Dancing with Change: Cultivating Healthy Organisations

Dancing with Change

Cultivating Healthy Organisations

Eric Lynn

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Copyright © 2020 by Eric Lynn

Published by Eric Lynn, cultureQs

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All photographs © Eric Lynn

cultureQs and Qs are registered trademarks owned by Eric Lynn

Cover design: Tina Hanisch, missmilla design.

eBook: Laura Kier, www.buchwelten.net

ISBN 978-3-949056-10-9

"Mundus vult decipi:

The world wants to be deceived.

The truth is too complex and frightening:

the taste for the truth is an acquired taste that few acquire."

(Martin Buber, I and Thou)

Table of Contents

Change and the Essence of Life

… Change … and … Life …

What do you understand by Change?

Confusion about …Change … and the Essence of Life

Origins of the machine metaphor to describe our world

Living Systems

Changing the Narrative

Organisation Change

Interlude: A Walk through the Forest as the Fog closes in …

Nature’s Dance

Growing: Life is Relational (1)

Interacting: Life is Relational (2)

The Power of Personal Stories: Life is Relational (3)

Observing Nature Changing: Natureʼs Dance (1)

Growing and Evolving: Natureʼs Dance (2)

Flowing with Natureʼs Changes: Natureʼs Dance (3)

Weaving and Learning

The End: Natureʼs Dance (4)

Dance Stoppers

Wandering Blindly into the Swamp

Languaging: How our Patterns cause us to, unintentionally, Stop Nature's Dance

Illusions, Models, Heroes and Myths – same same … but different

Common Examples of Dance Stoppers in Action

The Illusion of Understanding

The Illusion of Knowing

The Illusion of Control

The Illusion that Constructed Models actually explain the World

The Illusion that we need Heroic Leaders

The Illusion that Myths about Change are Accurate Representations

Popular and Populist Myths about Change

Change can be managed

Focus on Change

Cause and Effect for Change are Definable

People resist Change

Change is a Project. Change is a Process.

Change Occurs in Definable Stages

Change is Hard

Change is Painful

Change Sometimes Fails

Focus on a Change / the Change

Change is Measurable

There's an end to Change

Developing Antibodies to Myths about Change

Composing the Music

Shifting Sands: Reflection (1)

An Essential Question: Reflection (2)

Dancing: Reflection (3)

Towards Cultivation: Reflection (4)

Cultivating Healthy Organisations

Fundamental Questions

Moving Beyond the Limitations of What's Possible

The Fundamental Question for any Organisation

Seeing the Whole Organisation: Beyond Incomplete Frameworks for Organisation Health

The Role of External Consultants: A Reminder for Organisation Leaders

The Fine Print

Characteristics of Healthy Organisation

Characteristics of a Healthy Organisation

Further Questions for Reflection …

The Business Case for Organisation Health

Everyday Life in Organisations

Organisation Culture Alive

A Dance … Culture and Change: Perspectives through Multiple Changing Lenses

The Inevitable Messiness of History

Ensuring Healthy Organisation Interactions

A Practical Framework

How can we Cultivate a Healthy Organisation? A Practical Framework

Principle: Clear Purpose. Clear Focus.

Principle: We Work with … the Inherent Complexity in Living Organisms

Principle: Organisation Culture Change Initiatives are actively and visibly led by the Senior Decision-Makers

Principle: Collective Leadership

Principle: The Group knows what it needs, even if it doesn't know that it knows

Principle: Conversations in Dialogue

Principle: Shape a 'Trust Space' in which people genuinely listen to one another

Principle: External Facilitation is a Prerequisite for Success

One herb alone does not make a spicy dish

Transitioning to Action

Dancing to Changing Rhythms

Questions for Personal Reflection

Acknowledgements

Sources of Inspiration

cultureQs®

The Author: Eric Lynn

Change and the Essence of Life

Life is relational …

Independence is an illusion … It is also real …

… Change … and … Life …

Welcome.

The focus of this book is Change. The focus is also Organisation and Society Health.

Actually, these two notions are so intricately intertwined that they are inseparable in the context of living communities.

While this may not be immediately obvious, hopefully, it will become so.

Convention suggests that these first pages be devoted to an introduction to the theme of this book.

Introductions are for beginnings.

As we are focusing on change, it makes little sense to speak of beginnings. Why is this? … Please read on …

It is always healthy to Question norms and conventions.

We may or may not decide to change them.

Failure to Question them is potentially harmful to individuals and the societies in which we live.

We need to Question our narratives about change.

Indeed, it is essential that we change the way we think about change as well as the way we work with change.

Why?

Because our world is a mess.

We’ve got it wrong. Misunderstandings concerning the nature of change pervade life, and this is one of the primary reasons our world is a mess.

The mess includes … widespread violent conflict; millions of refugees fleeing conflict, poverty and exploitation; environmental destruction; the poverty of human ethics; pervasive corruption; the shallowness of politics; increasing levels of psychological stress; manipulation and wasted potential everywhere, including all corporations, institutions and organisations.

While the scale and perceived significance of these problems may be greater than in the past, none of them are in any way new.

The impact of these problems on health should be crystal clear.

What do they have to do with change?

Everything!

At the time of writing these words, it is May 2020, and throughout the world, people are trying to come to terms with the effects of the COVID-19 virus. However, notwithstanding the disruption that the virus is causing, our world was in a sad and unhealthy condition long before it enriched us with its presence.

Enriched?, you may ask. Why, yes. COVID-19 has served to illuminate the relationships between so many of the factors causing the mess we have been creating for a long time.

Gregory Bateson, anthropologist, philosopher, biologist and much more besides, succinctly summarised the primary cause of our problems in the middle of the 20th century:

The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and how people think.

The problems we are confronted with today are infinitely more complex than they were during Gregory Bateson’s lifetime.

Unfortunately, we, human beings, nowadays tend to listen far too rarely to those who offer us the learnings of this deep wisdom, wisdom that has actually been available to us for thousands of years, wisdom that understands the natural flows of life.

Instead, we are too easily distracted, indeed blinded by those bright flashing lights operated by the so-called movers and shakers, people who continue to exacerbate the world’s problems while promising easy gold, repeating the mistakes of the past in their attempts to manipulate nature in order to expedite their selfish personal interests.

Ironically, conventional perspectives of progress all too frequently, actually, embody a process of negative retrogression.

Let’s progress by going back to the future … generatively.

Let’s understand … and work with … nature’s simple lessons about change and life.

This is a book about change.

It makes no claim whatsoever to be a comprehensive work.

Indeed, I don’t believe that it is even possible to write such a compendium.

Such a book would indeed contradict the very essence of this ubiquitous notion that enables life.

This is not a book about change.

It’s a book about life, which is actually the same thing.

The book makes no claim whatsoever to be a comprehensive work.

How could anyone be so ostentatious as to even think they were able to write such a compendium?

I am certainly not claiming to understand life.

I understand what I understand about life, which does not mean I understand life.

What I understand about life is continuously changing … as I learn.

I do, however, consider that I have acquired some understanding of change and the role it plays in our lives.

There are no contradictions whatsoever in the above sentences.

Paradoxes perhaps; but not contradictions.

Life is full of paradoxes.

Can we play with them?

I would love to think that people working in organisations and societies everywhere, regardless of size, feel able to use the principles and frameworks presented here to shape thriving healthy communities in which they live and work.

This challenge ought not to be all that difficult, yet it is clearly beyond the grasp of many organisation leaders. This is an observation, not a criticism.

We can change this … together.

For centuries, we humans have proven proficient in making life difficult for ourselves.

Let’s change this too.

Throughout this book, I use the metaphors of nature, music and dancing to illustrate the notions of change and healthy communities.

Unfortunately, moving and thinking in accordance with nature are skills that appear to have become dormant among the majority of human beings. We were actually born with these skills. After all, we are nature. In the words of ecologist Rex Weyler, "We are wild animals."

Our social systems, together with their associated political and education systems, teach us to perceive our world as a machine to be manipulated. Therefore, even when we are designing initiatives with a generative intention, we tend to build in hinderances and stumbling stones that prevent us from dancing to nature’s tune.

We need to relearn nature’s flows; not merely learn about them academically, but internalise the principles so that working in accordance with them becomes natural for us.

Current estimates place the global population at 7.5 billion human beings.

Every single human being gathers a unique collection of experiences during their life; experiences which are experienced through the lenses of those already acquired.

And so, our perceptions and perspectives of life are changing as we learn.

What a rich and powerful source of learning, evolution and development this is.

Let’s cultivate it.

Throughout this book, I am inviting you to reflect on your own personal perceptions, perspectives and experience.

The text is interspersed with pauses, interludes and Questions.

These too constitute an invitation for reflection.

You, of course, will decide for yourself whether or not to actually make the time and space to answer the Questions.

Having learned that confronting uncomfortable Questions constitutes a rich source of personal learning, I would recommend doing so, while actually writing down whatever comes into your mind. The act of writing on paper, rather than a piece of electronic equipment, can help to clarify what may well be a collection of confusing murky thoughts. Should your thoughts remain murky even after writing them down, that’s fine. In the words of Alan Watts, the philosopher,

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

Outline, structure and content

I feel that the structure of a book about organisational and community change should reflect the theme.

However, nothing whatsoever about change is clear and structured. Yet, a book of this nature requires clear configuration.

Decades of working with both individuals and groups has taught me the necessity of providing orientation within a supporting framework. When the context is open to so many different interpretations, as it is here, providing such a structure becomes even more important.

We have a dilemma.

Change is messy, occurring in interactions that cannot be readily defined, delineated or necessarily specified. I am trying to reflect this undefinability while doing justice to the message, by weaving through multiple contexts simultaneously and continuously. Hopefully, the result