Cross-organization purpose alignment

The world needs leaders who (1) believe there are better ways of organizing for work, (2) care enough to want to do something about it, (3) understand they need to learn more about what is possible from pioneering organizations, and (4) are willing to chart a path toward that future.

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Cross-organization Purpose Alignment

The last newsletter focused on distributed decision-making where traditional control of delegated authority was replaced with soft control from tension between two principles – Purpose and Autonomy enabled with an Entrepreneurial Mindset.?We ended that article with – how can cross-organization purpose-alignment be attained without traditional hierarchical controls?

In the spirit of self-organization, something “happens” when a group of people is convened around a common problem.?This taps into two Group Powers that transcend positional powers that traditional organizations are built on.?First is the Convening Power that is emergent when the group is gathered, followed by the co-creation (Level 5 Involvement) where the group has ownership of new thinking when diverse perspectives are focused on a common problem.?

End-state Futocracy has a formal Purpose Alignment Team (PaT) that serves this function but does much more than just purpose-alignment.?Put aside the thought that this is too large a leap for traditional organizations fighting dysfunctions of silos and powerful hierarchies – I will shortly circle back to interim steps to move toward this end-state PaT.

If we go with a blank sheet for organization design, there are three core leadership activities – setting Direction, gaining cross-organization Alignment, and nurturing a Committed group of employees and other stakeholders to accomplish this purpose.?This is the concept of DAC Leadership that will be discussed in a later newsletter.?Traditional leadership constructs are built around each leader executing DAC activities, while the rethinking here splits the three functions as illustrated in Figure 1.?

Figure 1. DAC Leadership with a critical Purpose Alignment component

Direction still comes from the top but is translated by the PaT for cross-organization alignment without relying on the traditional command & control processes that normally filter such communication.?In traditional organizations, this push-down communication happens annually with the strategic planning and budgeting cycle and then “fixed” in the performance management system monthly and quarterly.?Instead, the PaT works in real-time, addressing issues as they arise and going beyond just communicating the strategy to convene ad hoc work groups and network weave the network of work relationships needed to deliver the organization’s purpose.?In this role, the members of the Purpose Alignment Team are responsible for drawing attention to issues, chartering work groups for problem solving, and seeing that the needed decisions are made – by those doing the work and not the PaT.?This is a fundamental difference from traditional hierarchies where middle management is responsible for making decisions or explicitly delegating that role. ?In this instance the PaT does not make the decision, but instead makes sure the decisions are made by those impacted.?This role also addresses another issue that is often overlooked in traditional organizations – fire prevention.?A common complaint is that little time is left for solving core problems due to the time required to put out the fires of the symptoms of those problems.?In this case, the PaT leaves the firefighting to those living with the problem and instead focuses their attention on preventing fires and seeing that the structural and operating issues are attended to – exercising their expertise as a coach and not a player on the field.

This leaves the question of how to move toward a Purpose Alignment Team (PaT) within a traditional hierarchy or matrix structure.?Step 1 is clarity of Purpose built around the customer (ideally with some consideration of internal customers that ripple across the networks making up the formal and informal organization in a traditional structure).?From personal experience, I once led a team to review the company’s bonus program and make recommendations for improvement.?I went into this effort thinking it would be a quick & easy project that ended up taking many meetings spread over several months.?The unexpected delay was the lack of cross-organization agreement on what the organization’s purpose was and how each silo contributed.?This is a sensemaking exercise that pulls in people from across the organization, who then take the understanding back to the far reaches of the organization.?The questions driving Step 1 are Why do we exist? and What problem are we solving for our customer??This is followed by What part do I play?

This clarity of purpose leads naturally into a second step – identifying points of friction and seeing that they are addressed.?While the first step focused on a single issue – purpose, this second phase is ongoing, clearing one problem is likely to identify another issue where improvement is needed.?In this manner, a cross-organization team meets regularly to address alignment issues, not to make decisions but to convene action by those impacted.?Over time, this organization role can be formalized thereby establishing the foundation for restructuring the organization in totally new ways of operating.

Are toxic work environments – toxic to our health?

Asked another way, are dysfunctional organizations similar to environmental conditions driving drug addiction??This is an interesting question that arises after reading about tests with rats and drug addiction (Sederer, 2019).?Solitary rats with no social activity or stimulation were more prone to drug addiction to the degree of overdose and death.?However, other rats in a “rat park” with other rats and activities would often ignore the similar availability of drugs or would only occasionally partake – none ever overdosed.?It was not so much the desirability of drugs as it was using drugs as an avoidance of an unpleasant environment.

Rats in the poor environment were alone (like working remotely or working on solitary tasks?), lacking activity choices (like being micromanaged without involvement in work decisions?), and without purpose (like employees working for a paycheck, without passion for what they are doing?).?While this research focused on the connection between the rat’s living environment and tendency to use drugs as an escape, the similarity to the conditions many workers find themselves in is striking.

As we consider bureaucratic dysfunctions, are we dealing with a workplace issue or a health issue??Many organizations have “wellness programs” but they are add-on benefits without any critical investigation of the work environment they are placing employees in.?Should we rethink how we approach organizations, leadership, and change from a health perspective in addition to curing dysfunctional conditions limiting the production of work?

Quick Tips

These short tips (one to five sentences) are published daily, each touching on a topic moving us closer to building the New Era Organization – purpose driven, agile, socially responsible, and people friendly.?You can view these tips and receive a LinkedIn notification at https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/futocracy-network/

What others are Saying

Steward (2022) in the article Why it’s time to stop developing leaders said what I have long believed – it is time to stop developing a select few as leaders (noun) and move toward leadership (verb) competency among the many. ?As we rethink the distribution of authority down & across the organization, the need grows for collaboration and influence instead of traditional command & control.?The leader development industry partially recognized this shift with the advocacy of Servant Leaders but this still assumes power asymmetry with the focus on the Parent role in a Parent-Child relationship. ?This is directionally noble but limited by the Industrial Era Paradigm built around the power of hierarchy.?Moving beyond the traditional leadership versus management differences, the author prefers to define leadership as “creating the conditions for an organization (and the people within it) to fulfill its potential.”?This definition captures connecting work to purpose involving everyone and removing obstacles (then getting out of their way).

When making this shift, the development process changes from an ease of delivery (often a course or conference) that is disjointed from on-the-job application to developing people as part of a team operating within the group dynamics of collaborative problem-solving.?This approach to development shifts from detached skill development to joint testing of ideas and learning from each other through applying new principles and practices in the work undertaken.

The author concludes with a further recommendation that organizations go beyond self-management of teams to self-leadership practices among those on the team.?In this way “the right people are empowered and enabled to step up or back at the right time to do the most critical work.”?This links back to the doctoral research I did 20 years ago that showed those with higher levels of self-leadership were those more likely to work to initiate change when they saw the need.

Coming Attractions

In July, we will turn our attention to the Building Blocks for the New Era Organization.?Pioneering organizations that are experimenting with new organization structures and operating styles often started that way driven by the founders’ values or made the transformation when faced with a near-death crisis.?That leaves the vast majority of organizations that struggle with dysfunctions that have not yet built to a existential crisis.?For these organizations, we will dive into the components (building blocks) that are common across many pioneering organizations with consideration given to each on how each might be implemented in phases while also understanding the supporting relationships between the building blocks.

Why this Newsletter

It is time to stop complaining about organization dysfunctions and start moving into the future – the post-Industrial organizations we need now for releasing people’s passions – places where people want to work.?

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