cyclesThere are many maps and models of human development that illustrate how individuals function in relation to their community — and how they co-evolve.
Spiral Dynamics, published in 1995 by Don Beck and Chris Cowan, provides a glimpse at how communities and their values unfold in stages — from magic (tribal) to mythic (literal) to mental (modern) to integral (post-modern) and beyond. In 2018, we saw the emergence of memetic tribes — the idea that increased cultural fragmentation has made it impossible to describe people (particularly in America) in categories of left/right or red/blue. Each of these tribes or communities exist in a digital bubble that reinforces their biases and beliefs and goads them into responding to various manufactured crises. In some cases, it’s secularization (and the crisis of meaning) or atomization (and the crisis of belonging). For others, it’s stimulation and the crisis of sobriety. But every tribe has a battle to wage, and they mean to win it. Unfortunately, soon after this phenomena reared its dangerous head, we experienced a worldwide pandemic that saw people hunkered down in their homes and reinforcing these digital bubbles with the unforgiving brick and mortar of cognitive bias and propaganda. Some of them have still not emerged. From 2010-2020, I led an interspiritual community and became involved in the global interfaith movement. I traveled the world speaking about the future of spirituality and the peace-making potential of interfaith dialogue. I saw first hand the plight of people committed to personal and social transformation. I witnessed those doing the sacred work of pulling people out of their filter bubbles and bringing them to the table for actual conversations that would transform hearts, neighborhoods, and communities. The four paths of “Creation Spirituality” were made popular among Progressive/Mystical Christian circles in 1983 when Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox published his book, Original Blessing. The paths are as follows:
Like the four seasons of the calendar, this wheel is one of many religious lenses (Eastern, Western, Native/First Peoples) with which we may view community cycles through time. These wheels, models, and metaphors are how members of the community know it is the right time to plant, harvest, grieve, and celebrate. Whichever maps or models you are using, this shared vision of the world is the cosmology of the organization – how it views the universe. This is where I remind you that all organizations are cults – with their own beliefs and values. I’ve helped countless businesses write their core values, identify the behaviors that support those values, and profess publicly what they believe. And I’ve done it long enough to know that this is what William James meant by the “inclusivity principle” and what Ninian Smart meant by the “Doctrinal Dimension” in his book Dimensions of the Sacred. These beliefs hold groups together. There are many other maps of specific processes that move through time. Some examples include:
In my consulting life, the most well-worn of these has been Ichak Adizes’ Lifecycle of a Business, which we delve into here. And, there are meta-theories (theories of everything) such as Integral Theory (popularized by Ken Wilber in 1995) or the Theory of Process (laid out in Arthur M. Young’s The Reflexive Universe in 1976) that attempt to explain how all of the theories and metaphors throughout time fit together. One thing all of the models share is a holistic kind of symmetry that balances the outer, empirical world with the inner, subjective experience; and draws a straight line between the conditions for change in the individual and the broader evolution of groups or communities.
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DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives are growing quickly in organizations around the world. Leaders and entire departments dedicated to DEI – or EDIB (equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging) – are being installed in for-profit and nonprofit organizations. These teams are committed to deeply embedding DEI principles into the values and actions of the business so that it can be more accessible, welcoming, and empowering.
Here we’ll discuss the “E” in DEI. Compared to diversity and inclusion, the words equity and equality (with which equity is sometimes substituted) are ambiguous terms that can be defined very differently from organization to organization. According to Robert Harris, Director of EDIB at National Audubon Society, it's "not advisable to use equity and equality interchangeably." "In general," he says, "equality is when folks receive the same resources in amount and proportion and equity is when differences are recognized. Resource allocation varies based on those differences to achieve equality." How you implement your DEI initiatives will depend on how these terms are defined. Your definition of these terms will also influence your culture deck, hiring process, team charter, operating agreements, mission statement, media/investor relations, etc. Making sure that they are clear and meaningful for everyone on the team is very important. Equity may be defined in the following ways:
To review, diversity means that you have various people in the room, equity means that there is awareness that they are not all on equal footing, and inclusion means that you have a process for engaging them. Equality is the outcome of people being equally resourced. If you’d like to have a conversation about team performance, team design, or team development, please schedule a discovery call today. For those of you leading organizations in growth mode, you are continually having to balance efforts between the business you are and the business you are becoming. As your team expands, you’ll need to consider new and exciting (yes, they can be!) iterations of your org chart. I recently worked with a corporate team coaching client. We were tasked with building an interdependency journey in Mural that would allow leadership to measure where interdependencies were happening on their global finance team. Interdependency is not only a function of a team, it’s also a quality that emerges at the higher stages of team development (think storming, norming, performing, etc.). If you’re familiar with McKinsey’s innovation horizons, you know that each level of product or portfolio planning requires new or different team members, leadership styles, mindsets, language, business systems, experimentation frameworks, and management methods. Just as in innovation, interdependency has a similar way of scaling. According to the 1967 book Organizations in Action by sociologist James D. Thompson, for each level of team interdependence (pooled, sequential, or reciprocal), there are different levels of coordination required (standardization, planning, or mutual adjustment). Pooled - This type of task interdependence combines separate parts. Business units perform separate functions, not necessarily interacting or overlapping. Like a gymnastics team, however, their individual performance can negatively impact the rest of the organization. Sequential - Like an assembly line, this type of interdependence means that one unit depends on the output of another before they can do their part. Planning and scheduling become vital to avoid bottlenecks in production. Reciprocal - These units are highly interactive and reflexive. It’s sequential, but with the addition of multiple rounds or cycles. Teams or departments may adjust as the situation changes (think sales, marketing, product development, R&D, etc.) and if one department underperforms, the house of cards could come crashing down. A lack of agreement between the types of interdependence and levels of coordination can reduce results, bruise relationships, diminish well-being, or shutter businesses. For now, consider these questions:
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ABOUT THE AuthorJoran Slane Oppelt is an international speaker, author and consultant with certifications in coaching, storytelling, design thinking and virtual facilitation. Archives
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