Learning for a Change

We know how to create and nurture close friendships or family relationships. But when we enter the realm of the organization, we're not sure which domain to invoke. Should we evoke the domain of the machine? After all, much of our daily life is about interacting with computers, tape recorders, automobiles, and ATMs. Or should we evoke the domain of living systems -- because a lot of our daily life is about interacting with family, friends, and colleagues?

There are those who come down firmly on the people side: They tend to be HR professionals and line managers -- people who understand that relationships, teamwork, and trust are essential to effective operations. But high-level executives are frequently separated from the day-to-day stuff of the enterprise: They look at the organization from the perspective of numbers, financial statements, and prospective deals. Their number-one variable is the company stock price. That outlook distances them substantially from the living, human aspects of the enterprise. You end up with organizational schizophrenia. Some people operate the company as if it were a machine, and some treat it as part of the messy, living world.

What happens when you see a company as a part of nature?

It shifts profoundly how you think about leadership and change. If you use a machine lens, you get leaders who are trying to drive change through formal change programs. If you use a living-systems lens, you get leaders who approach change as if they were growing something, rather than just "changing" something. Even on a large scale, nature doesn't change things mechanically: You don't just pull out the old and replace it with the new. Something new grows, and it eventually supplants the old.

You see the same thing at the level of behaviors: If new behaviors are more effective than old behaviors, then the new behaviors win out. That insight gives us a doorway into a different way to think about how enterprises might change: What if we thought of organizational change as the interplay among the various forces that are involved in growing something new?

Looking at nature, we see that nothing that grows starts large; it always starts small. No one is "in charge," making the growth occur. Instead, growth occurs as a result of the interplay of diverse forces. And these forces fall into two broad categories: self-reinforcing processes, which generate growth, and limiting processes, which can impede growth or stop it altogether. The pattern of growth that occurs unfolds from the interplay of these two types of forces.

Looking at organizations, we find that one of the first things that changes is how we define the term "structure." "The Fifth Discipline" proposed a definition borrowed from system dynamics -- which looks at structure in terms of feedback interactions within a system. Our new definition of that term is "a pattern of interdependency that we enact." Again, think about the relationships within a family, rather than those within a company: People come to relate to each other in predictable ways, which form a pattern that then defines the structure of relationships -- norms, expectations, taken-for-granted habits of communicating. Those patterns aren't fixed; they can change. And, more to the point, those patterns aren't given. Ultimately, the structures that come into play in our families are the result of the choices that we've made all along the way. We "enact" our families.

All of this applies directly to our ideas about leadership and, in particular, to the cult of the CEO-as-hero. In fact, that cult is one pattern that makes it easier for us to maintain change-averse institutions. When we enact the pattern of the CEO as hero, we infantalize the organization: That kind of behavior keeps everyone else in the company at a stage of development in which they can't accept their own possibilities for creating change. Moreover, it keeps executives from doing things that would genuinely contribute to creating significant change. The cult of the hero-leader only creates a need for more hero-leaders.

How does challenging the idea of the hero-leader promote change?

Deep change comes only through real personal growth -- through learning and unlearning. This is the kind of generative work that most executives are precluded from doing by the mechanical mind-set and by the cult of the hero-leader: The hero-leader is the one with "the answers." Most of the other people in the organization can't make deep changes, because they're operating out of compliance, rather than out of commitment. Commitment comes about only when people determine that you are asking them to do something that they really care about. For that reason, if you create compliance-oriented change, you'll get change -- but you'll preclude the deeper processes that lead to commitment, and you'll prevent the emergence of self-generated change.

Again, you end up creating a kind of addiction: People change as long as they're being commanded to change -- or as long as they can be forced to change. But, as a result, they become still more dependent on change that's driven from the top.