Mind the Gap(s)
Systemic approaches to organizations
As a leader, have you noticed that some dependable ways of running your organisation are no longer working?
An increasing number of challenges have arrived. Everything feels more complex and faster now thanks to digital communication and commerce, which is super globalised, and competition (across many verticals) emerges from all corners, all the time.
We live in an eternal scroll of short-lived certainties: a headline fades into oblivion minutes after seeming like a big win, people change jobs more than ever, and market fluctuations carry us like waves.
Separation of concerns is no longer possible. Reliable frameworks that once worked now cause confusion and resentment:
Not everybody can be relied upon to use super-efficiency-based work practices
Rigorous scientific management and hierarchy to force compliance ends with shoddy results and unhappy people
Bringing everyone together as a team as if they're family with one shared and unifying vision is liable to be mocked and surface cultural and social divergences that the organisation cannot hold.
One of the only levers left, incentivising people with better job titles and packages is no longer a sure bet: people want more, they want meaning and mastery.
However, you've seen and heard from fellow leaders that many of the experiments in the opposite direction, where people take on bossless self-management, are also struggling.
So where is the balance?
How can you free your organisation from all the complexity and inertia that paralyses it?
We're here to tell you you can't. At least not from complexity. But happily, you and your team can learn to dwell and maybe even flourish in this new realm.
The Gap(s)
Gaps are challenges that occur in an organisation. If they aren’t seen, named, understood, triaged, and acted on, they cause turmoil. They sit beneath the surface and cause tension. They trip people up, cause them to lose their way, and cause them to leave. They cause leaders to reach for command and control to understand or see what is causing dissonance, frustration, and breakdowns in communication. Too many gaps prevent groups of people from becoming high-performing teams.
Gaps are repeated patterns, yet they exist outside predominant diagnostic lenses. They persist in the background as a low-level hum or bursting into turmoil.
Digging into these gaps is more efficient than ignoring them. Proactively working with them allows us to better understand their impact and the possibilities they can help us leverage.
Gaps are not problems. They represent opportunities.
The Complexity Gap
Intellectually, we understand that anything involving people makes everything unpredictable. Yet we spend our lives striving to codify, monitor, and measure and we pretend that rigour and rules will get us the outcome we seek. And it might! The question is—is that what we want? What about innovation, potential, and imagination?
Modern organisations are complex systems, like ecosystems or markets. Innumerable events and signals take place simultaneously, and uncertainty about what will happen next is prevalent. These ‘critical uncertainties’ could revolve around product/market fit, the efficacy of a strategy or tactic, changing regulation and other factors completely outside of the organisation.
In these environments, leaders are pressured to have clear and compelling missions and plans and tangible and well-marked ways of achieving them.
In reality 5 (or even 1) year planning is a relic of the past. Traditional planning and management approaches are only suited to organisations that dwell in paradigms where success replicates an exact, knowable, unchanging outcome. But because most organisations want and need to adapt and improve, being able to stay with uncertainty instead of reacting chaotically or employing 'wartime leadership' is a key skill. So is helping others learn that it’s ok to not always have all the answers - this space is where opportunity and potential reside.
'In a complex entangled world, our theory of top-down governance can never deliver, you can never regulate the complexity of a situational reality from the top.' Indy Johar
The people with the most power in the system must give mandates and create boundaries for action, decision making and collaboration
As a leader, your role is to help people see their unique potential and take action
Create opportunities for everyone in the system to share what they are noticing from their vantage point
Practice sitting with uncertainty - sometimes it’s ok to leave a meeting without clarity
Prototype things and pay attention to what happens
Practice tight feedback loops instead of rushing to codify and measure the first thing you think of, otherwise, you risk constraining potential
The System Understanding Gap
'System' (especially 'Living Systems') is a phrase on the rise. Even though this first emerged in the 1940s, everyone is talking about systems thinking, change, or interventions. So what is a system, and how does it relate to organisation and work? And how can our organisations become more effective by understanding systems?
A system is comprised of interacting parts forming a complex whole. This mesh of interactions is non-linear and dynamic (constantly changing). Therefore, it makes sense that an organisation is also a system. Because everything in a system is interconnected, constant feedback loops and flows exist. Once we understand patterns (by observing), we can intervene in feedback loops.
Modern organisations require people to be able to take wide-angle, holistic views of the organisation.
Identify opportunities for creating new connections and partnerships that can increase the overall learning capability of the system.
The Systems Capability Gap
Understanding how the parts relate is crucial.
Do you consistently 'sense' what is going on in the organisation?
Can you see the different parts of the organisation - how they relate, and when the parts are out of alignment?
Do you see the relationships that build the systemic whole?
Do you feel it when there is tension and conflict in the system?
Are you consistently (and often without being asked) holding the complexity of all the parts and many humans?
Do you utilise facilitation, deep listening, and great communication to make an impact?
This is systems work. It's a critical role that doesn't have a language and is often not seen or acknowledged.
The Strategic Facilitation Gap
Creating strategy in complex systems is no small feat. Often, leadership teams come together to strategise and get caught out by major gaps. One team member might bring corporate strategic setting experience, another is a creative catalyst, and one wants to make long term plans. Often, no one facilitates the team as they navigate this challenging process, and the ability to produce innovative ideas, goals, and objectives falls away.
There are many great tools and expertless practices (easy for anyone to learn) for facilitating group processes. Holding a group without imposing content or perspective is appropriate in some situations. However, strategic facilitation requires a combination of skills, including advisory capabilities—someone who knows about business and can balance the needs of the people and the critical uncertainties of the market environment.
Having an external actor facilitate strategic processes is essential
Tactical planning is not the same as setting strategic direction
Are you confident that you are organised in the best way to manifest your strategic objectives?
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These are the first set of gaps - what we call ‘the meta gaps’. There are meta gaps and get-your-hands-dirty pragmatic gaps. If these meta gaps feel a bit too theoretical, you’ll find these pragmatic gaps practical and actionable .
So, are you experiencing any of these meta gaps?
When you see a gap, is your reaction one of fear and dissonance, or do you see opportunity and potential? Working through gaps can deliver an unprecedented level of resonance in your team, which can flow throughout the organisation.
Recognising a gap gives you a choice: you can use a different approach, close the gap, or do something else (or nothing!).
With decades of experience working in these gaps, helping leaders identify them, and experimenting with ways of dealing with them, Susan Basterfield and Kate Beecroft can help you navigate the pitfalls and potential.
If you need someone to talk to who is not your cofounder, not an investor, not your romantic partner, and not your Mum, talk to us: askmindthegaps@gmail.com