The Power of Spirit

Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Contents

Preface...............................................................................................viiPrologue: Spirit Is the Most Important Thing..........................................................1Part I CHAOS, ORDER, AND SELF-ORGANIZING SYSTEMS.....................................................11Chapter 1 Chaos and the End of Control As We Knew It..................................................15Chapter 2 Chaos and Learning..........................................................................25Chapter 3 Chaos, Order, and the Creative Process......................................................37Part II TRANSFORMATION: THE ADAPTIVE PROCESS IN HUMAN SYSTEMS........................................57Chapter 4 The Standard Business Curve Revisited.......................................................61Chapter 5 Grief at Work: The Journey of Transformation................................................67Chapter 6 Organization Development in Four Acts.......................................................79Part III THE STAGES OF TRANSFORMATION................................................................89Chapter 7 Stages Along Spirit's Way...................................................................93Chapter 8 Over the Edge...............................................................................107Part IV CULTIVATING SPIRIT: THE CARE AND FEEDING OF THE INTERACTIVE ORGANIZATION.....................133Chapter 9 A New Way: Creating Space for Emergent Order................................................137Chapter 10 Optimization: A Practical Way of Keeping in Touch..........................................147Chapter 11 Sustaining the Integrity of Spirit.........................................................157Chapter 12 Healing a Broken Spirit....................................................................175Chapter 13 Everyday Life in the InterActive Organization..............................................181Chapter 14 Ethics in the InterActive Organization.....................................................199Epilogue..............................................................................................207Appendix: Collecting the Stories......................................................................211Notes.................................................................................................215Selected Bibliography.................................................................................219Index.................................................................................................223About the Author......................................................................................231

Chapter One

If there is a single sacred word in the culture of most of our organizations, that word is control. When we have it, we are in good shape, and in its absence disaster is a short step away.

As managers we have been trained to control, and control is the prime attribute designating high-quality management. The centrality of control is not usually stated so blatantly, but it is never far from the surface. According to the old dictum, the good manager makes the plan, manages to the plan, and meets the plan. And the essence of all of that is control. Close, tight control.

We presently find ourselves in rather strange circumstances. It remains relatively easy to make a plan, for after all we control the pen, paper, or computer. But ensuring that the plan, once made, will have any relevance past the drying of its ink, is no easy task. Sure as the sun rises, some unpredicted event will shatter our best efforts. These are hard days for plan makers, and all those other folks who place high value on being in control.

But what are the options? Somewhere along the line we came to the conclusion that the only alternative to control was being out of control. And we all know what that means. Chaos!

In the good old days (whenever they were), events moved at a stately pace, allowing us to make our plans with some reasonable hope of completion. And indeed, we often looked forward to a little chaos just for added spice. Chaos is no longer a little spice added to the organizational stew. It has become our daily bread and butter. As Mikhail Gorbachev said, "We are already in a state of chaos." (Washington Post, Fall 1990) Maybe someday we can return to normal.

SOMEDAY WILL NEVER COME

The hope for a return to normalcy is precluded by myriad factors. I will mention only two: first, the state of the planet; and second, the electronic connection.

The State of the Planet

It is not my intention to deliver an impassioned plea for ecological reform, although that is certainly in order. Rather I merely wish to point to the present sorry state of the planet as a prime factor precluding any possible return to normalcy. Take whatever list of ecological disasters you wish (present, imminent, or potential), and it is patently obvious to even the casual observer that the base system, upon which all other systems stand, is badly out of whack, and showing every sign of becoming more so. Acid rain, global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, destruction of the planetary lungs (rain forests), toxic wastes, are just examples of the many ecological problems; it seems almost pointless to count them. Each contributes, and all conspire, to create the conditions under which we will never return to normal, and business as usual. For it was "business as usual" that got us into this mess.

The productive capacity of the West—now spread around the world—has indeed been good business. However it is business as usual, which is about to put all of us out of business. Scientific studies documenting the appearance of the Greenhouse Effect combined with predictions of the ultimate outcomes are sufficient to give you nightmares. And the nightmare is quickly becoming a "daymare" as our once crystalline blue skies smudge over with the noxious fumes of millions of automobiles, factories, and power plants. Worse, an unsightly mess has become a genuine hazard to our health. In Bombay, Mexico City, Los Angeles, to say nothing of Washington, D.C., pollution alerts are now a way of life, and evacuations of the young and old a growing occurrence. Truly, it is getting hard to breathe, and as any business person understands full well, customers who stop breathing are rather unlikely to buy. In a word, getting back to normal, or returning to business as usual, is a one-way ticket to disaster. We really don't want to go there.

The Electronic Connection

Not terribly long ago, the notion that our planet was a small electronic cottage appeared "far out" and avant-garde. However, science fiction is now an everyday experience. We are all connected and virtually instantaneously. When something happens in a far corner of the planet, we know it, and react. What all of this has to do with the impossibility of returning to "normal" is quite simple. Our organizations and institutions, almost without exception, were designed for a much different era, and even those human systems designed most recently are apparently patterned on what has gone before.

The archetype for organization design emerged early in the 1900s, a classic period in the United States with the...