[Neurons] 2014 "Neurons" Meta Reflections #8

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2014 #8

February 24, 2014

 

 

 

UNCONSCIOUSLY PIONEERING

A SELF-ACTUALIZING COMPANY

 

 

"The lifelong dream of pioneering a new concept of organization had been
realized.   There was pride and gratification in knowing what it had been,
what it now was, and what it might become, but there was a deep sene of
failure about what it ought to be." (Birth of the Chaordic Age, p. 285)

 

Last week I began the story of Dee Hock, founder of VISA International and
CEO Emeritus and his incredible journey to envisioning and then creating a
whole new kind of organization.  So go back ... way back to the 1960s when
he was doing this, when businesses were just beginning to wake up to the
typhoon of change that was just then beginning to blow over this planet.
Douglas McGregor had just translated Maslow's Self-Actualization Psychology
into workplace language.  He did that by inventing the language of Theory X
and Theory Y to explain the old mindset of command-and-control leadership
and bureaucracy and the new mindset of tapping into and release human
intelligence and creativity.  He did that in the book, The Human Enterprise
(1960).

 

As far as I can tell Dee Hock was not aware of Maslow or McGregor and yet he
was on the same track.  He described the problem with business, with
leadership, and with organizations as one created by the "machine" metaphor
that began "the age of managers" and "the Industrial Age."  The 400 year old
Industrial Age and its paradigm of predictability and control was the
problem.  And people were begin "victimized by a false metaphor" (p. 171).
That's because a new age of information had arise and was upon business and
Dee Hock argued that business needed a more natural metaphor- an organic
one, a systemic one, and one human one.  So he wrote about self-organizing,
self-governing, adaptive complex organisms and used that as a more natural
metaphor for an organization or community.

 

I mentioned last week that I had read his book many years ago and didn't
realize that he was actually writing about Self-Actualizing Companies and
Organizations.  How could I have missed it?  In part, because he never used
that language.  He had another name.  He called the new kind of organization
that he envisioned chaordic.  This was his invented word, created by
combining chaos and order.  He defined a chaordic organization in this way:

"The behavior of any self-governing organism, organization or system which
harmoniously blends characteristics of order and chaos; patterned in a way
dominated by neither chaos or order."

 

Dreaming the Radically New

"If anything imaginable was possible, if there were no constraints whatever,
what would be the nature of an ideal organization to create the world's
premier system for the exchange of value?" (132)

 

In this way he stumbled upon the qualities of a whole new kind of
organization- one that would be friendly to the human spirit, that would
accord with human beings and the biosphere.  As I re-read the book, The
Birth of the Chaordic Organization, I took notes.  The following notes are
those that describe a Self-Actualizing Company.  It this sounds very similar
to the descriptions which I put in the book, Unleashing Leadership-
Self-Actualizing Leaders and Companies, they are.  What did CEO Dee Hock
conceptualize the new chaordic organization to be like?  Here are a few
hints: 

           A becoming organization.  "Life is not about getting, having,
controlling, it's not even about being.  Life is eternal, perpetual
becoming.  Becoming is not a thing to be known or controlled.  It is a
magnificent, mysterious odyssey to be experienced." (24).

           Systemic.  We are irrevocably interconnected, defining one
another. (22).

           A Principled Community.  "People everywhere are growing
desperate for renewed sense of community." (91).  "Healthy organizations are
a mental concept of relationships to which people are drawn by hope, vision,
values, and meaning, and liberty to cooperatively pursue them." (120)

           Leaders who induce rather than impose.  "There is no way to give
people purpose and principles, nor can there be self-governance without
them.  The only possibility is to evoke the gift of self-governance from the
people themselves." (90).

           A place of ingenuity and creativity.   "Without question, the
most abundant, least expensive, most under-utilized, and constantly abused
resource in the world is human ingenuity." (72).

           Empowerment.   "If you're going to form a committee to do
anything, give it responsibility for creating some way to examine all
problems in a systematic, continuous way." (108).

           Self-Organizing cohesive group.   "We know that 'together' [we]
must transcend all present boundaries and allow self-organization at every
scale..."   "Chaordic organizations self-organize and evolve, creating and
governing diversity and complexity beyond any possibility of central design,
engineering, or control." (296).

           Ecological.  "If the purpose of each corporation is not
primarily the health of the earth and well-being of all life thereon, if its
principles are not based on equitable distribution of power and wealth, if
it avoids responsibility for the sustenance of family, community, and place,
if it has no belief system, or one devoid of ethical and moral content, it
is difficult to see why it should have the sanction and protection of
society through government." (171).

           Open discussion and debate.  "Deliberation and debate will be
open to all and controlled by none, particularly management." (185).
"[VISA] was chaordic and open to surprise." (269).  "The promise of open
meetings and candor was often put to the test by skeptical employees."
(283).

           Mature responsible people.  "In chaordic organizations of the
future, it will be necessary at every level to have people capable of
discernment, of making fine judgments, and acting sensibly upon them." (264)

           Vigilant least the old mindset re turns.  "On t he whole, we had
poor methods and techniques and far too little of them to bring about the
cultural change that a chaordic organization requires."  (277).  "Bit by
bit, the old patterns reasserted themselves..." (278).   "I missed
completely the need for an institutional immune system to thwart the viruses
of old ways." (281).

 

Now in the process of creating a new kind of organization Dee Hock ran into
numerous problems, problems which are relevant to what we are doing today.
More about that next week.

 

 

 

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L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

                Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

                Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

                1 970-523-7877 

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