Organizations as agents in an ecosystem

I’ve mentioned in Interconnectedness and new forms of organizing that new forms of organizations need to be nested into their ecosystem. Now I want to say more about why.

The main point is that participation in – instead of just transactionally “serving” – the ecosystem gives the organization participatory knowing. That means that the organization understands better what is needed. It can serve its ecosystem better.

In that way, the ecosystem shapes the organization, getting molded into the ecosystem.

Top-down – bottom -up

My hunch is that any top-down directive might interfere with the natural process of adaptation because any meaning making that is too detached from the operational life of the organization needs to translate the relational, obvious, participatory, into abstract aims, objectives, purpose statements or strategic plans.

While reflection about the work are useful, of course, the more abstraction there is, the further the “planning” and the “doing” become separate.

This might seem like a stretch but I liken it to the separation of the divine/perfect and the world on the ground in a two-world dualistic frame. Vervaeke talks about the two-world dualism of (1) the everyday world and (2) the higher-order world.

The higher-order world is the world where managers (like gods!) have a plan. The every-day world is where the workers try to implement. Since ideals cannot be implemented perfectly, the workers will certainly fail, even with -and maybe particularly in – perfect plans.

Just like Vervaeke lays out for the world of philosophy, where there has been a long-held discussion of what the real world is – the metaphysical or the physical – I’m currently examining whether the separation in itself is an inaccurate assumption.

Vervaeke traces the two-world dualism over time, and notices that, once separate, it’s impossible to bring the two worlds back into one world. To reconcile that, thinkers over the millennia either dismissed the every-day world (declaring transcendence into the realm beyond the physical as the goal to get closer to the real – the ideal), or they dismissed the divine and created a purely “rational” and secular world.

Let’s look at organizations. What’s the “real” work? The management that makes perfect plans? Or what happens on the shop floor?

The dichotomy between management and labor might be a trap in itself. Because as soon as we separate them, we have to translate them into each other again.

There are different methods for that. Frameworks like Policy Governance, for example, separates the two worlds to an extreme. Boards make policies, and workers simply carry them out. The two spheres are separate.

In self-management, the spheres are connected and in fact identical. While there are different modes – reflecting mode and doing more – the people who reflect and work are the same. That way, we don’t even have to spell out our purpose, strategy or values – we simply live them together and remain informed by the needs on the ground.

Adaptation is local

An implication of that is that “management” has to be strictly local. Just like meaning is created on a sub-propositional level, meaning in organizations (which informs relevance which informs strategy) has to be close enough to the direct participation in the ecosystem.

That means groups have to be small enough to engage in the ecosystem, and everyone has to be involved in the ecosystem.

That doesn’t mean everyone needs to be engaged with clients. Some “internal” roles like HR or financial planning might have its focus on internal processes, which means the “clients” or “customers” are internal to the organization, and the people providing services to them need to remain connected to the people who they provide services to. So when I say “participation” or “customers” then that might not mean interactions outside of the organization.

Being led

An organization that molds into its ecosystem needs to be willing to be changed. The fox whose fur changes over the millennia to adapt to the colors around it doesn’t get asked for willingness. It’s a process that is beyond individual choice.

For an organization to be changed like that requires flexibility and lack of ego. If the loyalty to a certain mission, purpose or personal ego is too big, then the adaptation process is hindered. The organization ossifies and fails to adapt.

Responsiveness and local autonomy make it possible to be shaped by the ecosystem, without top-down management.

Meaningfulness

With Vervaeke, I’ll assume that meaning is not something to be found, but instead something to be created via some propositional but more sub-propositional processes.

For individuals, he lists three structural issues with lack of optimal fittedness:

• absurdity: feeling disconnected from the world
  For organizations, this might be the state when organizations come up with products or campaigns that seem to have lost “touch” with world, e.g. in terms of inappropriate amount of resources. An organization that produces absurd products or services in an absurd way will lose it’s meaning and dignity.
• alienation: feeling disconnected from others
  For organizations, this might mean lack of synergy and destructive competition with other organizations. For example, if organizations don’t cooperate where it would be useful (e.g. the crazy proliferation of different cell phone chargers)
• anxiety: feeling disconnected from ourselves
  This might be the overarching feeling of disenfranchisement from the individuals and their values and purposes in an organization.

The “perennial problem” of management – how to bring together planning and execution – might have a deeper core that stems from the separation of the two.

Organizations want to be meaningful too! Instead of searching for higher purpose, this approach is more about deeply connecting it to its ecosystem to improve its agent:arena relationship and usefulness and relevance.