What is an organization?

Most of the organizational development frameworks I have been exposed to divide an organizational design approach into interrelated categories. For example, Galbraith’s brilliant work around the “Star Model” call the designer to think about choices in the areas of organizational structure, lateral capabilities, people practices, and rewards and metrics to ensure they serve creating the capabilities needed for the organization to succeed in its strategy. And Michael Porter’s deep yet practical view of strategy as being visible in a network of interrelated activities invites the designer to discriminate about which activities might reinforce the network and which should be “traded off.” Geoffrey Moore 's “Zone to Win” looks at core functions of an organization like performance, productivity, incubation, and transformation as a combination of static and dynamic phases in the organization’s process of reinventing itself. Such frameworks provide great ideas and methods for more reliably achieving innovation, disruption, resilience, effectiveness, and other core organizational goals. And they tend to position categories, or cross-sections, of organizational qualities in relative importance to one another depending on the design goal, the maturity of the organization, and other factors.

Another view on approaching organizational design (to which I was exposed by folks such as Frederic Laloux , Glenna Gerard, Thomas Klug, and William Isaacs,) which has recently captured my imagination is:

The organization itself is, most fundamentally, the sum of conscious and subconscious stories its stakeholders tell themselves and one another about it.

This perspective opens a new world for understanding the organization – and a radical shift in approaching interventions. Importantly, this perspective does not supplant or supersede the categorical ones – it works next to, or perhaps underneath them. (We can think of categorical models representing objective qualities, which can be seen and even measured, and this “collection of stories” model representing the subjective, where beliefs, values, archetypes and myths interact in a manner not directly measurable but no less significant to the visualization and realization of intended outcomes.)

What is the impact of this change in perspective?

Most significantly, seeing the core of an organization as a collection of conscious and subconscious stories provides the insight that for an organization to transform, the stories underpinning it have to somehow be dealt with to make room for the creation of new ones. For example, the people in an organization might hold – both consciously and subconsciously – such beliefs as, “we are innovators,” “we stand for quality,” or “we treat our employees and customers fairly.” In the same organization, there might be less apparent stories also present, such as “at the end of the day, profit is the most important measure of our success,” “we have tried to become more effective and it just doesn’t work,” “some people in the organization are just never going to ‘get it,’” and “being able to make changes quickly is just not in our DNA.”

Some of these stories might be shared, and some might be individual. Some might be conscious and frequently spoken while others might be lurking in the back of our minds. And each individual is potentially nuancing these stories in their own ways, adding different flavors depending on their own experiences – both direct experiences in the organization, and the meaning they attach to them because of past experience.

Self-limiting beliefs need to be transmuted for an individual to grow. As long as such beliefs are in play, each of us sets goals and pursues them, somewhat ineffectually, through a mist of drivers and compulsions of which we are, at best, only vaguely aware.

Likewise, all relationships are impacted by the individual and shared beliefs about them. In an intimate partnership, beliefs such as “I won’t be able to get my needs met in this relationship, so it’s better to not voice them,” or “I can never trust someone else to fully see and care about me,” would obviously impact both partners’ ability to more fully connect and row their boat in the same direction.

Some forms of team coaching and group/family/couples therapy aim to surface these beliefs so they can be inspected, integrated, and adapted to better serve the relationship. New beliefs can emerge, creating a new container in which each person can be empowered to show up and connect more authentically. So too in an organization, I think we can reliably infer that there is always a possibility of greater authenticity, and incrementally achieving that potential makes defining and achieving organizational results more accessible - and also more fulfilling.

?A practice of “thinking together” – not for the purpose of making decisions or agreements, but simply to surface the stories, feelings, and beliefs that we have about the organization, so that all stakeholders can get a good look at them, is foundational to transformation of what the organization actually is, at its most basic level. Then, all the choices about categories - strategies, structures, capabilities, and all - might become more coherent and possible to achieve.

As Geoffrey Moore says, "That's what I think. What do you think?"