Lessons In Authentic Leadership, continued
Listening from an Organizational Context:
Organizations have structured themselves like pyramids for hundreds of years. The shape of a pyramid made for an appealing metaphor: one leader at the top giving everyone direction. This has been the traditional way of thinking about organizations.
The network has emerged as a new organizational metaphor. In networks, every component has the potential to communicate with every other component. This vibrant model was derived from the scientific study of the operations of living systems. Whereas the icon of the hierarchical organization was the machine, the icon of the networked system is the living organism.
The emphasis in the networked system is highly social. Whereas the focus of the hierarchical model was on predictability and continuity, the networked organization seeks agility and adaptability. In the industrial age the physical strength of the workers powered the organization, but in the post-modern economy, it is the workers’ knowledge that creates the value. These changes have necessitated an evolution in our thinking about workers and leadership.
The IRI Model (Identity, Relationships, Information) is our idea of how organizations function as systems. While the Model arises from ideas derived from science (post-Newtonian physics and modern biology), its principles are highly relevant to today’s networked organizations.
The IRI Model begins by thinking about the system as a whole. Every system has an identity, which provides answers to key questions about that system. Who are we? What is our purpose? What are our boundaries? The answers to these questions define the system’s identity. The leader’s role, at whatever level of the organization, involves articulating and disseminating a common identity throughout the organization. Leaders must attend to the conversations of the workforce and act to create and sustain a focused sense of shared identity.
Next, all organizational outcomes require relationships with other members of the system: an individual within a system can never function in isolation. Organizations have tried to re-invent themselves to accommodate changing market requirements. This is why organizational silos have proven to be so troublesome as collaboration and cross-functional partnering has grown in importance.
Key questions emerge about organizational relationships: with whom must I interact to accomplish the organization’s mission? How I must interact in order for the system to function optimally? Leaders must be astute at tending to and enabling these relationships. These relationships, to work optimally, cannot be dictated but must work successfully; adding value to everyone involved.
In organizations, relationships become formalized as processes. A robust system views its processes as opportunities for conversation about operational and strategic concerns. It then facilitates the kinds of relationships that will enable those conversations to take place: What are we doing well? What could we do better? What does the environment have to say about us? What do we have to learn to do that we don’t do now? Leaders need to model the concern about the answers to these questions and cannot do so without listening well.
In this networked organization, everyone is expected to look beyond their job to think about ways to improve the system as a whole. Relationships, then, are the key to the IRI model. Ultimately, because relationships center on trust, it is crucial for organizations to seek ways to establish and enhance trusting relationships. It is only through the evolution of a trusting work culture that highly developed relationship skills in networked organizations can develop.
Finally, identity-focused action-relationships in networked organizations require quick, targeted sharing of information: what information has to flow within the relationship in order to fulfill the purpose of the system. Systems find ways to transmit vital information, often in spite of formal processes. Fundamental to this transmission are opportunities for people to talk together about the work and to listen accurately to what others have to say.
The IRI Model shows that systems achieve results through interdependent processes. Heightened effectiveness and efficiency arises when all relationships within the system are maximized. In such maximized systems, required information flows with little resistance. No matter where I sit in such a system, I have to be able to determine what now needs to happen from a relationship standpoint that will allow the right kind of information to flow so that we can accomplish what is needed. As such, real value creation takes place within the relationships; the level of intimacy that the relationships attain ultimately determines the company’s potential for success.