ORGANITZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION AND THIRD SOCIAL SECTOR
Original article published in catalan on 02/11/2022
This is the speech I made last January 26, 2023, in the session of "Apunts 654C.
Imperdibles de La Confederació".
First, I want to contextualize from where I talk about the following ideas:
I talk from the knowledge I have been acquiring in recent years, reading, studying,
and writing. At this point I want to mention that a most part of the ideas
that I explain here are reflections made and written jointly with Fernando
Fantova and that we have been publishing in Llei
d’Engel between 2020 and 2022.
Also, I talk from the experience I have been acquiring by having the
opportunity to participate actively, together with other colleagues, in the
process of organizational transformation that we are carrying out at Fundació
el Maresme.
At the same time, I contribute ideas from a critical perspective: asking
myself what we can do differently to respond to the social complexity and
challenges we currently face.
And finally, I share these reflections from a vision, intuition, or a dream
of being able to contribute to social transformation through the transformation
of the organizations and the people who are part of them.
So, to start I would throw out the following thoughts and questions:
We can answer who we are in the third sector, where we come from, but
perhaps the answer is not so simple when we ask ourselves, who do we want to
be? where should we go? and what is expected of us? Since the
first doubt that could arise is who should answer these questions.
We are in a time of great transformations and increased social complexity,
and the third sector will probably also have to transform itself to become what
it should be. How can we move towards this whole transformation? Are
the third sector entities themselves prepared organizationally to be active
agents? Do third sector entitineed to start by transforming ourselves
internally to promote all this change? To become a mirror of social transformation.
THIRD SECTOR. WHO ARE WE? WHERE DO WE COME FROM? WHO WE WANT TO BE? WHAT IS EXPECTED FROM US?
Who are we?
Taking as a basis the current
proposal for the Third Sector Law of the Parliament of Catalonia (2022), third
sector entities are those that work for people that may be in a vulnerable
situation such as children, youth, elderly people, people with disabilities,
people in a situation of unemployment, people in a situation of poverty... Some
of its areas of intervention are civic and community action, awareness,
training, work inclusion, residential care, access to housing...
But neither the area of intervention, nor the groups with which third sector entities work
represent the distinguishing features of third sector entities. So, what
are those characteristics that differentiate the third sector from commercial
companies or public entities that can share the object of their
intervention? To answer this question, I propose to step back a little.
Where do we come from?
As we well know, most of the entities of the third sector come from a community base: people, families or collectives who joined to help people in a vulnerable situation could receive the attention they needed, also that for that their rights to be recognized (universal rights such as the right to education, the right to work, the right to a home or the right to social services) so that their needs become visible, to build models of care and inclusion in society.
In the last half century, the
organizations that currently form the third sector, we have made a lot of
progress in recognition of rights, in visibility, in attending people, as a political
lobby, and in professionalization among other aspects, but which are the organizational
models adopted by third sector entities? and what should be the growth
model of these entities?
The organizational models that
have been mostly adopted are inspired by business and hierarchical models.
It is worth recognizing that
the current organizational models have brought us to where we are now, as I
mentioned, a strong, recognized sector but at the same time we are in a moment
where we see that we must respond differently to the challenges and social
complexity we are experiencing.
As Quim Brugué (2022) points
out in the book "Organizations that know organizations that
learn", business models have brought efficiency in public services
but have not managed to ensure the effectiveness of public policies.
About the growth model of
entities, I wonder: should third sector entities be ever larger
entities? Providing more services? And how should they respond to the
increase of needs and social complexity?
Talking about social
complexity we refer to those new challenges and social problems, derived from
the confluence and intersection of phenomena such as longevity,
individualization, digitalization, change in gender roles, inequality,
globalization, urbanization, crises of care or exclusion (Gomà and Ubasart,
2020).
So, we can ask ourselves:
What should third sector entities do?
Entities of the third
sector are not only entities that provide social services, but they are
also entities that work to transform society into a more fair, inclusive, and
cohesive society. Also, entities with political purpose. So, I propose to
recover the transformative purpose, community DNA which is the origin of most
of the third sector’s entities, to move towards the meaning of being of the
third sector. But we cannot forget to think about sustainability:
- Sustainability from an economic point of
view: will the current economic model be sustainable to serve more and more
"groups" of people with support needs, and more people who will need
to be accompanied some moment along his/her life?
- Sustainability from a management and
organizational model point of view: will increasingly large entities with
pyramidal, hierarchical management models, with centralized decision-making be
sustainable?
- Sustainability from care models the point
of view: will we be able to respond to social complexity with the current care
models? Could community care models be models that contribute to make support
and care for people in vulnerable situations more sustainable?
How can we move towards all this change? This transformation.
We face a great challenge, but
the difficulties we detect can be opportunities and leverage to respond
differently. If we really want to be a Third Sector and not remain part of
the establishment, we must position ourselves by providing different, brave,
and innovative proposals.
To answer how we can move
towards this whole transformation, I propose starting with ourselves: at the
individual level (micro), at the organizational level (meso) and permeating the
ecosystems with which we relate and collaborate (macro).
In this article, however, I
will focus on the organizational part, and to do so we can ask ourselves:
- what is the type of organization
that can contribute to all this transformation of the sector itself?
- what is the type of organization that
best represents the values of the
third sector and the social and solidarity economy?
- what is the type of organization that
can best contribute to the challenges we face?
If organizations of the third sector of social action really want to be a third sector, we must be able to give a relatively autonomous and specific response: a necessarily complex response to this complex social reality. To do this we will have to create complex organizational structures. Emphasize that I’m not using the term complexity as a synonym for difficulty, but as multifactorial, dynamic, diverse situations or structures...
ORGANIZATIONS AND ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION
What is the model or type of organization we are talking about?
From my point of view, we cannot talk about a specific type of organization
or model. Rather, we will have to be inspired by ideas and characteristics
that organizations should have, so that they come closer to being able to
respond to all the concerns that I have been exposing and that we detect from
the social sphere and from the social economy.
The types of organization we are talking about should have most of the
following characteristics:
- More agile
and flexible organizations that can better adapt and respond better to social
complexity.
- Organizations with a more ecological and less
mechanistic approach (Capra, 2002): organizations are made up of people
and not parts of a machine. So, we will have to understand organizations
as "living things" and not as machines that must be well adjusted and
geared.
- More lively organizations: as Maite Darceles
points out "when we talk about what organization X is like, the first
thing we think of is an organizational chart with its division of
functions. We assimilate organization to structure, capturing only the
static part. (…) The concept of organization cannot be explained only from the
concept of structure, it encompasses more. Organization is a network of
connections. The structure establishes a static network of connections. Therefore,
the living organization is much more than its structure. To think of
living organization is to think of it from the concept of self-organization
with mobile connections, in flux, in continuous immanence: forms of
communication and interaction between people not explained from a structure
(…)". (Darceles, 2009)
- Open organizations: as described by
Alfonso Vázquez, open organizations, unlike closed ones, where the views are
concerted towards the direction, are built on cores of self-reference with
their own meaning, which can be seen as a form of deal with diversity. Multitude
of units capture and interpret information, signals from their specific
environment and, within the framework of corporate intentions, decide"
(Vázquez and Ayerbe, 2000). In more traditional models,
decision-making is reserved for management, or a small number of people who
will most likely share a very similar vision of seeing the world and
interpreting reality. This means that decision-making is biased, limited,
and does not integrate diversity in the governance of organizations.
- Organizations that include and recognize diversity:
people, knowledge, life experiences...
- Organizations formed by self-managed
and self-organized teams. If we want agile organizations,
we will have to design organizations with teams of dimensions that can
self-organize and self-manage.
- Organizations that promote and create new
leadership styles that are less paternalistic and more feminist.
- Organizations where decision-making is shared,
and therefore power is shared.
- Organizations that facilitate the emergence of
strategy from anywhere in the organization, incorporating diversity in
strategy to respond better to complexity: "strategies can take root in all
kinds of places, practically anywhere in which people have the capacity to
learn and have the resources to support this capacity. These strategies
become organizational when they become collective, that is when the patterns
proliferate and permeate the behavior of the organization in general”
(Mintzberg, 1991).
- Organizations also based on
the Teal principles: able to manage large amounts of information,
there is no immutable hierarchy or directed from above every detail. Which
are mainly based on three principles:
- Self-management:
more people deciding more things.
- Evolutionary purpose of the organization.
- Work with
meaning - Fullness: that we can feel and show how we are at work. Without
covering up doubts, insecurities, because when we wear a mask, we also cover up
creativity, passion... and leave the organization without life.
The definitive factor is that there must be a leader who
does not want to do things the old way (Laloux, 2016).
-
Organizations
based on democratic governance: which recognize the different
voices as well as the diversity of people, and agents who are and are part of
the organization, generating dynamics based on the intrinsic values of a
democratic society. On the other hand, they also facilitate
the generation of collective knowledge, dialogue spaces to imagine, design and
co-create.
Another important aspect when we talk about what is the type of
organization or what are the characteristics it should have, is to keep in mind
everything that is not seen in organizations, the intangible: values, organizational
culture, forms in what we recognize and relate each other... I like to call it
the underground of organizations, assimilating it to everything that is
underground in nature.
Depending on how we take care, nurture this subsoil, what will grow, and
flourish will be one thing or another.
As Fernando Fantova points out " the depth, complexity and
fragility of the emotional dimensions of the units and organizations advise us
to pay constant attention to the organizational climate, but, at the same time,
always remember that we are dealing with a dimension of delicate management in
the that more than the theoretical knowledge of people with management
responsibilities will influence what their deeply rooted attitudes and their
generic relational skills are.” (Fantova, 2005)
Once defined which are the characteristics that should have organizational
models that could contribute to give complex answers to complex social
problems, to move towards the transformation of the third sector itself and
that better represents the values of both the
third sector and the social and solidarity economy, I will briefly describe
what we are talking about when we talk about organizational transformation.
What do we mean when we talk about organizational transformation?
By organizational transformation, we are talking about the process that an
organization makes to change the organizational model with which it is working.
An organizational transformation based on democratic governance, in the process
of defining what the new organizational model with which it wants to work,
already incorporates the participatory methodology and is therefore already
defined collectively, generating a collective knowledge.
In collective knowledge we start from the
premise that the knowledge we are looking for does not exist and that it will
not be the result of the sum of different knowledge, but rather it will be the
result of conversing, listening, and trying to create ideas that did not exist
until now, the result of bring different types of agents into dialogue. Agents
who will have shared a certain space-time oriented to build a complex idea.
In the construction of collective knowledge, the roles, ranks and power of the
different agents are transcendent (Mindell, 2004). Therefore, if we
really want to make this knowledge emerge, listen to the different voices of
the ecosystem, we will have to be attentive to the possible asymmetries of
power that occur between the different agents and facilitate the spaces so that
they do not limit them the result.
When we talk about organizational model, we are mainly referring to
the architecture and dynamics in organizations:
The architecture graphically represents how a certain entity is
organized; we could also call it the organizational chart. Depending on
the architecture of an organization, we will make it easier for certain things
to happen within it. Depending on the teams we recognize, the commissions,
the committees... we will promote work in one way or another, we will
facilitate some interrelationships or others.
Organizational dynamics are the ways in which work is done in a
certain organization, the interrelationships between the people who are part of
it. Defining, putting into practice new relationship dynamics within an
organization is probably the most difficult part, the one that will pose a
greater challenge. To move forward we will have to keep in mind and pay
attention to a series of aspects that I detail below:
What should we be aware of?
We must be conscious that
the old dynamics of both the organizations themselves and the social
model in which we live weigh heavily. Therefore, if we really want to
promote real changes and move towards a deep democracy within organizations, we
will have to become aware, among other aspects, of the weight of the different
ranks of the people and teams in organizations (Mindell, 2004). A
facilitating and mediating perspective will be essential for new shared
dynamics to emerge.
That is why we must
promote safe spaces and work dynamics that facilitate freer relationships,
more spontaneous, more open, and more creative way.
In these dynamics and
organizational structures, spaces for dialogue, for the construction of
collective knowledge, we will find a base that will operate in these new ways
of working, of relating, and of moving forward, it will be a base that will
respond to the logic of complexity: we will often not advance in a linear
way but recursively, the dynamics will not have to be causal, new ideas will
emerge that will not necessarily be the result of previous effects, time will not
be a neutral variable in the processes and we will have to understand that the
whole is not the sum of the parts. We will also have to incorporate the
view of fractality within the organization.
We will also find that there
will be processes that we will not be able to speed up, since there are aspects
in life that will resist achieving greater efficiency, "while we can
produce coffee machines faster and more economically, a violinist cannot speed
up the rhythm without spoiling its melody” (Bregman, 2017).
Keeping in mind these ideas,
patterns, laws that will be operating, paying attention to them, recognizing them,
and facilitating them will allow us to see and sense opportunities that can be
created. We will have to accept certain aspects such as: not understanding
why a certain thing or situation happens and therefore the way to relate to it
will have to be starting from where the system is and work with it. On the
other hand, we cannot pretend to "control" or standardize the
self-organization of structures and collective spaces. We will have to
take a leap towards accepting uncertainty.
Uncertainty, the unknown,
changing, chaos, conflict will not be mistakes to be avoided in organizations,
spaces, or ecosystems but a reality that we will have to recognize, accept, and
manage (Pastor and León, 2007). A certain instability and uncertainty will
lead us towards new structures, relationships, processes, and innovative
creativity. In all this basis of complexity we will also have to recognize
the feelings and emotions intrinsic to every relationship.
We often find that the work
dynamics that predominate in teams, organizations, collaboration spaces
are traditional dynamics where power is concentrated in one or a few
people, and where what is expected of the rest is that they do "what has
to be done" or what they are told must be done.
As Lluís Marco points out, we
will have to be attentive to where power is and how it operates. In
organizations where no one apparently holds (formal) power, intangible power
and rank dynamics take place that we must keep in mind (Marco, 2022).
In all these complex
dynamics, the role of the people who lead this transformation will be the key. People
with management knowledge and experience but above all with a change of
perspective and understanding of relationships and the generation of collective
knowledge. That they accompany organizations, by placing them in a different
stage to be able to bring out the diversity of voices, of people, of knowledge
in the co-production of social policies. That they generate scenarios,
circumstances with a great diversity of agents, that weave more community and
inclusive models. This change of perspective in management may create
situations of uncertainty, which must be temporarily sustained to move towards
collective proposals. It will have to combine more traditional and classic
knowledge but with a transformative look and vision, intrinsic to the DNA of
the third sector.
To finish this article, I
return to the part I mentioned at the beginning that I contributed ideas from
vision, intuition, or dreams: we are in a time of great transformations, we
live with a multitude of complex social challenges that we often do not know
how to respond with current structures, models, and views. Third sector
entities have a long history accompanying, making visible, working for people
in vulnerable situations, and we have shown that the form and perspective from
which we do it "is different". So, I propose to take a step
forward, transforming our own entities to create new structures, models, views,
more agile, flexible, alive, that permeate the ecosystems in which they work, and, in this way, we move
towards greater effectiveness in the new models of care for people as well as
the social policies we want to implement.
RELATED VIDEOS:
Original speech in the
" Apunts 654C. Imperdibles de La
Confederació” (2023)
Organizational
Transformation “Fundació el Maresme” (2020)
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