TO FUTURE-PROOF YOUR BUSINESS YOU'LL NEED ALL SYSTEMS SELF-EVOLVING

Business is entering a period of fundamental change. Very few organisations will survive. Those that do will have a different mindset.

Many managers believe their organisations are 'mechanical' and can be driven and controlled like a machine; therefore they 'restructure', 'downsize' and 'reengineer' them. For the most important things in an organisation (culture, relationships, teamwork and customer service) it's more accurate and helpful to see them as 'organic'; more like a garden or a forest that evolves by itself. They are not things you can build from a blueprint, like a house, by specifying and assembling a series of materials and actions. It is far more subtle than that. Like all emergent properties they can be encouraged, led and given visibility; but they can't be commanded or pushed into being.

It's more accurate and useful to see culture, relationships, teamwork and customer service as natural byproducts of a high-performing organisation. Systems thinking and complexity science shows that like all emergent properties, good culture, relationships, teamwork and customer service are the natural way of being and they will emerge automatically at the level of the whole system once it achieves the required level of interconnectivity, increased communication, deeper relationships and improved trust.

The old (current) mechanical image is unbelievably wasteful. By focusing topdown on structure, rules, constitutions and legislation they drain the life from their organisation; and by constantly structuring and restructuring managers keep themselves so busy and important they fail to work on the garden. They don't prepare the soil (build trust, connection, relationships, communication); sow the best seeds; develop green fingers (develop leadership skills that are both magic and logic); tend the plants (listening more than telling, questions more than answers, and encouraging more than criticizing); thin and prune (allow space and time by removing barriers and bottlenecks); tend and nurture (tell stories, amplify wins and prune the unsuccessful); or harvest properly (celebrate wins).

Can you imagine the success and longevity of an organisation where culture, relationships, teamwork and customer service were allowed to self-evolve naturally in a well-tended garden? This organisation would definitely be rewarded with profit and longevity well beyond 50 years.


Bruce Holland