A poem to the bailout

Look at me, look up in the sky
Though famous and admired, I cheat and I lie.
My way to the top was covered in blood
Nobody knows I am really a dud

Look at my wealth; I have all you have lost
Greed is all good if you can deal with the cost
Leading by words that I never believed
Ooh, how I had my admirers deceived

Arrival to DC in my private jet
Asking for billions without a regret
Cheers to the bailout, my partner in crime
Even a failure is highly sublime

Tags: change, leadership, bailout, greed

Business: It's not life on Mars

"Western cultural views of how best to organize and lead (now the methods most used in the world) are contrary to what life teaches. Leaders use control and imposition rather than participative, self-organizing processes. They react to uncertainty and chaos by tightening already feeble controls, rather than engaging people's best capacities to learn and adapt. In doing so, they only create more chaos. Leaders incite primitive emotions of fear, scarcity, and self-interest to get people to do their work, rather than the more noble human traits of cooperation, caring, and generosity. This has led to this difficult time, when nothing seems to work as we want it to, when too many of us feel frustrated, disengaged, and anxious."
- Margaret J. Wheatley

What is an organization? Start surfing the web and you will get more and more confused. As with everything else in life the more you learn about a subject, the less you feel that you know. Ignorance is bliss, or is it?

There are literally hundreds of definitions of what an organization is. I won’t bother you with all of them so let’s just go with one that is very common and probably one of the best definitions:
“An organization is a group of people, sharing the same objectives.”

From this we learn:
1. An organization consists of a group of people
2. Having some common interest that they want to achieve (a goal, a vision etc)

A problem with this definition is that in reality the various stakeholders rarely share the same objectives. The shareholders wants to maximize the shareholder value, the managers want to climb the corporate ladder and the employees want to develop a certain skill. These are just some silly examples (or are they?). The important thing to note is that there are many goals competing for attention in an organization.

But this is old news. Traditionally leaders and managers have tried to control the organization in different ways to align all competing wills and goals. The hierarchical organization was created to maximize control and efficiency. In order to exercise control companies were built on rigid structures with closed borders to the outside environment.

However, as we discussed in an earlier post, times have changed. The business environment has changed. The world is much more complex and uncertain than ever before. In order to maximize shareholder value (or perhaps even stakeholder value) we need to find a new definition of the organization. Why? Because structures, incentives, culture and relationships will look different based on how you view an organization. And all these factors will together determine the organization’s performance.

A better way to look at the organization might be through a systems perspective.
“Systems of independent activities linking shifting coalitions of participants; the systems are embedded in -dependent on continuing exchanges with and constituted by - the environments in which they operate.” (Scott)

“All social systems, including organizations, consist of the patterned activities of a number of individuals. Moreover, these patterned activities are complementary or independent with respect to some common output or outcome: they are repeated, relatively enduring, and bounded in space and time." (Katz and Kahn)

In other words, stakeholders need each other. It is ok to have different and individual objectives, as long as we align them through our organization. However alignment cannot be based on agreement as that by definition creates conflicts, groupings and power domination.

Yasuhiko Genku Kimura instead suggests that we embrace alignment of intention as we then can allow people to differ in their opinions and still align in their intentions. We can then leave the usual politics of opinion-domination, which is subverting the very integrity of human-unity.

Instead we can begin to design our company around principles like openness, partnership, equality, transparency, learning, participation, self-organization, cooperation, caring and generosity.

As implicated by Margaret Wheatley the same rules apply in life and businesses. Why? Because our business life is just a part of life, a sub-system in a larger system.

Now we are getting somewhere. The road to building the natural organization starts here.

Tags: leadership, learning organization, natural organization, systems thinking, organization, Margaret Wheatley, Yasuhiko Genku Kimura, change, life on mars

A word on equal opportunities and integration

OK, I live in Sweden. It’s a pretty good country to live in by any standards. It’s not perfect by any means but it is a democratic, reasonably wealthy and integrated country in comparison with other countries around the world. We are also probably World leading when it comes to gender equality.

When I went to school we started to learn foreign languages already in 3rd grade. As Swedish is not a major language in the world it makes sense to start learning English at an early age. In the 7th grade we could choose to learn a second foreign language. I made a terrible choice and picked German which I liked about as much as having a rectoscopi . Anyway, at age 15 I was able to communicate (if “Guten tag Fräulein“ counts) with people in three different languages which is great.

When we talk about integration we usually mean integrating immigrants in our society. That is of course very important but it makes me wonder even more.

Why the hell do we not teach sign language in our school?

I am now 37 and I can make myself understood with almost everyone I encounter. Some years ago however I was playing Counterstrike on an Internet Café. Next to me was a nice guy in my age that was deaf. I didn’t realize it at first but after shouting and gesturing to him a couple of times he pointed to his ear. We ended up writing messages on paper but it was extremely frustrating. I actually felt ashamed of myself. How could I not have learned sign language? The deaf community is a forgotten minority and one that I believe is segregated from the rest of our society because we don't learn sign language in school.

Now only 1 out of 1 000 people are born deaf. That means that we “only” have around 9 000 people in Sweden and 70 million in total in the world according to WFD (World Federation of the Deaf). Does that mean the group is so small we can ignore it? Is the cost to teach sign language in school to high when doing a cost-benefit analysis? Not in my world.

Considering how much german I can speak today my six years of learning german is much more of a waste. Especially since most germans can speak english today. And if they can't, they at least have made a choice not to learn. Deaf people do not have this luxury. And if the rest of us do not learn they will never be fully integrated in our society. Correct me if I am wrong but I believe it is much easier to learn sign language than to learn a spoken language. That means the cost would be much lower per student when comparing teaching for example german with teaching sign language.

First though, could someone please make a universal sign language?! I don’t get it why the sign language in Sweden differs from that in the US, France or Japan. In our globalized world. I am usually not a big fan of standardization, but here is an application worthy of the effort.

So if any politician would stumple upon this post by mistake, here are a few factors to consider before making that cost- benefit analysis.

The benefits of teaching sign language in school:
1. Integration of deaf people in our society. No they are not integrated today. There is a reason why I don’t have any deaf friends, never had a deaf colleague or played sports with even one deaf guy. The reason is spelled SEGREGATION. Even if there are only 9 000 deaf people in Sweden I would certainly have met more than one in my 37 years on this planet if everything was as it should.

Bonus reasons:
2. An easy way to speak to people around the world when the words fail us.
3. Baby signing is a great way to communicate with kids under age 2. It makes the baby less frustrated and it helps developing spoken language earlier.
4. We all get old… Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to use sign language when your ears falls off your head?
5. Everyday use for places and times when you can’t talk. I would love to be able to show a few signs to a friend at the movies instead of annoying people with my whispering. Well you can probably think of loads of situations when it would be useful.

Cost of teaching sign language in school
Estimation: 1 hour a week for 5-7 years * number of students.
Nothing that we can’t live with. It’s a price we easily must be able to pay in order to integrate a segregated group in our society.
Option: Financing for free. Exchange cooking and baking (household knowledge?) as a subject. How hard is it to read a cook book? I still get mad when thinking about those silly lessons. Total waste of time and money.

Final note. The embarrassing thing is that I still don’t know how to sign. But I will make two promises. I will not shy away from encounters with deaf but instead try to reach out. And If I only get one friend or acquaintance who is deaf I promise you that I will learn sign language faster than you can type hypocrite.

Jonas
Ps I would love comments from deaf people. And please tell me if I am wrong about anything, I admit to my ignorance, this is just my best try to capture what I feel about this subject. Thanks!

Tags: equality, equal opportunities, integration, segregation, deaf, sign language, world change

Code of the Paladins

• Our mission is to change the world into a better place.
• Paladins fight all evil. Structural, systemic, universal and human.
• Paladins have a holistic world view based on systems thinking.
• Paladins embrace a partnership system worldview.
• Paladins support the integral movement
  
• Paladins do not accept the old industrial paradigm of hierarchical organizations.
  
• Paladins view leadership as action, not as position.
  

Tags: change