by Jay W. Vogt

Published in The Handbook of Business Strategy, 2005

Embracing a New View of Organizations as Living Things

Every day our bodies fight off infections. Who is in charge of this highly successful effort?  Certainly not the brain!   It happens naturally through the innumerable interactions of autonomous cells.  We call it healing!  What if organizations could do that?  What if ailing companies, under attack from competitors, had the capacity to organize themselves to do exactly what was necessary to restore competitive integrity?

To answer that question, a new way of looking at organizations is emerging, one which models companies on living things, not on machines. Our mechanistic view of companies is well established in our language.   We "build" teams and  "run" organizations.  We call techniques "tools" and procedures "mechanisms."  A great team "works together like a well-oiled machine." But viewing organizations as machines limits the success of any company to the capabilities of its "operating system," the leadership vision put forward by the CEO or the management team.  If they are unusually gifted or very lucky, this directive leadership from above may work very well. 

But when the competitive environment is changing very rapidly, or when customers with leading-edge needs and demands are leading the company into new markets, such top-down thinking can "gum up the works."  It slows the natural adaptability inherent in organizations composed of intelligent and independent employees.   Is there a way to engage the inherent intelligence of our people, and hence of our organizations, in order to stay competitive—to heal?

Methods for Enabling Strategy to Emerge

In fact, leaders in many organizations are stepping back from relying solely on themselves as the source of competitive strategy, and are instead fostering environments in which competitive strategy can emerge.  Emergent strategy is not imposed, it is revealed.  Christopher Meyer, co-author of It's Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business, defines emergence as "the way unpredictable patterns arise from innumerable interactions between independent parts."

Our organizations have lots of parts, but they often can’t act independently. We have lots of interactions, but they are typically quite constrained. Usually our patterns are conceived and directed from above. Can it be different? Let's examine two proven meeting methods—Open Space Technology and Grounded Visioning—that enable "unpredictable patterns" (viable, desperately needed business strategies) to arise from "innumerable interactions" between "independent parts" (employees, customers, suppliers, and anyone else who cares about what the company does and how well it does it).

Open Space Technology

Open Space Technology, created about fifteen years ago by Harrison Owen, is more commonly known as "Open Space" (http://www.openspaceworld.org/). It’s a meeting method which gathers together the people who care most about a challenge, lets them define the issues and agenda, and sets them loose to work out solutions. Open Space has been used successfully in 80 countries to take on the hardest challenges in business, issues which:

• Are very complex.
• Require diverse minds to understand them.
• Are likely to cause conflict.
• Require urgent answers.

However, it is definitely not a meeting method for control freaks.  It welcomes an unlimited number of participants, offers no preplanned agenda, and has no room for expert speakers, panel discussions, or PowerPoint presentations.  It may sound wild, but it works.

The Nortel Networks Case

Nortel faced just such a challenge when two important clients, GTE and Bell Atlantic, merged to become Verizon.  Nortel's GTE and Bell Atlantic Global Customer Service Teams suddenly had to merge into a single team.  The newly merged team had to redefine its mission and focus, reassess the needs of its new customer, merge the cultures of its two teams, and plan out a seamless transition.  Many leaders would have locked the door until they hammered out the strategy, and then announced it simultaneously to all.  Nortel’s leaders knew didn't have all the answers themselves. They wanted to engage the intelligence of their teams, confident that good solutions would emerge.  So they put both teams into "Open Space."

The invitation to an Open Space meeting, coming from the CEO or strategy champions, is critical.  It minces no words in laying out the task at hand. It defines any parameters which must act as givens. And it asks for help.  It is humbling, but it is the truth. 

For the senior sponsor of the Nortel event, this meant something like this:

“ The number one issue on our client’s sleepless list is fending off the competition of the agile new telecom companies. We have a unique opportunity not only to help our new customer, Verizon, transition their networks to the next generation, but also to be their partner as they work through their internal struggle of becoming more nimble with their business.

“How do we do this? How do we introduce new ways of working to our customer while they request we continue to work they way we always have? How do we leverage the strengths, knowledge, and skill sets in our new and expanded team? How do we stay current on technology that changes daily so we can deploy it quickly? How do we exceed our customer’s expectations, increase our partnership with them, and keep them truly loyal to Nortel Networks? How do we achieve our personal and company objectives?”

As a leader willing to embrace emergent strategy, he added, “The truth is, I do not have all the answers to these or the numerous other questions.”

Whom does the invitation invite? Anyone who hears the call and wants to play.  The invitation goes far and wide, and the sponsor welcomes all takers, from 15 to 500.  In Nortel’s case that meant managers, team members, human resource professionals, and members of support teams—a healthy cross-functional mix. Customers weren’t invited in this round, but they could have been.

When those who care are assembled—for a half-day, a whole day, two days, or three—the Open Space facilitator restates the challenge before them.  Next he or she briefly explains the four principles of Open Space, designed to foster an environment in which strategy may emerge.

• Whoever comes are the right people.
• Whatever happens is all that could have.
• Whenever it starts is the right time.
• When it’s over, it's over.

Finally the facilitator invites participants who care passionately about a topic related to the challenge to step forward and assume responsibility for convening a work group at a particular time and place of their choosing.  Nortel's sixty participants identified fifteen topics, including:

• How can we deliver on diverse customer report card requirements?
• How can we integrate e-business initiatives into our work?
• How can we convince our client to undertake next-generation work?
• How can we create synergy with our internal support teams?
• How can we provide a high level of customer service while managing our internal process changes?

Once the group's agenda is set—typically in less than an hour, even when working with hundreds of participants—everyone is off and running.

For a day and a half, Nortel’s work groups met in roughly two-hour blocks. Typically, some work groups attract swarms of interest, and others few or no participants.  As the work proceeds, the meaning of the four principles becomes clear:

• Even two people who share a common passion can make plenty of sparks fly! That’s why "whoever comes are the right people." 
• Work with whomever cares enough to come, and start with your current reality, like it or not.  That's the wisdom of the second principle: "Whatever happens is all that could have."
• The purpose is to create, not to punch the clock.  When two folks stumble across a common interest in the hall, something has "started," and therefore it's the "right time."  Follow the spark of creativity!
• And when the spark dies out, don't sit around waiting for someone to rescue you.  “When it’s over, it’s over.” Then it’s time to follow the one law of Open Space, the Law of Two Feet: "If you're not learning or contributing wherever you are, use your two feet to go where you can!"  This law places all responsibility for each individual's learning and contribution in Open Space squarely on his or her own shoulders.

The Nortel Networks Results

The high tech professionals and managers at Nortel loved Open Space.  They got to talk about the issues they most cared about, for as long or as little as they wished.  They used laptops and detailed templates to churn out coherent proceedings.  Their customized template guided conveners and their notetakers to:

• Name the session topic, convener, and participants.
• Establish a linkage with one or more of the five elements of the Team Vision.
• List discussion notes and recommendations in a running fashion.
• Quantify the business impact of recommendations.
• Name the leaders for follow-up action, and an action plan of tasks, time frames, and persons responsible.
• Identify obstacles and how they’ll be overcome.
• Define means for updating the Leadership Team on progress.

Participants printed out these proceedings instantly for review on their flights home. 

The final half-day was devoted to joint action planning. The Open Space facilitator shifted gears into a more traditional facilitation style, helping the group find the convergence of all the elements that had emerged throughout the process. The whole group, working in task mode, then hammered out thirty-day, sixty-day, and ninety-day action plans for major tasks. Differences of opinion on priority or sequencing were referred to members of the Leadership Team.  And while 14% rated the overall session as good, 84% rated it excellent.

Results from Open Space

Once it’s all over, executives have found it easy to delight in:

• Innovative solutions to business problems.
• Widespread sharing of critical business information.
• Building of task focused networks and alliances.
• Release of community spirit, playfulness, and fun.

Gary Consalves, Vice President of Sales at the Southern California Division of Corporate Express, put it this way: “Someone would state a problem, and someone else would say, “’Hey, I can solve that for you.’ One thing you discover with Open Space is your people know what changes they need to make. All you have to do after they’ve made their recommendations is say, ‘Go.’”

Anthony Tiberi, Senior Vice President and CFO at Rockport, reported: “As CFO, I was the most vocal opponent to closing the plant for Open Space. A company as large as ours [$300 million] could not afford to lose two whole shipping days—that’s $3 million dollars! Now, after the meeting, I can easily quantify some results. I expect to realize savings of more than $4 million a year in inventory and related costs from one set of recommendations. I expect sales of about $20 million a year from another—a new line of shoes.”

Kevin Brady, CEO of the Brady Group Holding Company, put it this way: “Over the years, we have tried various ways to gain employee input and involve them more in day-to-day operational decisions. Our recent Open Space session was a quantum leap ahead. Employees truly felt the process enabled them to make very meaningful contributions to our future. Additionally, the ‘departmentalism’ attitude that existed has shifted to a ‘we’re all in this together’ mindset.”

Open Space Worries

Nevertheless, there is plenty of anxiety before, during, and after such a forum. While planning an Open Space meeting, few managers really trust their people's ability to organize themselves so happily, and so productively, without their guidance. Most managers accept Open Space as a meeting method only grudgingly, when all their other options have been exhausted. They worry:

• Will people think I’ve gone mad to sponsor a meeting with no agenda?
• What if we invite the world, and no one comes?
• What if everyone comes—how can we possibly get ourselves organized?
• What if no one steps forward with any issues?
• What if it degenerates into a bitch session?
• What if my boss doesn’t like what he hears?

These are common and reasonable fears, and there may be no way to completely overcome them without living through, and surviving, a few Open Space sessions. During the meeting, the facilitator is a source of abundant faith that those assembled can and will prevail. The facilitator’s role appears minimal, but he or she is always ready to step in if someone attempts to control or co-opt the process. In my experience of leading over forty of these events for over 4,000 people, that has rarely been necessary. Mostly, I am waiting for "unpredictable patterns" to emerge from "innumerable interactions" between "independent parts."  An abundance of results always do.

These results come with a price for management. As R. Sundar, CEO of Majesco Software, Inc., warned: “Open space leads to unpredictable outcomes. If management invites people to take responsibility and follow through with action, it had better be prepared to follow through on its end of the bargain and trust people and help them be accountable. Backpedaling leads to less trust instead of more.”

Grounded Visioning

Sometimes organizational leaders choose to focus the talents of an entire work group, or an even more diverse set of stakeholders, toward creating a shared vision of a desired future.  We know from Peter Senge's seminal work on "learning organizations" that "shared vision" is one of the five key disciplines essential to business success.  But some of these leaders are still thinking of their organizations as machines, not as living things.  They feel it is their job, or perhaps their privilege, to set the vision and ask others to "share" it.  In these cases, the senior leadership is "telling and selling”; sharing only happens if the lower ranks agree, either naturally or through the intimidation of hierarchy.

But a truly shared vision emerges from all those who are committed to make it real. So we must ask ourselves:

• What is the best way to create a truly shared vision? 
• How can it emerge from those who are committed to make it real?

Grounded Visioning, a process created by the author, is one answer to these questions.

A Grounded Vision is a vision of the future that is grounded in the realities of how the organization works when it's at its best.  It's not a blue-sky vision that may or may not be attained, but a grounded one, based on actual best practices. 

The Maynard Public School District Case

Dr. Mark Masterson, the new Superintendent of Public Schools in Maynard , Massachusetts , had just such a need.  He wanted a mandate to push for positive change in his working class suburb of Boston .  But Maynard had a history of voting down tax overrides that would fund school operations above a bare bones budget.  Plus the never-ending tax and spending debates had started to divide the town.  Young parents lobbied hard for improvements, while seniors living on fixed incomes begged for relief.

No vision, however brilliant, could be conceived and imposed on this passionately divided community.  One segment or another would promptly reject and resist it.  A shared visioning process would have to bring together diverse stakeholders who didn't particularly want to work together.  The vision would have to emerge from the community, so the community—as a whole—would own it and commit to making it real.  And given the short attention span of most community volunteers, this all had to happen fast.

Dr. Masterson believed Grounded Visioning would do the trick.  The process works simply.  The organization gathers its leadership and other stakeholders whom it wishes to influence and involve.  The facilitator frames the agenda, states simple ground rules, and explains the core energizing task: the appreciative interview.

The Appreciative Interview

Every powerful visioning process needs to draw its energy for the future from some source.  One of the most reliable processes for creating shared visions, the two and one half-day Future Search Conference  (http://www.futuresearch.net/), uses playful skits set in the desired future as its spark plug.  They always work!  Yet in my visioning work, some clients tell me that one or two days is too much time to ask.  Dr. Masterson in Maynard needed results in just four hours!  My search for a powerful spark plug for visioning the future led me to appreciative inquiry (http://ai.cwru.edu/), an interview process that self-consciously dwells on what works in an organization or community.  It brings out the best in people faster than anything else I've found.

Pairs of participants interview each other with four simple but powerful questions:

• Attraction: What attracted you to this organization and keeps you committed?
• High points: What’s a story that expresses a time when you felt most connected, committed to, and proud of this organization?
• Dreams: What are three dreams, hopes, and aspirations you have for what this organization can be or become?
• Optimism: What is one reason for optimism that these dreams can come true?

Think of the appreciative interview as a short research program on the organization's best practices.  It quickly focuses our attention on whatever is working well.  And as we know from our studies of the mind, what we appreciate, appreciates.  The more we focus on what works, the more energy we have.  Conversely, the more we focus on our problems, and what is not working, the faster our energy drains away.

The Maynard Public Schools Results

A call went out for community volunteers to participate in planning a community conversation about Maynard's kids and their learning.  A deliberate effort was made to balance pro-school and anti-tax advocates.  Everyone agreed we were going to talk about goals for our kids and their learning, not budgets and overrides.

This diverse planning group settled on a Saturday morning in the spring, and invited literally everyone in the community to come.  Parents organized enough offerings of food to host a lunch for all comers.  That morning, as organizers anxiously waited to see who would come, over one hundred and twenty five people marched in and sat down at tables of eight. Volunteers at the registration table assigned folks randomly to table groups to ensure diverse conversations, giving an explanatory note explaining the reason for the request and begging their indulgence.

After a welcome by the Superintendent, the facilitators set out a few simple ground rules, then set the interviews in motion.  Participants regrouped and called out the attractions they had described to each other, which the facilitator recorded, setting a positive and upbeat tone. These included:

• People remembering their enjoyment of learning as a child.
• As adults and parents, their excitement of seeing the spark of learning in a son, daughter, young relative, or neighbor.
• As employers, their satisfaction in hiring well-educated employees.

Then the facilitators invited people to tell their stories of kids and learning at their best, effortlessly surfacing moving testimonials on the power of learning.  Core community beliefs capturing how kids learn when at their best quickly and naturally emerged.

Next, participants recorded their dreams on adhesive notes while the facilitators directed them to build a grand visual display through the clustering of like ideas.  This happened first at the tables, and then again on broad sheets of paper before the whole audience.  No one was in charge of setting the themes. Each group added their contributions to those posted before them, physically placing them where they found common ground. (If you remember your total quality management tools, picture a big "affinity diagram.") Everyone watched as, before their very eyes, nine major aspirations for Maynard's kids and learning emerged from the shared hopes and conversations of all present. These included:

• Provide a rich variety of curriculum choices.
• Create an environment that validates high expectations for all and fosters individual academic excellence among students and teachers.
• Provide adequate tools and resources.
• Think critically, problem-solve, and become life long learners.
• Promote a strong sense of students’ own competence and value.
• Create a reciprocal, supportive environment between school and community.

The group quickly expressed their preferences, using individual multi-voting, and the community's priorities rang clear as a bell.  It was time for lunch!

With more time, participants could have gathered in small groups to organize for implementation planning around aspects of the vision that most attracted their interest.  A Grounded Visioning session always closes with action plans for next steps. In Maynard’s case that meant forming work groups around the top three priorities—curriculum, student competence, and community relations—to detail action plans over the summer. A startling sixty-five people volunteered on the spot to help flesh out the learning goals.  A generic task charge for their work groups, and a calendar of presumed next steps, leading to School Committee approval, were prepared in advance so volunteers would know what they were signing up for!

Key process elements of the goal teams’ charge included:

• Overall purpose (create action plan).
• Results expected (objectives, measures, action plans, etc.).
• Key task completion dates.
• Resources provided (from sponsors, including leadership training).
• Constraints (givens and parameters).
• Sponsorship (leadership role of Superintendent and School Committee).
• Key approval points.

Lastly, the facilitators ended by engaging participants in an upbeat sharing of the results of the fourth interview question—everyone's reasons for optimism that success is achievable. These included:

• The community’s history of rallying together in times of adversity.
• The fresh and innovative leadership of the new superintendent.
• Everyone’s ability to work together that morning to find common ground.

Six months later, the results of the work groups became official School Committee policy.

Once again, unpredictable patterns emerged from innumerable interactions between independent parts.  The use of one-on-one appreciative interviews between total strangers and the distillation of data at tables of eight diverse stakeholders set the conditions for emergence.  Within four hours, a large group of wary strangers found themselves volunteering to implement their shared vision. Grounded Visioning is a simple yet powerful tool to help a shared vision emerge from a large, diverse, and conflicted set of stakeholders.

Emergence Revisited

What do these cases tell us?

• Difficult competitive challenges and rapidly changing environments test the limits of our machine view of organizations, and ultimately break it.  Yet the same challenges that dazzle us when we think of organizations as machines enliven us when think of them as living organisms.

• One concrete way we can shift our focus from the machine view of organizations to a living-systems view is to be receptive to opportunities where strategy wants to bubble up—to emerge.

• At least two simple yet powerful group process technologies exist to help us make our way in this strange new world: Open Space Technology and Grounded Visioning.

• Courage is needed by leaders to move from the hierarchical, mechanistic view of organizations to an interconnected, biological view of organizations as living systems.  It is scary, and it goes against the grain for many of us.

• Ultimately, the rewards to us leaders of letting go - and trusting the natural intelligence of the people we employ, and do business with, to emerge when we create an environment to bring it forth - is worth the anxiety it causes us.

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