I have often had calls from clients in the past that begin “we are having a lot of communication problems in our organization. We think it is a good time to do some strategic planning.”. My common response to that is to point out that those two statements do not go together.
If you engage in strategic planning, especially if that planning is looking at working with organizational structures, and you haven’t dealt with communication, interpersonal and power issues then there is a strong likelihood of those unspoken dynamics being built into your organizational structure. Silos get created for many reasons, among them the fact that people sometimes don’t want to work with each other.
I had a meeting with a client yesterday, with whom I am working on Friday. His organization is in great shape. They have a rolling five year plan which has no targets in it, but only a series of strategic objectives. He creates targets on a yearly basis or as funding comes in. The board is in good shape and the organization is providing good service to its members. In our meeting yesterday we were able to think about setting aside a third of our planning time to have a blue sky conversation about the future of the organization, the changing environment and some new philosophical frontiers for the group. It feels easy, even though this is an organization that works in financial administration. We don’t have to consume energy fighting political battles and power dynamics, and we can instead look outwards.
People often deride the relational aspects of organization life as “soft”. They aren’t. They are the underlying architecture that makes core business lines possible and that ensures quality in every offering.
Action comes from a accepting offers. When an offer comes to you you can accept it or block it. Blocking it kills the action. Accepting it moves it forward. When we are working in complexity, waiting for the failsafe plan leads to inaction because there are more blocks than acceptances. In contast diving into a safe fail mindset means committing to action and refining it as you go.
This is the essence of improvisation: accept, commit, develop, offer. A simple four stage cycle for action planning
We have just been through a challenging municipal election here on Bowen Island. At issue was a referendum on whether we wanted to see a National Park established on the Crown Lands on our island. Also in the air was a level of distrust and animosity between some citizens and some of the candidates and the incumbent council.
In the midst of things I made it a practice to see what it would be like to actively facilitate quality of conversation. This meant a number of things for me. It meant finding kindness for those who not only thought differently than me, but who actively took aim at me with ad hominem arguments. It meant finding factual bases for assertions about the past, while paying attention to how speculation about the future could be held in respectful and non-fearful ways. It meant challenging the idea that there was a massive rift in the community (natural considering the use of a yes/no question on a complex topic).
Subsequently, it has meant holding space for grief and outrage from those of my friends who felt hard done by (our Island rejected the Park and elected Councillors that many of us didn’t vote for). It has also meant inviting people to check their gloating, that somehow this was a victory that actually privileged one world view over another. It didn’t. It was really about small differences in the larger scheme of things, which were inflated because the choice we made was one of those that, had we voted yes, would have radically changed the view of our future.
The thing about living on an island is that you know where your boundaries are. Holding space within those boundaries, where differences are exacerbated by our closeness to each other is the most challenging work of hosting. Being an active member of the community, with opinions and thoughts but also equally interested in the meta-level of conversational quality and resourcefulness is challenging, but that was the learning journey I was on for the past few months, and one I continue on. Being active and hosting within the field is fraught with difficulties. What gets me through is a practice and focus on that sweet spot.
For me it comes back to the balance for ensuring that the community is working, learning and tending to relationships in equal measure.
Unlocking_Leadership Art of Hosting, The Burren Ireland _Jan2012
Start the new year with a deep dive learning journey in moving from Silos to Systems. I’ll be joining Lorraine O’Rahilly and Chris Chapman at The Burren College of Art in Ballyvaugh, Co. Clare, Ireland from January 5-8 2012 for an Art of Hosting gathering. Download to incredible invitation here and join us!
Matt Taibbi gets it:
There was a lot of snickering in media circles, even by me, when I heard the protesters talking about how Liberty Square was offering a model for a new society, with free food and health care and so on. Obviously, a bunch of kids taking donations and giving away free food is not a long-term model for a new economic system.
But now, I get it. People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something. It may not be a real model for anything, but it’s at least a place where people are free to dream of some other way for human beings to get along, beyond auctioned “democracy,” tyrannical commerce and the bottom line.
via How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests | Politics News | Rolling Stone.