As the summer doldrums set in amidst the disharmony and dysfunction here in the USA, I’ve begun looking for inspiration on how to effect constructive change. While achieving change – especially social change- has always been very difficult, it currently seems to me next to impossible in my country.  Here, amidst the everyday claims and counter claims of “fake news”, everything and everyone is so polarized we all feel stuck in our separateness.

In her May blog, Katrin addressed how this schism strikes her and what she thinks we can do as we live through these discouraging times. She concluded that when mass protests don’t work and institutions are too easily by-passed, each of us must step up.  She said that we must “do what is right every single moment every single day” even when we don’t see immediate results. And how do we know what is right?  Katrin suggested that we use our values and our commitment to a common well-being to guide us.

Katrin’s words reminded me of the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.  I immediately thought of the following quote which has been attributed to him:

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

Many question whether Gandhi spoke these exact words.  Nevertheless, he said many things that implore us to first look inward before we attempt to change the world.  For example, he said the following:

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.”

Gandhi’s teachings include some specific advice about how we might change ourselves.  While his words of advice are simple, the actions he recommends are not. For example, he directed us to seek harmony in thoughts, words and deeds. And he advocated for individuals to pursue truth selflessly and with enormous humility. The pursuit of truth is hard work and takes time.

We should form our convictions with care. Gandhi said that we must defend our beliefs and not ever compromise on fundamentals such as showing others respect and honoring the dignity of every human being.

Even so Gandhi warned us to avoid arrogance concerning our own wisdom. He said, “It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”

Gandhi acknowledged that people may diverge in what they see as truth. However, he suggested that when we pursue truth humbly, with selflessness and tolerance, we may find that our varying perceptions are all part of a larger truth:

“…where there is honest effort, it will be realized that what appear to be different truths are like the countless and apparently different leaves of the same tree.”

Of course individual change without action is not enough. Gandhi claimed that we should act fearlessly, selflessly, with dignity and without violence.  He, like Katrin in her May blog, reminded us that we must take action even if we don’t see immediate results.  He believed that it is the action itself rather than the fruit of the action that is most important.  And he wisely observed that even if we may not see the results of our actions, if we do nothing, there will be no results.

Clearly Gandhi’s words and teachings have had a powerful impact on the world. Not only did he achieve enormous changes in India and in the world in his lifetime, other great change leaders such as Martin Luther King claimed to have been guided by his teachings. And Martin Luther King is arguably the greatest leader of social change in my lifetime.

Gandhi’s teachings are universally profound. His words transcend the boundaries of country and culture.  His wisdom is equally relevant to individuals, organizations and entire societies.  And for me, one of the most significant results of my readings of Gandhi is that I found the inspiration that I was looking for:

“You must not lose faith in humanity.  Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

I plan to repeat this quote to myself every time I am exposed to the relentless onslaught of disquieting news across the globe.

Author: Dr. Kathy Miller Perkins 

Dr. Kathy Miller Perkins is a social psychologist and is the CEO and owner of Miller Consultants , a firm specializing in organizational development, executive coaching and change management. Her work involves helping companies create and sustain organizational cultures that are conducive to executing sustainable strategies. She has worked with companies such as Toyota, IBM, Kindred Health, Brown-Forman, Lexmark, Anthem, Ashland Chemical, the U.S. Military and BC Hydro.

References

Rosenburg, Shaun.  Mohandas Gandhi Quotes and Their Meaning.  http://www.shaunrosenberg.com/mohandas-gandhi-quotes-and-meaning

Allen, Douglas. The Phlosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-first Century. Lexington Books, 2008.

Nirupama, Rao. Gandhi’s Light Guided MLK.  Politico. 3/07/2013. http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/mahatma-gandhis-lightguided-martin-luther-king-jr-088581

There is no such thing as organizational culture there is only people culture

I am curious to explore the difference between a role and a person, an organization and its people. This difference can be illustrated by considering a familiar scenario: What is the culture of the White House? I am suggesting here that it is not the White House that has a culture – the White House is an institution that has a purpose. Those who live and work at the White House represent the people of the White House and these people, how they work together and how they are together define the culture of the White House as an institution. A different set of people will result in a different culture, even if the institution remains the same in its purpose. Individuals may have an influence on the appearance of an institution or organization and depending on the governance structure, also have an influence on the purpose. And yet, the culture is an attribute defined by a group of people, not an institution or an organization. This insight may influence our understanding of how a culture may be changed. Could it be that cultural change is much more about changes that take place at the individual level, rather than those that can be master-minded at the organizational level? Let me attempt to reflect this by considering our lessons learned through the cultural change at Business School Lausanne.

There is a seemingly small but possibly substantial difference between what Organizational Development experts call an “Organizational Culture” and what is really going on. I have become aware of this difference in a reflective talk with BSL’s Holacracy implementation coach Christiane Seuhs-Schoeller of evolutionatwork. We reflected on Business School Lausanne’s (BSL) biggest difficulty and darkest hour in the transformation from a hierarchical to a self-organizing organization that somehow relates to the people space.

As you may recall, Holacracy is a highly sophisticated operating system for self-organization that explicitly takes care of organizing decisions around the “work” that relates to the purpose of the organization and how it very clearly does not organize how people work with each other. Despite hearing and reading everything we could about this, we entered into this transformation and felt entirely unprepared for what was waiting for us.

As we focused on organizing work-related decisions in a power-distributed, non-hierarchical way, learning the complex and sophisticated Holacracy rules that provoked and forced a behavioral change in every single person taking part, we did not pay attention to something crucial: what do we do with our personal relationships above and beyond strictly work-related discussions. In our darkest months, busy negotiating the shadows cast by difficult change, we entirely neglected these personal relationships, trusting that all we needed was work-talk.

With hindsight, we now know that there is a huge need to deal with and find solutions for personal relationships. This is not something a “tribe meeting” can fix as Holacracy may suggest. It is one-to-one work, not something that can be masterminded and implemented across the board. Personal relationships are apparent in every single moment that people work together – in the same space or around a common purpose; rather than being an occasional moment around the coffee machine, they dominate all interactions. Purely work-related decisions form the exception in such exchanges, something we have become able to distinguish thanks to Holacracy, which forces a particular and awkward talk-protocol when work is concerned. As such we would start work-talk with a sentence that sounds like, “In my role of ….., I would like to talk to you in your role of … about …”. And this is where the conversation shifts from a personal talk to a work-talk where the two people share specific accountabilities they can expect within their cooperation.

Such a situation is in stark contrast with the more typical situation where a person with a superior position casually strolls into an office of one of her or his subordinates, leans against the doorpost and in a collegial tone starts a friendly conversation that, depending on personal affinity, is either relaxed, hearty or a bit tense. Typically, somewhere towards the end of that nice chat, the boss comes up with some new expectation, deadline reminder, urgent action to be embraced or a long-term project to ponder. Depending on the managerial style of the supervisor, she or he either checks back about the feasibility of this requests or just strolls out of the office, fully expecting the subordinate to take her/his request as an order. This is a normal mix of personal and work relationship that all of us who work in a normal hierarchy are used to and know by experience in all of its wonderful – and less wonderful – shades of conscious or unconscious manipulation.

Self-organization crushes such situations by rendering them inacceptable in one way or another. It is impossible for any individual to walk into the office of anybody else and expect them to do something just because his/her seniority dictates that their “great idea” becomes an action on someone else’s to-do list. Anybody who has not lived self-organization has no means of truly understanding the implication of this. It makes no sense and any straight-thinking person wonders how anything that needs to get done, does get done. This is where Holacracy and other self-organizing operating systems tend to fail. A leader cannot fathom giving up her or his power and truly trusting that other individuals will not only step up into the space created by defining clear accountabilities in roles, but will have so many more ideas in these roles than could ever have been imagined by one supervisor alone. This trust is a leap of faith that seems to be a big ask for leaders.

At BSL, we were lucky that this was not a problem. As a leader, I was very keen to let go of the implicit power my position held and to focus on activities I could not spend enough time on but where I felt I could add true value for the organization. Given that letting-go was not our main issue (although, despite my wish to let go, I had to check my instincts for a good year!), a deeper issue emerged as a potential deal-breaker in transforming organizations. This is what I am fascinated by: the distinction between what an organization is and what a group of people is.

An organization is indeed NOT a group of people that works together. An organization, and this distinction is crucial, is a “thing”, a legal entity with a very specific purpose that subsequently serves as a vehicle to employ people and resources to realize that purpose. A group of people consists of individuals who, together, form the group. An organization possesses a “culture”, no more than my teacup can possess a culture. My teacup may look a certain way by having a certain shape and color and material, but it has no culture. In the same way, an organization may house its employees in a certain type of building, paint its walls a certain color or serve food of a given quality in its canteen; however, these attributes do not constitute culture. The only aspect of an organization that can have a culture is the people. There is people culture, not organizational culture. If you want to look at what it takes to change culture, you need to look at what it takes to change the individuals who, together, are the people. This is an insight that is not fully embraced in organizational change theory or organizational development. Organizational change in this sense would imply a change of the organization’s purpose or structure, activities or locations, but not of its people. Organizational development cannot mean that its people develop but that the organization grows through new products and services, locations, contracts, partnerships etc.

The reason I feel this distinction is important is that I have a hunch that, by peeling back this layer called “organization” when we talk about changing the culture, we may discover true levers of change to enable cultural shifts in organizations. I am fascinated by this as I still don’t know how our own cultural change came about at BSL. And I was there closely observing it! What happened in these dark months and what came out and into the light after it? When trying to answer this question, examples of individual human actions come to mind. Acts of courage, love and care. All of which are entirely unrelated to any role or accountability. These acts of humanity are what have touched me and possibly others – as individuals, not in a role or a responsibility. Alex sharing his new Chinese tea leaves and showing me how to pour a cup of tea as I walk in tired from a long outside meeting. Denitsa standing up and giving me a big hug as I walk in to say hi. Yasmina cracking a joke as I walk by that makes me stop and see how she is doing, as a person not as a colleague delivering her to-do list. It is Aurea that closes her work notebook and shares how her friend is doing.

These moments which are entirely and totally disconnected from any follow-on comment that says, “and hey, would you mind printing me x and quickly running me this or that report?” or, “hey, since we are chatting, have you heard back from x on y?”. We don’t do that anymore. We were forced to separate these kinds of conversations by learning how to have power-free conversations among roles in a journey to replace our hierarchy. Awkward, coded language that has nothing human or fun in it. But it does its job, it provides a safe space for anybody with a certain responsibility to do the very best she can to embrace this responsibility with all the passion and knowledge and freedom to innovate that she can put into it, given other priorities of other responsibilities she may also have. What happened in these dark hours is that we reduced all of our conversations to such coded, awkward language, and next to that each of us dealt with the pain and the frustration that such cold exchanges created in our own ways. To all the varying degrees of incapacity that humans possess. Some started gossiping, others started to moan and complain, some formed small groups that tried to super-analyze it all and solve it for the team, some retreated in their caves, feeling alone and rejected by a system that was inhuman. All of us, in one way or another, felt alone, helpless and overwhelmed, and all of us reacted to it through the large variety of dark shadows that are a part of our human characters.

Until the human light started to shine through and some started to reach out in caring conversations, daring to question endless complaints by asking, “do you want help or do you just want to complain?”; some started to share their pains and how they went about dealing with them with their coach or in therapy. Somebody organized tea for everybody. Somebody else brought in a homemade cake. Some people started to have really honest and painful conversations with each other. In these early days, everything felt raw and we were all exhausted. Emotionally affected. Small groups of individuals formed who felt more affinity for each other and much energy was spent discussing a problem nobody that nobody could name. Pockets of resistance against the transformation became loud and forceful and the pain was in front of all of us, all the time. The atmosphere was dim, and some people fell ill. They could not understand the coldness of Holacracy and the inhumanity it seemed to require. People who didn’t perform were suddenly very exposed and position power didn’t protect anymore. Difficult talks requiring courage were needed to end long working relationships that probably could have been addressed long before but were hidden due to an overlap with personal relationships. More and more we learned to separate these relationships and slowly, very slowly, too slowly, the benefits started to emerge.

We had focused on identifying work benefits – and we reported many of these, experiencing them with increasing rapidity. The degree and extent of self-initiative is simply mind-blowing. We have moved from a group of people who each felt overwhelmed with the amount of work we needed to do to a group of people open to listen to new ideas, suggestions and opportunities, and ourselves coming up with innovative new, additional things we can do. Where did this space suddenly come from? Our plates were full before – I had long stopped daring to bring in new projects as I feared the reaction of a team that was clearly already overstretched. How come these same people now had ideas far beyond what I had ever dreamt of bringing in? How come, solutions for problems nobody even acknowledged before suddenly were implemented without anybody even knowing? How come costs were reduced where before there was no alternative? How come a suggestion for improvement was suddenly met with “tell me more” rather than “I have no time”? These are all “just” work-related benefits that brought tremendous benefit to the organization and these deserve being studied to be better understood.

What we didn’t focus on was what would happen to our relationships. And this is where more miracles happened. Our human relations have deepened; we know today more about each other than we ever did before and we are forming more of a family in a true sense than ever before. It is wrong to use “we” and “us” as a term. This phenomenon is an individual one and builds on the individual care for somebody else. Massimo and I are sharing the difficult moments we both experience right now seeing our parents with health issues. Carlo and Branko share their worries about their kids during our upcoming company ski-weekend. Denitsa inspired us with daily emails in the holiday months sharing insights about positive psychology from her current Master’s studies. As I present a key note at a big business event, I see the faces of my colleagues in the audience whose smiles encourage me to say what I want to say in clear language. We are all signed up for a course in non-violent communication. Our stakeholders (students and faculty) tell us that it is easier to engage with us, that we listen better and have more time and space for them as human beings, not just as transactional problems. I notice myself that I am careful in responding with a personal comment to emails that I receive. I am friendlier, warmer and more open, and I like that very much.

In our team, a feeling has spread that says “we are cool” and we are proud to belong together. Strength-spotting has become a past-time. Laughter is easier, humor more present and even after a long, tough day at work, I walk out feeling much better in my body and certainly in my heart and soul. Denitsa had asked me midday, “how is your day going” and I was profoundly touched. What a nice question and rather than complaining about all the things that I had going on, I took a quiet breath and I realized, I was having a really good day!

There is a miracle that has happened in front of my eyes and I don’t understand it quite yet. I remain curious and do want to understand it better. For if I can describe it better, others can benefit from such “organizational change” that really is “people change”, and that would be just great! My hunch is that the differentiation between the organization and the group of individuals that make up the people is key. When I worked for Alcoa, it was not the organization I admired and adored as much as its people. It was not “being the best aluminum company in the world” that made my soul sing, it was the positive opportunities I was given, and the leader’s interest in hearing a twenty-four-year old’s opinion on strategy.

How do companies grow into new cultures? Can a given culture be changed? How palpable is a culture anyway? And if you wanted to change it, how would you go about it? These are questions that occupy Organizational Development consultants and researchers alike. At Business School Lausanne (BSL) we have decided to prototype new forms of organizations as a way to offer a living case study to our students. For the end of the year, I would like to offer a self-reflective piece about our organizational journey, from my own personal (and obviously, limited) perspective.  

On 30 September 2015, BSL had formally implemented self-organization (Holocracy) as its new way to organize itself. Now, one year and three months later, we are looking at ourselves in disbelief. We have become a living and breathing organism with its own distinct culture and sense of purpose. And we wonder: how did this happen?! This blog attempts an analysis by looking at six distinct time periods in the course of the last 15 months.

Step 1: October to December 2015 – We can learn this. The initial three months of implementing Holacracy were colored with a tremendous (good) will to learn this new system. I think every single one of us put in discipline, time, energy, and an open trust. We learned the technique of Holacracy, got burned by what it unveiled in us regarding how judgmental and close-minded one is, and we stopped and wondered, does this work? Some of us masterminded a massive systems-change that we proudly introduced in December 2015: from two circles, we shifted to five circles – in one go (a “circle” is something like a “department” or “business unit” – those roles that work together organize in a circle). Only later would we learn that this is absolutely not the way to go about solving “tension by tension”. We were still operating from a paradigm of hierarchy, quite unaware and unconscious, but willing to try. We attempted to separate “role” from “soul” and forgot about the “soul” in the process, without knowing what to do about it. Holacracy told us – “just trust the system”.

Step 2: January to March 2016 – In the deepest of darkness. After these initial three months of openly learning the mechanics of Holacracy, our team dove into a dark place where we lost our previous natural sense of how to maintain personal relationships as a part of our professional collaboration. Suddenly, everything felt mechanic, cold, and distant and there seemed to be no place to connect from person to person. Our Holacracy coach kept on telling us: “Holacracy structures how you work together; how you want to relate to another, what we call ‘tribe space’, that is up to you to define.” We didn’t know what to do with this advice – “tribe space” was a term that didn’t resonate and sporadic attempts to create a “tribe space” were mostly left unattended. Critical colleagues raised concerns about a serious loss of trust in the team saying we have a big problem.

Step 3: April to May 2016 – Addressing dormant people issues. These dark three months forced some previously unaddressed and uncomfortable people issues into bright daylight. We had learned to talk straight and to listen to one another – one of the great benefits of Holacracy’s very mechanic technics. This dialogue culture enabled us to openly address pain points that we didn’t have the courage to address before. We realized that not everybody would make it and we made generous offers to those that would not be able to dance this new journey of self-responsibility and co-creation with us at a much heightened innovation speed. These talks didn’t help the sense of darkness in the team, to the contrary, now the problems were in the open and things looked and felt bleak.

Step 4: June to August 2016 – Inventing a new recruitment process. Connected to step 2, we were facing some serious recruitment challenges that resulted from having addressed the people pain points. Quite unknowingly, we stumbled into a number of new practices that entirely overhauled our recruitment process. We started to ask very different questions to candidates, asked them to write an essay about how they might do in a self-organizing structure, and we used new strength-based assessment tools. We formalized a policy that the committee should consist of concerned colleagues that were intimately knowledgeable and concerned with the roles a new-hire would take. The blog “we are hiring for DNA” explains this well.

Step 5: September to October 2016 – Questioning the performance evaluation and bonus system. During the busiest time of our year, we also had to do our performance reviews. Given that we were new at self-organization, we didn’t quite know how to do this in our new setting. Those partners who cared formed a committee that defined in a few pragmatic sessions a process that seemed reasonable and time efficient. The result: a small disaster! By now, our team was entirely comfortable to discuss uncomfortable issues collectively and we quickly assembled a list of things that didn’t work. We agreed that we no longer wanted to tie our financial bonus to our peer-based performance review. So how to advance? Simply, a call to those among us to self-organize and propose a better system for the coming year. This is an excellent example of what is called “safe enough to try”. We tried, it didn’t work so well, we still all accepted and embraced the consequences and vouched to do better next year. No hard feelings! As you can see, the goodwill and the trust were back – in a very new and different way. Not a trust in a boss or a hierarchy, nor a need to plead for personal favors, a trust in our way of making decisions, a trust in the ability for everybody to speak up and be respected, a trust that the others cared.

Step 6: November to December 2016 – The real test with titles and new-born authority.With our new-hires in place and with priorities cleared for the coming months, the question arose as to what to do with our old titles, in particular, “the Dean”. We recognized that our outside world demanded such a title and position, even if, internally, we had delegated its accountabilities into a variety of roles and circles and the Dean was no longer a reality for us. There were four of us with external roles that at times resembled what is traditionally called a “Dean” role. In a governance meeting we discussed, argued, considered, reflected, rejected, improvised and eventually agreed that we shall be having the “Dean” title available to those who have an external representation need, clarifying that four people can use the title in four different special areas, such as academic programs, executive education, thought leadership, applied research. The website adjustment is still underway and shows how hot a potato titles are. Meanwhile, new authority arose elsewhere: we will be making three significant leadership changes on 1 January 2017 in three key circles. Leadership in the sense of ensuring that resources and competencies are directed at realizing the identified mission. As my last act of “letting go”, the BSL Company Lead Link (a position even the Holacracy inventor Brian Robertson still holds at his company) will be energized by Carlo Giardinetti, while Branko Saintakes over the School Lead Link and Massimo Baroni takes over the Support Service Lead Link. All of these appointments are announced as being intended for the year 2017, and we shall be seeing who has appetite and talent to embrace such roles thereafter.  Denitsa Marinova has risen to be our inspiration in her new people role, offering daily positivity challenges during the Advent months. David Kibbe says that he feels that partners take more time to connect personally, creating a foundation for getting things done so much more easily. And last but not least, our newly invented Gap Frame Weeks have transformed the way the administration and the faculty interact with the student body, something that was palpable at our Holiday Season Party, which was a huge success. We are closing the year on an unprecedented high, “looking back at the pain with appreciation and understanding” (Aurea Almanso) and “feeling new wind beneath our wings” (David Kibbe). Welcome 2017 – we are ready to embrace whatever is thrown our way!

Are these six steps necessary? Could we have anticipated or planned for them? Can you learn something from these? Do these steps provide insight into cultural transformation? I am not sure. Yet I am curious to continue with our “action research” to see if there is anything we and others can indeed learn, if only in hindsight. And that is one of the purposes of a year-end reflection, too!

To my blog correspondent, Kathy, I wish you strength to continue with your own personal journey of sense-making, most particularly in the coming year. It is a privilege to co-write this blog with you as it brings my own reflection about how to enable organizations to become sustainable and to contribute to taking the common good to new heights. Thank you for that and thank you for sharing so authentically your own journey in your last blog.

If we want companies to engage in courageous collaboration beyond their traditional organizational boundaries and engage in new ways with other players and stakeholders, we need people capable of engaging themselves personally in new ways, and also engaging with others. This article looks at what it takes to achieve just that. 

Following Kathy Miller’s April blog on Courageous Collaboration which focused primarily on collaboration among and beyond organizations, I would like to complement her perspective with a reflection on courageous collaboration within organizations. Both – I believe – are essential in a journey where organizations and their people can contribute to a better world.

Reviewing the action research blogs about the organizational and personal journey we have all undergone at Business School Lausanne, I have discovered a number of insights that are worth sharing:

Enabling an equal footing among all people

Ensuring the same rights and conditions among all employees, irrespective of their work-related hierarchy, is easier said than done. Even nine months after having transferred our formal power into a constitution that clearly empowers all employees to express their concerns in a safe way, we are still not entirely there. We are still fighting a shadow hierarchy, even if these are mostly in the heads and are projections of the “old system”. What we have accomplished is that such concerns are now expressed openly and with ease. A good indication that we may be at the beginning of an equal footing, that is of essence for true collaboration. Once ensured, an equal footing allows that ideas, concerns and insights of all kinds can be shared with equal priority, a basis for an innovative environment. Even though we might just be at the very beginning, we are already experiencing a significant increase in innovation.

Establishing deep listening

A clear procedure enforced through a clear process has proven incredibly powerful to help us become aware of our deeply engrained thought patterns when listening to each other. Holacracy has procedures that prevent an automatic pattern of interrupting others (and thus preventing real listening). After nine months of living by these rules, I have noticed a change in my listening patterns. Rather than observing instant thoughts popping up whenever somebody suggests something, I notice now a free space in my head that allows a much deeper and open listening, focused on understanding rather than immediately judging, evaluating, deconstructing, denying or approving. We all had our challenges with the strict Holacracy structure and how this brought up patterns in us. At BSL, we offered every employee a CHF 1000 grant for their individually defined personal development programme, recognizing that transforming an organization does impact everybody and that we wanted to not only own our organizational responsibility for this but enable each individual to deal with what comes up and to look at flaws, for those with an appetite for it. Many have jumped at the opportunity and we look forward to seeing what happens if a large majority of the team engages with personal development alongside the organization. The point here is: resources, including financial, must be made available to enable such a profound transformation! We are now able to talk very differently and this space has resulted in more opinions being shared and considered by a broader team that feels more engaged. This is a basic condition for collaboration.

A transparent process for problems

Any organization depends on real processes that ensure that anybody can safely bring up problems and issues without suffering any consequences. Holacracy provided us with such a safe space. It took the various members of our organization about six months until everybody started to be at ease in bringing up controversial and possibly disruptive or questionable ideas that will challenge conventions and ways things have worked. Now that we have this space, which is guaranteed through a bullet-proof process, innovation is emerging in new, unconventional, honest and not always very convenient ways. We have developed our culture from a more homogeneous, stable place to a place where change is a part of the everyday, and transformation happens continuously in small doses. From a developmental perspective, this is very interesting; the only alternative might be to hire the right people from the start, so
mething that is not feasible with a going concern and ignores the possibility of developing those with an appetite to discover and embrace more of their potential along with the organization. Continuous change is not everybody’s business, we have discovered this too and creating a space where this can be expressed and dealt with that is the kind of culture that truly does enable the more underlying transformation of deep change, so very different from a top-down change process. We have never experienced such a degree of honest and authenticity in working with and among ourselves and while some things have been difficult to listen to, we now work on a new basis of trust that is built on a common understanding of reality and where we stand as compared to where we might like to be. Such a basis of understanding removes all artificiality and falseness and enables true collaboration.

Slowing down to speed up

We used to mastermind change by considering all intended and unintended consequences of a decision, then orchestrating change top down. This was one of my specialties and I am still learning to resist my temptation to mastermind change. We are starting to see the benefits of simply processing one “tension” (problem, idea, issue, etc.) at a time and implementing related changes in the spirit of “if safe enough to try, let’s go ahead”. And then letting the next tension, which might be unrelated and occurring elsewhere in the organization be processed. The emergent ongoing process of adaptation and change, one step at a time, slightly resembles a dancing spider. While it sometimes still feels like we could move faster when masterminding, we are just starting to experience the benefits of advancing at a speed that is felt by those who are actually affected. It not only results in the most appropriate solution but is also much more relaxed from a managerial perspective. For the first time, working at BSL feels like working in a team of peers with everybody engaged in advancing the organization towards its mission.

Separating the role from the soul

We always say that it is important to separate work from personal relationships, yet we have learned at BSL that most people have no idea what this actually means. Since last September, we have first focused on optimizing our work relationships, entirely neglecting our personal relationships and missing them at the same time. After a dip in team spirit and after a long dark period, the benefits started to emerge. Learning how openly and directly we can deal with work issues, without taking offence, opened up a new type of personal space in which we are now able to be with each other just as human beings. This transformation is entirely surprising and unexpected. It was the most difficult thing in our Holacracy implementation, and we had no idea what expected us at the end of the tunnel. The ability to separate work roles from our individual souls, has professionalized our work and increased our productivity and efficiency while at the same time, we are able to have very difficult conversations without taking them personal. At the same time, we have deepened our individual relationships in entirely new ways. This separation allows an entirely new flexibility and honesty in matching individual strengths with accountabilities and roles. Giving up the idea of jobs and identifying roles and accountabilities has provided the basis for this flexibility.

Seeing the hero in others

The strength-based approach that now defines the way we look at each other, has brought out a special talent in one of our team members, Carlo. He dreams of a team of heroes that work together to advance the mission of our organization and with this view, he has developed a habit of addressing particular skills or competencies in hero terms. He says, “Hey, that is amazing what you did here, which hero suit do you want? How about Spiderman? Or Superman?” By now, his view has become contagious and we are paying a lot more compliments to each other when one does something that is worth appreciating. This has generated a lightness and a humor that has transformed our hard work into more of a dance than a race it used to be. This new sense of appreciation may well be a result of having so rigorously separated role from soul. It has for sure augmented our spirit of collaboration.

Sharing the journey of learning

An important impulse for our newly found basis of collaboration lies in the simple fact that our entire team started a process of learning a system that none of us knew: Holacracy. This put all of us at an entirely equal level and it ensured that nobody knew better, with everybody having a chance to shine, to help others, to ask for help, to praise and be praised, to role model in the many possible ways that make a difference in a team that consists of true collaborators that know both the strengths and weaknesses of each other and know how to ensure progress by focusing on strengths and celebrating big and small successes that were jointly achieved

These seven insights are a result of our organizational transformation that has provoked such fundamental and deep changes in the way we look at ourselves and at each other, how we work together and how we are able to truly collaborate. This transformation was by no means without pain, but the magic that is emerging now is far beyond the wildest dreams I had when we started this process. Introducing Holacracy, an organizational operating system that enables a power distribution and self-organization, has brought about a chance that has fundamentally transformed our ability to collaborate internally. An important element for an organization to also effectively cooperate beyond its boundaries with other organizations. As we have learned, reviewing internal boundaries that reconsider our individual, personal space in an entirely new way – separating soul from role – has become the source of innovation to create an inspiring basis of true collaboration.

Organizations of the future can be recognized by a number of unique elements:

They attract and retain talent with future-relevant competencies

They are able to innovate as quickly as the outside world changes

They have distributed power structures based on smart self-organizing units

They build their purpose on solving burning societal needs and thus ensuring long-term economic viability

They embrace stakeholders into their decision-making

They have flexible and adaptive structures and processes

In short: they look very different from the typical large-sized organization of today.

As Kathy Miller pointed out in her February blog, organizations need to “adapt or die” and understanding stakeholder pressure as an opportunity for purposeful growth is an important pathway towards adapting and long-term success. As Kathy has suggested, the average lifespan of corporations has decreased from 60+ years to less than 15 years in the past 100 years (source: Richard Foster, Creative Destruction, 2001). This compares to a human lifespan that has increased by 30 years in the past 100 years. What I am proposing here is a short discussion about how organizational structures need to adjust – a painful, difficult and necessary topic.

Innovation is a big word and many believe that we can innovate around just about anything, including new organizational forms. Gary Hamel has made this claim in his latest Harvard Business Review Article (March 22^nd, 2016), suggesting that organizations should prototype new organizational structures into various sub-units rather than adopt carefully designed and complex organizational structures that exist “ready-made”, such as Holacracy. I find this a dangerous invitation for a number of reasons.

First of all, I would say that companies should only innovate in the areas of their specific expertise, which typically do not involve organizational design but rather some specific product or service.

Second, changing an organizational structure can result in significant inefficiencies, fear, resistance and unintended consequences. It makes sense to propose as few such deep changes as possible to avoid paralysis.

Third, organizational structures deal with deeply embedded power structures that trigger all kinds of conscious and unconscious reactions when disrupted – a delicate thing as we know from personal development. It is amplified when applied to an organizational setting. Therefore, I would suggest the very opposite to what Gary Hamel is saying, namely: do not prototype and innovate around your organizational structure. Instead, get professional advice and figure out carefully where your organization stands and where it wants to go and then evaluate what options there are to ensure that the organizational structure supports that future direction. And then choose the option that is most appropriate to your organizational culture.

In Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux outlines different types of organizations using a developmental perspective. He introduces the idea of “teal” organizations which are the emerging newest form of organizations and are considered the most adaptive, flexible and future-ready. He then lists a number of examples of what these companies might look like and then investigates if there are any common themes in the way they are organized. He points out three things: a) such organizations use the wisdom of self-organization; b) they promote “wholeness”, meaning that employees don’t leave their values at the doorstep; and c) they have evolutionary purposes, meaning that the organization serves a larger purpose than the survival of its own unit. Now, clearly, not every company fits this profile or might even want to be operating in such a space. One can claim that such organizations are well positioned to do well in future, given that by their very nature they integrate the six critieria listed above.

At Business School Lausanne, where we aim at educating our business students for the future, we believe it is critical to not only introduce such new evolutionary models into our standard curriculum, but to actually walk the talk by testing such new forms of organization. As a result, we decided to embrace Holacracy as our new organizational operating system in the summer of 2015. Now, our organization is transparent and visible to anybody (see here real-time how we are organized and who does what) – and it has been interesting to see what has happened to us and our organization as a result. Those of us who feel like sharing contribute to our blog regularly, which has become our very own action research in organizational development.

Our experience at Business School Lausanne (BSL) is very different from what Gary Hamel has outlined in his article: the positive energy that is released and the resulting shared and collaborative innovation is so enriching and powerful. And this has been achieved in a relatively short period of time after the initial shock was felt and that goes with any important quantum leap change process. Holacracy does not seek to replace bureaucracy; it offers an alternative way of dealing with power in decision-making processes. In our own journey at Business School Lausanne, we briefly suffered from this misconception, with a number of employees treating Holacracy as a new ruler (top down) rather than as the enabling support structure that it can be (and is intended to be). And we are not yet through the process – but we are sticking with it for sure. This is both for our own personal and organizational learning and to fulfil our promise as a learning institution for our students. Holacracy has put all of us in a new, shared space, one where we had to learn a new language, individually and collectively and where each of us was challenged with our own shadows of how we had so far unconsciously dealt with power. Daring to face these shadows, and enabling one another to dare to take new decisions in the roles we have, has been such a rich experience and has brought such an acceleration of innovation that sometimes I wonder how it is possible to get so much done in one day. The last two weeks feel like six months of work (and done with a smile). There is so much energy locked in the system that can be unleashed if the process is accompanied well and coaching and facilitation is readily available if and when needed.

Now, this was our journey so far and yours will be different for sure, and so I am not recommending that you copy what we have done. Rather, I am curious about where your organization is on its journey towards its vision and whether or not your organization has the right structure in place to achieve your vision. If not, do let Kathy Miller and me know – we are glad to help you with a cultural and an organizational assessment and with recommendations on what options there are for your future journey.

At the dawn of the primaries in the United States, there is much surprised rubbing of the eyes in front of the possibility that we might enter the U.S. election with a radical dreamer on the left (Bernie Sanders) and an egomaniac billionaire on the right (Donald Trump), both lining up the late-arriving Michael Bloomberg to represent the sane path down the middle. Both candidates play skillfully with two dangerous emotions: fear and anger. My grandmother had always advised that fear and anger were not wise counsellors.

Of course, it might all go very differently.Yet, at this moment in history, I am left wondering to what degree democracy actually ends up holding up to its promise of liberty and of considering “all men as equal”, the most profound meaning of the revolution according to Lincoln in his Gettysburg address in 1863. We seem far from this sentiment and clearly, “the common people” are angry and unhappy. To the extent of wanting to overthrow the elite in power with a man who has come to represent stupidity in many of its most vulgar dimensions? But is this a problem that only exists in the United States?

In Switzerland, we have our own Donald Trump as well. With a slightly better haircut, and only occasionally more moderated or sophisticated views, our Christoph Blocher still causes indigestion for many of us. If anything, our version has been more consistent and long-living and his political party has been on the rise. And yet, let us look at the two democracies and how good they are at preventing the madness that would threaten the very foundation they are built on.

The Unites States, like many democratic nations, lives an indirect democracy. This means, that the people elect their representatives that subsequently take decisions on their behalf. These representatives are grouped in political parties that people can choose to support, or not. In many countries, new political parties can emerge as a result of dissatisfaction with existing parties, in some not. For example, in Germany, the brand new party “Alternative für Deutschland” emerged after the Euro crisis and many people being unhappy about how Germany subsidizes the rest of Europe. In the Unites States, the bipartisan practice reigns, forcing political expression into two – opposing – camps. The only direct influence the people of the Unites States have is in the election of its representatives, including in the election of its President.

In Switzerland, which is one of the few direct democracies, things work exactly the other way around. While people still elect representatives that subsequently govern for them in two chambers, anybody who is able to collect 50,000 signatures on any topic will create a referendum which will be voted on by all citizens. We vote four times a year on three to four issues of all kind (examples: getting rid of the army, leaving the European Union, allowing minarets, etc.). And, also in opposition to the Unites States, the people don’t elect the President. Actually, it doesn’t even matter who is the President. We have removed all special powers from this position, with exception from an obligation and responsibility of representing Switzerland abroad, a sheer necessity to ensure other countries know who to talk to when they want the “top guy”. Our parliaments elect the seven Swiss ministers in accordance with an historic allocation of the top parties, meaning that each party can suggest one or two candidates for the ministry positions, depending on the size of the party in the country. Seven is a magic figure, preventing any party from a majority and requiring collaboration from all to achieve the much admired Swiss consensus. These elections also take place every four years, always on a Wednesday morning in early December, and ministers can be re-elected for as long as they want. Past ministers are paid a fair life-long salary for their kind service to the Swiss people. The President is determined by rotation among these seven ministers, for a period of one-year. Hardly enough to make any lasting connections internationally and to thus influence one way or the other very much. The foreign minister has more impact and power in the sense that she (we have more female ministers than male, these days) is likely to hold that position for a much longer period than just four years.

An important consequence of the Swiss system is that the government as such doesn’t change every four years as a result of presidential elections. It is unlikely that more than two or three ministers get replaced every four years, with many staying for much longer, thus providing a continuity that allows difficult issues to be tackled over the often required longer-term. It is also unlikely for any newly elected minister to replace the heads of the professionally run ministry she runs, these administrators often serve ministers of different parties and there is a tendency for the issue to matter more than the party-origin. This practice enables a sense continuity that is a valid and necessary safeguard against the kind of personalization of politics we are now seeing in the United States, where most likely both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders represent a voice of their party that may not actually reflect the dominant thinking of the parties at all.

In brief, in Switzerland, we suffer from “issues over personalities”, whereas the U.S. suffers from “personalities over issues”. In Switzerland, we are often confronted with having to vote on highly complex issues that by far not all citizens understand and where there is a high risk of political campaigns instrumentalizing voters on certain issues (a most recent example is the recent vote on foreigners). Worse, we have seen that people are quite incapable of voting in the interest of next generations when their own interests are at stake, not exactly very sustainable neither! In the United States, much time is spent on the personification of the next President, with issues being left to the lobbyists that surround the parliament like a sorry plague. Neither of these situations is ideal or perfect, and I am not even sure which one is better. My aim here was to start a discussion about different kinds of democracy – and there are many more than the two I have superficially compared here – and how they might best serve their original intent of liberty and equality among their people. How wise is it to impose a certain kind of democracy on a country with a history, which may or may not be able to even grasp this concept in a way that is in the best interest of its future? And how do we generate representatives that are able to fully represent not only current, but also future interests, of those not yet born. To me, that would be one of the hallmarks of true democracy in the context of limiting resources and dilemmas of dimensions that is threatening the very survival of our species in the not too distant future. Who has any answers for this?