ORGANIZATIONS: THE CHALLENGE OF TRANSFORMATION

Original article publised in Catalan on 06/19/22
 


"We do not live in homogeneous communities, nor should we aspire to emphatic units or absolute consensus. These are impossible things and even if only for that reason, situations that make no sense to wish for".  Daniel Innerarity affirmed this in his article on "The society of gaps" (La Vanguardia, 04/30/22).

This reflection suggests me to think of organizations as communities: we cannot expect organizations to be calm systems where absolute consensuses are given. This idea, however, becomes a greater challenge in entities that focus on working with participatory and democratic organizational models: management models that are based on shared decision-making, distribution and democratization of power, self-management, and self-organization between other characteristics.

In any organization, there are different points of view regarding how to do things, which are the best decisions to make, which are the ways in which we should relate... These differences are intrinsic to each of the people who built the organizations, because of one's own life experiences, because of culture, because of training, because of interests...

It is said that in diversity there is the wealth, but perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that in diversity there is the potential for wealth. And as with any potential there is also the challenge.

Generalizing is always dangerous, but in organizations governed by hierarchical organizational models, this diversity will be neither a risk nor an opportunity or potential: it will not be a risk since people are "not expected" to develop their full potential and differences to contribute to the organization's purpose, instead everyone is expected to "do what they have to do". Sometimes even, looking for standardize and minimize the differences between people as much as possible, so that the organization always responds the same way no matter who is there at that moment.

However, we are in a time of great challenges, in an environment of complexity, uncertainty and more than speed, we are living in a time of acceleration.

We read, we see, we feel, we experience constant changes and a high need for adaptability, flexibility, resilience, and agility... At a work level, it seems as if these constant changes, needs, opportunities, challenges dump us into a unsustainable way of work... and the most worrying thing is that mostly we don't know how to slow it down... (lately I tend to remember (or remind myself) that "let's not forget that meanwhile we are living")

My feeling, although sometime feelings are not scientific and therefore can give little confidence, is that we are approaching to the end of an era about the way we work, and we don't know yet which will be the next one.

In this "we don't know" it is probably because the new organizational experiences that already exist or are being born, are in the process of becoming, without being conscious of the need to exist. But I have to tell you that they already exist.

These new organizational experiences appear as a response of a need to work differently, but it is still difficult to "model" what type of organization they are or will become.

In the society of the 21st century, with the changes and disruptions we have experienced and that we will experience, organizations will have to become different.

To keep moving forward on this way, we need people, organizations, even legislative frameworks, who push towards change. At the same time, we also need to have to take care to make it tangible, to order it, and to work with methodology, when possible. We must focus that the transformation of organizational model’s root fastly, clearly and firmly, and that the rain and wind we are encountering contribute to watering and growing it, rather than putting it in danger of disappearing.

To close this little reflection, I take again a paragraph from the article that inspired and in says:

" The type of government that this society of the gaps is requiring demands a broad view, an overall vision, a new institutional and organizational culture."


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