What is an Organization?

Remove people from headquarters and what do you have? Cubicles, no culture. We don’t mistake a vacant office for an organization, but we often misidentify what constitutes an organization and this thing called “culture”.  If we want to change our organization, it helps to know where it lives.

Flashback: When Christopher Columbus and his crew sailed west, they journeyed under the flag of Queen Isabella of Spain which bore the motto Ne Plus Ultra, meaning “nothing farther” to affirm that Spain was the end of the world, so to speak.  When Columbus returned to the monarch to report his findings from beyond the edge, the Queen ordered the “Ne” removed so that the motto read: Plus Ultra, meaning “more beyond”. A new possibility was brought into existence with this new conversation.

Consider this: Columbus pushed off from the dock because he “saw” (imagined) a different world than those who stayed on the dock.  I propose that the world he saw showed up in a conversation he was listening to in his head.  He listened to a conversation of “it’s possible that there is no edge; we’ll live”.  The nay saying folks on the dock listened to a different conversation of “the edge is there; you’ll die.”   Each person’s actions, regardless of where he or she was standing, perfectly matched his or her conversation.

What we are exploring here is a language-based phenomenon experienced by all human beings, regardless of culture, race or geography.  Understanding the correlation between the conversations we are listening to and our performance, individually and collectively as an organization, is simple, profound and transformative.

We Are a Conversation We are always listening to a conversation. Even while reading this, I assert you are listening to a conversation, something like … “I agree. I disagree. I already know this. How will this help my bottom line?”

Each of us has been listening to these conversations for so long (since we got the power of language), and they are so prevalent (24×7), we no longer relate to them as conversations we are having. Rather, they are us.  Our personal radio station, call letters WILT (“What I Listen To”), is so integral to who we consider ourselves and others to be that we say things like, “well, that’s just the way I am.  Collectively, our conversations make up our world view: what’s possible, what’s not; what we believe; what we know about others, ourselves, performance and results.

We call some of these conversations as beliefs (women should stay home and have children; men should strive for the corner office), some as facts (you can’t trust bankers or lawyers or politicians), some as wise sayings (don’t let them see you cry; learn to swim with the sharks).  By the way, if you’ve been noticing that your WILT and my WILT are broadcasting similar signals – bingo!  The WILT is not a personal conversation; it’s one we collectively tune into: I’m not smart enough, old enough, experienced enough.  He’s the boss, he must be right.  She’s a Ph.D, defer to her.

What’s critically important about these conversations is not so much their content, but the way in which we relate to them. We relate to them as The Truth: not up for question, unchangeable, immutable.  It is our relationship to the conversations that is the fulcrum for change and transformation. Conversations are malleable, able to be changed.  Mastering the art of generating future-based conversations is the leadership challenge.

An organization is a network of conversations An organization and its culture live in the network of spoken and the unspoken conversations.  The spoken conversations occur in meetings, hallways, parking lots. They are codified in mission statements, strategic plans, and in policies and procedures.  Powerful conversations, indeed, but not the most powerful.

The more powerful conversations are the ones that are not spoken.  The unspoken conversations are often about the spoken ones: “we tried that before, it didn’t work then, it won’t work now … another stupid pep talk … they say share knowledge, but my VP hoards it.” These past-based conversations anchor an organization to the dock.

Regarding the “unsaid but communicated” conversations, Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan, authors of the three laws of performance, put it this way:  “Untying the knots of language begins with seeing that whenever you say something, other communication is carried along with it. …We call the phenomenon the unsaid but communicated. …The unsaid is the most important part of language when it comes to elevating performance.”

What’s next Observe Zaffron/Logan’s 3 laws of performance within your organization: #1. How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them.  #2.  How a situation occurs arises in language. #3.  Future-based language transforms how situations occur to people.

To create a high-performing, innovative, adaptable organization, the leadership challenge is to reveal the spoken and unspoken conversations and resolve the dissonance.  This requires resilience, humility, vulnerability, perseverance, and a willingness to step into the unknown.  In the process, you and your people will continually discover the difference between a real and an imagined edge, between a fact and an interpretation.  Hoisting and sailing under the flag of “more’s possible” is a leadership move.  Step away from the dock.