbearance I would like to apply Habermas’ concepts of Instrumental, Communicative and Emancipatory learning to cows.

Cows

Studies in Britain have shown that an average dairy-sized farm could see production increase by an extra 6,800 gallons a year based on the following:

• Naming and treating cows as individuals cuts stress levels and boosts yields
• Giving cows one-to-one attention so makes cows feel happier and more relaxed
• Naming cows makes them more docile and less likely to kick during milking
• Treating cows like “one of the family” is believed to cut levels of cortisol—a stress hormone known to inhibit milk production
• Placing importance on the individual cow improves their welfare and their “perception of humans and increases milk production

http://www.berwickshire-news.co.uk/news/Happy-cows-produce-higher-milk.

Instrumental learning and action might approach the cow as an object to be controlled or manipulated. Many farmers, on the other hand, enjoy Lifeworld concepts wherein the cow is more than a milking machine—she is “one of the family!” They can now challenge the distorted meaning perspectives of those systems (driven by money and power) which invade their Lifeworld and undermine the dignity of the cow.

I am reminded of Senge’s Systems Law: “Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.” Living ‘systems’ like the cow have integrity. Senge says that violating the boundaries results in a “mess”—we recall the BSE scandal—which evidently started by feeding cows diseased sheep brains.

I love your comment, “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 for an organizational environment.” For me, the cow symbolizes the subjective under siege from the system: the host hostage to the parasite.

To illustrate, workers in one Canadian organization ;) tethered to a telephone all day long are treated to “soft” skills training. Ironic given that most are female and most have exemplified “soft” skills for decades. In this scenario, the workers’ Lifeworld did not legitimate the system; the systems media (which eschews face-to-face interaction) are “colonizing” their Lifeworld—despite respectful protestations from the workers.

Your insightful references to “holism” and “the revalorization of the quality of our subjective and inter-subjective experience” are key to the reclamation of the beleaguered Lifeworld. Lisa, I am wondering how Montuori would achieve the “healthy organic system”? Does he see any antagonism between the Lifeworld and the systems world?

Bye for now!

Carman

p.s. I’ve talked about cows—how about a duck? From Reader’s Digest—the only joke I know. This duck walks into a store, and asks the storekeeper, “Do you have any grapes”?  The storekeeper says, “Sorry, No.” The duck leaves. The next day the duck walks back into the store and asks the storekeeper, “Do you have any grapes”?  The storekeeper says, “No.” So the duck leaves”  The next day the duck walks into the store and asks the storekeeper, “Do you have any grapes”? The storekeeper says, “No, and if you ask me one more time I’m going to staple your feet to the floor!” The duck leaves. The following day, the duck walks back into the store and asks the shopkeeper, “Do you have any staples?” The shopkeeper says, “No.” The duck replies, “Do you have any grapes?”

From More on humanizing systems (and the brain), 2009/02/27 at 6:16 AM

Category: All Posts, Leadership, Partnership, Philosophy, Science /

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 /

Humanizing Systems — from Carman de voer

February 22, 2009 / / No comments

Hi Lisa,  Thank you for enriching and expanding the Organization as Theocracy metaphor. I especially enjoy the way you integrate the concepts into your own educational and industrial experience. I am excited by the potential praxis of reflection and action we’ve ignited which demonstrates the power of thought to “negate accepted limits and open the way to a new future,” to quote Richard Shaull.

Lisa, you may always ask me whatever you like.  Refreshingly, and unlike Theory X organizations, we are not consigned to a ‘culture of silence’. As regards theological studies—No. I have no background in theology or religious studies. I threaded my essay from strands of thought furnished by Max Weber. I inclined to inquire into the origins of psychic prisons. I do, however, read a range of secular and sacred material, which leads me to conclude that the greatest literature is the literature of leadership.

To illustrate: When Vaclav Havel speaks about humanizing systems that ‘serve the individual rather than vice versa.’ I see a parallel in the New Testament (‘dissident intellectual’ Jesus washing the feet of his rabbis in training—apostles—and directing them to do likewise to ‘one another’). It’s curious that such a potentially powerful educative act can transmogrify into the caricature annually enacted by the Vatican.

Thank you for discussing ‘absolute hierarchies’ Lisa. I tend to think of my theocracy metaphor as a continuum of organizations—exhibiting an array of colors from white to grey to black—depending upon the unique profile or idiosyncratic nature of the ‘entity’ (i.e., mission, vision, values). Economic and survival stressors can, I believe, expose the organization’s location on the continuum. The touchstone would be the extent to which the system serves the individual rather than vice versa—to invoke Havel. We might put it this way: ‘If an organization was arrested for consistently treating employees humanely, would there be enough evidence to convict it?’

 Your question, “what does it look like to take a more hemispherically balanced approach to organizations?” transits us from organization as Instrument of Domination to Organization as Brain. I’m excited about that. By the way Lisa, your comment “traditional bureaucratic organizations were substantially shaped by a theory x worldview.  This stymies the highest aspirations of many leaders who are effectively driving with the parking brake on…” is brilliant! Beautiful analogy too.

Bye for now!

Carman

p.s.  I saw a seal swimming close to Lion’s Gate Bridge yesterday. I stopped, looked at it, and said, “I see you!…” Indifferent to my presence, it gracefully disappeared into the water.

Category: All Posts, Culture, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Values /

Reply to Organization as Theocracy

February 21, 2009 / / One comment

Carman, What a creative essay! It sounds like you have a background in religious studies or theology. May I ask if that is true? 

The organization as theocracy metaphor is a potentially useful one in that it’s been multiply observed ( I hope my readers will forgive me for not looking up the references) that our understanding of the Divine (or Sacred) order shapes our understanding of the ideal social order.  As you mention, although Western culture has its deep roots in a more organic worldview, it has been strongly shaped by Protestant ideas and ethics. 

For example, conservative theologians interpret the maleness of Jesus to affirm God as male, and therefore, as an endorsement of male dominance (patriarchy) in the human social sphere.  Alice Miller, author of For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of Violence, observed that in pre-World War II Germany, children were raised to be reflexively obedient to the father. This was understood to socialize them to be obedient members of the larger societal hierarchy, and therefore, in correct relationship to God. 

Throughout history, political leaders have often claimed divine endorsement.  In secular culture, God may not be imagined to be at the top of the social pyramid, but those at the top may still be seen as God-like.  I have heard the religious metaphor used within organizations. For example, in one institution, it was said that the president and founder reported to the board, and the president’s spouse, who was also involved in the business, directly reported to God. In another, a colleague would remark dryly, “I’m on a mission from Ray…” (the CEO). 

There’s a sense in which our understanding of power per se is derived from our understanding of divine power. (It follows that a shift in worldview can also shift our understanding of the nature of power…).

What I’m hearing you say in your essay, is that, in a sense, that absolute social hierarchies, create or reinforce the objectification of others.  An absolute social hierarchy would be one in which one person is understood to be superior (rather than differently gifted, knowledgeable or skilled) than another. A theocracy is an absolute social hierarchy, with some members considered closer to God (or an absolute standard of Godliness as interpreted/embodied by the human at the head of the divine hiearchy).  We also know that  absolute hierarchies have historically led to the exploitation and abuse of those considered “less than fully human.” I would include lots of examples here, but they are all grim, and I am aiming for a lighter tone! 

In my experience — at least in the high technology industry –knowledge-based organizations often can’t be described as theory x organizations. At the same time, I don’t see many knowledge-based organizations as fully expressing a theory y orientation. I think this is because traditional bureaucratic organizatons were substantially shaped by a theory x worldview.  This stymies the highest aspirations of many leaders who are effectively driving with the parking brake on…

Your post also ties in the strategies of rational control. The left brain gives rise to and is analogous to the structures of the control in the bureaucratic organization. It is also that part of us which seems to make objects of “things” so as to manipulate them. The right brain takes the world in as a gestalt, without sealing the self off from it.  It is holistic and inclusive.  http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2008/03/22/experience-of-right-and-left-hemispheres-of-the-brain/

As humans, we have both capacities for experiencing our selves as separate and as continous with the world. However, Western culture emphasizes the former and subordinates the latter. If we were to use our brains in a more balanced way, we might expect to be more creative and innovative, individually and collectively.  I’m wondering, what does it look like to take a more hemispherically balanced approach to organizations?

http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2009/02/21/organization-as-theocracy-metaphor-from-carman-de-voer/

Category: All Posts, Culture, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Philosophy /
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