“The Things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done — that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.” – Buckminster Fuller
As my wife and I in earnest started discussing having kids, I decided to stop consulting. This decision was mainly due to the heavy travel commitments that often come with that line of work and to a smaller extent to have a more stable income when providing for my family became a priority. My own father was away on work for most of my early life and I did not want the same for any of my own children. I felt I needed to be home for dinner every night and be a big part of their lives. I thoroughly enjoyed consulting and had the privilege to work with some fantastic clients so it was for a specific purpose I decided to switch to contracting.
Why contracting you may ask, well with my then limited network in Sydney it was too difficult to get consulting engagements and permanent roles have always felt – well, too permanent. Either way, the mortgage still had to be paid, anyone owning property in Sydney understands what that means…
After more than three years of work on various reform/transformation/change programs I am now convinced that I need to stop, if nothing else for my own sanity. The reality is that in most organisations, change or transformation programs are just illusions. We’re reshuffling the deckchairs using another management fad after another, having convinced ourselves that this time it’s different. Few initiatives are based on sound theories of how organisations really work. I’m sure this realisation is not profound or insightful in any way and it makes no claim of that. For me, however it’s something I’ve known but ignored for a steady pay-check and the huge benefit of being able to have dinner with my family every night.
Ignoring this is taking its toll on the passion and intrinsic motivation I have for creating better organisations. It is rather exhausting trying to influence poorly thought out, top-down imposed programs of “change” or “transformation”. All managed by more or less a command and control approach. An approach that is desperately incompatible with the complexity of these human activity systems we call organisations. If I see another MS Project plan with thousands of lines of tasks trying to keep the illusion of a program being “under control” I will throw the laptop out the window. The very notion of thinking of change as a project drives me crazy! #noprojects #nochangemangement
Not too long after I started my own company my old colleague Tim Banner and I made a deliberate decision to stop doing work for clients that weren’t really interested in doing anything other than a review. A review was always followed by a report of recommendations that they would file away and never look at again. We wanted to focus our energy on working with clients that really wanted to make a difference for staff and customers. I feel that I have drifted away from that and I’m looking for ways to get back on course.
Per Frykman gave me some good advice when he helped me to better understand and work with my reputation – create a stop doing list. High on that list is stop working with leaders without the courage to do the things no one else seems to see need to be done.
Where do I find the courageous leaders who want to profoundly transform their organisations for the better, for their staff and for their customers? Who has the courage to wholeheartedly engage with their whole organisation to explore better ways of working without knowing in advance where it will take the organisation? Who has the courage to let go of the illusion of control and trust people to find a path together? Is anyone out there brave enough to embrace something as radical yet so simple as the antimatter principle?
But then what would I do if that person came knocking on my door to ask for help? I’d need the support of others, especially ones far smarter than myself. I know you are out there, some probably hiding in plain sight banging your heads against the same walls as I, wondering why no one else seems to see or want to see how flawed most of our approaches to change are.
If you are stuck working in a change or transformation program and would like to do work differently I’d love to hear from you to explore if we can do things together. It would of course also require me to find the courage to get back to freelance consulting and ride that rollercoaster of fear and joy again.
Are you a leader with an above average level of courage and are you open to do something different to make your organisation a place of joy – I’d love to hear from you.
It does not have to lead to anything other than perhaps a coffee and a chat. If I can help in more ways than just pointing you to great resources to further your thinking or connect you with some of the very smart people I know in various domains, that would be fantastic.
It is however not all that important that I get something out of this. I can suffer through the silliness and madness I come across on a daily basis for a bit longer, living as a character this is not the real me, adding value where I can. What is important though is that more people start to rethink and challenge the dominant mental models of organisations, of human beings, and of human relationships.
I don’t want my son to grow up, working in a world where we still view organisations as machines, people as resources, profit and shareholder value is paramount, and growth is essential.
I want him to grow up being able to contribute to society in ways that embrace a more holistic and human approach. There are movement out there making waves: #responsiveorg, BetaCodex Network, Reinventing Oranzations etc hopefully they will create enough momentum to hit a tipping point where command and control is the exception – not the norm.
Maybe by then we’ve even got rid of this weird notion that we all have to be more productive to earn a spot in society. It seems appropriate on that note to also finish with a quote by Bucky Fuller.
“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living.”
stefan norrvall 