{"id":2617,"date":"2020-02-26T17:21:46","date_gmt":"2020-02-26T16:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/?p=2617"},"modified":"2020-07-31T13:04:39","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T11:04:39","slug":"tapping-the-human-potential-in-ecosystems-by-stefan-stern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/tapping-the-human-potential-in-ecosystems-by-stefan-stern\/","title":{"rendered":"Tapping the human potential in ecosystems <\/br>by Stefan Stern"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Friday Nov 22nd<\/sup> 2pm-3pm\nZeremoniensaal, Hofburg, Vienna<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The corporation may be one ecosystem\noperating within a broader ecosystem. But at its heart remain the people who\nhave to carry out the work that has to be done. This session of the Forum took\ntime to consider the role of people and how they contribute to the wider\necosystem of business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the chair was Andrew Hill of the\nFinancial Times, and he was joined by Michele Zanini<\/a>, managing director of Gary Hamel\u2019s Management Lab;\nGianpiero Petriglieri, associate professor of organisational behaviour at\nInsead; Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, author and CEO of the 20-first consultancy;\nand Bart Weetjens, a social entrepreneur and a Zen priest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hill opened by recalling the words\nof the English writer and art historian John Ruskin, who identified three\nrequirements for people to be happy in their work: they should be fit to do it,\nthere should not be too much of it, and that people should have a sense of\nsuccess in it. This neatly introduced the contributions from the panel, all of\nwhich, in their different ways, considered how humans react with the systems\nthey find themselves in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incremental\nchange is no longer enough<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zanini asserted confidently that the\nbureaucratic model of the organisation is no longer fit for purpose \u2013 too slow\nand inadequate to the needs of today. A lasting shift in management models\nrequires radical change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get beyond slow, incremental\nchange (which can be sabotaged) change has to be \u2018syndicated\u2019 \u2013 spread through\nthe organisation. At the Management Lab this is called a \u2018management\nhackathon\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one large consumer goods\norganisation which worked with the M-Lab, 4,000 employees were asked to\nreimagine the organisation\u2019s management model, working on a dedicated\ncollaborative platform. People felt they could change the system. The advantage\nof this approach is that, while 50 people working remotely on a change project\ncan be blocked, thousands working in real time online (and visibly) are harder\nto stop. This is about \u2018leveraging the wisdom of the crowd,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drucker Forum 2019<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>
\n

This article is one in the \u201cshape the debate\u201d series relating to the 11th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme \u201cThe Power of Ecosystems\u201d taking place on November 21 & 22, 2019 in Vienna, Austria.\n
#GPDF19 #ecosystems<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Work:\nan existential moment<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was happening to our experience\nof work? Petriglieri asked. Change today is freeing us up, potentially, but\nalso freaking us out, he said. Existential questions arise in this context:\nwill we survive, will we matter, will we be in charge? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have poor management tools, in\nour theory and practice, to deal with these questions, he noted. We are better\nat instrumental questions (\u2018are we productive?\u2019) than existential ones. Yet\nthis is an existential moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three hundred years ago what it\nmeant to be human was to belong. The logic was tribal. Later we defined\nourselves in terms of what we did, what we contributed. And there were two\nbasic psychological needs which underpin this: the need to belong and the need\nto be free. We need to have some agency. Belonging and agency are the two\npillars of humanity. When we dehumanise others, we either tell them that they\ndon\u2019t belong or we restrict their choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this digital age people are\nasking, about this emerging world of work: will we be able to make friends? How\nfree will my choices really be? Who are we becoming and with whom?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need a different metaphor for\nwork and leadership, Petriglieri suggested. We\u2019ve had the military metaphor\n(the general), the saint, the entrepreneur\u2026now we need to consider the metaphor\nof the artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artists are free and cultural,\npersonal but working for others, marketable but adding beauty\u2026we need to stop\nthe tyranny of thinking that says if we are preoccupied with becoming and\nmeaning it means we are not practical, Petrigieri said. He concluded: There is\nnothing as human as a good story. We don\u2019t need another theory of management.\nWe need a different story of management if we are to figure out what it means\nto be human in ecosystems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies\nneed to become gender-bilingual<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Wittenberg-Cox, women were the\n\u2018canary in the coal mine\u2019, choosing to have fewer children. But this leads to\nthe problems of the ageing society. Designed and organised for men by men,\ncompanies have yet to adapt to the arrival of women in the workplace \u2013 women\nhave been allowed in but only as long as they become men (or at least display a\nclose resemblance to the dominant group).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women will change the organisation,\nbut only if they are allowed in as women, Wittenberg-Cox argued. Companies need\nto become gender bilingual, not gender blind. They are not the meritocracies\nthey think they are. Where women are excluded, the ecosystem is \u2018set up to\nfail\u2019. \u2018The Drucker Forum is, at least, one of the most gender balanced\nconferences I have seen,\u2019 she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weetjens showed a film of his\norganisation, Apopo, at work. Apopo trains rats to locate land mines, which can\nthen be safely destroyed. (This represents quite a change for him \u2013 formerly he\nhad worked as a product designer, before becoming a Zen monk.) \u2018We work on\nhuman potential and rodent potential!\u2019, he commented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\ndo our structures do and for whom?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the discussion that followed the\ninitial presentations panelists looked more closely into what a healthy and\nchanging ecosystem at work might look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Petriglieri observed that \u2018you can\nhave too much control but also too much freedom\u2019. Organisations should be\nneither stifling nor neglectful. Today\u2019s level of control now is \u2018FW Taylor\nplus an algorithm\u2019, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A question to ask is: what do our\nstructures do and for whom? And: \u2018does our work allow us to make work that\nresembles us, and make friends who do not? If not we are being dehumanised,\u2019 he\nsaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wittenberg-Cox noted: \u2018Feminism is a\nmovement against domination.\u2019 And Zanini observed that, in his opinion, the\nbest organisations feel like a community or a family, in which you can set your\nown path. Families are not always unproblematic, however. And parenting is a\nrisky metaphor, according to the former psychotherapist Petriglieri.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a stimulating and wide-ranging panel which in just one hour raised all sorts of questions worthy of further enquiry. It certainly added depth and variety to the rich ecosystem that is the Drucker Forum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the Author:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the Author:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stefan Stern<\/strong> is the co-author (with Prof Cary Cooper) of “Myths of Management – what people get wrong about being the boss” (Kogan Page 2017), and “How To Be A Better Leader” (Bluebird 2019)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is one in the Drucker Forum \u201cshape the debate\u201d<\/strong> series relating to the 11th Global Peter Drucker Forum<\/a>, under the theme \u201cThe Power of Ecosystems\u201d, taking place on November 21-22, 2019 in Vienna, Austria #GPDF19 #ecosystems<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

#GPDFrapporteur <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday Nov 22nd 2pm-3pm Zeremoniensaal, Hofburg, Vienna The corporation may be one ecosystem operating within a broader ecosystem. But at its heart remain the people who have to carry out the work that has to be done. This session of the Forum took time to consider the role of people and how they contribute to the wider ecosystem of business. In the chair was Andrew Hill of the Financial Times, and he was joined by Michele Zanini, managing director of Gary Hamel\u2019s Management Lab; Gianpiero Petriglieri, associate professor of organisational behaviour at Insead; Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, author and CEO of the 20-first consultancy; and Bart Weetjens, a social entrepreneur and a Zen priest. Hill opened by recalling the words [\u2026]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":""},"categories":[272,237],"tags":[270,238,23],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2617"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2814,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617\/revisions\/2814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}