Caterfly recently hosted an Open Space event to explore the need for transforming the way we work together in order to move toward more collaborative, responsive workplaces. Lisa Gill shares some of the key learning and event highlights.

On the 21st of July 2015, around 40 people gathered in a space called ‘The Barn’ in Green Coat Place Conference centre in Victoria, London. We were all drawn to this place to answer the question: why aren’t organizations shifting? Among us were people making shifts within their own organizations; coaches and consultants devoted to guiding people towards better ways of working; educators frustrated with the current system; and some who simply had the nagging sense that “there must be a better way.”

Martin Grimshaw and Francois Knuchel, from Caterfly, invited the group to volunteer ideas for exploratory, participant-led sessions. Within minutes, the wall was plastered with headings: barriers to change, reinventing education, and even a session done in complete silence. In this Field Report, I’d like to share the key themes from the sessions I took part in.

Can you shift an organization from within?

One delegate shared an incredibly positive story about how he has been using Liberating Structures to facilitate change in his department of 50. Slowly but surely, he’d been able to effect change by giving a voice to employees and feeding critical issues and ideas upwards. It’s a work in progress and there have been some challenges but his plan is to develop a ‘Teal bubble’ (see this Q&A article with author of ‘Reinventing Organizations’ Frederic Laloux for a definition of Teal). It was an inspiring example of someone experimenting and impacting the culture and mindset of an organisation from the bottom up.

We heard another story from the opposite end of an organisation – the CEO. She told us how she had joined a voluntary organization and started by speaking individually to employees to build trust. It became clear that the company needed a set of values to live by so she involved the whole company, across levels and functions, to co-create them. The process of whittling them down from many to just six was the most valuable part of the exercise, and she deliberately distanced herself from the activities so as not to impose. As CEO, she could have written the values herself or enlisted the HR department to do it but she truly enjoyed the energy that was generated from the whole team designing their values together. Before long, the values were being discussed in meetings and everyday conversations, helping to guide behavior and decision-making.

We also discussed how difficult it can be to influence a shift when the CEO or management team is stuck in a traditional mindset. Laloux himself writes that for a Teal organisation to thrive, “the chief executive must have an integrated world view and psychological development consistent with the Teal paradigm.” The same goes for owners and board members. Without this, it can become a frustrating battle of one step forward, two steps back.

The Human Organizing Festival

In the next session, we discussed ideas for a new kind of event – The Human Organizing Festival, planned for Spring 2016. Why is our education system so soulless and destructive? Why is it so hard for leaders to be vulnerable and share their mistakes openly? Why have so many people resigned themselves to the fact that work is dull? How can we organize ourselves better as humans in our education, work, political and social systems? All of these questions will be explored in a celebratory day with events happening simultaneously all over London. The energy and enthusiasm in this discussion was electric which for me indicated that there is a real need. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could spark a global movement?

Songs and stories to ignite the human spirit

One of the leaders of this discussion shared an example of how she had used Joseph Campbell’s ‘the hero’s journey’ as a framework to help and inspire women returning to work after maternity leave. Others in the group shared their own personal stories that had created a shift in their lives and it was incredible how quickly it generated a personal connection between us all.

We discussed what it would be like in organizations if leaders and team members shared their stories in this way to illustrate why they joined the company in the first place, or why they care about a particular cause. It would be a short cut to purpose and connection and create an authenticity that is so often lacking in the workplace.

Does a shift first require a shift in organization design?

I was curious to know if organization design was a necessary element in creating a real shift, and whether a shift is really possible if the company is structured as a hierarchy. Laloux’s book ‘Reinventing Organizations‘, Salim Ismail’s book ‘Exponential Organizations‘, and research by WorldBlu are just some of the current works that suggest the future of organizations isn’t pyramid-shaped!

Some delegates shared examples of Teal or Agile units existing within a hierarchy (what Jacob Morgan calls ‘Flatarchies‘), but we concluded that without an aligned mindset at the top of the organization, these will always be separate and the results limited.

Holacracy was mentioned several times as one of the alternative structures to hierarchy. There are many benefits to the system such as increased autonomy and agility, and similarly there are some challenges – some of the critiques are the length of time it takes to learn the system and its sometimes alienating language. I spoke to Martin Grimshaw after the event about my concern that some people might pounce on Holacracy as the answer when there are in fact many alternative methods of governance. Martin, for example, is a champion of sociocracy, upon which Holacracy is based. The first sociocratic organization was Endenburg Electrotechniek, who were experimenting with more democratic ways of running organizations as early as the 1970s.

It reminded me of an interesting conversation on the Reinventing Organizations Discourse platform where Daniel Tenner (founder of GrantTree) said this:

He explains more fully in this blog that there are no short-cuts to a cultural shift and in any case, culture should and will always be changing. Many people complain to me about the ‘cult of Teal’ or express frustration at the fact that many of these systems aren’t new, they just have shiny new names.

My response is inspired by my brief career in the travel industry where one of the perks was travelling to Laos. One particular day I was walking around Luang Prabang with an ex-monk who told me the story of Buddha and the moon. One of Buddha’s teachings goes something like this:

“My teaching is a method to experience reality and not reality itself, just as a finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself. A thinking person makes use of the finger to see the moon. A person who only looks at the finger and mistakes it for the moon will never see the real moon.”

So for me, it’s not about getting hung up on the latest ‘finger’ pointing at the moon, but to always be journeying in search of the moon. Every organization is unique and must find its own way to evolve.

Overall, the event was exciting and the longing of those in the room to transform our organizations was palpable. One of the most energizing things for me was the coming together of many different groups and communities, all of whom are striving for the same thing: to make work better.

For the benefit of those who weren’t able to attend, here is a list of those communities and resources that I hope will help accelerate the shift in organizations that the world needs.

• Responsive Org
• The Human Organising Project
• Evolving Organisation
• Culturevist
• Future Considerations

And some useful resources:

• Reinventing Organizations Discourse platform – a place for anyone working in a reinvented or ‘Teal’ organization or in the middle of the transformation process to have discussions and support each other
• Reinventing Organizations wiki – a wiki that explores next stage/Teal organizations, practice by practice