More Truth about Teams!

Since my last post there has been a barrage of great responses, not only on this blog site but also on various networks as well as personal email. A big thank you to everyone for your thoughtful responses as they started a real discussion and demanded more thought.

The responses can be roughly divided in two categories:

1. the importance of equal participation and inclusiveness, and
2. a focus on what needs to be done, the purpose, and how to align everyone with that.

Historically, teams are a relatively new phenomenon. There wasn’t much like it back in our parent’s age – perhaps an Olympic team, a string quartet or the Apollo missions were early manifestations, but in the workplace it was command and control and rigid, firm hierarchies. Even when I first started working a straight job in the 90’s in the Amsterdam Harbour (which admittedly was a very traditional environment) there was no such concept as a team.

To begin with, I want to do more justice to the existence of teams. They have emerged as a result of the greater freedom and egalitarian approach that came with the pluralistic worldview, now typical for the Western world. Bottom-up approaches, the inclusive workplace, personal development, mutual understanding and respect are the great achievements of the second half of the 20^th Century.

At the same time I don’t see them as a purpose in themselves. If we make a climate of mutual understanding and bottom-up empowerment the goal, we could end up in those mushy situations in which we’re caught in endless meetings, satisfying a requirement for the job-review, but not being at the top of our creativity, and therefore possibly resentful and in perennial conflict with the most creative drive in ourselves – and with our colleagues. Because what is the team there to do? What is my right to self-expression worth if it inadvertently creates an environment that stifles my ability to act on my own creative drive?

What I’m pushing into is something beyond the phenomenon of teams – something that is being enabled by our capacity to listen, share, understand and make space for each other – but that takes us beyond ourselves into a possibility that none of us can imagine or manifest by ourselves. Here are a few great responses that I think point into this direction:

“What I found key is the individual purpose and/or motivation should be aligned and catalyzed by the collective. Individual should be in the center but grounded in the collective big-picture. (…) The magic seems to be in kick-starting the individual fire, by finding and highlighting to the collective the unique contribution of each individual in the team. (…) And we compete by shaping the diamond in so more perfect angles together.” (Daniela Micodin in Vienna)

“… we are exploring how we demonstrate collective intelligence beyond ego by acting out of our authentic selves as we work together. (…) The key challenge: how to inspire individual genius within collective wisdom to create collective genius!” (Robin Wood in Perpignan)

“However, I firmly believe that it’s worth the effort to try to make [teams] work, by dealing with the many issues you illuminate [...]. When you address head-on the varying levels of capacity, ego, territorial concern in an open, safe and supportive atmosphere [...] you can emerge with something quite amazing and beyond anyone’s furthest imagination of what is possible.” (Nadine Hack in New York)

What I find so strong in these responses is the inherent balance between the personal and the collective, the interior and the exterior, the individual needs and the collective purpose. There is a climate of understanding, respect, trust, bottom-up empowerment – but it is a climate in which empowerment serves a strong collective drive, respect and understanding enable the facing of ego-issues, and trust shifts competition from individual dominance to collective excellence.

I know from my own experience that this balance is the hardest thing to achieve, but the most amazing and satisfying thing we can do in a lifetime. I’ve been in situations that were as close to perfect as humanly possible (Nadine knows this as she beautifully guided me in it and showed me many things about myself!) and was utterly challenged to embrace the possibility of a higher emergence. Despite my enthusiasm for this emergence, I struggled and at some point failed to embrace it when I needed to – but it taught me the real human growth that this takes.

Why is that? The creative force we can unleash by going beyond our mundane, superficial relationships is stronger than we are, we can’t control it, it takes over from us. The more you let go, the more there is to give. It’s a bit like this: the more money you put in the bank, the greater your debt. Now if there’s anything you want to keep for yourself, that’s an unattractive scenario. But if you want to give everything to what stirs your passion, it’s the best thing you could ever do. And if you not only see your peers flourish in doing the same but experience yourself the exhilarating power of collective emergence, you have entered a new way of being.

So that’s a very different way to work. There are some inspiring examples of team emergence – I recently read the story of the handful of Open Source volunteers who saved the Internet when something went badly wrong – without official positions, without anyone taking a lead; for two hours they laboured to get it back on track, just because they felt called to do it. And they needed money nor glory in return – there were no job-reviews.

Here’s my hunch: the whole thing about Team Players is only the beginning. It was the act of putting on our skates – now we have to start skating! And whoever has ever had the pleasure of skating on natural ice (as a Dutch girl, I grew up with that), you know that skating alters your perception of the possible, particularly when you do it together and bolster each other’s courage; the ice may crack, you may not know how to stop, but you have that exhilarating sense of freedom and possibility – an expanded understanding of your own destination.

The Truth about Teams

Organisational psychologist J. Richard Hackman gave an interview in Harvard Business Review, called “Why Teams Don’t Work”. I felt curious about the title as, indeed, I find that often teams don’t work and can sap people’s precious energy, creating a sceptical or even cynical attitude towards meetings of any kind.

I found Prof. Hackman’s interview enlightening in several ways. He mentions reasons why teams often don’t work: problems with coordination and motivation, competition with other teams, too much homogeneity because of lack of risk, and HR departments only focusing on individual development rather than team performance. He also attacks the hype about ‘being a team player’, often a contradiction in terms as it tends to overshadow the primary skills a team player would need to bring to the team in order for it to do well.

I think this is all very true and valuable – yet I wasn’t completely satisfied. It didn’t give me clarity on how we could create an environment for better teams.

I’ve been part of countless teams throughout my life, from symphony orchestras to senior management teams to women’s groups. I’ve probably experienced every possible situation: the ecstasy of performing far beyond the capability of any one individual, keeping my head down to stay out of trouble, being bored to death by endless meetings, being asked to leave because I didn’t keep up with my peers, and the most spectacular one was being fired by a team-hugging organisation for providing my team with correct data (I had ‘hurt’ them with our disastrous financial data).

What I have learned from this is two things: a well-functioning team is complex, while striving towards one simple, unifying purpose.

This sounds simplistic, but I don’t think we usually set up teams with this in mind. For a team to function well it needs to fully integrate all dimensions of existence: the inner, the outer, the individual and the collective.

First of all: What is our purpose? Are we setting out to do something that each team member can be fully behind, whatever their level of engagement and whatever their personal interpretations?

Once this is clear, what are the dimensions of our existence that need to be integrated to align us with that purpose? What is the (interior) attitude and wisdom I bring to the team? What (exterior) skills do I bring? What is our function in the collective and what are our deliverables? And what is the culture between us and the collective spirit we want to deliver our mission in?

Simply being aware of this can transform a team. Why? Because what happens is a fundamental shift from having our locus in ourselves, to having it in that which we are here to do – our purpose. We move from changing (or moulding) the individual, to calibrating all dimensions so we will be an integrated whole and perform the best we can.

That means the individual can be who they are, but the ego has been fired. Individual needs will be met through the collective purpose, while the collective outcome will be determined by our unique individual contributions.

I’m not speaking about something Utopian. We are used to setting our standards so low! What I see as the main downfall of Western Capitalism is the deep-seated assumption that we can only operate from ego, or in other words, have to submit to the reality of competition, half-heartedness, personal ambition and self-interest.

I think this is a gross under-estimation of who we are and what we are capable of. If we are capable of dreaming up ideals, setting goals, and fighting a noble struggle to turn them into reality, why wouldn’t we fulfil that promise? Why would we ever suffer our own and each other’s egoic motives at all?

Even putting your focus on this for a few minutes reveals how superficial the idea of a ‘team player’ is. It is time we get up from our slumber and reach for the higher fruits.

A New Leadership

Several comments over the last week made me think more about the issue of leadership.

Zhaawano wrote: “Bruce Hardwick, an Anishinaabe spiritual teacher once said: “There are no great leaders left in this world, and I have to follow myself.””

Ralf wrote: “Taking into account your experience in the garden, where the single grass on the terrace will be picked by your hand quickly and has no chance at all to grow. How would the grass manage to grow across the terrace?”

These two very different comments seem to me curiously related. Leadership is a big industry these days. It is being taught at all levels – school kids, nurses, CEO’s, politicians – you name it. Our traditional command-and-control structures are not functioning anymore, the last 50 years have been the liberation of the individual and it is not enough anymore to be a sheep in the herd. Now that we have increasingly more freedom to express ourselves fully we must reinvent how to lead each other.

But how much of that leadership work is truly revolutionary? Many programs are admirable, inspiring, successful. But do they give us a new leadership that gives us what we need to confront the complex future we are about to enter?

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with encouraging people to be authentic, express their full potential or remove the limitations from their thinking. That’s important work. But it is the scope of liberation where I feel we’re on the cusp of something new.

Leadership has always been in the context of power structures where individuals rule the collective. This has worked for thousands of years, sometimes in horribly exploitative ways, sometimes in noble, wholesome ways. But the world has changed – and we have changed. Globalisation has lifted us out of our local isolation, individualism has given us the courage and development to stand up and decide for ourselves, the crumbling of the class systems mean that each individual has access to higher education. Thanks to these forces the world has, of course, become infinitely more complex.

A friend who works at one of the biggest software giants told me how one authentic speech of a SVP, in which he urged his subordinates to speak the truth under all circumstances, changed something fundamentally in the collective. Could this have happened through Monday-morning-memo’s in the traditional command-and-control structure? I doubt it.

So what happens in these instances? There’s the depth, integrity and courage of a leader, who is authentic and is not afraid of what others think. But there’s also a mysterious collective force that absorbs this authenticity into hundreds or perhaps thousands of people, in a way that no one would want to avoid it anymore.

I think many people realise this much. But how did we even get to this point? What is the connection between the leader in ourselves, and the collective as the leader? Could it be that the SVP gained his courage from the collective that he knew he shares with his thousands of subordinates, rather than from some amazingly rare personal disposition? To me it sounds as if there is no boundary between the authentic SVP talking about only speaking the truth, and the many individuals who take his words in through a sort of osmosis and change their behaviour in subtle, positive ways.

What is this collective? Could it be that we aren’t the individuals we think we are? Could it be that leaders aren’t the great people they think they are? What if the next step is a matter of all of us tapping into a higher force that supports and inspires us all?

I know this sounds spiritual. But think about it – our old ways don’t work anymore. Under market pressure, senior management is often a revolving door. Political power games spoil many matches. People at all levels of the traditional hierarchy can be seen walking around with knives in their backs. At the same time, what is happening with Web 2.0, with face book, with the new ways of working of GenY seems to be a collective emergence that leaders (usually Boomers or GenX) know they can’t really influence or control. The Force is taking over!

Honestly, I can count my scars from trying to avoid this new reality. It took me many years to wake up to the interplay of the collective and my own ‘inner’ leadership, in spite of the practical, daily necessity to do things very differently. I think we better catch up, discover it, start experimenting… I’m curious about your experience.

The Trouble with Values

One of the most contentious issues in the melt-down of Western Capitalism is values. But I’m also finding that when talking about values, I easily end up in a muddle about what values mean – it seems that everyone has a different view.

Mostly they are looked at as objects with a clearly defined meaning. Honesty, truthfullness, care. So far, so good. But what does that mean? Honest to whom? To the public? To the Board? To the employees? To the tax man? And for what reason? Because of the law? Because of inner integrity?

I think values give us trouble, because looking at values as objective traits doesn’t work without first seeing how we operate from values as subjective structures.

Those value structures are not what we think, but how we think. We can see objectively what someone thinks, but our interpretation happens through how we think ourselves.

And there’s the catch. Without introspection and objectivity on ourselves we won’t be able to understand the values someone else filters our values through, and will end up either miscommunicating or imposing our own preferred values.

Now the times of imposing values by Royal or Papal decree is over – in our postmodern times values can’t be prescribed anymore. They have to be internalised, accepted, understood. That’s why most conventional consulting on values is rubbish.

What, rubbish? Those painstakingly crafted corporate values that we’ve carefully rolled out through all-staff breakfast meetings and put up on the walls in beautiful graphics? In a corporate climate of cold mechanistic impersonality, what could possibly be wrong with that?

Unfortunately most corporate values don’t actually touch people’s real values, as they don’t consider the interior of the human being. They don’t deal with the value structure of the individual. If applied in a top-down mechanistic way as a one-size-fits-all, they will be nothing more than the new prescribed mode of being – and nothing to do with real values.

‘Our Customers Come First’ – well what does that really mean to each employee? Is customer value really what makes a human being tick? If a manager cares first and foremost about his team, if a coffee lady lives to please her collegues with great coffee, if an environmental officer looks at the future, is that perhaps not good enough? Do we train them to smile and say the customer comes first? And do they perhaps fear a falling out and losing their job if they pursue wholeheartedly what they truly value?

You can see the trouble… how do we create values that work universally? Hanging some beautiful graphics at the entrance is not enough – values are meaningless unless deeply lived.

‘Shareholder value’ is just as much an oxymoron. If shareholder value is about money for the shareholders, the meaning of the word ‘value’ gets problematic. The values of our shareholders are expressed in the well-being of the organisation, its employees and its natural and social environment – not only now but into our grandchildren’s future. That obviously doesn’t allow for Fred the Shred hiding out in Turkey.

So you can see how ‘care’ or ‘integrity’ will look different depending on the value structure of the human being holding that value. From a purely traditional capitalist perspective care looks different than from a triple-bottom-line perspective.

The only way forward I see is if honesty, dedication, humility and respect (and I’m picking these randomly) stop being seen as soft, vague or taboo, but are the heartbeat of any organisation. Not just as fixed, objective traits, but as living, internalised expressions of what moves us – whatever corporate ranking, cultural background, education, gender or generation we filter those values through.

The one thing we all know is that when you shake someone’s hand, you can tell their values in an instant. If we pay attention, we can’t be fooled. And in a way, we can rebuild our capitalist system just based on that simple fact alone.

The good news is that there’s No Way Back

My overwhelming impression is that in response to the recession, most people are still trying to ‘go back to normal’ or ‘restore the financial system’.

Not only is this impossible, it would be madness.

The collapse we’re seeing currently, not only of the markets but also of the environment and the old world order, points to something much bigger: the collapse of the Modern Age.

That statement may seem to take us back to History Class, but it’s worth taking a closer look.

It was around the 1700’s, the Age of Enlightenment, that science and independent thinking took off, and a bit later the Industrial Revolution. This was the flowering of the Modern Age which so radically changed our thinking. Before that time, we were shackled by our ignorance, the Church, feudalism, our warring empires and fiefdoms. Most of us didn’t go to school, didn’t live beyond 40, and in fact it’s fair to say that one didn’t think one’s own thoughts, but those of the establishment. It really is a very recent event that we all started thinking as individuals. The Universe is 14 billion years old, and individualism is only a mere 300 years old.

When we walk through the City of London, do we ever consider that the first money market, started in a coffeehouse somewhere in the Square Mile, was a radical leap in evolution? I tend to take it for granted, but opening the world of money to any individual willing to play the game was a huge accomplishment in human development.

Eager to throw off our shackles, we embraced critical thinking and science. After more than a millenium under the tyranny of a Church Empire controlling our hearts and minds, we found freedom in evidence, critical reason, facts & figures. We didn’t buy the myths of the Church anymore and claimed our maturity. We observed the planets and worked out how they related, ditching the Creation Story. That literally blew our minds and we established Reason as our mode of thinking, not Belief. We took a newfound delight in this, pushing away the old order, and so, in our well-meaning zeal, we threw out the baby with the bathwater.

We entrusted interior principles such as morality, compassion and honesty to the exterior field of science and observation, where we thought them safe from Church manipulation and monopoly.  Not realising that that’s exactly how they fell prone to massive manipulation.

Why? Because they’re interior phenomenon, not exterior. Our endeavour to measure everything objectively in facts & figures was fundamentally flawed because we didn’t understand the differentiation between the realm of facts & figures (the exterior) and moral values (the intererior). You can’t see moral values, you can only measure them by interpretation, and that’s where the catch is.

And so the phallacy of scientific materialism was born. That’s a tired mouthful but it means that Yes, we have unprecendent freedom and power, space to be creative and develop, all things that are extremely positive. But No, we lack in moral values, compassion and honesty. And risk being ridiculed as an oldfashioned C of E sissy when saying that.

Laws meant to regulate the Free Market have bred a generation of lawyers and accountants who specialise in abusing laws for purposes they weren’t intended for.

Corporate values meant to bring morality to large corporations are more often than not used as marketing tools for attracting investment and, what’s even worse, pushing employees back into a feudal structure of ruthless productivity (‘Our Core Value is the Customer’).

The free market was deemed the most reliable tool to govern derivatives. Facts & figures were intentionally made so complex that nobody understood them, and were then used to justify the immoral practice of selling money that didn’t exist. And back we went to the Church-run business of superstition and indulgences (all in Latin).

We want to be inclusive of everyone and nurture diversity. So we invented countless forms with tickboxes, creating obstacles for immigrants and making any normal person feel like the loneliest person on the planet.

And on and on. Now we wonder what went wrong, and point fingers at the government, bankers, corporations. But the issue is much larger and we should rise above our blame.

I’m saying this is not the collapse of government, banks and corporations. Look around – it is the collapse of the Modern Age. And the good news is that Grand Old Ages only tend to collapse when we’re ready for the next one. So rather than looking back and pointing fingers, we need to look ahead and scrutinise our own thinking.

Because our own thinking is the key to the way forward, not the government, not the bankers, not your employer.

Human existence contains an Exterior as well as an Interior – call it matter and values. You can’t singularly measure one through the other. I can’t do my bookkeeping by thinking alone, but equally you can’t tell what I think by looking at the figures. To observe your child’s development you don’t only look at their school markings, height and weight, but also their behaviour, happiness, willingness to say ‘goodmorning’ and help someone in need.

We must apply this to all of society. We must end our binge-objectification. Use the legal frameworks we established for their rightful purpose: as a guideline for moral behaviour. Interpret facts & figures through our morality: depending on the context, a massive profit could be a blessing or pure evil. Balance rewards with intentions – rewarding for leadership is healthy, but buying greed with greed destroys the very aim of the enterprise.

This is the beginning of the Integral Age, in which our values and performance are integrated to one balanced whole. Our interior world validated by external facts & figures that reflect our moral values. And our exterior world of facts & figures interpreted through our values and intuitions. So that we build a balance we’ve never managed yet, and can truly take a step forward.

Why Scarcity in Abundance?

Lately I’ve been talking to veterans in leadership, organisational change and management.  And what keeps striking me is this question: Why do we believe in scarcity?

I think everyone agrees that financially things are not going well. Opinions differ but people do agree that we’re in a recession. However I don’t think that collectively we’re clear about the size, scope and cause. At all. In fact, the most frequent response I observe is automatic finger-pointing to the government.

Now particularly in Britain that’s understandable because our government has gotten on the wrong side of just about everything anybody could ever get on the wrong side of – like lemmings competing to reach the cliff. But how on earth did a democracy end up with an incapable government? Who voted those people in? And if our leaders seem so incompetent, what exactly does that say about us?

In fact, I admire them for the fact that they have the courage to stand up and be counted, where it’s easy for us to throw tomatoes.

But I think the issue is deeper. We’re not used to thinking about the culture we shape. Or even about the fact that we shape our culture. Culture seems to be something that’s just there, and never gives us what we need (or want).

So we worry, and compete to get what we think we need. Education is usually about competing with everyone else. There are vast networks of people helping each other not to cooperate, but outsmart each other. And do you ever consider why we compete so hard? What is the logic behind this? Why, if God has put us all on this beautiful earth (or whoever did) with big brains and enormous creativity, would there not be enough to do for everyone? Why would anyone be so cruel as to put more people on the planet than there is potential?

So then why did we create a culture of scarcity? If you think about it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. It probably did some time ago, when we were hunting and gathering and depended on what was on offer. Later we started farming and depended on the weather. But now? We have developed a world that works as one mechanism, able to make use of farming, manufacturing, hunting, services, technology, you name it – and capable of inventing new ways to deal with these modes of life as we reach the limit of each.

So why still scarcity? Isn’t it time we catch up with ourselves?

If we can see that the economy failed not because of external scarcity, but because of internal greed and incompetence, why do we try to squeeze ourselves back into that same economy, doing more of the very things we know don’t work anymore, worrying that there isn’t enough opportunity for us to do the things we don’t want to be doing?

I appreciate that many people are trapped in this economy, as they didn’t receive the skills and education others did. But many people I talk to are extremely well-educated, sophisticated, creative individuals who seem to be largely unaware of this state of affairs.

If clients don’t need our traditional consulting services of recycling the same old market ideology dressed up in New 5-Step Methods anymore, what would they need to create a new culture? What do we need to offer them to adapt, transform and morph themselves into sustainable, abundant, useful hubs of cutting-edge creativity?

Do you feel the desire to liberate the abundance that’s hidden under the old Syndicate of Scarcity?