Written to a colleague on LinkedIn:

“As for new organizational forms, I have become more and more convinced that we must replace our notions of structural permanence and semi-permeable boundaries with clarity about the value core, an inquiry based approach to seeking new purposes, and incredible fluidity about structural responses to those two, that situates structure as emergent, dynamic, modular, contingent, etc., and existing in complex interactions among three “strange attractors” of community, results, and core values. Boundaries become completely open. Networks (integration mechanisms) replace hierarchies and bureaucratic structures. The only routine things are those systems that are routine because they can be and support the dynamism of the rest, conserving energy for substantive work…”

I’ve been thinking alot recently about Strategic Planning in a time of recession (in other circumstances, I have used this process with schools, school districts, non-profit organizations, government agencies here and abroad, and a few private sector organizations; my favorite of these was the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) back in 1994):

An economic recession is not the time to shrink back in fear and hesitate to act, nor is it the time to act reactively, spasmodically, thrusting out into the markets with every new idea that it seems might produce income, nor is it the time just to continue to do what we’ve always done only harder with fewer resources.  It is, however, a time to hug to one’s core sense of purpose, the values at the heart of one’s work, be clear about the knowledge one has and needs, and act in powerful, innovative, carefully focused, yet also risky ways, to create new opportunities.  In effect, it is a time to act with wisdom.

Wise organizations have increased their capacity for deep reflection, self-knowing, being purposeful, and acting in knowledgeable ways that are rigorously focused, galvanizing, and motivating to employees.  Having delved deeply into who they are, what they value, and what their purpose is, they are better able to engage with the work they decide to do coherently and efficiently, to take risks to be innovative with clarity of purpose and alignment of action.   They are also better able to state to the world who they are and what they offer.

I believe that a Strategic Planning process should enable an organization to act with more wisdom.  Most approaches I know are mostly technical/rational processes that examine various kinds of data about the current situation in terms of strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes also threats and opportunities, see what the “gaps” are, and develop some goals and strategies around those gaps.  Rarely does that sort of process truly focus and inspire and galvanize action broadly across an organization; usually the resulting document sits on a shelf until the next round five years later.  It does not usually enable an organization to act with more wisdom.

The sort of Strategic Planning process I help my clients engage in starts with looking inward, into the heart of who the organization is, into its stories and myths, examining the most meaningful of its artifacts and experiences, to mine from those the values and sense of purpose that lie at the center, the core, of the organization’s being.  This is not a technical process, but a shared meaning making process.  It is about reinvestigating who we ARE as an organization, at our core.

Next the process examines the consequences of that inward look to clarify or reframe the organization’s Mission, as in, given these values and this purpose, what do we actually DO as an organization?  This is a place to be rigorous.  How does who we are determine (not just influence) what we do, in the big sense? …. (and so it goes from here… and what are your thoughts?)

Some thoughts about what makes an organization wise…

 Values

• Be clear about your values, purposes, principles, & vision
• Know what’s in your heart
• Know what you do
• Be authentic
• Live in abundance and possibility, not scarcity
• Continually seek new purposes
• Set clear intentions & goals; engage 100% (not 90%, not 110%
• Learn from the past, be aware of the present, create the future

Systems

• Understand open systems; understand systems; understand deep system architecture
• Slow down, create space, slack: be purposefully inefficient
• Deliberately emerge new structures to enact new purposes contingently
• Be responsive, not reactive; better yet, lead from deep systemic analysis
• Understand and enact creative destruction (be willing to let go of what you do well, so you can find the next thing to do better)

Networks

• Be highly networked (internally and externally)
• Focus on network collaboration and enhancement, not on competitiveness
• Increase bandwidth & airtime (increase # and diversity of sources of concurrent idea generation, amount of time for each source to contribute; use few linear & sequential processes; network)
• Transcend boundaries (apparent paradox of strong personal boundaries and weak organizational boundaries; blur the distinction of who is “in” the organization)
• Connect to (interconnect with) community

Community

• Seek to build community; strengthen social networks among organizations and among community members
• Focus on ecological and economic sustainability
• Create social justice and equity
• Be public, transparent
• Be healthy; support healthy staff

Knowledge

• Manage knowledge & meaning making, not information (create space at the center of your work for substantive “meta-logues” (Bateson) & capture the results)
• Build knowledge management system architecture to mirror and then expand the knowledge creation and meaning making of your networks
• Target resources strategically

Infrastructure

• Build simple routine self-monitoring systems for basic functions so most of your organizational energy can be spent on non-routine work

Welcome to this blog on the Wise Organization.

I’ve had the good fortune to be able to provide coaching and consulting for the past twenty years to schools and school districts, government agencies (as far away as Singapore, but also our own government), non-profit organizations, and even some private sector businesses.  I’ve come to see, in every case, the same longing for transcending traditional bureaucratic forms that were created to serve an entirely different purpose (and even different epistemological underpinnings) and discovering more authentic, networked, connected, responsive, emergent, fluid forms that can address the complex world and the revolutionary speed of learning and knowledge (not just information) creation and use.    

Even more fundamental, people are longing for a new sense of meaning and purpose, a clarity about values and principles, to get away from cynicism and meaningless, repetitive, compliance-driven work, to make connections with each other, to renew our commitment to stewardship of the earth, to rebuild community and find the heart of what it means to be human together.   

Over the past two years, I had been working with some folks in Denver to create a new coaching organization there (Institute for Educational Equity) to work with Denver Public Schools, and in the process of doing that, got involved with an intriguing social network driven organizational development project with the Piton Foundation and several organizations in Denver, including the African Community Center, which resettles African and other refugees.  It’s been inspiring to see their openness to organizational forms unimagined before, in the service of building strong community networks.  In addition, I’ve been “coaching coaches” at the LA County Office of Education in developing a coach community of practice to support their learning and work as consultants in low performing school districts.    

Underlying all of these projects is a huge need to understand the processes of creating and making meaning out of and managing in a real time way all the knowledge that is being generated in these new work relationships and conversations.  I’ve been working with several groups on what a dynamic and interactive knowledge management system and collaborative workspace would look like.  I’m excited about the prospects of an architecture that mirrors the new networked organizational forms that are emerging.  

Thus, these questions arise:  How do we learn together to support complex work?  How do we create systems to manage in a real time way the knowledge building and dialogue necessary for that work? What sorts of organizational designs best support these new kinds of work?  That’s what this blog is about.

We are on the verge of an absolutely essential radical shift in the way we organize to do collaborative work and build community, I believe.  The work on microdemocracy that The Right Question Project is doing, the Small Planet Institute that Frances Moore Lappe started, The Sustainability Institute that Donella Meadows started (she was one of the systems thinkers who influenced Peter Senge), the work of Kevin Kelly on networked, co-evolving, open systems, the World Cafe of Juanita Brown and David Isaacs…  the list goes on and on of emerging new thinking about this essential need. I think there is enough evidence and thinking out there to give us all the clues we need; it’s just a matter of slowing down enough to take the time to think about how they all fit together.    

So, here is a place to build the “slow organization,” like the slow food movement.  Only I want to call it “the Wise Organization.”  Let’s explore what that means together in our dialogue here.  We have lots to learn, and a community to build!    

I hope you will contribute your ideas as we grow!  

John