Organizations are organic things — they are born, they die, they suffer and they thrive. But very few organizations flourish.

Organizations that flourish are rare creatures.

We find them where business goals are tied to larger purpose, where larger purpose is linked to community needs, and where individuals’ authentic selves are nourished by and engaged in the collective enterprise.

The opposite of a flourishing organization is a withering organization.

Many organizations that we assume are doing well are, in fact, withering.

A majority of organizations are just getting by. They hit their profit or service targets, they hire and retire members, they serve customers, and they do this all adequately. But, in the service of short term goals and/or selfish missions, these organizations are sapping themselves and their stakeholders dry.

These organizations are a net energy drain on their stakeholders. They take rather than contribute to the net value of the systems they are part of.

These organizations are withering.

We fight organizational withering, but we don’t promote organizational flourishing.

Organization leaders, advocates and members spend a lot of energy trying to prevent withering. We try to make organizations ‘better’ by addressing specific dimensions of improvement. We advocate and work towards everything from employee engagement to diversity to sustainability to enterprise 2.0.

The problems addressed by each one of these initiatives are root causes of organizational withering. Fixing, improving, changing and even transforming the organization on any one of these dimensions does make an organization genuinely better.

But ‘better’ isn’t the same as flourishing.

These single-issue change initiatives, and those of us who advocate for them, work as though “better” is our goal, and not as though organizational flourishing is our goal. I’m not sure whether this is because flourishing is just something we don’t let ourselves consider, or whether it’s because we’re so focused and so invested in the one particular issue that calls to us and feels like “our” work.

What Flourishing Requires

To be sure, getting an organization to flourish requires that we work on each of these important change dimensions:

Flourishing requires engagement.
Flourishing requires sustainability.
Flourishing requires leadership.
Flourishing requires diversity.
Flourishing requires employees with full, balanced lives.
Flourishing requires connections to causes that matter.
Flourishing requires products and services that meet real community needs.

Flourishing requires coordination and connection.

Most of all, flourishing requires coordinated, other-aware participation, from all of us who are advocates and agents of organizational change.

The success of the initiatives we each care about depends on us recognizing how that one dimension is connected to and depends on all these other initiatives. And, organizational flourishing requires that we deal with each of these initiatives in their relationships with other initiatives.

Each of us who advocates some dimension of organizational change needs to recognize, acknowledge, support and link to the organizational change efforts on other dimensions. We need to be aware of other initiatives, and coordinate our change efforts to include the initiatives important to others.

Flourishing requires a multi-pronged, networked change strategy.

To get to flourishing, we don’t have to abandon our commitment to a particular change initiative– we simply need to adjust how we approach our own initiative.

Oh, and think bigger too.

I realize that this is what some might call a tall order — too complicated, too complex, too ambitious. You’re right, it is complicated, complex and ambitious.

But I don’t really see a sensible alternative. I don’t want to rearrange deckchairs on a sinking ship, or tie up the weakening branches of a withering vine.

More specifically,

• I don’t want to contribute my energy to improving the environmental sustainability of an organization that is exploiting its workforce.
• I don’t want to improve the work-life strategy of any corporation that is taking advantage of the American financial system.
• I don’t want to improve the social learning at an organization that makes fun of LGBTx consumers.
• I don’t want to develop leaders in organizations that are fundamentally selfish.

Do you?

I didn’t think so.

What I do want to do, and what I want you to do with me, is to focus on flourishing.

Our goal should be helping organizations to flourish.

Our strategy should embrace every progressive organizational initiative and work to leverage the connections between them.

Our tactics should center on the initiatives that are dearest to us and where we can make a unique contribution, but always moving to connect with other advocates and ally our initiatives with theirs.

Are we together on this?

Images from Flicker:

Vine on blue from tanakawho
Funny from tanakawho

HT to Akhila Kolisetti (@akhilak, blog: Justice For All) for recommending Paul Rogat Loeb’s book “Soul of a Citizen: Living with conviction in challenging times.” page 283.

See Also:
A Benevolent Perfect Storm for Progressive Organizational Movements
Socialism, Capitalism, 5 Points of Ignorance, and Progressive Organizational Movements

Just a quick rant here, triggered by and not quite in response to Rachel Happe‘s post on The Social Organization & Womenomics. In her post, Rachel wonders whether a truly ‘social’ organization or business might be more accommodating to the real-world, real-life pressures of managing work and family demands, not only for women but also for men.

I am glad to see someone with Rachel’s insight and influence writing about gender relationships, work & family in relation to socially-mediated organizations and business — why shouldn’t we be designing remarkably better organizations?

Why shouldn’t we be re-creating the worlds of work and commerce, as we implement and develop all these great tools for working together?

Alas, I fear that a whole lot of people talking about “Social Business”, Enterprise 2.0, Organization 2.0, Wirearchy, and the myriad of labels for “organizations facilitated internally by social media” are missing an important issue, one that Rachel only begins to untangle for us.

They may be making business and organizations more effective at getting work done, but they aren’t paying much attention to making businesses support us.

Many of these advocates of Enterprise 2.0 emphasize that new tools will bring about new work patterns, and new work patterns will bring about new social relationships.

This is both true, and not true. It is true in the sense that technology always changes behavior – whether or not these changes are intentional or desirable.

However, it is not true that these changes will be radical or that they will transform our world for the better. This is because too many people are thinking inside the box, and not even considering how we could completely rebuild organizational structures, and in so doing, remarkably change our world.

Too much technology, not enough vision.

The conversation about social media and organizations is too much about ‘business change’. This conversation should be about ‘social change’.

The vision of the organizations these new media will create is not feminist enough, not inclusive enough, and not revolutionary enough. We need to talk about how to use these technologies intentionally to transform human relationships within and across organizations, and human relationships inside, outside, and in relation to work.

Otherwise, we’ll simply re-inscribe the same old oppressions, the same old tensions, and the same old disappointments we already have about work and organizations. We’ll just be able to talk about them more easily on Mixx or Pringo.

To be sure, there will be changes from ‘social business’:

• Hive minding means that more people will get a chance to contribute to knowledge and participate in innovation.

• Shared decisions making and cross-functional expertise will make power more networked than individually-based, and thus more people will have influence.

• More transparent organizational boundaries will make it easier to hold organizations accountable for their words and their actions.

• Market-power dynamics that shift control over products, brand and reputation from organizations to customer communities will make stakeholder alliances more influential.

• Mobile, distance, collaborative, project-oreinted work tools will make results more important than facetime, relaxing location and timing constraints and increasing productivity.

But where is focus on values?

Where is the visioning that considers:

- What could innovation  be like if people felt invited and valued?

- What could organizational democracy and engagement  be like if we intentionally flattened hierarchy and opened decision-making processes?

- What could organizational openess be like if we actually valued customers, suppliers, and organization members as much as we value shareholders?

- What could flexible work processes be like if we not only designed them to increase productivity but also designed them to increase freetime, time off, family time, and recreation?

Too much work, not enough life.

Why is the conversation all about making work more efficient, without focusing on making life or the world better? When will ‘social’ business become social change business?

There is a link here between social business and womenomics, and between organization and feminism:

If organizations really value what is social about us– not only about our work processes but about us as people –  they (businesses) and we (workers) would intentionally create businesses that reflected feminist values.

Social media already resonates with feminist principles of leadership and community, so why shouldn’t these principles also intentionally shape whole organizations as organizations bring social media tools and norms inside?

When will ‘social’ business become social change business?

I promised a few colleagues that I would be a little more authentic, and a little bolder, about calling attention to the opportunities that feminist, inclusive, social-change oriented principles could bring to business this year…. so here’s the first step.

Rant over– discussion just beginning. Join me?

Thanks Rachel, Cali, Donna, The MamaBee, MissRogue, Beth, Lena, Vanessa & Jill for the nudge.

Related articles

• Julia Moulden: New Year, New Job, New Radical (huffingtonpost.com)
• Enterprise 2.0 Conversations (themarketingblog.wordpress.com)
• My Nose, Other People’s Business (AuthenticOrganizations.com)

An amazing discovery! Someone from Wasilla (Alaska) reads AuthenticOrganizations.com! And not just “lands on the page”. Oh, no. We’re talkin’ 3 pageviews and 1.27 minutes online— in one visit alone!

Oh, the modern miracle that is Google Analytics.

I was showing an academic-colleague-who-wants-to-learn-to-blog how to use Google Analytics to gather some nifty data on who visits a blog and what they do once they get there. Showing off the (amazing to me) array of countries and then cities where readers of AuthenticOrganizations.com reside (or rather, where they log in from), I was surprised to discover, nestled in there between Makiti and Ingolstadt, the city of Wasilla.

I won’t tell you which pages s/he visited, (privacy issues and all) but I do want to send her a shout out and a big New Jersey welcome!

So back to the academic-colleague-who-wants-to-learn-to-blog, I think he was impressed. After all, while many management scholars can say their work is published in important academic journals, how many can say that the woman-who-might-have-/-might-still-be-POTUS has read their work?!

Wondering were I’m going with this?

You, too, management scholar, can become a blogger and reach thoughtful readers in 187 cities around the globe. You too can find other scholars, practicing managers, E/MBA students, consultants, social media advisors, non-profit innovators, and anyone else interested in topics dear to your mind&heart, all by blogging.

“But isn’t it hard to blog? Won’t it distract me from science?” you ask. Fear not! Check this out:

Join us at the Academy of Management for a workshop on Blogging for Management Scholars: Why & How to Read Blogs, Write for Blogs, and Create your Own Blog, being held Friday, Aug 7 2009.

This workshop follows an innovative modular format, with three phased sessions that will teach members how to use blogs at three levels of increasing engagement, from reading to writing to publishing ones own blog. And, the workshop includes a group blogging opportunity that will run during and after the Academy meetings.

* Phase 1 (8 am – noon) introduces the medium and the active community of management scholar blogs for those who want to read and comment on blogs effectively.

* Phase 2 (1 pm to 3 pm) teaches participants how to find their niche, to adjust their writing paradigm, and to contribute to existing blogs as writers.

* Phase 3 ( 3 pm – 6 pm) will have a smaller, limited enrollment. Phase 3 will teach the basics of creating your own blog.

The workshop combines informational presentations, a panel discussion by eight management scholar-bloggers, roundtable conversations, and hands-on exercises, as well as the open invitation to blog at www.InsightsToActions.com.

Pre-work (available online at www.InsightsToActions.com) will establish a basic level of understanding, and a post-session group-blogging experiment open to the Academy will let participants apply what they learn. Participants will clarify their blog-related scholarly opportunities, their blog community, their topical niche and their authorial voice. Participants will leave this workshop (1) aware of the opportunities that blogs offer management scholars, (2) able to identify, understand and use the major features of a blog, (3) understanding the array of blogs being published by management scholar colleagues, and (4) able to participate at their desired level of engagement.

Pre-registration is requested, at https://secure.aomonline.org/PDWReg. Colleagues interested in participating in the limited-enrollment Phase 3 of the Workshop should contact CV Harquail directly, at cvharquail@AuthenticOrganizations.com. (That would be me.) The deadline to register online is July 10, 2009.

You too can influence readers and practitioners far and wide, outside your classroom, your university and your favorite journals! Come to the workshop and learn how!

Note: Although I can’t promise that Governor Palin will be there (But Sarah, you know you’re invited!! [And now you'll have the free time ! 7.4.09]) the workshop will be facilitated by several of the cutting-edge management scholars whose blogs you might also read.

And, the workshop will be attended by management scholars with a yen for innovation and a vision of the future

— like you?

“A Benevolent Perfect Storm.”

Isn’t that a lovely image? It comes from David Ellwood, dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, as quoted by Steve Lohr in his NYTimes article “With Finance Disgraced, Which Career Will Be King?” Ellwood hopes that one outcome of the collapse of social and monetary incentives to take a job in finance will be more graduating students chosing careers in “public service”.

Ellwood mentions (1) the economy, (2) other long-range policy issues and (3) the new administration as features of this Benevolent Perfect Storm creating a new set of career opportunities.

In addition to the features that Ellwood mentions, there are three others — more prominent than ever — that add not only the ‘push’ to this perfect storm, but also the ‘pull’.

1.  The rise in Progressive Organizational Movements increase the number of different causes people can work and connect with.

2.  The increasing profile of CSR, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, diversity, and other movements within organizations themselves increase the number of jobs available. And,

3.  Sites and networks where organizations can post specific job and career opportunities, and individuals can post resumes and profiles, make it easier to find opportunities and match them with individuals.

Expanding beyond our earlier understanding of ‘non-profit careers’ or ‘public policy careers’, we are now seeing “Jobs for Good” and “Responsible Careers”.

Here’s just one example of #3, a site that that helps to link “Just job”-seekers with organizations working for social, economic, ecological, global good:  JustMeans.

JustMeans is an online community for people and organizations interested in social responsibility. One of the services that JustMeans offers is a job posting page, where organizations (and executives) looking to hire people with specific goals & values, as well as skills, can post their opportunities to an interested community. (Disclaimer, I only know about JustMeans what anyone can tell from their site. No inside information…)

There’s a nice match here, between the push of the economy, policy, and political leadership, and the pull of specific job opportunities and career networks. Add that to the increasing number of graduating students looking for jobs where they can pursue larger goals and reflect their personal values, and yeah, I’d say that’s a perfect progressive storm.

Please let me know of other, similar job&career sites for individuals and organizations focused on a progressive purpose.

Rarely am I inspired by the Harvard Business Review.

Despite Harvard Business Review’s efforts to revamp their print edition (with a zippier format, hip graphics and bite-size summaries) and to expand their online initiatives, HBR has always felt behind the times. Even when HBR has addressed issues critical to my own research or summarized the research of my friends and colleagues, reading the Harvard Business Review has always left me feeling more anxious than inspired about the future of organizations.

But the February 2009 issue is different.

This month’s issue of the Harvard Business Review contains The Only HBR Article You Need to Read. That article? Gary Hamel’s Moon Shots for Management.

Moon Shots for Management is a Valentine to progressive managers everywhere .

The article lists 25 challenges that make up the Agenda for Management Innovation, an effort to reinvent management as a concept and practice and to create new ways of mobilizing and organizing our collective activity. The list was culled from conversations among 35 "veteran academics, new-age management thinkers, progressive CEOs, and venture capitalists" at a conference sponsored by MLab , a research/practice institute co-founded by Gary Hamel & Julian Birkinshaw.

[The list is in its own post, after this one.]

The 25 goals on the list compose "a roster of make-or-break challenges — management moon shots– that should focus the energies of management innovators."

Scanning the list, you’ll note that not a single item is new.

If you track conversations about sustainability , complexity , innovation, social networking , organizational democracy , employee engagement , social responsibility, non-profit for-purpose business , reinventing management education , changing the world, positive organization scholarship , or for that matter any other progressive organizational issue, you’ll see something from your focus area represented in this list.

What is new, though, is that these 25 items are all on an agenda TOGETHER .

Looking at the whole package of challenges encourages us to imagine working on the issues closest to us, those within our span of influence, in ways that allow our focused efforts to generate multiple values streams. That is, working on any one item with the big picture in mind can move forward several goals at once.

Imagine the future of organizations if we saw these items not as a laundry list of things we "ought" to do, but rather as description of what we could do. Talk about Saving the World at Work !!

Wouldn’t it be great to work in organizations where we "Empower the renegades and disarm the reactionaries" ? (#16)

How about working at non-profits and for-profit companies that "Enable communities of passion" ? (# 22)

Even #4, "Eliminate the pathologies of formal hierarchy" looks possible!
(I acknowledge that this one is somewhat ironic, coming as it does from HBR, a bastion of capitalist, "free-market" privilege. But I digress).

Just two things are missing from this article: (1) recommendations for how to put this agenda into action and (2) a concrete invitation to join in the work. But I hope expect that the folks at MLab have a plan. I look forward to seeing the plan unfold and to finding ways to link my work to this agenda.

For starters, we’re all invited to to the HBR site to participate in a survey where we can rate the importance of these 25 items (to our company) and report on any progress our organization has made towards each of these challenges. Then, you might check some of the links in this post to find out more about MLab and read about the progressive organizational movements that have helped to generate and sustain enthusiasm about these challenges.

And, just because this article is The Only HBR Article You Need to Read, don’t imagine that reading it is enough. You should also:

(1) Go to the HBR site (if you can get behind the pay wall),
(2) Print out/download a copy of Moon Shots for Management
(3) Share the article with some colleagues & friends, (or, send them a link to the list, using the ShareThis button)
(4) Talk about it, think about it, and then …

What’s next?

1. Ensure that management’s work serves a higher purpose.
Management, both in theory and practice, must orient itself to the achievement of noble, socially significant goals.

2. Fully embed the ideas of community and citizenship in management systems.
There’s a need for processes and practices that reflect the interdependence of all stakeholder groups.

3. Reconstruct management’s philosophical foundations.
To build organizations that are more than merely efficient, we will need to draw lessons from such fields as biology, markets, democracies, and theology.

4. Eliminate the pathologies of formal hierarchy.
There are advantages to natural hierarchies, where power flows up from the bottom and leaders emerge instead of being appointed.

5. Reduce fear and increase trust.
Mistrust and fear are toxic to innovation and engagement and must be wrung out of tomorrow’s management systems.

6. Reinvent the means of control.
To transcend the discipline-versus-freedom trade-off, control systems will have to encourage control from within, rather than constraints from without.

7. Redefine the work of leadership.
The notion of “the” leader as a heroic decision maker is untenable. Leaders must be recast as social-systems architects who work to enable innovation and collaboration.

8. Expand and exploit diversity.
We must create a management system that values diversity, disagreement, and divergence as much as conformance, consensus, and cohesion.

9. Reinvent strategy making as an emergent process.
In a turbulent world, strategy making must reflect the biological principles of variety, selection, and retention.

10. De-structure and disaggregate the organization.
To become more adaptable and innovative, large entities must be disaggregated into smaller, more malleable units.

11. Dramatically reduce the pull of the past.
Existing management systems often mindlessly reinforce the status quo. In the future, they must facilitate innovation and change.

12. Share the work of setting direction.
To engender commitment, the responsibility for goal setting must be distributed in a process where share of voice is a function of insight, not power.

13. Develop holistic performance measures.
Existing performance metrics must be recast because they give inadequate attention to the critical human capabilities that drive success in the creative economy.

14. Stretch executives’ timeframes and perspectives.
Discover alternatives to compensation and reward systems that encourage managers to sacrifice long-term goals for short-term gains.

15. Create a democracy of information.
Companies need holographic information systems that equip every employee to act in the interests of the entire enterprise.

16. Empower renegades and disarm reactionaries.
Management systems must give more power to employees who have their emotional equity invested in the future rather than in the past.

17. Expand the scope of employee autonomy.
Management systems must be redesigned to facilitate grassroots initiatives and local experimentation.

18. Create internal markets for ideas, talent, and resources.
Markets are better than hierarchies are at allocating resources, and companies’ resource allocation processes need to reflect this fact.

19. Depoliticize decision making.
Decision-processes must be free of positional biases and exploit the collective wisdom of the entire organization.

20. Better optimize trade-offs.
Management systems tend to force either-or choices. What’s needed are hybrid systems that subtly optimize key trade-offs.

21. Further unleash human imagination.
Much is known about what engenders human creativity. This knowledge must be better applied in the design of management systems.

22. Enable communities of passion.
To maximize employee engagement, management systems must facilitate the formation of communities of passion.

23. Retool management for an open world.
Value-creating networks often transcend the firm’s boundaries and can render traditional power-based management tools ineffective. New management tools are needed to build complex ecosystems.

24. Humanize the language and practice of business.
Tomorrow’s management systems must give as much credence to timeless human ideals such as beauty, justice and community as they do to the traditional goals of efficiency, advantage, and profit.

25. Retrain managerial minds.
Managers’ traditional deductive and analytical skills must be complemented by conceptual and systems-thinking skills.