I have had
deep, passionate and stormy love affairs with business
organizations. The storms have been caused by the painful
contradictions I have experienced between the potential in
business for what is fine and good, and the meanness,
blindness and impersonal
cruelty that has often been their actuality.
In recent
years, I have sadly come to think of these lovers as
addicts, struggling with increasing
desperation to control their lives and to feed their
addictions with growth, money, novelty, success. As
addicts, they lie, cheat and steal to support their addictions;
they live in denial of the consequences of their actions;
and they turn ugly when confronted with their addictions.
I continue my
love of business and especially of the people I meet in
business, but I am saddened
by the power of these addictions to corrupt or render
ineffective our best initiatives:
the dedication to quality at all levels, the development of
a corporate vision of which all in the organization
can be proud, the excitement and growth typical of the
learning organization. Increasingly,
the context within which I is one of frustration of my
highest aims, and those of my clients. Here is what I view
to be that context. What I now endeavor to do for business
people is based on this map of our present day world.
I see us now as
facing a great and inevitable turning, one being brought
about by the unbridled growth to which we as the dominant
world culture are committed. The signs and signals of that
turning are in what is ending in our society. Here are five
things that I see ending, upon which we used to count. I
have found considerable agreement on these endings in
audiences to which I have spoken on these matters, mostly
audiences composed of people working on changing their
organizations.
• Our ability
to treat Earth as an unlimited resource and bottomless
septic tank.
• The capacity of our system to provide social and
economic justice.
• The capacity of our dominant mental models to keep chaos
and despair at bay.
• The rewards and pleasures of individualism.
• The patriarchy as a viable social contract in
organizations and society.
There are other
signs that have surprised and delighted me and have warmed
my heart.
• Growing
numbers of people are becoming attuned to the systemic
connections between what we do privately and what happens in
the larger world. We know, even while we embrace them, that
quick fixes won't work.
• Many people long for community and for meaningful
relationships in every sphere.
• An understanding is developing that no great leader is
going to fix things for us, and that we have to do it
together.
• There is a spiritual renaissance going on, although, as
usual, it has both dark and light sides.
• People are becoming more open to exploring the value of
intuition, prayer, and other non-rational ways of knowing
and choosing.
• The grief and despair which all or most of us feel at
some level for what we are doing to life on the planet is
beginning to surface and be acknowledged, particularly among
young people.
Because these
latter developments are all countercultural, they are
subtle, hard to track, and there is less agreement that they
are actually going on. My own confidence that they are
there and growing depends a lot on my mood and spirit from
day to day. However, these trends form the basis for those
paths which I believe have integrity and heart that may be
followed in working in and with business organizations
today.
I have been
endeavoring to detach myself from the codependency and
enabling which are typical of the life of an organization
development consultant, so as to see more clearly what use I
can be to human beings enmeshed in a culture of job
insecurity, overwork, information overload, urgency and
competition.
When I do that,
what I see to be necessary for those who want to assist in
the transformation of business is
1) wake
ourselves up;
2) learn to support and nurture ourselves in the loneliness
and despair of being awake in the midst of sleepers;
3) assist others to wake up;
4) join together with others who are awake to
a) nurture and
support one another, and
b) decide upon
and take joint action based on our awareness.
What I mean by
"waking up" is to achieve as much independence as we can
from the influences in our culture and our organizations
that keep us unaware or in denial of the unsustainability
of our present ways of doing, perceiving and believing.
Waking up means letting in the full import of what we do to
the air, the water and the land; to the living beings who
are becoming
extinct because of our actions; to our fellow human beings
who are denied the opportunity
for work, for physical and emotional safety, and for the
necessities of life; to our children
who are neglected and abused. Waking up means accepting our
individual share in the collective responsibility for these
events and processes.
The dedication
to knowing and speaking one's truth is a spiritual practice,
equal in its demand for discipline to any I know. Most of
us will, I believe, need the support of others as we seek to
liberate ourselves from the blindness of the dominant
culture. Fortunately, there are many who are endeavoring to
do this work, but there are strong cultural barriers to
speaking unpalatable truths, and so we often do not declare
ourselves.
For the
transformation of business, it is required first and
foremost that we collectively come to a place of
acknowledgment that our system of livelihood is
unsustainable and that it needs to change at all levels:
individual, community, corporate, and governmental. That
requires a sweeping change in the consciousness of us all.
That change will be accomplished partly through future
events that I believe will demonstrate more and more clearly
that we cannot continue as we are. I anticipate that it
will be made clear that for us to change course to live in
balance on this planet will require both sacrifice and
ingenuity.
The needed
transformation will, I believe, be accomplished through
groups of people engaging in dialogue about what they see
happening in the world. For me, there is much value in
being a member of a group that engages in deep conversation
in an effort to move beyond illusions and inherited
fantasies and to identify our truths and our paths of
service for this time of turning. That is the chief work I
now do, both in organizations, and in the public workshops I
conduct with my partner, Margaret Harris, under the title,
Life on Earth. It is work that can be done by each
of us, in whatever settings we find ourselves: in business,
in our churches, in our neighborhoods and in our voluntary
associations.
In this time of
change people need healing as never before, and we can each
be an agent of healing, bringing wholeness to ourselves and
others in our places of business and other organ-izations.
In workshops I have conducted on becoming an agent of
healing in our work, here are things people have said they
do to promote wholeness for themselves and others:
•
Communicate fully, truthfully, and often, especially about
changes. Be open and honest about both good and bad news.
• Take and
provide time out, for people to integrate changes, to come
to terms with grief and loss, and to consider the future.
• Create
safe spaces: tell your story, and encourage others to tell
their stories and express their feelings, without judgment
or reprisal.
• Build
supportive networks of individuals who trust, honor, nurture
and tell the truth to one another, no matter what is
happening in the larger system.
• Share
power and authority. Give others freedom and responsibility
where one can.
• Treat
those who suffer losses with respect, dignity and
compassion, as opposed to, isolation, silence and neglect.
• Share the
burdens and sacrifices of change evenly throughout the
organization.
• Celebrate
small successes and triumphs, and honor one another's
contributions generously.
• Spend
time close to the natural world, for the healing and
nurturance that remain available in such abundance from our
fellow creatures.
I have lost
whatever faith I may once have had in social engineering,
planned change, and the ability of institutions to transform
themselves. I do not know what forms our institutions will
take in the long term, but I believe they will be both more
human and more conscious. I expect the transformation of
our culture to have much in common with that in southern
Africa, and in the former Iron Curtain states. It will be
fueled by a change in consciousness on the part of ordinary
people, and it will be promoted by getting people together
to tell their stories, and to sing and dance their visions
of truth and of the future.
That is the
work that has heart and meaning for me at this time of
turning, and I invite others of like mind and feeling to
join in it!
