Help! We're Trapped in an Industrial Mindset and Can't Get Out!

The "In-Charge Organization"

I'm a very organized person. I love to plan, whether it's a monthly budget, a summer vacation, a meeting agenda, or my to-do list for tomorrow. Most days my penchant for planning is useful - it helps me be efficient, responsible, and reliable. But some days it feels like an addiction. It's on those days that I glimpse the pernicious hope that drives my behavior: If I just work hard enough and plan carefully enough, there will be no unforeseen consequences, no uncertainty, no worry, no pain.

I offer this story as a metaphor for modern organizations. Those organizations are designed to maximize efficiency and minimize uncertainty. The central premise harks back to Frederick Winslow Taylor's scientific management, the belief that managers utilizing quantifiable ("scientific") methods should regulate every aspect of work life.

The Case for Self-Organization

People seem perfectly capable of managing their personal lives without supervision. Why, then, do we assume they need to be managed at work?

Self-organization does not do away with hierarchy, but it does assign leaders a more facilitative role. Three factors are particularly important:

• Awareness of dynamic tensions: The self-organized organization makes use of dynamic tensions, contradictions, differences, even conflicts that surface in a safe and productive manner.
• Creating "containers": Self-organization occurs where there are structures that provide a safe space in which groups and teams operate.
• Having conversations that matter: Humans thrive - and so does self-organization - when individuals and teams experience meaningful connection.

From Control to Conversation

Self-organization can be generated by open and honest conversations, what Olson and Eoyang describe as "a dance in which agents shift continuously in concert with an ever-changing environment."

A Shared-Power World

Control is the primary currency of the in-charge organization. But what if we believe that people are naturally capable and collaborative? What if we fully grasp the benefits of enabling informal networks and self-organization in our workplaces?

In their book Leadership for the Common Good, Crosby and Bryson describe the "shared-power organization," in which sharing power "is a fortunate, rather than unfortunate, necessity because it ensures that diverse voices and needs receive attention."