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Individuals,
the basic units of organisational transformation
by Margot Cairnes
"Our new boss is great. He wants to
make our organisation the model for the industry. He
wants us to find out how to bring this about". The two
men sat opposite me eagerly looking for suggestions, a
way forward. They were existed, switched on. They knew
their leader's objectives, they understood his values
and they wanted to be part of the transformation. I
contrasted this with the client I had just seen who had
recently decided to change companies. He had tired of
his previous boss's lack of clarity, his playing
favourites with those who unquestioningly agreed with
him. My caller had sought out (at a substantially higher
salary) a place where he would be empowered to use his
intelligence and hard won skills and experience to make
a meaningful contribution to improving results.
Know your people
Time and time again I see the colossal impact
individuals have on their environment. People who are
proactive, innovative, courageous and energetic can, and
do, bring about change. Likewise those who are
conservative, reactionary and frightened of moving
forward inhibit both themselves and the people around
them. Organisations can rise or fall on the quality of
the people they employ. Whether they're at the top,
middle or bottom of the organisation it is individuals
who will transform themselves, their performance and the
success of their organisations.
Given this truth it is surprising how
little managers seem to know about individuals and how
they "tick". The conventional model of organisations has
led us to view people in a linear fashion. We see them
as a set of behaviours working mechanically towards the
achievement of a set of tasks or concrete outcomes.
Change we simplistically believe involves getting people
to change their behaviours so as to achieve improved or
altered outcomes.
Anyone who has ever worked in
organisations knows that this belief comes out of
"la-la" land but we go on operating as if it is true.
Real people have their own needs,
objectives, feelings and psychological patterns of
thought, feeling and action. They are highly complex
sophisticated organisms who are capable of high order
thought, rich spiritual experience and emotional
transformation. People have the potential to be great
inventors, creators and communicators. In varying
degrees they have the ability to foresee the future,
read "body language" and process huge amounts of
information intuitively.
Real organisational transformation
therefore takes all this into account. If we are going
to lead or be a significant part of real transformation
we had better increase our level of understanding on how
real people actually function.
Education and Training
Now, having said that, I wouldn't want to encourage you
to seek out some pool of academic knowledge in the
belief that it will open up to you all you need to know
in this area. People assume that the information they
need to bring about radical transformation can be found
in a book, video or in a particular course of study. Our
education and training has conditioned us to think that
learning is an intellectual process. Yet from experience
I know that the most successful organisational
transformations are led by people who found all the
information they needed within themselves. Books, videos
and courses can help us only in as far as they open us
up to our own learning.
You see, the path to bringing about
real change with complex human beings comes through
fully exploring the complexity of your own being,
including your mind, emotions, spirit and actions. In
business we have worked hard to separate who we are from
what we do. We have encouraged people to be rational
workers leaving all that non-rational feeling stuff at
home.
Now we are encouraging people to think
of the businesses in which they work as if they were
their own. We extol people to be creative and
innovative, to communicate and relate well with
customers, to learn to understand and meet customers
needs while continuously looking for ways of improving.
We are asking people to take responsibility for making
calculated risks. We expect them to bring more and more
of themselves to work.
If we really want them to do this leaders are going to
have to bring more of themselves to work. They are going
to have to drag their long neglected emotions and spirit
out of the cupboard.
I worked once with the top team of a
large professional firm. Getting to the top of this firm
involved a long and difficult cloning process. Changes
in the environment now signalled that the firm and its
leaders needed to change. This was a real problem
because they had forgotten how to be rebels. They had
closed down their natural flare for play, challenge and
innovation. Only one leader had retained his ability to
be a larrikin. Not surprisingly, it was his part of the
organisation that led the change process because he
could remember how to be himself, how to feel, how to
laugh and how to flaunt the rules.
An opportunity
Change presents us with a real opportunity.
Organisations aren't the only place where people have
been encouraged to give up their basic humanity. The
socialisation process through which most of us pass so
that we can function as contributing members of society
encourages us to give up parts of ourselves to fit in.
Firstly at home and then later at school we learn to
give up those feelings, intuitions and opinions that
don't conform to the accepted norms of our parents,
teachers and peers. We learn that it is better to be
like every body else than to take the risk of being
rejected for being ourselves.
Successful organisational
transformation actually demands that we reverse this
line of thought. Organisations flourish when individuals
take the risk of being different, of following their own
intuitions, of exploring their feelings and spiritual
leaning to uncover the messages and new insights that
these can bring. Successful organisational
transformation happens when individuals start reclaiming
their birth right as beings with huge potential who can
make a huge difference in the world in which they
operate.
Switched on leaders who have themselves followed this
path have the wit to understand and encourage this
process. They support people to engage in a wide variety
of personal development programs, they give people power
and responsibility to make a difference within their own
area of influence. Leaders of transformation are
constantly on the look out for people with the courage
to be different, they encourage those with an
alternative point of view. Trend-setting bosses know
that when people take control of their own lives they
can bring increased value to organisations through
increased effort, insights and innovation.
Many managers however are still so
stunted in their own humanity and growth that when they
have a dynamic alive subordinate they feel threatened.
They push these people away, satirise difference and
undermine individual empowerment.
These managers badly need to start
exploring their own human effectiveness as part of their
professional development. Managers that are unwilling or
unable (through personal limitation) to do this need to
be removed.
Individuals are the basic unit of any
change program and it is as individuals from the top to
the bottom of all organisations that we need to be
growing, learning and blossoming. Organisations full of
healthy, alive, innovating and communicating human
beings can only surpass their competitors.
Copyright
ã Margot
Cairnes
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