My goal in working with organizations is to understand what kind of structural strategy would lead to the healthiest organization. The assumption I'm working with is that healthy members, working cooperatively, with the least amount of interpersonal friction, and the most amount of empowerment to generate results, can create systems that will allow the business to clearly define "our way" of doing it here. This systemic approach creates a consistency that opens the door to measurement and change through a statistical application of process innovation and process improvement. Moving from one consistent systemic platform to another well-conceived systemic platform, allows for an objective analysis of risk factors involved as well as a thorough measurement and analysis of the gains. Armed with this information about improvements within the organization, the workers can gain valuable feedback and motivation to continue a healthy effort to take quality leadership from the activity level of Deming, to a functional or even organizational level of improvement.
In other words, we want to take the scientific approach of Deming, of measurement and immediate feedback and adjustment to continually improve an activity; and through joining people together in whole systems, evolve a measured approach to adjusting processes at a functional or even organizational level, as a team.
It appears the key to creating whole systems is to design them to be multidimensional in the way that they accommodate the strengths of personality of all the team members involved. In other words, any system needs to be accessible to people of various skills and personal styles. A communication system for the organization would provide gateways for people, whose style is doing, relating or feeling. Each of us has these styles to some degree, but most of tend to work predominately in one way and then, when healthy, integrate into the other styles. Designing systems to include features that work for all styles of communication and learning creates a whole system, or "our way" of doing it here.
An example of this in application is a simple brainstorming or idea development module that would work similar to an on-line service or bulletin board. Introverted people might call into the system from home late at night or early in the morning. Extroverts might call in from a client location or even a crowded bar after work. Each of the three types mentioned above could have a category of idea development, things that we could do together, rumors we need to talk about together or feelings that we share in order to stay in touch with one another. Each category would be in a different section on the system, which would allow for threading from an original idea through posts that develop that idea to a level of action and move it then into the next planning module where the idea could be treated for priority, schedule and budget. Since this system is all on an information technology platform, good ideas can be traced back to their source and their development can be understood and the organization has created a valuable tool for understanding itself and can begin to apply strategy to make it even healthier.
How do we know in advance what mix of actions taken around goals, rumors or feelings would lead to the most growth and health of the organization and the individual players that make it up?
The pearl of understanding behind this systemic approach is that the organization commands a finite amount of resources, labor, capital and equipment. Labor offers the organization the greatest opportunity for improving itself, but much of the available energy of this resource is wasted in inefficient bureaucratic structures that purposely limit workers and set up dysfunctional and adversarial relationships within the organization. Redesigning the organization to reduce interpersonal friction and to focus the energy of the people into the use and development of the whole systems, and their results, is the simple benefit of this useful approach to organization design.
When the energy of the team switches from largely internal and dysfunctional, to largely external and results oriented, it becomes aligned and balanced in a state of efficiency that we call GroupSync.
Most people try to use power to control the positive and so-called "negative" energy of the people within a group. But positive energy naturally exists in the people in the organization and it merely needs to be tapped into in an intelligent systemic approach. Trying to control the energy of the people within the organization is precisely the point where most of the available energy is lost. In fact "negative" energy is not a reality in human beings, only a difference in the way we perceive what another has to offer through our own context of attitudes, beliefs and opinions. If there is a proper system in place that allows all people to input their energy and ideas, the dynamics of the group will filter out the less useful energy and create fantastic ways of applying all the positive energy available to the group.