This article was written over six years ago…before the pandemic. It throws up some interesting thoughts. Apart from the world becoming even more complex, uncertain and unpredictable…with how geopolitics has impacted even the concept of ‘global village’…as we continue to learn how to move forward from here, the basic thread has remained unchanged. If anything, it has become more relevant: a healthy and functioning ecosystem has the opportunity to evolve, and evolution is what is going to succeed…creativity, innovation, adaptation. Agility. We have all been challenged to be creative and adapt over the last few years. Now we know we are, in fact, creative beings (much to the surprise of those who have consistently claimed otherwise about themselves) we can take this new-found asset and build with it.
The world is becoming an increasingly complex and competitive place, both for individuals and organisations. Marketplaces are in constant flux and, in our global village, are so intertwined that creating clarity and focus is ever more difficult. Add in individuals battling to meet changing personal priorities, needs, wants and desires in a more confusing and demanding environment and it’s no wonder we have 1 in 4 people suffering mental health issues, a shift towards a greater focus on employee engagement and a notion of wellbeing emerging as a business driver.
So how do we forge a path through this maelstrom, to THRIVE….?
In a post-Industrial Revolution perspective, organisations were seen primarily through the lens of a mechanical model, striving for predictability of outcomes through linear management of processes. Today, we are more familiar with the perspective of an organisation as an ecosystem – a complex set of interdependent relationships of human beings striving together for existence in its environment.
Leadership that understands and works with the interdependent nature of this kind of system will create organisations that can THRIVE.
The mechanical model sees the organisation as an ‘additive’ system, where one piece adds to another, adds to another and so on. So a skill is either present or it isn’t; and if it is important enough the system will work when it is present and fail when it isn’t. So, for organisations that still see themselves this way, skills training becomes a ‘shopping bag’ of parts: do we need that part for the machine to work…or can it work without it? It’s a binary choice.
On the other hand, the ecosystem perspective is a ‘multiplicative’ system, where a recognition of the interdependency of all the pieces and their interactions – in human terms the relationships – is what creates the variety of possible outcomes. So the ‘shopping bag’ takes on a different meaning. The proficiency and effectiveness of communication skills (the how and the what) impacts trust in the system; which in turn influences a sense of belonging, which is an important element in personal wellbeing, and can be a factor in the prevalence of mental health issues like depression and burnout. Individual resilience begets organisational resilience, giving psychological safety, which builds employee engagement….and so on, in many different permutations. Where you put your effort influences the nature of the outcome.
Transform your people’s awareness of themselves and the part they play in such a system and you will transform the performance of that system! My own experience over the years as both a consultant and a coach has given me many examples of this. Organisations evolving from autocratic, ‘command and control’ structures into relationship-based configurations show this. Google’s extensive research for Project Oxygen demonstrates this. It shows up in Laloux’s model of Reinventing Organisations. A healthy and functioning ecosystem has the opportunity to evolve – and evolution is another positive expression of the ability to THRIVE.
The question remains, though. What steps are you going to choose to take, to create your healthy and functioning ecosystem?