In my last blog I shared my view that, despite all the talk of change in organisations, little has changed in the fundamental ways we work over the last 30 years. In this blog I explore the obstacles that are getting in the way of us upgrading how we work together.
Whilst the world of work has been sticking to patterns of working that are centuries old, there are some people who have been developing, often from innate beliefs and values, completely different systems of thinking about how we work together. In these systems of thinking ….
- Everything is relational – People and relationships are the heart of everything.
- Change is perpetual – Not something to be managed or done to people. All we can do is learn to sense and adapt to change – trying to predict and control is a fruitless illusion.
Trying to find language to persuade and rationalise (left brain) ways of being (right brain) to people that have a fundamentally different world view is frustrating and fruitless. What I can now see is that language cannot convey the mindset. It’s like the shift from Newtonian physics to Quantum physics, these are different systems of thinking with different mental models, practices and values.
To upgrade the way we work together we need to confront and let go of the old ways. The following list of myths was co-created with @Joan Scarrott in a recent learning lab. I think they sum up what appear to be the invisible myths we are being driven by. Whilst no one actually says these things explicitly, they describe the As Ifs of modern working practices…
“We are behaving as if….”
- Work is not personal.
- Change happens when we start something new.
- We must maintain harmony at all costs.
- Conflict is destructive and to be avoided.
- The sum is greater than the parts and all we need to do is put a diverse group of people in the same room.
- Leadership is only in people with hierarchical and positional power.
- The best way to solve a complex challenge is to get a small group of experts together, figure it out, and tell everyone what to do.
- It’s not possible to do real work in groups, especially large groups.
- What we need to do with complex challenges is break them down into small parts.
- Change is done to… on top of real work.
- Improvement comes from problem solving.
- Leaders make the best decisions.
- Meetings aren’t about getting work done.
- We can predict the future and then plan, organise and control to achieve it.
- The bottom line financial results are real …. Trust is not.
- Trust building happens on away days and at the coffee machine.
- Failure is to be avoided at all costs.
- Learning and working don’t go together.
- We get buy in by involving people through surveys and questionnaires.
- We can manage change.
- Learning is about the acquisition of knowledge and tools.
When we let go of these myths we can make space for something else, something different… a space in which we acknowledge that change is perpetual and the key to surviving and thriving lies in our ability to connect as human beings, so that we can collaborate, to adapt and co-create in response to change. THIS is what makes work joyful, creative and meaningful.
I have used the image of the Hindu God Ganesh, in this post, one of my favourite deities… the remover of obstacles … the current invisible belief systems that are driving the way we work are the obstacles we need to remove before we can find more healthy and human ways of working.
It is hard to let go of something we cannot see but I hope that, in some small way, this post might make transparent these myths.