Imagine if our managers believed they were custodians of a living system, rather than controllers of an economic machine.
The stories we tell ourselves create our reality. Because of our machine story we put people into boxes (jobs), isolate them in silos (departments) and constrict them with policies and rules that sap humanity and creativity. We fail to realise that human beings require meaning in their lives as much as we require oxygen and nutrients in our bodies. Barry Oshry proved experimentally that the current ways of organising are bound to fail. They don’t work well even in the army or the church let alone business and society. We need to start thinking of work as a necessary part of a living system that helps provide our physical needs, our intellectual needs, our emotional needs and our spiritual needs.
If our story was about living systems we would stop restructuring every time a new CEO was appointed or a government changed. We would save ourselves from the endless cycle of centralising and decentralising; loosening and tightening structures; tinkering backwards and forwards like detailed mechanics. Rather we would start preparing the soil to plant and grow liberated people. We would allow the system to be more like beanbags and to move naturally towards its ‘sweet-spot’ that can only be interfered with by over-management. Instead of controls, regulation or manipulation, the way we control machines, we need to help people grow physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Cheers
