By Simon Confino originally published on we-q
Last week I facilitated an open event entitled ‘Reinventing Organisations’, which doesn’t sound very sexy does it?
Yet it was a sell out.
The #togetherness + Reinventing Organisations Event
75 people were motivated enough to buy tickets and schlepp to the city on a cold wet Monday night to participate. So what is it about the ideas within Frederic Laloux’s book ‘Reinventing Organisations’ that is such a draw?
For those who don’t know, Frederic has researched the underpinnings of highly successful ‘self managed’ organisations. Frederic, an ex McKinsey top flight consultant, has researched in depth a very wide variety of organisations that have succeeded in making the journey.
We have interviewed Frederic Laloux on the subject of his book and the practical ways you can involve his methods in your organisation. See here for more information.
Examples of self managed organisations
This includes unlikely candidates such as gearbox manufacturers, a huge tomato paste processor, Holland’s largest community healthcare provider and many more.
So with the mic roving, I asked the audience what their particular interest was. What did they want to get from the evening. It turned out that we had a very wide range of people from startups, banking, consulting, education, community, not for profit… just about everything!
A strong theme emerged though.
Hunger to explore an alternative to the crushing nature of the Me, ‘orange’, rational, hierarchical model that is destroying life on the planet and damping human potential.
All the stats show a far higher percentage of people are disengaged in their work than are engaged. This translates into unhappiness, poor wellbeing, low productivity and innovation. People recognised that a new system has to emerge, one based on deeper human values.
Why and How questions on reinventing your organisation
The questions people asked:
- “How can I have more impact on my top-down educational institution to be more self managed?”
- “As a startup founder, why should I go through the huge hassle of enabling self management, when telling people what to do is so much easier?”
- “How can I challenge the status quo without being fired?”
- “I’d like to explore how to implement these ideas living in a community”
- “How can we shift from consensus to self management in our not for profit?”
- “Does going Teal have to come from the top, or is there another way?”
Those present split into six self managed groups, each of which had powerful conversations on their particular area of interest. They then fed back what they had discovered to the plenary.
By the end of the evening, emails had been exchanged and WhatsApp groups set up. Many people expressed the wish to keep the ‘conversation’ and momentum going.
I’m talking with Adam Taffler, from ‘Togetherness’ the initiator/host of the event, to run a second session which will get down to the practical details. We’ll facilitate a clinic to look at live examples of the challenges people are facing.
Together we will tap into the collective and collaborative intelligence in the group to solve these challenges, to offer support and challenge along the way.
Republished with permission of the author.
Featured Image/graphic link edited by Enlivening Edge Magazine
