Navigate the Swirl. Richard Hawkes

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Navigate the Swirl - Richard Hawkes


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Indeed, one way to think about the culture is that it's what people do when no one is telling them what to do. That's unconscious or natural culture—the natural pattern of the social system when it is undirected, when people are filling the void and choosing how to behave in the absence of leadership. That may be positive, negative, or otherwise, but when you reach a point where you need to upgrade, shift, or evolve the complex adaptive social system of your organizations, make no mistake, leadership will be essential. It takes leadership to create a more conscious or intentional culture, one in which the ways of thinking and acting are purposefully aligned at a higher level of performance.

      Again, a leadership style is shaped by how the leader sees the system they are working in. If you view your organization as a mechanical system made up of parts, inputs, and outputs, you'll lead it one way. If you view it as a social system composed of people playing their roles, forming relationships with others, exercising their agency to negotiate shared purpose and ways of working in the context of those relationships, you'll lead it another way. The social systems view includes the process flow of inputs and outputs between roles in the system but goes beyond it to take into consideration the human aspect of those interdependencies as well.

      In the mechanical systems view, solutions are designed top-down and team members are expected to follow the directives set forth as tasks, processes, and project plans. In this view, some roles are assigned strategic planning responsibilities, and others are expected to execute. Conversely, when operating from the social systems view, all roles are expected to engage and contribute their perspective to the overall strategy. Solutions may still be designed top-down but validated and updated based on bottom-up feedback, and in the context of aligning purpose, roles, and ways of working. In this view, all players are empowered to exercise their agency and choice, and leaders need to align team members around their decisions through communication and consultation.

      The following are a few key characteristics of the social system mindset as contrasted with the mechanical system mindset:

       Interpersonal, not impersonal: Leaders focus on influencing others and creating alignment through conversation, rather than relying on the weight of hierarchical authority.

       Relational, not transactional: Leaders focus on building and maintaining strong mutual relationships, rather than supervising outputs.

       Inclusive, not exclusive: Leaders focus on ensuring everyone on the team has agency and choice and is fully engaged in the transformation process.

      Let's return to that swirling, tumbling river we were navigating earlier in these pages. As you steer your team and organizational watercraft through the rapids of changing markets, around your competitors, avoiding the rocks, and riding the currents, the last thing you need is for all the people on board to be rowing in different directions. You need them to be aligned. You need them to be working for a common purpose, pointing in the same direction—the direction of growth and higher performance.

Schematic illustration of the art of aligning people as vectors

      Alignment occurs in a social system, like a team or company, when the individuals come together and adopt shared ways of working toward a common goal. It is not necessary for each person to agree, but they must choose to align out of a recognition that it is for the common good of the team or organization.

      To achieve alignment in a complex adaptive social system, leaders must become skilled at breaking complex issues down to the key choice points. These are the moments when people need to consciously choose to come along on the journey together, and the leader's job is to initiate the conversations that lead to those choices. These are the seven “crucial conversations” that we will delve into more deeply in the third section of this book. They are an essential part of the Growth River Operating System. Out of these conversations, people can come to a choice about what's right for the team and decide upon and implement shared ways of working. There is no subterfuge or sleight of hand involved in obtaining alignment. That would defeat the purpose. These are conversations that are held transparently and openly. Suffice to say again that we're not talking about requiring every individual to perfectly agree with or even like the decisions that are made, but we are talking about every individual recognizing those decisions to be in the best interests of the team or organization. Therefore, they'll choose to put that above their own preferences or opinions.


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