NEW INFORMATION INTO NEW STRUCTURES
Overcoming Organizational Enslavement in a Chaotic World
David R. Brubaker, Associate Professor of Organizational Studies. David earned a BS in Business Administration from Messiah College, an MBA from Eastern University, and a PhD from the University of Arizona, where he specialized in the study of change and conflict in religious organizations. David has trained or consulted with over 100 organizations, including in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. Since graduation from college in 1980 David served with several community development and conflict transformation organizations. These roles included Associate Director of Mennonite Conciliation Service and Assistant Director of Mennonite Central Committee’s Recife, Brazil program where he became fluent in Portuguese. David is the author of numerous articles on conflict transformation, both in organizations and internationally. He is also the author of “Promise and Peril: Understanding and Managing Change and Conflict in Congregations,” published by The Alban Institute and co-author (with Ruth Hoover Zimmerman) of “The Little Book of Healthy Organizations,” published by Good Books.
Yago: David, you are very much
welcome to this blog called “Breathing Forgiveness. Embracing the Giant Wound
in the Naked Now.” As you know it aims at deconstructing the energies of
enslavement that keeps paralyzing the discovery of our real identity and potential
as humankind. In this interview I would like to look at it from the
organizational perspective. The goal is to gain new awareness in understanding
the role organizations play in the enslavement or liberation of people. But
first of all David, could you share with us what brought you to be interested
in organizational life? Could you share with us your curriculum on this regard?
David:
Thank you, Yago, I’m honored to have my thoughts included with the other highly
regarded individuals you’ve interviewed on this impressive blog. My interest in
organizational life began with a fascination with congregational life. My
father was a pastor, and I noted growing up that congregations could be the
best of places (offering identity, belonging and meaning) and yet could also
become the worst of places (spawning separation, alienation, and pain). An
institution with that much promise and potential for pain intrigued me, and I
realized once I entered the work world that virtually all organizations had the
same capacity. Over the years I’ve developed four courses at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) relevant to organizations, including congregations. These are
“Developing Healthy Organizations” and “Leadership for Healthy Organizations”
(both for the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding), “A Systems Approach to
Organizational Behavior” (for the MBA program), and “Managing Congregational
Conflict” (co-taught with Mary Thiessen Nation for the Seminary).
Yago: In "The Little Book of Healthy Organizations" you say that organizations are
best studied as living systems. The metaphor that you like most to use for an
organization is a living tree. Could you elaborate more on this? Could you
introduce briefly the main components of an organization related to the living
tree?
David:
Every organization is an “open system” (meaning it’s open to its environment)
that goes through a normal lifecycle (meaning that it’s born, grows, matures,
declines, and eventually dies). I use the tree metaphor to symbolize this
organic (living) nature of every organization. The root system represents the
structure of the organization, both its social structure and its physical
structure (buildings). The trunk represents the leadership of the organization,
both formal and informal. And the leaf and branch system represents the
culture, which can only be fully understood by those willing to climb the tree
(enter the organization) and see it from the inside. The organizational tree is
nested in a complex set of environments that include the social environment,
the political and legal environment, the geographic environment, and the
organizational field (whether academic, medical, corporate, governmental, etc.)
to which the organization belongs.
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| "The family is the first organization" |
Yago: Could you tell us how our
family experience (its organizational style) shapes our understanding/behavior
within an organization?
David:
Those of us who work with organizations often quip that “the family is the
first organization” that every human being experiences. That’s part of the
reason that family systems theory is so explanatory, helping us to understand
why many (especially smaller) organizations behave the way they do. For
example, many of our expectations of leadership are shaped by our parents or
primary caregivers. If they have a collaborative relationship with open
communication we will expect the same from leaders in organizations we work
with. But if our primary leadership models were authoritarian and patriarchal,
we will see such leadership as “normal” unless we’ve made deliberate efforts to
shape differing leadership assumptions in our own mental models.
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| Margaret Wheatley |
Yago: Margaret J. Wheatley in her
book Leadership and the New Science, says that life uses information to
organize matter into form, resulting in all the physical structures that we
see. She keeps saying that for a system to remain alive, for the universe to keep
growing, information must be continually generated. The source of life is new
information, novelty, ordered into new structures. We need to have information
coursing through our systems, disturbing the peace, imbuing everything it
touches with the possibility of new life. It looks to me that mobilization of
information and awakening to a new consciousness of information being
everywhere are key for health within organizations. What can you say about
this?
David:
I was just reading “Leadership and the New Science” last evening in preparation
for an SPI course in “Developing Healthy Organizations” where Joanne Lauterjung
Kelly and I will use Wheatley’s classic as a primary text. In the traditional
(mechanistic) model of organizational life, “communication” was a finite
resource that had to be “managed” and “controlled.” But in the organic approach
that more recent scholarship has embraced, information and communication are
infinite resources that renew organizational life by infusing new ideas and
possibilities. Communication is no longer something to be managed and
restricted, but rather to the embraced and released. Organizational members
intuitively know the difference, and tend to respond with greater trust and
respect to leaders who are open with information and encourage its free flow
through the system.
Yago: Wheatley thinks creatively when
encouraging us to check what metaphor to we give to information. She says that
another organization was able to change its approach to information by changing
its metaphor. Instead of the limiting thought that “information is power,” they
began to think of information as “nourishment.” What is the role of meaningful
metaphors when we talk about information in organizations?
David:
Metaphors are mental models that allow us to wrap our minds around difficult
concepts. So when we see information as “nourishment” we are much more likely
to drink at its wells and also to share it freely than when we see it as a
finite source of “power.” Likewise, if we view organizations as mechanistic
systems that have to be “managed” we will tend to develop control systems that reserve
power and authority for those at the top. But if we see organizations as living
systems whose members thrive when treated with care and respect then we will
develop support systems that empower individuals and groups to experiment and
create.
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| Open Systems |
Yago: I would like to tackle the
issue of intelligence within organizations. Wheatley says that organizations
are open systems. If a system has the capacity to process information, to
notice and respond, then that system possesses the quality of intelligence.
Could you expand this insight? How does an organization become intelligent in
practical terms?
David:
Because an organization is a living system rooted in a particular set of
environments it is dependent for its success and even its survival on three
primary resources from those environments—people, resources, and information.
No university, for example, could survive for more than a few years without a
regular influx of students and financial resources. But an organization is
equally dependent on a regular inflow of information from its environments.
Universities must monitor developments in the financial, technological, and lifestyle
worlds of potential students if they are to successfully attract and serve
them. If only one person, say the university president, is doing all of the
external monitoring then a very limited amount of information enters the
system. But if all members of the university are attentive to these dynamic
environments and are actively reporting on and discussing changes, then the
entire system is alert and activated. It is, in Wheatley’s language,
“intelligent.”
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| Flow of Information |
Yago: We live in a world where access
to information is everywhere. In fact intelligence could be the way we are able
to select what information is valid for the organization. It is never the
volume of the information that matters. Wheatley says that it is only the
meaning of information that makes it potent or not. When information is
identified as meaningful, it is a force for change. What can you say about the
importance of creating meaning from information in organizations?
David:
This is where the “information revolution” becomes particularly challenging, if
not overwhelming. Because the volume of information entering and circulating
within every healthy organization is indeed overwhelming, it is a constant
challenge to “make meaning” of all that data. This is why a classic management
response is to try and constrict or “manage” all that information. But a far
more productive response is to nurture the organizational strategy and culture
(particularly its vision, values, and norms) so that there is a consistent
screen for organizational members to process all that information. Rather than
attempting to restrict the flow of information, we open the floodgates but
provide several clear channels in which that information can flow and be
processed. Within the torrent of ideas, which ones truly fit our mission and
vision? As we work to implement them, how can we do so in ways consistent with
our values and norms? A clear and shared strategy and culture thus becomes an
information manager that is available to every member of the organization, not
just a select few.
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| Emergence |
Yago: How are the new discoveries in the line of quantum physics and emergence theory are challenging the traditional way of understanding organizations?
David: Perhaps the greatest contribution of the “new science” that Wheatley writes about is its displacement of traditional leadership models of “command and control” with more relevant models based on connection and cooperation. Quantum physics encourages us to see the various ways in which energy (process) creates matter (structure), and the fluid nature of the relationship between energy and matter. When applied to organizational life, we begin to focus less on how things are structured and more on how things are processed. Relationships start to matter more than roles, and information becomes a free-flowing currency that energizes productivity. Organizations are viewed not as mechanistic structures but as living organisms. Structures need to be “managed,” but organisms need to be “nurtured.”
Yago: We live in an amazing changing
world where organizations are being challenged constantly. Organizations live in
multiple environments. You say in your book Healthy Organizations that in
general, the power of an organization’s environment acts on the organization
more than vice versa. Could you expand on this? How does the environment
determine the running of an organization?
David:
Because organizations are living systems nested in a particular set of
environments, they will be regularly shaped by those environments. Much like
natural selection processes in the biological world, organizations that refuse
to adapt to a changing environment will eventually be selected out of those
environments. For example, a religious congregation located in a particular
neighborhood that refuses to adapt to the changing needs and demographics of
that neighborhood will decline and eventually die if it doesn’t make adaptive
changes. Of course, it should make those adaptive changes in ways consistent
with its deepest values and beliefs, but if it refuses to many any changes it
will eventually die.
Yago: You are currently the academic
director and practicum director at CJP. Could you tell us what concrete steps CJP is
taken so to update itself to the ever demanding and challenging times. What
kind of methodologies are in use so to be more effective in today’s world? How
is CJP dialoguing with the world and its needs? What is the sense of identity
of CJP?
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| Lynn Roth |
David:
I would give significant credit to Lynn Roth, our executive director, who led a
strategic planning process last year along with a “strategic planning task
force” that I was part of. We did a significant “environmental scan” and then
looked very carefully at our core mission and vision. We also sent surveys to
all of our alums and to as many SPI and STAR participants as we could reach,
along with scores of other colleagues and friends around the world. As a result
of the feedback and analysis, we decided to build on our greatest strengths—our
diverse and experienced students, our commitment to practice, and our
rootedness in a faith community—and to work to more fully integrate practice
into our core mission (education and training for peacebuilding). This clear
identity and purpose conveys greater
clarity about what to say “yes” to and what to say “no” to in the midst of the
many requests we receive and opportunities that we face.
Yago: Let us talk about unhealthy
organizations. How do they behave? How do they enslave people? What kind of
subtle mechanisms are used for that? How lack of self-criticism is empowered?
David:
It’s not like there are only “healthy” or “unhealthy” organizations. Rather,
there is a continuum of organizational health where you’ll find organizations
all along that range. But those organizations that cluster at the most
unhealthy end of that continuum tend to share three traits in common. First,
they feature leaders who are either highly controlling or emotionally absent
(either one is destructive to organizational life). Second, they are structured
in ways that are either rigidly hierarchical or completely fuzzy and confusing.
Third, they possess organizational cultures that are either exclusive or
lacking boundaries altogether. In other words, highly dysfunctional
organizations are either controlling, rigid, and exclusive OR fuzzy, confusing,
and boundary-free. Either extreme leads to organizational dysfunction and
enslave people in different ways.
Yago: You say that an organization’s
culture generally serves to bind its members together and provide
shared meaning and identity, but it can become exclusive and dysfunctional. It
can become a malignant presence when it hinders the organization from pursuing
its mission. Could you expand on the meaning of culture within organizations?
What are the determinants of culture? How does this apply specifically to the
Catholic Church being the largest and oldest organization currently existing?
David:
Every organization develops a culture, which is simply an accumulation of what
the organization has learned over time about the best ways to deal with its
challenges of external adaptation and internal integration (Schein). What determines
culture is a combination of the personalities and values of the organization’s
founders and its experience over time in its unique set of environments. What
makes culture visible are its values, rituals, artifacts, and narratives. The
older and larger an organization, the more embedded its culture tends to become.
As one of the oldest and largest organizations in the world, we can safely
predict that the Roman Catholic Church has a supremely well-established culture
and structure. Neither will be easy to change….
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| Pope Francis |
Yago: Pope Francis, in his Pentecost homily, invited us to be aware of transient structures which have lost their capacity for openness. He said: "Are we open to 'God’s surprises'? Or are we closed and fearful before the newness of the Holy Spirit? Do we have the courage to strike out along the new paths which God’s newness sets before us, or do we resist, barricaded in transient structures which have lost their capacity for openness to what is new? We would do well to ask ourselves these questions."
David, putting yourself in Pope Francis’ shoes, what kind of organizational steps/measures would you take so to make the Church a more lively Institution faithful to the original style of Jesus?
David: It seems that millions of people around the world have been deeply impressed with Pope Francis’ visible commitment to the poor and to viewing the Church as an instrument of God’s peace and justice in the world, rather than as a self-serving institution. I pray for Pope Francis’ success at transforming the institutional structures to truly serve the poor and others on the margins of society. At the same time, there is overwhelming empirical evidence that “the system trumps the individual,” even if that individual is at the very top of the institutional structures. If Pope Francis wishes to be an instrument of sustained transformation he will have to do three things. First, he will have to adopt a time frame that is at least two or three decades long—which means that the transformation period may outlast his own tenure as Pope. Second, he will have to build a “guiding coalition”—a critical mass of change agents that will partner with him to work for change. Third, he will have to anticipate significant resistance from those who have a strong interest in maintaining the current institutional structures and culture—and find effective ways to neutralize their efforts to forestall change.
Yago: The Second Vatican Council defined the Church as “ecclesia semper reformanda”, holy and sinful, slowly growing towards maturity. During the last years the Church has been challenged by sexual abuse scandals and hierarchical power issues. The Church more than ever is in need of reforms. These reforms must be taken from within. To my understanding, it is very important to become aware of ways that dysfunctional dimensions of an organization can affect our capacity for change and creativity. David, how does a dysfunctional
organization promote/create dysfunctional behaviour on its members? Could you give some examples?
David:
The primary way in which a dysfunctional organization protects its own
dysfunction is by establishing “no talk rules.” A no talk rule generally exits
to protect the status quo, and thus those who currently hold power within the
organization. For example, some religious organizations insist that they will
not ordain women, and they then quickly squelch any attempt to question or even
discuss the issue. Thus, the no talk rule essentially protects the male
monopoly on formal authority within the organization. It’s a brilliant, if
tragically disempowering, method to insure that power relationships never
shift. Thus, if we want to change embedded relationships within an organization
we often have to first challenge no talk rules. (And expect significant
blowback when we break the rules.)
Yago: As you just have shared one of
the determinants of organizational culture is the historic experience of an organization.
In order to grow healthily an organization is invited to deconstruct and
embrace its past, with its goodness and successes, but also with the failures
and disasters. How important and healthy is to name
reality, to do “shadowboxing,” at organizational level?
David:
As I mentioned earlier, organizational culture is constructed not just by its
lived history but even more by the stories that organizational members tell
themselves. Thus, we narratively construct our historical memories. But since
we construct them, we also have the possibility of deconstructing and
reconstructing them. When some members of an organization decide to start
speaking truth about the organization’s past the first response will be denial
and repression, as no talk rules apply to chosen histories as well. But over
time organizational narratives can shift, just as they do for entire societies.
I was raised with a version of American history that stressed how brave settlers
fought savage Indians in their quest to spread civilization across the
continent. My boys were exposed to a much more accurate (and tragic) version of
the decimation of native peoples and cultures as the colonists moved west.
Narratives change…despite resistance.
Yago: You say that the Churches do tend to be effective at transmitting belief, but they do not always shape the
leadership style in ways that reflect the leadership of Jesus? Could you
elaborate more on this insight?
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| Servant Leadership |
David: Up
until the last two generations we could have predicted with nearly complete
accuracy what religious tradition an adult would adhere to simply by asking
what religious tradition s/he was raised in. But passing on beliefs is a far
cry from shaping behavior. In the Christian scriptures, Jesus describes himself
as being among his disciples “as one who serves.” This modelling led to the
rise of the “servant leadership” school of leadership thought, which frankly
has been embraced more frequently by secular organizations than by religious
ones. I’m pleased that all of the graduate programs at EMU are now exploring
how to prepare our graduates to practice “leadership for the common good,” a
leadership model that prioritizes the good of employees, customers,
communities, and the world—not just the enrichment of CEOs and stakeholders.
Yago: You say that every organization and every
human being eventually faces the same three temptations that Jesus faced in the
wilderness. Could you expand on this? How does this affect the Churches core
values, especially compassion and love for the enemy and for the
underprivileged?
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| The Temptation of Jesus |
David:
While in the wilderness Jesus faced the same three temptations that every human
being faces—to prioritize our own needs, to seek fame, and to accumulate
personal power. While meeting one’s own needs, receiving recognition, and
possessing power are all normal and appropriate human responses, when we do so
at the expense of others they can become destructive. Jesus refused to use his
great power just to meet his own needs and instead used it to heal and feed
others. He also deflected the celebrity status that people wanted to grant him
after performing such deeds, crediting instead the power that comes only from
God. Finally, Jesus used his power not to overthrow the king in the palace but
to throw out the money changers in the temple, insisting both that the poor
should not be cheated and that Gentiles had a right to worship.
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| Peter Block |
Yago: Peter Block talks about
community as a structure of belonging. The need to create a structure of
belonging grows out of the isolated nature of our lives, our institutions, and
our communities. How structure and belonging marry together? Can an
organization aim to be a community?
David:
I’ve consulted with or mediated in over 100 organizations (30 of which were
congregations) since I first accepted this calling (to help develop healthy
organizations) in 1987. While these organizations included for-profit
corporations, government institutions, and non-for-profit organizations, every
one of them functioned as a community of people as well as a formal
organization. Thus, I tell my clients that by definition their organization is
also a community—the only question is how healthy of a community it will be.
Most of us will spend at least half our waking lives (8 hours per day) in the
context of a variety of organizational communities (including schools,
workplaces, religious congregations, and other formal associations), and
therefore they will affect us at least as much as do our families. Every human
being needs a sense of identity, belonging, and meaning—and a healthy
organization (just like a healthy family) will contribute to fulfilling all
three needs. An unhealthy organization, tragically, will demean and diminish
all three needs.
Yago: You say that organizations take
on lives on their own. They are born, they grow and mature, and most eventually
decline and die. Human organizations are thus much like the life cycle of other
organism that inhabit this world. Organizations are dynamic and interdependent
systems. In this regard, in my theological thesis at Tangaza College (Nairobi) I proposed four
ecclesiological (organizational) models/metaphors that the African Church is
invited to integrate and live simultaneously in order to navigate efficiently in
the extremely difficult and complex conditions of today’s Africa. These models are: the “Pilgrim Family of
the Paschal God” (“ecclesia semper
reformanda”, holy and sinful, slowly growing towards maturity); the “Compassionate One” (embracing the pain, ender care that nothing
be lost); the “Suffering Servant of Yahweh” (immersing
herself in the pain of history, disfigured… ); and the
One “Bringing Voice to the Voiceless” (the revolutionary one).
You say that evolutionary change
is more successful that revolutionary change. Could you expand on this in the
context of these models?
David:
I would need to spend considerably more time reflecting on the four models you
propose, but the concepts of a “pilgrim family,” “compassionate one,”
“suffering servant,” and “revolutionary one” strike me as four conceptual
models that would fit a religious congregation or institution in almost any
society. The Apostle Paul wrote about his desire to “become all things to all
people,” and I believe that the church has a similar calling today. There are
times when the church needs to journey with, to suffer with, and even to
(non-violently) “revolt with” the people that she is serving. With the nearly
constant change that we are now experiencing around the world, however,
continual, adaptive change processes will prove to be more effective for
organizations such as churches than will episodic “revolutions” that radically
disrupt the status quo but are generally not sustained. The historic reforms of
a “Vatican II,” for example, were easily overturned by successive popes,
whereas the profound change accomplished over time by a Church continually
reforming will not be.
Yago: Organization change when leaders
change. How does this apply to the Church?
David:
It’s important to know who I include when I say “leaders,” as I’m not talking
only about the formal leaders in the organizational hierarchy. Rather,
religious “leadership,” for example, includes not just the ordained but also
the lay leaders who provide the key energy and direction for that congregation
or organization. So when I talk about “leaders changing” I mean that a critical
mass of the formal and informal leaders have made a significant change. We almost
never get 100%, but we don’t need 100%. Rather, we need to have a sufficient
critical mass that the change is both initiated and sustained.
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| Social Capital and Community |
Yago: The Catholic Church has an amazing Social Capital. Her level and potential for networking is beyond definition. Still we see that its real impact in concrete international and domestic policies in today’s world is very precarious. Why?
David: Every organization, including religious and academic ones, faces the temptation to become self-serving rather than other-serving. The older and larger they are the greater this temptation, so again the Roman Catholic Church will be vulnerable to this temptation. But universities are equally tempted, as those of us who are faculty members start to believe that the real purpose of the university is to support our careers and our scholarship. Instead, we must remind ourselves of how incredibly fortunate we are to be part of a diverse and energized learning community, and that the overarching priority of the institution must be the education of students and the co-production of knowledge—not institutional maintenance and faculty benefits.
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| Helder Camara |
Yago: You have being living for three years in Brasil in the 80’s. You had the privilege to witness a very lively Church in Recife Diocese under the leadership of Bishop Helder Camara. What can you share with us of your Church experience during that time? How Camara envisioned the Church as a healthy organization? How does it relate to the bottom-up model of emergence theory?
David: I would love to talk more with you about this incredibly energizing time in our lives and the life of the Recife/Olinda diocese with the leadership of Dom Helder Camara, but it would take far more space than I think you would want to devote here. Suffice it to say that I have never experienced a time when the church was so alive, and the people who comprise the church so hopeful.
Yago: What happened when you returned few years later? Why do you think that occurred?
David: When Dom Helder Camara retired and was replaced by Dom Jose (appointed under John Paul II), there was an attempt to purge the “liberal” elements of the Church in the diocese. This led to the closing of the seminary in Recife and the disappearance of most of the lay Catholic communities that had been meeting for weekly Bible studies. In the desire to “control” the Church the energy and enthusiasm was wrung out of it, a truly tragic by-product of traditional command and control thinking applied to a living organism.
Yago: How do we create a
conflict-healthy organization?
David:
A conflict-healthy organization is characterized by three attributes. First,
there is a general attitude that conflict is natural and normal, and therefore
is not to be feared or avoided. Second, there is a culture of approachability
(modelled by leaders) that invites disagreement and moves towards disagreement
and conflict rather than away from them.
Third, there are mechanisms in place
(such as mediation and an ombuds office) that are offered to help individuals
deal with conflict when it has escalated beyond the point of effective
interpersonal communication. How do we create such an organization? We start
behaving as if it has already arrived. When members start behaving this way,
particularly those who are formal and informal leaders, the conflict culture
begins to change. Sometimes the assistance of an outside coach or consultant is
also needed to help the whole system move forward in healthy and incremental
ways.
Yago: We become fully alive when we
are co-creators. Identity is a crucial issue. How can an organization become
fully alive, with a sense of flexibility of constant newness?
David:
We’ve been talking a lot about change and agents of change, so I want to put in
a good word for what I call “agents of stability.” The organizations that I
have experienced as healthiest (and most alive) tend to have a delightful
balance and respect between the “agents of change” and “agents of stability.”
While the latter may appear at times to be the ones who resist change, when I
talk with them I realize there is something very precious in the history or
tradition of the organization that they are trying to hold on to. If we can
learn to value the agents of stability alongside the agents of change we will
find that there is a delicate symmetry in organizational life, and that we are
embracing both the new and the old. But when we demean those at either end of
the spectrum, we will create destructive conflict and contested identity (such
as we now see in the U.S. Congress).
Yago: Leadership as meaning-making…
Leadership as a journey of self-discovery… How can an organization live in the
now? What kind of mechanism (inner design of the organization… roles,
leadership positions, use of power and rank…) are needed so that the
organization becomes really organic and interactive with the environment?
David:
What I have learned from your “butterfly model,” Yago, is that the inner
journey matters every bit as much as the outer journey. Therefore, leaders who
are going more deeply inside themselves (often with the help of a guide on that
inner journey) will also find themselves able to accompany an organization on
its own inner journey. It is that journey of self-discovery (both at the
individual and the organizational level) that will allow an organization to
reach out into its environment with a clear sense of identity and purpose.
Organizations that are clear about their identity and purpose (that possess a
clear mission and vision) will be far more successful than organizations that
are fuzzy or opaque about their identity and purpose. Just as in nature, an
organization survives and thrives in a particular environment because it has
established an ecological niche.
Yago: Richard Rohr in his last book Immortal Diamond speaks very clearly
about the urgent need to find the “unified field of love” and then start our
thinking and strategizing from that point. What nourishes really an
organization? How can living in the Now nourish and challenge an organization?
David:
I first entered the world of work in 1975 as a recent high school graduate
working as a dispatcher for a trucking company, and I have been employed by
eight different organizations in the nearly 40 years since that first full-time
job. When I look back at the various organizations I worked for and the many
colleagues and supervisors I worked with, I realize that there is one essential
difference between the leaders and organizations I loved working with and the
ones I did not. That essential difference—leaders I loved and respected cared
about me (and my colleagues) as human beings, not just as
human doings. While they valued
productivity and encouraged clear goal-setting, the leaders I most respected
valued relationships even more. What most nourishes an organization? Leaders
who love—what they do as well as who they work with. What most destroys an
organization? Leaders who use and abuse the people who work “under” them. Those
of us who are leaders, formal or informal, must also strive to be lovers.
Yago: David, thanks a lot for your wonderful contribution to this blog. We have gained many insights in our call to live meaningfully within organizations.
David: Thanks to you, Yago!
