Excerpt from The Superpeforming CEO
From Chapter 14:  Distributed Being

If you look into nature, into these places of community, you will find an amazing degree of alignment; there is a beautiful, symmetrical pattern. No friction, no member out of alignment—the flow is seamless. These organisms all behave intelligently, even though their members are unaware of the big picture and there is no “central controller” to guide them. According to futurist and complexity author Kevin Kelly, they are out of control—a state he describes as “distributed being.” Since this is the preferred operating mode of complex biological forms that have thrived for millions of years, Kelly suggests that our own increasingly complex organizations will inevitably follow the same pattern. In the simplest terms, they solve problems by drawing on masses of relatively simple and locally autonomous agents, rather than a single, super-intelligent executive branch. They are bottom-up, self-organizing systems. In the language of complexity science, they are complex adaptive systems (CAS) displaying emergent features.

For organizations, reaching anywhere close to this level of performance is only possible in a decentralized environment. But decentralization of decision rights requires corresponding levels of personal responsibility.

Agile project teams are an excellent example.

George: “Birds flocking, fish schooling, bees swarming, all move effortlessly in the same direction, it is a more efficient way to forage and travel, the whole uses less energy to operate in this way. Somehow great teams and great organizations are able to operate as something approaching this ‘frictionless’ state. There is something extra–something invisible at work.

“Some companies become fossilized by centralizing all authority. This is suboptimal. Decisions have to be made as close to the customer as possible, at the lowest level of knowledge and skill. Organizations are patterns of relationships. Conversations are the heart and soul of organizational life. Conversations shape commitment to the organization and create a sense of what is possible. Like Buckminster Fuller’s trimtab on the rudder of a ship, conversations seem insignificant, but have tremendous hidden power. Conversations characterize everyday work life and negotiations between people in the organization and their customers. They determine the quality of service and the overall effectiveness of the company. In many organizations, conversations are negative and blocked or fall into otherwise destructive loops.

“Change cannot be imposed or controlled from the top or from the outside. It is better to work with people at all company levels to help them discover for themselves what is possible and what can be done better. This helps to facilitate new conversations, which often cross boundaries within organizations. By focusing on those conversations at the core of the organization, the greatest leverage can be created, for executives working on strategy, teams working on projects, the whole organization working on its next transformation, or any other critical business function. Systems, structures and processes all help the effective organization, but they count for little if the conversations and relationships are not real. Imposing command-and-control solutions to business problems, especially around knowledge work, has proven to be almost completely ineffective.”

C = f (GKC) > f SQ

Upshifting to Superperformance requires a critical phase transition. For organizations, the experience is the same as water turning to ice –or an outbreak that becomes an epidemic. It is only when critical mass is achieved that true transformation occurs and change will be lasting. This is a second order change. Why are these simple physics missing from the change management literature?

The reason is because change cannot be managed in the first place.

This problem stems from the same outdated mechanistic paradigm of what can be managed and what must be led. The truth about transformational change is that it does not occur from the outside in – it occurs from the inside-out.

It is widely known that the vast majority of transformation initiatives are unsuccessful. While the literature suggests that less then 30% successfully accomplish their objectives, change agents themselves report the true percentage is less then 15%.  Clearly traditional approaches to transformation – while expedient – have not been very helpful.  The evidence of Superperformance – successful large scale change in organizations and projects of every size – points to something different.

The evidence tells us that unless the intrinsic motivation of process owners is Galvanized, and they psychologically ‘own’ the change themselves, they will be doing it because they have to and not because they want to.  This is an inevitably short-term proposition. Creating conditions that catalyze and harness the intrinsic motivation of process owners is an indispensable requirement for Superperformance, and usually the missing ingredient. There are many ways to provoke  the psychological involvement of process owners, such as appreciative inquiry, design conferences, world cafe sessions, and so on, but the fundamental requirement around people is to involve them in the change.

At the same time wanting to change and knowing how to change are two different things. Knowledge for Change (knowing what to do) is where operational excellence begins. Equipping process owners with the knowledge and methods of improvement (understanding of optimization, appreciation for a system, iterative PDSA cycles, voice of the customer, methods of lean, agile, performance scorecards, use of statistical methods, and so on) i.e. the tools of a never-ending continual improvement program–is the second critical element of transformation to Superperformance.

Thirdly, Concrete Actions must be taken. These actions convert the concept of change into the reality of change, and establish the meaningfulness and urgency of the initiative. The first steps to transformation are always the hardest but if they are certain and confident they will rapidly engage a community of practice.

The Status Quo is very powerful. The force of these three previous elements must be strong enough to overcome the force of the Status Quo. It is only when the energy, information, or temperature passing through any system is increased to the place where the old system cannot sustain it, that a critical phase transition occurs, and the whole system changes, adopting a new steady state. This is the same experience in any organization system.

It will only be when the force of these three (Galvanized Culture x Knowledge of What to Do x Concrete Actions Taken) becomes more powerful than the Status Quo that transformation will occur.

Hence the formula:

C= f (GKC) > f SQ

where:

• C means the Rate of Change
• f means Force Of
• G means the Galvanized Culture
• K means Knowing What to Do
• C means Concrete Actions Taken
• SQ means Status Quo