Living with the Intelligence of Nature
Emerging everywhere around us is a growing human desire for more cooperation. While the chronic stress of conflict and resulting decline in our overall health and happiness are undoubtedly a factor, the underlying reason is the expanded desire throughout society for living more harmonious, creative lives. Life is supposed to be good for us. We live on an abundant planet. As we have navigated the landscapes and seascapes we occupy here on Earth, some of us have learned how to become good stewards while others have not, usually because of ignorance, lack of information, or a lack of integrity.
Finally, we now have enough information to take a different tack and work with Nature’s intelligence. We can take advantage of decades of scientific research and mathematical discoveries and begin to act naturally here on Earth in all of our situations. Nature’s way of doing things is easy and flows more smoothly than ours. This is why an emerging field of technology development, biomimicry, is having such great success with adopting Nature’s designs for a range of applications from propulsion to protection to flight.
It is time for us humans to operate naturally in our organizations as well. For centuries we’ve relied upon the top-down hierarchy to get things done. And for a long time that system worked well, mostly because the majority of humans were uneducated and there were no alternatives. Education has changed everything--it has expanded not only human capabilities but also human desire for better lives. More of us know it is our nature to be creative and we want to participate in the work we are doing, not just be directed or told what to do.
In smaller organizations it’s easier to act naturally and keep the flow of information moving toward collective goals. With fewer layers of bureaucracy, the resistance to information flowing in all directions is less than in your typical corporation. One reason for this one-way flow of information is that corporations believe that humans are as controllable as other things and processes. Not that humans work on assembly lines anymore, at least in this country. We were replaced by robots long ago, as machines are actually controllable and don’t ask for wage increases. Yet, most organizations that reach numbers of 50 or more resort to the top-down model for their organizational structure and end up with the same systemic issues it has been causing forever: redundant work efforts, internal competition for positions and resources, negative gossip about relationships and uncertainty, and the resulting turnover as people seek new situations with more rewarding outcomes.
Larger organizations will continue to need structure in order to use resources efficiently, so what’s the alternative to the old way? The Fractal Organization. This natural hierarchy actually enables an even, balanced flow of information between the center, where the core leaders make decisions for allocating resources, and the edges of the organization, where managers of things and processes are interacting with the external environment. The chain of leadership in the Fractal Organization creates and sustains the shared vision and goals of the collective. Leaders are the conduits of information flows to the center and back to the edges.
In a Fractal Organization, leaders are dedicated to being leaders: to inspiring, guiding, and mentoring their managers of things and processes. In conventional hierarchies, leaders are often managers with their own functional duties and tasks, which divides their attention and takes their focus away from the people they are leading. In this situation, leaders are not capable of being the conduits of information flows that modern organizations need in order to adapt to the rapidly changing conditions around them. Nor do they have time to maintain the key connection between the shared vision and their employees, the connection that creates the pattern integrity that keeps everyone on the same page and prevents personal agendas from superseding collective goals. In part two of this article, we’ll explore the skills leaders need in order to facilitate better information flows and drive results toward desired outcomes.
Leadership through Shared Vision: the Fractal Organization
Leaders in a natural hierarchy spend less time doing things and more time being there for the managers of things and processes. This may sound luxurious, except that information has increased exponentially and continues to do so, driving change at more rapid rates than ever before. Without ensuring clear conduits of information flows through thought-leadership, making timely decisions is nearly impossible. You can still make decisions, it’s just that they’ll be made with less information and in a less timely manner than if the information was flowing more freely.
Every day we humans produce more new information through our interactions with one another. In organizations that focus efforts on customers and clients, you never know what will unfold, as each person is so unique. Project-based work is also unpredictable, because the unfolding of the project always reveals new information yet to be considered. Planning is obviously important. Even more important is having and holding a shared vision for the project as the foundation for conversations about ideas and issues that arise along the way.
In fact, shared vision is likely THE most important thing in any organization--it is the glue that holds teams and organizations together and keeps members on the same page and in agreement about their collective goals. New issues and idea are considered for their potential alignment with the shared vision. New positions are created and filled with individuals who buy into the shared vision first and foremost, otherwise their personal agendas may supersede collective goals. Personal agendas create an atmosphere of distrust, and the job of leaders is to continually emphasize the connection between their team’s projects and the collective’s shared vision. An important reason for doing this is that people will keep the vision in mind as their projects unfold and they address unexpected changes as they arise.
Along with all that is sharing resources and information about resources. The real or perceived scarcity of resources is one of the types of internal competition that erode pattern integrity. The other is competition for position. These types of internal competition are based upon a perception that resources and opportunities for advancement are limited, a perception that triggers a “survival of the fittest” mentality that is rather sparse in Nature. Only humans have developed the perception that the world has limited resources, a perception directly due to our own mismanagement of Earth’s resources. Our scientific observations of species in Nature show us that, within species, members cooperate internally in order to compete externally for resources. Nature is remarkably symbiotic and regenerative, mostly in the absence of human settlements...
Along with sharing vision and resources, and the information about those resources and their availability, thought-leaders develop trust, appreciation, and the willingness to fulfill the collective’s goals by sharing their wisdom and knowledge. They do this through being open to other’s perspectives, honest with their word, respectful of other’s time and energy, generous with their own time and with the necessary resources to accomplish projects, and committed to their team members through mentoring and guiding their work as necessary. When leaders act in these ways that improve communication flows in their organizations, they always receive the right information at the right time in order to be able to help resolve situations or steer projects back on track. This is the beauty of the feedback loop, a scientific discovery important in the evolutionary process. Species in Nature evolve through iterative processes and we do, too, just not as cooperatively as our Earthen brethren. Why? Probably because of our beliefs, which are often colored by our perceptions in situations--our knee-jerk reactions--that remind us of past learning and experiences. [Endocrinologists term this the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis.] This response produces stress hormones and is often based upon false evidence appearing real (FEAR). Successful leaders help keep their teams in present time, using past experiences as real learning yet being courageous enough to take measured risks.
Leaders also need to put in writing the agreements their team members make around how things will get done, by whom, and by when, knowing that the agreements will need amending as processes unfold and new information is revealed. Though having many conversations and writing agreements may seem like a lot of work, this process is important for several reasons. For one, written (and signed) agreements reduce diction errors or misunderstandings that might arise during conversations, which goes a long way in preventing the infamous blame game. Agreements are also the foundation for developing trust among team members, whose responsibility is to make and keep agreements. When they recognize a change in the environment that requires amending an agreement, they are also responsible for speaking up and bringing forth the new information they have discovered. This process is iterative and fractal in its nature. There are no “mistakes,” only opportunities for expanding information toward the collective goal by using resources timely and effectively.
Team leaders are responsible for ensuring that the members stay connected to the vision and have the resources they need to accomplish projects. In Fractal Organizations, information flows inward toward central leadership, informing them of resource needs that reflect current changes in the environment. With this continual flow of information from the external environment to the center of the organization, core leaders can allocate resources more effectively in real time and adapt to the changing conditions, just as all complex adaptive systems do in Nature. And time is speeding up, as you may have noticed. We are more in an improv play than ever before, and we can choose comedy over drama. The only difference is, in comedies the characters figure out what’s going on in time to do something about it.
Now, let us play together creatively!