Making Workplaces Work Better

Leadership Out of Control:

Accessing Organizational Leverage Points

"Well, I can’t tell you what to do, Alex, but if you’re going to reach your goals, you’d better do something to get your team’s act together."

"Like what, join hands and sing Kumbaya in three-part harmony? Get serious. We’re only as good as our leadership, and you people act like you’re out to get us. So, what gives?"

"If you mean we’re trying to get rid of you, you’re sadly mistaken. I just want results. Now I understand why you haven’t kept us in the loop and you’ve avoided returning my calls…."

Workplaces are like ecosystems … complex, interconnected webs of relationships that blend chaotic and well-ordered patterns of activity. This article is about using the best of both to interrupt patterns of stress and take charge of change using what I’ll call leverage points.

So Much Time, So Little Change

If we could just focus on the changes that would make the biggest difference and ignore the rest … we’d have it made. Unfortunately, humans can’t always separate out what’s pointless from what’s powerful until after we’ve jumped in with all three feet. Then we’ll know from experience how to "surf the chaos" and leverage that learning into other arenas.

Another way to gain this type of wisdom is to rely on established principles and "natural laws." Such principles apply to organizations whether or not we know about or believe in them. For example, even if I choose not to believe in the law of gravity, I’m still affected by it. Similarly, here are three leadership principles that powerfully influence personal and organizational change:

1. Tap the power of self-organizing systems (described by chaos and complexity theory), letting go of control. How? Build in teamwork and accountability systems. Accountable to what? Agreements, alias leverage point #2, below. This frees up leaders from spans of control – which often causes micromanagement – to "chaords" (chaos and order in dynamic balance), providing sustainable marketplace advantage. To quote Tom Peters, "The winners of tomorrow will deal proactively with chaos, will look at the chaos per se as the source of competitive advantage, not as a problem to be got around."
   
2. Organize and prioritize work around meaningful, coherent goals and powerful, voluntary agreements. Usually our purpose and priorities are clear to us, but is everyone on the same page? Impose structure on the chaos with clear goals and complete agreements. Shared vision, defined mission and articulated core values increase stakeholder buy-in and result in an increasing commitment to the success factors for the organization. It also instills an entrepreneurial edge so that this ever-increasing number of committed employees will act like owners – co-investors – not just additional pairs of hands.
   
3. Now the big one: notice your assumptions – the "mindset" out of which all of this arises – and bust the myths and outmoded ways of thinking that led to accepting perceived (assumed) limitations as facts. A definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. The key to innovation and creativity – busting through the well-worn reactivity and defensive loops that sometimes have us "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" – is to have the courage to irrationally throw off limits and dare to dream.

At first, it may seem counter-intuitive or can be quite uncomfortable to step back from habitual ways of thinking ("We’ve always done it that way!") to notice the structure of patterns that give rise to well-worn problems ("We have to get away from this, but we can’t …") or undiscussable issues ("I scare people? Nobody has complained to me about it so far!"). These patterns can transform stress-provoking stuckness into empowering moments of creativity when there’s a shift from a point of view to a viewing point: new, constructive dialogue emerges and people quickly move to get the job done.

Self-Assessment Questions

What are the most powerful places to focus your attention? How can you leverage your time and talent to bring forward the patterns that produce greater success?

As you notice the situations that currently drain you or that reflect defensive loops, deep-seated conflicts, or other cycles of stress – you can ask yourself the following questions:

• Is there an area where I’m holding onto how it has to be, where I’m rigidly attached to an outcome or goal?
• Where am I not achieving an outcome that reflects a broken promise, a lost opportunity or some other "sunk" energy that I could retrieve?
• What are my top three goals and how is my work organized around achieving those goals? For example, is my office space a mirror of what I’m actually working on, or more a reflection of stuff I happen to have?
• Am I operating out of any false assumptions – or causal "myths" – that put me at odds with the laws of human nature? For example, do I believe that I need to motivate or empower people to do their best work? Or, have I ever assumed that "If I let a team manage their own commitments and hold themselves accountable, they will slack off and become complacent"?

It turns out that people are already motivated (to do something); often people are motivated to do the best job they can– we need only tap into what already exists. Given the backing they need, people empower themselves, and if I’m an effective leader, I can get out of their way.

Holding people accountable externally is less useful than setting up systems and structures where people hold themselves accountable (and those who also care about the outcomes – for example, management – can simply pay attention to how it’s going).

These old assumptions about how workplaces work are based on a consensus way of thinking that perpetuates the myth – until someone stops to look at it and pushes back. This isn’t about who is right and who is wrong – it’s much more practical than having a philosophical debate: it’s about what works.

Shifting an assumption will, in turn, lead to a different result. Change your assumption and you’ll change your experience. This resets expectations, and expectations have a profound influence on behavior and results. How do you respond when the people around you expect you to be (or assume that you already are) brilliant, unstoppable, successful?

Because assumptions always appear to be correct and complete to the person who holds them, it may not go over well if we directly challenge (attempt to change) someone’s mindset. Indeed, a better approach is to ask the person to observe if their current assumptions are getting the results they are after, while we come from the alternative mindset. In this way, leading quietly by example provides a persuasive demonstration of what would serve them, too. In time, the shifts occur naturally, effortlessly, given the respect and flexibility that is the centerpiece of skillful leadership.

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