In this article, we will examine what business organizations need today and what people within these organizations and those working as outside consultants can contribute in making them more productive and hopefully less stupid and hurtful. It is only in knowing the differences that will make a real difference and capitalizing on them that we can have a strategic advantage as leaders, managers, employees, trainers and developers of human potential.
Figure I shows two contrasting visions of the corporation spanning a period of last 100 years on a number of dimensions or characteristics. It is interesting to note where we were at the start of 1900's and where we are today at the start of a new century. Much has been achieved, yet we are far from living in a world of "ideal" organizations. As a user of an instrument that measures the impact of organizational culture on several thinking styles, I frequently come across the tension between what people actually have as their "workplace" and what they really dream to have. There is no easy route to this dreamland, but training and consulting practices based on NLP could help business organizations tremendously in becoming more achievement-oriented while at the same time more humanistic.
Figure 1
| Characteristics |
20th Century |
21st Century |
| Organization |
The Pyramid |
The Web or Network |
| Focus |
Internal |
External |
| Style |
Structured |
Flexible
|
| Source of strength |
Stability |
Change
|
| Structure |
Self-sufficiency |
Interdependencies |
| Resources |
Atoms-Physical Assets |
Bits-Information |
| Operations |
Vertical Integration |
Virtual Integration |
| Products |
Mass Production |
Mass Customization |
| Reach |
Domestic |
Global |
| Financials |
Quarterly |
Real-time |
| Inventories |
Months |
Hours |
| Strategy |
Top-Down |
Bottom-up |
| Leadership |
Dogmatic |
Inspiration |
| Workers |
Employees |
Free Agents |
| Job expectations |
Security |
Personal Growth |
| Motivation |
To compete |
To build
|
| Improvements |
Incremental |
Revolutionary |
| Quality |
Affordable best |
No compromise |
Source: Business Week, August 28, 2000, p. 87.
As people within business organizations are increasingly working in self-organizing, flat and unstructured virtual teams, change can start at any level and at any time. The real limitation most of the time is not what we can do but what we can imagine.
In a linear world things happened in an incremental fashion. But in the non-linear world of today doing small things as a risk free strategy is a sign of slow but sure death. The best new products of today (internet, digital TVs, cell phones, mobile computing devices) were unthinkable only a couple of years ago. We are inventing the future of business every day we go to work. As Gary Hamel, the business strategy guru points out, "The future's going to get invented with you or without you. But if you want to build the new, you must first dismantle your existing belief system and burn for scrap anything that is not endlessly and universally true."' (Hamel, p. 135)
Some years ago, experts told us that we could plan and shape our future through the use of techniques like scenario planning. That was a false promise. We can't climb a mountain if the only thing we have ever known is to walk the straight road. Future thinking, on the other hand, is something more meaningful and promising. Future thinking forces us to imagine the future that we wish to create for our organizations and ourselves. NLP could be of great help in this effort since it offers a variety of tools and approaches to:
- Overcoming our limiting beliefs.
- Thinking about the smallest and the largest components of the problems we are trying to resolve (chunking).
- Using analogies and metaphors that can help us find unique and uncommon relationships
Innovation is a much-hyped term within organizations, yet we find that innovation in large systems really is not very widespread. There are substantial barriers to doing things differently. That is where the real challenge of leadership rolls in. A leader creates the conditions where alternative approaches to executing a task are legitimized. A leader encourages people to explore new possibilities. On the other hand, a manager shows them the rules that are required to be followed while they are doing their exploration. Both leaders and managers have a role in leading and managing a business. But it is only through the act of leading that something new is created.
Robert Dilts' work on the Disney Strategy shows in a simple and systematic manner how someone in business can manage to create a flow of creative yet realistic and viable ideas. Through the act of dreaming a new future we can steer ourselves away from what is real and known today. Dreaming is discontinuous, different, and quite often outrageous. Realism brings us back to the world that already exists before our eyes. It's like having a cold shower on a snowy day-inconvenient yet strong enough to make us aware of what might or might not work. Criticism is the perceptual filter used by the non-believer-the perspective of someone who thinks differently. Taken together-the dreamer, the realist, and the critic-these contrasting perceptions provide a business leader fairly reliable map to imagining a new reality.
Returning to the challenges presented in Figure 1, we can suggest several possible NLP strategies, interventions and meta-programs (Fig. 2). One needs to be careful, however, about following a highly segmented approach. The real power of NLP lies in its presuppositions. Like the principles of perennial philosophy, NLP presuppositions transcend cultural, ethnic, and geographic distinctions and work well in developed as well as in developing societies. We are only limited by the power of our imagination in how best we use them. Second, NLP practitioners have to be open to the use of tools and methods that are not traditionally considered to be part of the NLP arsenal but are likely to enhance our effectiveness as practitioners. These methods would include but not be limited to such techniques as systems thinking, mental models, complexity theory, spiral dynamics and MBTI preferences.
Figure 2
| 21st Century Business Challenges |
Strategies, Interventions, and Meta–Programs
|
| Creating a Networked Organization |
NLP Presuppositions
Logical Levels
Three Perceptual Filters
Spiral Dynamics
Wilber 4–Quadrant Model |
| External Focus |
Representational Systems
Anchoring
Client Centering |
| Flexible Style |
Belief Change Pattern
Dis–identification Pattern |
| Managing Change |
Six–Step Reframing
SCORE Model
Walt Disney Pattern
As–If Frames |
| Interdependencies |
Systems Thinking
Complexity Theory |
| Bits—Information |
Chunking |
| Virtual Integration |
Virtual Teambuilding
Organization Culture Inventory (OCI) |
| Mass Customization |
Identification of Mental Models and Thought Viruses (Memes) |
| Global Reach |
Map–Territory Distinctions
Stability–Complexity Factors |
| Real–time Financials |
Timeline Pattern |
| Short–time Inventories |
Timeline Pattern |
| Bottom–up Strategy |
Productive Conversations |
| Inspirational Leadership |
Servant–Leadership Pattern |
| Employees as Free Agents |
Creating a Value–based Organization |
| Personal Growth |
Six–Step Reframing
Belief Change Pattern
Frames of Reference |
| Building Motivation |
Value Direction (Toward /Away) |
| Revolutionary Improvements |
Options / Procedures |
| No Compromise Quality |
TQM, Quality Circles
|
In addition to the challenges mentioned above, there are four significant challenges that need to be mentioned separately. These are: (1) the challenge of creating a vision and sustaining a mission, (2) the challenge of living and working in the mysterious world of and, (3) the challenge of creating and sustaining new metaphors, and (4) the challenge of harnessing complexity.
VISION AND MISSION
A vision is not a dream. It is more like imagining a field of play that has permanently shifting boundaries. The business vision is not about winning today's game, but creating the rules by which tomorrow's game will be played.
A vision if it has to succeed has to be stated in clear and concise language and that's where many businesses run into problems. If the mission is too broad, it might lack focus. On the other hand, if it is too narrow, it limits possibilities for future growth. It takes real leadership to strike a balance.
A new mission statement also entails, though indirectly, what the business will have to learn and what it will have to unlearn. Whether the change takes place in products or services or how the existing products are sold to new clients, it requires new learning and a departure from the ways of the past. What is the new message? How effectively is it delivered? How do people master new technologies and processes? How do they solve problems? How do they reflect on their daily experiences-of both successes and failures-to make improvements for the future? All this is part of learning that sustains the implementation of the new vision and creates a new value network as a bulwark against future failure.
Our personal mission changes as we mature. It's the same for a business. Vision is not so much about predicting the future, it is about making a certain future happen. If the business can't imagine the new reality, continuously shape or mold it, it will have to live and operate in the "new reality" created by others, including competitors, customers, and regulators.
"AND" THINKING
Managers are trained to get around "either-or" dilemmas. The problem is that businesses are increasingly finding themselves in situations where they have to have their cake and eat it too. Welcome to the wonderful world of "and" (or paradoxical) thinking-doing two things at the same time that apparently negate each other!
Business clients are increasingly demanding comfort and low prices at the same time. They want products that are revolutionary yet affordable. The language of "and" is the language of yin and yang-the qualities of feminine and masculine, passive and active, dispersing and concentrating, defensive and aggressive, mystical and material, negative and positive, soft and hard, dark and light, conserving and pioneering-all at the same time.
How can we promote paradoxical thinking? This is the challenge where "languaging" skills can help greatly. We should refrain from framing issues in either-or terms. "And" thinking raises the bar because it eliminates choice of going in one direction. It brings us face to face with our belief systems. It reveals the hidden dynamic between words and our mental models, or thought patterns. Mental models are the raw foundation of our belief system. If what we believe is true, it is probably true and unchangeable as the framework of how we conceive reality. The new mental models require new capabilities, new behaviors, and thus they lead us to results generated by paradoxical thinking.
METAPHORS
Metaphors are the primary nutritional supplement for our imagination. If we aim to set our imagination on fire the last thing we need is to be imprisoned in the four walls of our current reality. What we could do differently would depend on several factors, but looking at the clouds outside our window may not be a bad starting point. Still better, we could take a walk in the woods and listen to the music of water, making its way through the stream, gently touching the rocks as it circumvents little barriers in its circuitous path. We may look at the birds hopping from one treetop to another.
One may ask what has nature to do with business? Are they not two different facets of life? Yes, and they are alike in many ways. Every business is a metaphor in disguise. Flying people from one destination to another is transportation for one airline, it is providing comfort, relaxation, and giving passengers pleasant memories of a worthwhile trip for another. It might look like wishful thinking considering that almost all airlines treat people badly these days. But that is precisely the opportunity for a new entrepreneurial venture to break the mold and to provide a service that is not even deemed to be the part of business possibilities. Every core business strategy that has the potential of challenging the status quo is based on a deeper meaning, a new connection that could be initially described only in metaphoric terms. When a business looks upon itself simply as a "business"' (the way to make money), it limits its scope and its capacity to become the real engine of economic growth-that is, being socially relevant while at the same time highly profitable.
HARNESSING COMPLEXITY
Today's business operates in a highly complex world. The factors that can account for success or failure are just one too many and most often they are interwoven in a web of complex interdependent relationships. We can't really manage or avoid complexity but we can learn to live with it. In their new book Harnessing Complexity, Robert Axelrod and Michael Cohen present a framework that is easy to apply to a study of organizations as complex systems. A simplified version of their framework may be rewritten as follows:
We can look upon organizations as complex adaptive systems consisting of "agents" (people, capabilities, and resources). These agents have strategies that tell them what to do in which circumstances. There is a regular interaction between agents in a system. Agents also use material resources that have definite location. Both agents and strategies are subject to a selection system that could treat them as successful or unsuccessful. But this selection system is error prone and may thus reduce variety or diversity within a system.
The application of this framework in several case studies have yielded the following eight insights (Axelrod and Cohen, pp. 156-158):
- Arrange organizational routines to generate a good balance between exploration and exploitation (US military).
- Link processes that generate extreme variation to processes that select with few mistakes in the attribution of credit (Linux operating system).
- Build networks of reciprocal interaction that foster trust and cooperation (Northern Italy social capital example).
- Assess strategies how their consequences can spread (AIDS research).
- Promote effective neighborhoods (Prisoner's Dilemma game insight: let the potential cooperators interact more frequently).
- Do not sow large failures when reaping small efficiencies.
- Use social activity to support the growth and spread of valued criteria.
- Look for shorter-term, finer-grained measures of success that can usefully stand in for longer-run, broader goals.
REFERENCES:
Axelrod, Robert and Michael D. Cohen. 1999. Harnessing Complexity: Organizational Implications of a Scientific Frontier. New York: The Free Press.
Beck, Don and Christopher C. Cowan. 1996. Spiral Dynamics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc.
Dilts, Robert. 1994-95. Strategies of Genius. Vols. I, Il & III. Capitola, CA: Meta Publication.
Greenleaf, Robert K. 1996. On Becoming a Servant Leader. Edited by Don M. Frick & Larry C. Spears. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Hamel, Gary. 2000. Leading the Revolution. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Wilber, Ken. 2000. A Theory of Everything. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Surinder Deol teaches leadership development at the World Bank, Washington, D.C. He is author and coauthor of several books including
Japji: The Path of Devotional Meditation (1998) and may be reached at sdeol@worldbank.org.
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